Panel 1
In Between White Cube, Black Box, and Online Screens: Curation and Exhibition of Artists’ Films

With: Erika Balsom (moderator), Sophie Cavoulacos, Lars Henrik Gass, Chrissie Iles, Almudena Escobar López, Julian Ross, Stefanie Schulte Strathaus

What are the main challenges faced by programmers and curators of artists’ films working in between the black box and white cube? How has moving-image curation and exhibition altered during the pandemic? What is the socio-political responsibility of the artists’ film curator working between traditional and emerging dispositifs? Distribution and exposition of moving images situated between cinema and contemporary art, migration of images to the online space during and after the pandemic, as well as challenges and potentials of the new post-pandemic times will be discussed in this panel composed of film programmers and curators.

“In Between White Cube, Black Box, and Online Screens: Curation and Exhibition of Artists’ Films” is the first of six panels in the online symposium The State of the Moving Image curated by Lukas Brasiskis, taking place this September 17–19 on e-flux Video & Film, and accompanied by the screening program An Other Cinema: Apparatus and Histories (streaming September 6–20).

Erika Balsom is Reader in Film Studies at King’s College London. She is the author of four books including TEN SKIES (2021) and After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation (2017), and the co-editor of Artists’ Moving Image in Britain Since 1989 (2019). Alongside her academic work, she regularly writes criticism for publications including Artforum, 4Columns, and Cinema Scope. She was the co-curator of the film program “Shoreline Movements” for the 2020 Taipei Biennial and the exhibition Peggy Ahwesh: Vision Machines, opening September 25, 2021 at Spike Island, Bristol. In 2018, she was awarded a Leverhulme Prize and the Katherine Singer Kovacs Essay Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Sophie Cavoulacos is an Associate Curator at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she has been part of the Department of Film since 2012.

Lars Henrik Gass has been director of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen since October 1997. He has published essays, reviews, and lectures on film, photography, and cultural and film-political topics, and has taught on film and cultural management. He is co-editor of Provokation der Wirklichkeit. Das Oberhausener Manifest und die Folgen (2012) and after youtube. Gespräche, Portraits, Texte zum Musikvideo nach dem Internet (2018), and author of the books Das ortlose Kino. Über Marguerite Duras (2001), Film und Kunst nach dem Kino (Film and Art After Cinema) (2012/2017, in English 2019), and Filmgeschichte als Kinogeschichte. Eine kleine Theorie des Kinos (2019), and editor of Hellmuth Costard: Das Wirkliche war zum Modell geworden (forthcoming October 2021).

Chrissie Iles is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her curatorial focus is on emerging artists, contemporary moving-image histories, and inter-disciplinary practices in a global context. Her curated exhibitions include Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964-1977, Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, the 2004 and 2006 Whitney Biennials, Alan Michelson: Wolf Nation, Cauleen Smith: Mutualities, and Madeline Hollander: Flatwing, co-curated with Clemence White. She builds the Whitney Museum’s collection of time-based media. She is on the Graduate Committee of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, the Advisory Board of the Julia Stoschek Collection, and the Faculty of Curatorial Studies at the School of Visual Arts. She writes and lectures widely on the moving image in contemporary art, and was recently awarded an honorary Doctorate by the History of Art Department at Bristol University, England.

Almudena Escobar López is a curator, archivist, and researcher based in Rochester, NY where she is the Assistant Curator of Media Arts at the Memorial Art Gallery (MAG). She is completing her Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester. Her work focuses largely on coloniality, anti-ethnography, visual historiography, and artistic practices that propose alternative ways of understanding territoriality. As a guest curator, Almudena has curated and co-curated a number of film and video series which have been presented at Anthology Film Archives, Muestra Internacional Documental de Bogotá, UnionDocs, ICDOCS, Visual Studies Workshop, Cineteca Nacional de México, Alternative Film/Video, among others. Her writing has been published at MoMA Magazine, Vdrome, Vertical Features, MUBI Notebook, The Brooklyn Rail, Afterimage, and Film Quarterly, among other publications and catalogs. She was program advisor of the 2020 edition of Art of the Real at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and is the curator of Cinema of Sensations: the Never Ending screen of Val del Omar, at the Museum of Moving Image In New York. Recently she has joined the programming committee of Media City Film Festival, and with Sky Hopinka, she is the co-curator of the 2022 Flaherty Film Seminar.

Julian Ross is a Programmer at International Film Festival Rotterdam and an Assistant Professor at Leiden University Center for the Arts in Society. He is a guest programmer for the 2021 Singapore International Film Festival, co-curator of the film program of the 2021 Tallinn Photomonth Biennale, and co-editor of the book Japanese Expanded Cinema and Intermedia: Critical Texts of the 1960s (Archive Books, 2020).

Stefanie Schulte Strathaus is co-director of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art (with Milena Gregor and Birgit Kohler). From 2006-2021 she was head of the Berlinale section Forum Expanded which she co-founded together with Anselm Franke. Schulte Strathaus has curated a number of film programmes, retrospectives, and exhibitions including “Who says concrete doesn’t burn, have you tried? West Berlin Film in the ’80s” (with Florian Wüst in 2006) and “Live Film! Jack Smith! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World” (with Susannne Sachsse and Marc Siegel in 2009). In 2011, she launched the ongoing project Living Archive – Archive Work as a Contemporary Artistic and Curatorial Practice; she, Bettina Ellerkamp, and Jörg Heitmann also founded the Film Feld Forschung (Film Field Research) project at the silent green Kulturquartier. She currently curates the collaborative project Archive außer sich which resulted in the foundation of the archive festival Archival Assembly. She is on the boards of the Harun Farocki Institut, NAAS (Network of Arab Alternative Screens), and the masters program Film Culture at the University in Jos/Nigeria.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.