School of the Art Institute of Chicago
112 S. Michigan Ave., suite 512
Chicago, IL 60603
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) presents a new season of Conversations at the Edge—a weekly series of screenings, performances, and talks by groundbreaking media artists.
Organized by the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation in collaboration with the Gene Siskel Film Center and the Video Data Bank, events take place at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 North State Street, unless otherwise noted.
Thursday, February 9, 6pm
Rikurō Miyai’s Expanded Cinema
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room
159 E. Monroe St.
Free, registration required (see website for details)
A central figure in Japan’s 1960s underground, filmmaker Rikurō Miyai makes a rare US appearance and presents two of his best-known works of expanded cinema in concert with Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist and artist Tatsu Aoki (BFA 1983, MFA 1985).
Thursday, February 16, 6pm
Against Ethnography
Curated by Federico Windhausen, this revealing program of contemporary videos from Latin America charts the limits of communication between indigenous and nonindigenous worlds. Includes works by Vincent Carelli and Dominique Gallois, Vicente Cueto, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Leticia Obeid, and Camilo Restrepo.
Thursday, February 23, 6pm
Nathaniel Dorsky: The Dreamer
Since the early 1960s, Nathaniel Dorsky has been making extraordinarily beautiful films that blend the sensual world with a deep contemplation of the mysteries beyond. In this rare Chicago appearance, Dorsky presents four recent films, each suffused with grace, joy, and mourning.
Thursday, March 2, 6pm
Stacey Steers: Edge of Alchemy
The surreal visions of Stacey Steers’ animated films are assembled from thousands of silent film stills and 19th century illustrations. She presents a trilogy of works on women’s inner lives, meditating on fraught relationships, motherhood, medicine, and death—Phantom Canyon (2006), Night Hunter (2011), and the recently completed Edge of Alchemy (2017).
Thursday, March 9, 6pm
The Passion of Remembrance
Produced by the Sankofa Film and Video Collective, a group of black independent filmmakers who emerged in socially conservative London in the 1980s, The Passion of Remembrance (1986) is a prismatic look at gender, race, sexuality, and generational conflict whose reflections reverberate today.
Thursday, March 16, 6pm
Sky Hopinka: Translations and Transmutations
A Ho-Chunk Nation national and descendent of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, Sky Hopinka creates sublime polyrhythmic works that draw upon his history and identity. He presents a selection of recent works built around ideas of homeland, language, and landscape including a new work filmed at the site of the Standing Rock resistance.
March 30, 6pm
Hyphen-Labs: NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism
Hyphen-Labs is an international collective of women artists, designers, engineers, game-builders, and writers known for works that merge art, technology, and science. The group presents its latest project, the multiplatform NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism, which uses video and virtual reality to explore Black women’s contributions to science and culture.
Thursday, April 6, 6pm
Melika Bass: Devotional Animals
The films and installations of Chicago-based artist Melika Bass (MFA 2007) are populated by figures whose enigmatic behavior suggest dark and troubling lives just beyond the screen. She presents two recent and evolving pieces that embrace an expansive approach to narrative: stories arc, abstract, and twist through projects, revealing and complicating characters, relationships, and themes.
Thursday, April 13, 6 and 8:15pm
Wael Shawky: Cabaret Crusades
The rich and provocative work of Egyptian artist Wael Shawky uses film and performance to explore the complexities of national, religious, and artistic identity. With the three-part Cabaret Crusades, he restages the medieval upheaval between Muslim and Christian worlds with a cast of exquisitely crafted marionettes and score derived from Shia lamentation criers and traditional Bahraini pearl fishing songs.
Thursday, April 20, 6pm
An Evening with VALIE EXPORT
Among the most important artists of her generation, VALIE EXPORT has created a groundbreaking body of multimedia work that interrogates many of the sociopolitical issues central to contemporary life. She presents a survey of her films and videos—from the provocative to the cerebral—and discusses the abiding questions that have guided her practice.
About the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
For 150 years, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has been a leader in educating the world’s most influential artists, designers and scholars. Located in downtown Chicago with a fine arts graduate program consistently ranking among the top programs in the nation by U.S. News and World Report, SAIC provides an interdisciplinary approach to art and design as well as world-class resources, including the Art Institute of Chicago museum, on-campus galleries and state-of-the-art facilities. SAIC’s undergraduate, graduate and post-baccalaureate students have the freedom to take risks and create the bold ideas that transform Chicago and the world—as seen through notable alumni and faculty such as Michelle Grabner, David Sedaris, Elizabeth Murray, Richard Hunt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cynthia Rowley, Nick Cave, Jeff Koons, and LeRoy Neiman. For more information, please visit saic.edu.
