Saturday, June 15, 7 PM, $7-10 suggested donation – cash only
Artists in person!

The Nightingale is thrilled to welcome Lydia Moyer to screen her meditative collage-like critique of contemporary life, The Forcing, preceded by Latham Zearfoss’s similarly elucidative short work WHITE BALANCE.

The Forcing, 2018, 46 min

An insistent collage of images and sound that muddles the quiet detail of flora and fauna with the chaotic noise of mass upheaval, building tension through the offset of sound and image. Made in response to the turbulence of contemporary American life, acknowledging how much is experienced through screens. The Forcing asks viewers to ride the waves of the capitalocene, moving between original and existing materials toward an unheroic encounter with the beautiful and the terrifying. Boundaries between climate change and the struggle for social justice dissolve relying on the energy of sound to place them side-by-side on the cosmic continuum.

WHITE BALANCE, 2018, 9 min

This experimental documentary seeks out moments of cognitive dissonance around multifaceted, liberal ideas of whiteness. Further, it questions how power circulates as ideology, via material and immaterial means. Paired with an unnerving original score, the camera lands on episodic vignettes that unpack white identity as a socially constructed set of power relations, and the color white as an aesthetic experience ranging from humdrum to stunning to repulsive.

Lydia Moyer is a contemporary video and print artist who works primarily with themes of feminism, the environment, and history. She often appropriates existing materials and objects and blurs the premise of non-fiction. Her work has been featured a number of national and international exhibitions. Aside from her artwork, Moyer also works as an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia.

Latham Zearfoss works in Chicago, where they produce time-based images, objects and experiences about selfhood and otherness. Outside of the studio, they contribute to collective motions toward joy and reflection through social projects such as a queer dance party (Chances Dances), a critical space for white allyship (Make Yourself Useful), and an itinerant conference on socially-engaged art (Open Engagement). Latham graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a BFA in 2008 and the University of Illinois at Chicago with an MFA in 2011. They have exhibited their work, screened their videos, and DJed internationally and all over the U.S.

Official Website

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Tags: Chicago, Lydia Moyer, The Forcing, The Nightingale, West Town