Fables of Dematerialization: Erika Balsom on oceanic cinema: Block Museum - Northwestern University
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Fables of Dematerialization: Erika Balsom on oceanic cinema

A computer-generated image of a small ocean island surrounded by mist
G. Anthony Svatek, .TV, 2017, digital video, 22 min
Cinema
October
31
5 PM-6:30 PM

Event Details

Date & Time:

Thu October 31, 2024
5 PM-6:30 PM

Location:

The Block Museum of Art
40 Arts Circle Drive
Evanston, IL 60208

Audience:

Open to the public

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Details:

Fables of Dematerialization: Erika Balsom on the changing tides of oceanic cinema

 

(Multiple artists, 2016-2017, digital, approx 33 min)
 

This screening/discussion approaches two works of digital cinema discussed in Erika Balsom's recent book, An Oceanic Feeling: Cinema and the Sea—G. Anthony Svatek's .TV (2017, 22 min) and Peggy Ahwesh's The Blackest Sea (2016, 10 min)—to open up a dialogue around hybrid media practices, strategies of representing climate change, and the role of visual culture in the creation of just futures.

The conversation will also situate these works in the context of Balsom’s work as the co-curator of Shoreline Movements, an expansive film program at the 2020 Taipei Biennial which explored “how artists and filmmakers have addressed the manifold encounters that take place in the littoral zone, broaching issues of environmental crisis, indigeneity, coloniality, community, and otherness.”

Followed by a discussion with Corey Byrnes, Associate Professor of Chinese Culture and co-founder/co-director of the Shifting Shorelines working group of the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern, and Michael Metzger, Curator of Cinema and Media Arts at the Block Museum. 

 

Program includes:

.TV (G. Anthony Svatek, 2017, 22 min., USA, digital video)

Courtesy of the artist

THE BLACKEST SEA. 2016, 10 min., USA, digital video)

Courtesy of Light Cone

Total run time: approx. 32 min

Presented with support from the Shifting Shorelines and Climate Crisis + Media Arts Working Groups of the  Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. 

About the speaker:

balsom_image_small.jpegErika Balsom is a Reader in Film Studies at King’s College London, focusing on the histories, aesthetics, and politics of nonfiction cinemas.

She has published extensively on the intersections of art and the moving image, often focusing on questions of technological change and/or examining the relationship between artistic practices and their institutional contexts.

She is the author of TEN SKIES (2021), An Oceanic Feeling: Cinema and the Sea (2018), After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video in Circulation (2017), and Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art (2013). She is the co-editor of Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image (2022), Peggy Ahwesh: Vision Machines (2021), Artists’ Moving Image in Britain Since 1989 (2019), and Documentary Across Disciplines (2016).

In 2018, she was the recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize and the Kovacs Essay Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. In addition to her scholarly work, she is active as a film critic and curator.

In 2022-23, together with Hila Peleg, Erika curated the exhibition "No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image" (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, and Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw), focusing on nonfiction filmmaking by women in a global context from the 1970s to the 1990s.

 

Contact The Block Museum of Art for more information: (847) 491-4000 or email us at block-museum@northwestern.edu