Light Industry
Films by Kevin Jerome Everson
220 36th Street, 5th Floor
Brooklyn, New York
http://www.lightindustry.org
Monday, May 18, 2009 at 7:30pm
Grounded in historical research and a strong sense of place, Kevin Jerome Everson¹s films and videos combine documentary and scripted elements with a sparse, rugged formalism. His ongoing subject matter is the lives of African Americans and other people of African descent, often working class, but he eschews standard realism in favor of strategies that abstract everyday actions and statements into theatrical gestures: archival footage is re-edited or re-staged, real people perform fictional scenarios based on their own lives, historical observations intermesh with contemporary narratives. His films suggest the relentlessness of everyday life?along with its beauty?but also present oblique metaphors for art-making.
Many of his works return to Mansfield, Ohio, where Everson was born and raised. The community's past is examined in Company Line, in which city employee Curley Lanier explains why he and his family left Alabama in the late 1950s to migrate North: ³To do better?I guess.² The remarks betray a sense of deep ambivalence about the promises of upward mobility in America that runs through this collection of recent projects; fifty years later, the people of Mansfield still aren¹t sure what ³better² means.
- Company Line, 2009, 30 mins
- Lead, 2009, 3 mins
- North, 2007, 2 mins
- Second and Lee, 2008, 3 mins
- Fifeville, 2005, 14 mins
- Ike, 2008, 3 mins
- Undefeated, 2008, 2 mins
- The Reverend E. Randall T. Osborn, First Cousin, 2007, 3 mins
- Home, 2008, 2 mins
- The Wilbur, 2008, 2 mins
- Two-Week Vacation, 2005, 1 min
- Honorable Mention, 2009, 2 mins
among others.
Followed by a conversation with Everson and Michael Gillespie.
Born in 1965, Everson now lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia. Everson¹s artwork and films has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; Whitechapel Gallery in London; the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art; Wurttenbergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany; the Spaces Gallery in Cleveland; the American Academy of Rome in Italy, the Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Cinematexas, Ann Arbor Film Festival, New York Underground Film Festival, and many other venues worldwide. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a NEA Fellowship, two NEH Fellowships, two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships, an American Academy Rome Prize, residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell Colony and numerous university fellowships.
Tickets - $7, available at door.
About Light Industry
Light Industry is a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project has begun as a series of events at Industry City in Sunset Park, each organized by a different artist, critic, or curator. Conceptually, Light Industry draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the presentation of time-based media and foster an ongoing dialogue amongst a wide range of artists and audiences within the city.
About Industry City
Industry City, an industrial complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is home to a cross-section of manufacturing, warehousing and light industry. As part of a regeneration program intended to diversify the use of its 6 million square feet of space to better reflect 21st century production, Industry City now includes workspace for artists. In addition to offering studios at competitive rates, Industry City also provides a limited number of low-cost studios for artists in need of reasonably priced space. This program was conceived in response to the lack of affordable workspace for artists in New York City and aims to establish a new paradigm for industrial redevelopment--one that does not displace artists, workers, local residents or industry but instead builds a sustainable community in a context that integrates cultural and industrial production. For more information:
http://www.industrycityartproject.org
Dialogues
These two programmes survey the trailblazing career of one of America’s foremost avant-garde masters.