Video Data Bank Presents: ROUNDABOUT
2023, Various directors, USA, 90 mins
In English | Format: Digital

Thursday, March 14, 6:00 p.m. | Video Data Bank (VDB), a special collection of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, presents Roundabout, a screening series in which the Chicago video art distributor invites fellow moving image archives and distributors to collaborate on a conversational program of short experimental works, prompted to respond to a selection of works from VDB’s collection with a selection from their own. The second participant, Image Forum Japan, functions as a school and cinemathéque that preserves and promotes the production and proliferation of experimental film and fosters the next generation of filmmakers. Its affiliate company, Daguerreo Press, Inc. publishes books on filmmaking and video software. The organization also runs the Image Forum Festival which is Japan’s largest art/experimental film festival focusing on the screening of work from the East Asian region.

PROGRAM

Beneath the Skin (Cecelia Condit, 1981, 12 min., USA, Video)
“Relating a tale told by a girl on a swing, Beneath the Skin explores the contrast between the impersonal horror of a news story heard on television and the involvement of the storyteller in a nightmare, which gradually becomes more familiar and commonplace as the tale unfolds. The straightforward approach of the teller is humorously or frighteningly contrasted by a bombardment of visual images which mock or intensify the macabre flavor of the work.” — Cecelia Condit

My Prince (Oguchi Yoko, 2005, 15 min., Japan, Video)
This is an introspective essayistic work which evolves by shadowing KOBAYASHI Yasunori,
the criminal of “The prince of custody in Aomori” exposed in 2005. There was a being who the artist would call a “prince”, a sadist who could “take away all her ego”. She
stands amid a park, amid an aisle of an apartment, wearing clothes at sometimes, nothing wearing or nobody standing at times. Showing images in verse and prose
with subtitles, the mixture provokes the imagination of “dreams”.

Just (Joon Soo Ha, 2002, 6 min., South Korea / United States, Video)
Through a process of degeneration of both sound and image, Just endows the iconic American flag with new context and implication. The image is repeated by generations, using different processes such as digital video, computer printout and photocopying, and then combined with degenerated sound. Single frames of original digital images are exported, and evolve through the repetition of process, before being metamorphosed back to digital image by scanning and rendering. This working process explores how differently an image can be read when put in a specific context, which separates it from its universal meaning. In Just the process not only conveys the idea but also creates the concept, and the form of Just acts as a clue to decipher the content. Just plays with image, sound and language but breaks down their karma and builds up new combinations of meaning.

Rapport (Filipa César, 2007, 17 min., Germany, DV Video)
Shot during an NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) seminar in Berlin, a group fluctuates between guided meditation and discussion on consciousness and self-acceptance. Neuro-linguistic programming is a set of techniques and beliefs that are used primarily towards personal development. NLP is based on the idea that mind, body, and language create an individual’s perception of the world, and an individual’s behaviors can be changed by “perceiving and feeling yourself”. Rapport focuses on the staging of the self that takes place during this kind of group therapy.

Textism (Hirabayashi Isamu, 2003, 11 min., Japan, Video)
“Under a cherry tree, there’s always a corpse…”. After a literary opening featuring this quote from KAJII Motojiro and the image of a giant, bifurcated tree, Textism suddenly changes key and a work full of wry humor emerges. Three stories, each somewhat aloof in tone, are told using subtitles and computer-generated synthetic sounds. With its effective presentation of images, this artist’s “memento mori” compels us not so much to “think of death” as to “think of text”.

Ultramint (Hirose Tadashi, 1980, 10 min., Japan, 16mm)
A film which proceeds entirely through analogy: oil and water form into a snail on a straight razor and then into a hand moving up a body. Analogies are made of shape, movement, and texture, cutting, for example, from flesh to feathers. The marvels of the impossible- a living thing straddles a straight razor unharmed- are celebrated.

Image Forum Japan: Established in 1977, Image Forum Japan functions as a school and cinemathéque that preserves and promotes the production and proliferation of experimental film and fosters the next generation of filmmakers. Its affiliate company, Daguerreo Press, Inc. publishes books on filmmaking and video software. The organization also runs the Image Forum Festival which is Japan’s largest art/experimental film festival focusing on the screening of work from the East Asian region.

Video Data Bank: Founded at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement, Video Data Bank (VDB) is a leading resource in the United States for video by and about contemporary artists. VDB is dedicated to fostering awareness and scholarship of the history and contemporary practice of video and media art through its distribution, education, and preservation programs.

The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu

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Tags: Cecelia Condit, Chicago, Filipa César, Gene Siskel Film Center, Hirabayashi Isamu, Hirose Tadashi, Joon Soo Ha, Loop, Oguchi Yoko, Veronica Anne Salinas, Video Data Bank Presents: ROUNDABOUT