presented by San Francisco Cinematheque and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
community partner: GAZE
anticipated artists in person: Richard Ashrowan, Lorenzo Gattorna, Lucy Kerr, Courtney Stephens and T2R/Laura Gillmore
pictured above: Lumen (2018) by Richard Ashrowan
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ADMISSION DETAILS
Single Screening Admission: $12 general/$10 Cinematheque and SFMOMA members with member code. Single Screening advance tickets available here.
CROSSROADS festival day pass (Saturday & Sunday only): $25
CROSSROADS festival day pass provides admission to all daily CROSSROADS screenings and general admission access to SFMOMA galleries (including Pat O’Neill: Three Answers).
Saturday, June 8 CROSSROADS festival day pass available here.
NOTE: Admission to the special exhibition Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again is not included with the festival day pass but can be purchased here.
This program is dedicated to the memory of Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019).
Opening with Richard Ashrowen’s gestural Lumen, this program draws inspiration from the legacy of the departed Carolee Schneemann. These introspective films examine familial, filial, and romantic love, and love that is fading, blooming and exorcised. Public and private performance, from the bedroom to the street. Moments of hesitation and connection. We’ve learned the languages of our masters. What geometry of desire will help overthrow the state? Meow.
SCREENING:
Lumen (2018) by Richard Ashrowan (UK); 16mm, color, silent, 3 minutes, print from the maker world premiere
A silent exploration of light and gesture, finding the light, losing it, moments of exploration, hesitation and connection. A collaboration with performance artists Sandra Johnston and Alastair MacLennan, Scotland, August 2018. (Richard Ashrowan)
To every bird, its own nest is beautiful/A ogni uccello il suo nido è bello (2018) by Lorenzo Gattorna (US); digital video, color, sound, 9 minutes, exhibition file from the maker world premiere
In memory of Lorenzo and Mario Gattorna. (Lorenzo Gattorna)
3 Dreams of Horses (2018) by Mike Hoolboom (Canada); digital video, color, sound, 6 minutes, exhibition file from the maker bay area premiere
Film is made out of gelatin that comes from horses. They’re waiting to be slaughtered, so that pictures can be made. Many years ago we learned the language of our masters. Though we couldn’t help wondering why so few of you bothered to learn ours. Three scenes featuring horses, remembering Jacinto. The first is a daytime forest haunting that winds up at a carousel, the second a rainy street in Portugal, the finale a nighttime vigil of fire and water. (Mike Hoolboom)
Lydon (2018) by Lucy Kerr (US); 16mm, color, sound, 3 minutes, print from the maker
Lydon explores the potential of a minimal gesture in relationship with the space surrounding them. (Lucy Kerr)
Mixed Signals (2018) by Courtney Stephens (US); digital video, color, sound, 9 minutes, exhibition file from the maker
A patient, undergoing a distressing medical exam, transforms herself into a boat and signals her distress using antiquated maritime phrases. Shot onboard a military supply boat during a power outage, the film uses language from the 1931 International Code of Signals to attempt to speak between the lines of a formulaic industrial language. It is a loose adaptation of Hannah Weiner's chapbook Code Poems, which explores the capacity of systematized language to convey female experience. (Courtney Stephens)
cold soup, pubic hair, raw meat (2018) by T2R/Laura Gillmore (US); digital video, color, sound, 2 minutes, exhibition file from the maker
The internet is laughing at you by wedging an ad for laser hair removal between recipes for Steak Tartare and Strawberry Soup. The laser is 65% off, the soup is 15 minutes and the steak tartare 30 minutes (including freezer time). The ad is "powered by" LiveIntent. Live or live? Steak tartare: unlike all others. Strawberry soup: in keeping with the season's bounty. Laser hair removal: could be the answer for you. (T2R)
T2R (Laura Gillmore) is a San Francisco based artist and product designer. Fascinated with the construction of identity, she uses a persona in her work, T2R, to reflect the anxiety and self-obsession experienced within online consumer space. T2R personifies “Time2Reflect,” the type of phrase one might see embroidered on a throw pillow. Alongside her art practice, she designs home decor for commercial retailers. Her work in the industry inspires much of her research including the psychological effects of digital marketing. […] Ultimately, her interests in consumerism in tandem with themes of “big tech” has made San Francisco a rich site for her subject matter.
The Bed and the Street (2018) by Heather Frise (Canada) and Mike Hoolboom (Canada); digital video, color, sound, 5 minutes, exhibition file from the makers U.S. premiere
A love story set in the global anti-austerity demonstrations. As citizens take back their streets, two women meet and fall in love. What geometry of desire will help overthrow the state? What micro-politics of sharing and communality will provide fuel for demonstrations that will remove and replace the neo-liberal consensus? Cast in a palimpsest of images and sounds, as if there were no way to separate inside and out, the street and the bedroom. (Mike Hoolboom)
Viet-Flakes (1965) by Carolee Schneemann (US); 16mm screened as digital video, b&w, sound, 7 minutes, exhibition file from Electronic Arts Intermix
The actions organised by social movements such as feminism were key in the struggle to end the Vietnam War. Carolee Schneemann, who took part in these anti-war movements, created this film within a strategy of protest and of counter-portrayal of the conflict. In it she uses a discourse fed by the most radical vision of reality, as opposed to the official image of the war process offered by the government and most of the US media.
Viet-Flakes is a film made [from] numerous photographs showing the atrocities committed against the Vietnamese people, photos that were gathered by the artist over a period of five years from foreign newspapers and magazines. The collage of scenes wrought with pain, torture and death is filmed at a pace that makes viewing it even more uncomfortable. The soundtrack, by James Tenney, is comprised of Vietnamese chants, fragments of Bach and popular American music from the 1960s, which contributes to the disturbing effect of the film.
This piece documents the ideological radicalisation occurring in the United States during the second half of the 1960s, one of the historical processes that would contribute to the great revolts occurring all over the world in 1968. (Lola Hinojosa, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía)
Plumb Line (1971) by Carolee Schneemann (US); 16mm, color, sound, 18 minutes, print from Canyon Cinema
Plumb Line: Plump line full rounded plumbs drop or descent abounding in, plume abrupt plunge, testing vertically/perpendicularity of wall, sounding (downright), level, true, exactly, (U.S. slang) utterly crazy, measure, depth, make vertical. Pendulum (Carpentry), Plumber, lead ball, join, joint.)
Plumb Line is made from scrap. Footage shot in 8mm and 16mm ’68–69, a film diary of daily movements—the couple. Sounds of my cat singing, repeated cries of “no,” sirens screaming, my voice describing food from the maze of a breakdown, his voice “tell me a story…I’ve got a truck you know.” Moving footage into freeze frames, stills animated, 8mm mirror printed as 16mm, images in 16mm reshot in 8. A portrait of a man and the dissolution of a relationship and of the film itself. The accumulation patterns of imagery are finally set on fire. Sound and images edited during ’70–72. (Carolee Schneemann)
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CROSSROADS 10 is generously supported by the George Lucas Family Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fleishhacker Foundation, San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund/Grants for the Arts, the Willow Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Cinematheque’s Members and Donors.