Drawing on the history of avant-garde moving image culture, conceptual poetics, ecstatic improvisation, dense wordplay and humor, Jesse Malmed makes art using moving images, text, performance, installation and the overlaps and gaps thereof. These works are conceptually engaged, language-intensive and visually mesmerizing.

While many commercial film labs are shutting there doors, a counter movement is taking place in the form of the international network of artist-run film labs. The Australian experimental filmmaker, Richard Tuohy – a prominent figure in this cinematic d-i-y turn – sees this new phase for the traditional media as an opportunity; as a chance for the film artist to directly engage with the once inaccessible, now too often discarded tools of the traditional film lab. 

Tuohy's hand crafted cinema presents us with multiple visual manipulations in camera, in printer techniques, in experimental processing procedures and in projection to sculpt an activated and reanimated reality which collectively represent a distinctively cinematic experience. More visual then cerebral, these pictures move, and with an energy unique to film. While covering a range of techniques, strategies and visual themes, they each share the same tenacious unfolding of a set of abstract possibilities from out of singular visual ideas. This program presents eight hand-processed and d-i-y printed 16mm film works from the artists recent output. The films, though diverse, are all highly abstract and tightly structured and share a fascination with the visual possibilities of basic traditional film technology.

Sight Unseen is pleased to partner once again with The Baltimore Museum of Art, in conjunction with the closing of German Expressionism: A Revolutionary Spirit, to present a rare screening of early experimental cinema produced during the extremely evocative era of German Expressionist art. Featuring the first abstract film, Walther Ruttmann's Lichtspiel Opus I, Opus II, Opus III and Opus IV, followed by the first animated film, Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed, this special event stands the test of time as a celebration of the livelihood and longevity of avant-garde cinema.

Oliver Shell, Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, will introduce the screening and explore the cross-pollination of visual art and cinema in 1920s and 30s Germany. 

Steve Cossman is founder and director of Mono No Aware; a nonprofit cinema arts organization whose annual event exhibits the work of contemporary artists who incorporate live film projections and altered light as part of a performance, sculpture or installation. In 2010 the organization established a series of analog filmmaking workshops, and has grown to include in their activities an equipment rentals program and an in-person screening series entitled Connectivity Through Cinema. Steve’s first major work on film, TUSSLEMUSCLE, earned him Kodak’s Continued Excellence in Filmmaking award and has screened at many festivals and institutions internationally. In 2013, he completed residencies at MoMA PS1’s Expo 1 and the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto. He has been a visiting artist at Dartmouth, the New York Academy of Art, Yale, SAIC, and UPenn. Steve’s newest work on film, W H I T E C A B B A G E (2011-2014), a collaboration with Jahiliyya Fields of L.I.E.S., had its U.S. premiere at Anthology Film Archives. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn as a director, curator, visual artist and member of the collective DecayNY, creating time-based works on film, video, and paper.