Moving Images in New or Old Formats: A New Curatorial Project Featuring the Work of Lily Sheng

Lily Sheng, Still from Mercurial Matter, 16mm to HD with sound by Michael Sidnam, 2014 - 2015, 6 min.

Lily Sheng, Still from Mercurial Matter, 16mm to HD with sound by Michael Sidnam, 2014 – 2015, 6 min.

As part of a curatorial residency at the AC Institute, a non-profit art organization focused on experimental media and performance, I had the chance to do several studio visits with artists working in video and the digital space last month. Among them was Lily Sheng, a Queens-based artist who makes films, videos, and hybrid moving images in her studio near the International Studio and Curatorial Program in East Williamsburg. Lily showed us a video work, Mercurial Matter, and a film work, Point, Line, Plane. In both, dense, abstract imagery moves quickly, sometimes at odds with the synthetic music that builds to a feeling of dissonance and unease.

Lily Sheng, Still from Point, Line, Plane, a film collaboration with Antonia Kuo, 16mm expanded cinema with live sound by Michael Sidnam, 2015, 11 min.

Lily Sheng, Still from Point, Line, Plane, a film collaboration with Antonia Kuo, 16mm expanded cinema with live sound by Michael Sidnam, 2015, 11 min.

Both the video work and the film projection she showed us were rich, multi-sensory experiences, deeply connected to the history of experimental film, although subsequent discussion revealed a different, purely digital mode she also sometimes works in (as seen in the image below). It was a pleasure discussing the many mediums with which she approaches the moving image and the technical processes behind her work. For example, Point, Line, Plane involved making photograms on the film itself to create a pair of black-and-white images, which she then showed as a dual projection, sometimes coloring the image with gels.

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As a result of that studio visit, I am excited to be arranging an exhibition and screening of Lily’s work at the AC Institute. Lily is creating a new series of animated GIFs as an homage to experimental films by deceased female artists, taking advantage of the concept of an online exhibition that the AC Institute proposed as part of my curatorial residency. While animated GIFs are ubiquitous on the web, Lily’s thoughtful consideration of the transfer and degradation of information show how well the format can be adapted to artistic purpose as she creates GIFs that, inherently reductive, highlight the limited, ghostly nature of film on the Internet. Considering the uncertainty of film preservation as we move into a digital era, the exhibition “Lily Sheng: Avant-GIF” will go online November 10 and be complimented by a performative video and film screening of recent works by the artist on November 18.

Lily Sheng, Still from Kabukicho,

Lily Sheng, Still from Kabukichō, 16mm with live sound by Michael Sidnam, 2015, variable duration (5 – 8 min.)

LoVid, Stuffed Digital Glitches, and the “Handmade Abstract” at BRIC

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Handmade Abstract” brings abstraction as an artistic concept into the physical realm in this group show at BRIC. In this exhibition, 13 artists use a range of materials from photography to sculpture to video, along with a fair amount of textile, to embrace the abstract in unexpectedly tangible ways. In contrast to the legacy of abstraction in art as transcendent or pure, the dense exhibition includes work that is intricate, colorful, and sensory. All the works evidence the hand that made them and evoke the senses.

Installation view of "Handmade Abstract" exhibition at BRIC featuring works by LoVid

Installation view of “Handmade Abstract” exhibition at BRIC featuring works by LoVid

Case in point: a wall of works by LoVid, a pair of artists (Tali Hinkis, Kyle Lapidus) who draw a parallel between digital editing and sewing. One large screen and two iPads display what seem like colorful “glitches”–the point where computer programs come apart at the seams and go buggy on you. Analog video recordings are edited into single-channel pieces that then become the basis for images used to create patterned fabric. From this fabric, LoVid creates stuffed figurines that hang like taxidermied animals from pegs on the wall, creating digital art that is awkward instead of glossy, whose shapes are uneven and bulging rather than geometric.

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Although all the artists in this exhibition are engaged with making the abstract tactile, LoVid renders the cold realm of technology more intimate, human, and fallible. While in the videos the “hand” doing the editing is necessarily unseen, these stuffed objects provide the opposite–showing the hand stitch by stitch and thus recalling time and labor. Hinkis says in an interview with curator Jenny Gerow that this DIY, handmade aesthetic feels both more human and more true to the artists’ experience of technology: “That is our narrative of media art, the era of glitch and handmade analog mess ups.”

Installation view of "Handmade Abstract" exhibition at BRIC featuring Michelle Forsyth's photographic prints with sewn tape (above) and Pedestal Components (2014) (below)

Installation view of “Handmade Abstract” exhibition at BRIC featuring Michelle Forsyth’s photographic prints with sewn tape (above) and Pedestal Components (below)

Handmade Abstract” is curated by Elizabeth Ferrer and Jenny Gerow and features the work of Katie Bell, Maria Chavez, Michelle Forsyth, Carl E. Hazlewood, LoVid, Marisa Manso, Lael Marshall, Christian Maychack, Leeza Meksin, Liz Nielsen, Courtney Puckett, Mary Schwab, and Lizzie Scott.

Check it out while it’s still up–now through Sunday, October 25 at BRIC in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Installation view of "Handmade Abstract" exhibition at BRIC featuring work by Marisa Manso (floor L) and Katie Bell's Blind Driver installation (upper R corner)

Installation view of “Handmade Abstract” exhibition at BRIC featuring Marisa Manso’s sculpture with light (center L) and Katie Bell’s Blind Driver installation (upper corner)