Memories Of Earth: (A)Wake In A House Of WorldsCurated by Oona MosnaOnline October 5–November 5, 2020Co-presented with the Walker Art Center
The film and digital artworks in this program span the course of more than ninety years. Selected in November 2019 from the Walker Art Center’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection (Minneapolis) to coincide with their Expanding the Frame series, Memories of Earth: (A)wake in a House of Worlds features a heterogeneous collection of films stressing the polymathy of avant-garde artists troubling conventional methods of working with the moving image across mediums and decades. Death, rebirth and the afterlife figure prominently throughout this selection, as does the subversion of film’s constituent elements to recast notions of what constitutes the cinematic, the political and the poetic.
Originally scheduled for presentation at the Walker in April 2020, this program is dedicated to Sally Dixon (1932–2019) for her early and immense contributions to American avant-garde film. Memories of Earth is free to view. In lieu of admissions, we ask those who are able make contributions to The Cultural Fire Management Council (an organization dedicated to cultural burning on the Yurok Reservation and other Ancestral lands in California), MIGIZI (an Indigenous support network based in Minneapolis), and/or the Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 relief fund.
Special thanks to Yoko Ono and Connor Monahan at Studio One; Michael Zryd, York University and Will Faller for the Estate of Hollis Frampton; Madeleine Molyneaux of Picture Palace Pictures; the Estate of Marcel Broodthaers and Kasmin Gallery; Michael Walsh and the Walker Art Center; Yvonne Rainer; Sky Hopinka and Kevin Jerome Everson for permission to make these works available.
SCREENING: One (Fluxfilm 14) by Yoko Ono, 16mm, b&w, silent, 5 minutes, 1966; Ko-Ko’s Earth Control by Max & Dave Fleischer (animated by Dick Heumer), 35mm, b&w, silent, 6 minutes, 1927; Mass for the Dakota Sioux by Bruce Baillie, 16mm, b&w, sound, 24 minutes, 1964; Hand Movie by Yvonne Rainer, 16mm, b&w, silent, 6 minutes, 1966; La Pluie (Project Pour Un Texte) by Marcel Broodthaers; 16mm, b&w, silent, 3 minutes, 1969; Jáaji Approx. by Sky Hopinka; digital, color, sound, 7.5 minutes, 2015; Gloria! by Hollis Frampton; 16mm, color, sound, 9.5 minutes, 1979; Eyeblink (Fluxfilm 9) by Yoko Ono; 16mm, b&w, silent, 5 minutes, 1966; Visions of an Island by Sky Hopinka; digital, color, sound, 15 minutes, 2016; music from the allegheny plateau by Kevin Jerome Everson; digital, color, sound, 7 minutes, 2019