The Ann Arbor Film Festival moves Off The Screen into the Art Center
March 20 – March 25, 2018
We are proud to partner with the Ann Arbor Film Festival once again to present a moving images exhibition in our gallery. Come on over March 22-25 and see the installations by artists Razan AlSalah and David Olson
[hr]Off The Screen! Events
Off the Screen! Party: Thursday, March 22, 3-5 pm | Join the Facebook Event
Artists Razan AlSalah and David Olson will be here for the party on Thursday, March 22, 3-5pm. Featuring a live performance by Good Evening Gumm, beer provided by O&W and refreshments by White Lotus.
Panel Discussion – Sat. March 24 (11am-1pm) | Join the Facebook Event
“Beyond Resistance: Seizing the Revolutionary Moment”
A panel discussion featuring Ann Arbor Film Festival artist David Olson and a panel of media makers, activists and organizers including:
Bernardine Dorhn and Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground, Alan Haber of Students for a Democratic Society, Moumita Ahmed (via Skype), co-founder of Millennials for Revolution, National Organizer People for Bernie Sanders, Lashaya Darisaw, Flint Water Crisis activist, Michigan United, Michigan People’s Campaign, and the Candidate for State Representative for Michigan’s 49th District.
[hr]
Ann Arbor Art Center Installations
[spacer]INSTALLATION 1: Artist: Razan AlSalah | Title:” i am also We”
i am also We is doc-fiction media installation, a visual-spatial intersection of three video works on settler colonialism, displacement and the intersectionality of the Syrian, Palestinian and Indigenous ongoing struggles. The video sculpture is a three pronged dark room made of reclaimed wood and cardboard, materials used by refugees to build their first shelter. A bunker-like structure that audiences duck into to stand at the center of three viewing stations, at the visual-spatial intersection of all three narratives before choosing one to watch first. Headphones on, each viewer now is at the center of another intersection: two videos are projection mapped onto a corner screen that merges two time-spaces into one visual perspective: that of the viewer, (dis)connecting different places, times and peoples. Each personal narrative recontextualizes found and archival images of virtual and physical spaces traveled through a first-person camera. i am also We – an i and a We – an immersive experience yet a collective one, a visual perspective and an intersectional view, a personal narrative and a (dis)connection with larger questions on time-place and belonging.
The installation encompasses three video works playing on loop simultaneously. Following are their titles and running times: your father was born a 100 years old, and so was the Nakba ابوكي خلق عمره ١٠٠ سنة، زي النكبة (7minutes) the game we play with grandma لعبتنا أنا والحجة (3min23sec) Palestine is a Standing Rock فلسطين الصخرة الصامدة (2min14sec).
Artist Bio: Razan AlSalah is a Lebanese-Palestinian media artist based in Philadelphia. Fulbright scholar and MFA in Film and Media Arts at Temple University, her thesis show “i am also We” was her first solo exhibition in New York City at the Flux Factory gallery. Her work has shown in galleries and festivals around the US and the Arab World and is in the permanent collection of the Sursock Museum in Beirut and the Palestine Film Collection.
Learn more about Razan AlSalah
[hr]Installation #2 – Artist: David Olson | Title: “Radical Democracy: the future has a past”
Activist and artist David Olson’s latest installation is based on his digital publishing project, Radical Democracy: an inventory of transformational ideas, documents, quotes and conversations. This interactive ebook connects social and political movements over the last 50 years through interviews with activists and organizers, Shareable quotes, graphic memes, and a digital archive of manifestos and other radical documents.
Radical Media//Radical Democracy explores the historic relationship between revolutionary movements and parallel advances in media technology. From the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and mimeographed manifestos of the Civil Rights and New Left movements of the 1960s to the copy-shop ‘zines of the 80s and 90s, advances in technology have helped spread radical ideas and information and helped to create a unique aesthetic and intellectual context to frame public discourse during times of change. Today, almost universal access to digital media production and distribution have given movements like Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo an even greater power to raise consciousness, organize, and to challenge and replace hegemonic, establishment politics and culture.
Bridging art and activism, the exhibition is a participatory multimedia experience that remixes artwork and text from print, social media, audio, and video.
To download the free book plus video, interviews, and additional media visit www.radicaldemocracy.net.
[hr]Installation #3 – Live performance during Event on Thurs. March 22 (3-5pm) Artist: Good Evening Gumm
Good Evening Gumm will perform a live musical score to accompany a collection of short experimental videos and animation. The performance will incorporate costumes and props that extend the screen works and create a playful audiovisual experience centered around characters that appear both on and off the screen.
Short Bio: Good Evening Gumm consists of three performers creating music on a variety of relatively portable electronic instruments and a $1.88 microphone.
Bio: Good Evening Gumm is a digital art and sound trio whose individual work includes video games, music, video, and animation. The trio began their collaboration during a weekly creative work session known as “Good Evening Grames” hosted by Public Space One in Iowa City. Now working as the house band at Rad, Inc., Good Evening Gumm continues to push their strange audiovisual experiment into new and uncomfortable places.
[hr]
In partnersip with