“Interzones” features the work of contemporary artists exploring these complex themes through their content, form and style. Featured artists include Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Marie Lorenz and Deborah Stratman, among others.

Following is an overview of the program’s main exhibitions and related events at UVP and related programming at partner organizations.

All exhibitions are at UVP Everson, UVP’s permanently installed outdoor architectural projection and sound system projecting onto the façade of the Everson Museum of Art, and all events are in the Everson Museum of Art’s Hosmer Auditorium, unless otherwise noted. All exhibitions and events are free and open to the public.

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Sept. 15-Oct. 27
Thursday-Saturday, dusk to 11 p.m.

”
Screening + Q&A. Reception follows.
Thursday, Oct. 20, 6:30 p.m.

Installation view of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Fireworks (Archives)” (2014) at UVP Everson

“Fireworks (Archives)” is an installation-based short-form work by internationally acclaimed Thai filmmaker and installation artist Weerasethakul. This piece acts as a counterpoint and pendant to Weerasethakul’s latest feature film, “Cemetery of Splendor,” an official selection of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. In “Cemetery of Splendor,” a mysterious sleeping sickness besets soldiers, who are transferred to a temporary clinic in a former school in Thailand’s long oppressed and politically marginalized northeast. The memory-filled space becomes a revelatory world for housewife and volunteer Jenjira, as she watches over Itt, a handsome soldier with no family visitors. Jen discovers Itt’s cryptic notebook of strange writings and blueprint sketches suggesting there may be a connection between the soldiers’ enigmatic syndrome and the mythic ancient site that lies beneath the clinic.

The related “Fireworks (Archives)” is an abstract and intensely graphic exploration of one of the key settings for “Cemetery of Splendor,” the Sala Keoku sculpture park, which features religiously inspired, concrete sculptures of animals and gods. In this hallucinatory setting, we see the two central characters of “Cemetery of Splendor” appear, approach each other and disappear like specters in the nighttime garden amid the disorienting flash of fireworks and flares. “Fireworks (Archives)” acts as a counterpoint to the slow, sun-drenched melancholy at the heart of “Cemetery of Splendor.” For the artist, the Sala Keoku sculpture park is a manifestation of the way that an arid land and a long history of political oppression from the central government in Thailand have driven the inhabitants to “dream beyond” mundane realities—in this sense, the fantastical statues of Sala Keoku are a form of revolt. In the words of the artist, “Together they commemorate the land’s destruction and liberation.”

“Cemetery of Splendor” will screen in Hosmer Auditorium as part of the Syracuse International Film Festival, followed by a live-streaming Q&A with director Weerasethakul and reception on Thursday, Oct. 20, at 6:30 p.m.

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Nov. 10-Dec. 17
Thursday-Saturday, dusk to 11 p.m.

Artist Talk & Reception
Thursday, Nov. 17, 6:30 p.m.

Image from “Tide and Current Taxi” (2005-ongoing) by Marie Lorenz

A collaborative exhibition of new and past works by multimedia artist Lorenz comes out of her summer 2016 sojourn on the Erie Canal in a hand-built rowboat.

Lorenz presents new video work as part of her ongoing project “,” which she started in 2005. Lorenz explores New York Harbor and beyond, taking participants in a rowboat built from salvaged materials to disused coastlines and inaccessible islands, and experiencing the urban environment from the rare perspective of the water. Along the way, she often collects trash that becomes material for her artwork in various media, as well as documenting her journey through social media.

This collaborative multimedia show, commissioned by the Everson Museum of Art, Light Work and Urban Video Project, is the culmination of Lorenz’s journey along the Erie Canal and the Hudson River in the summer of 2016 and brings together new works along with research, documentation and materials from the voyage on view inside the Everson and a new video work at UVP.

Lorenz’s work will also be on view in the Everson Museum of Art’s Robineau & Cloud-Wampler galleries from Sept. 24-Dec. 31.

The artist will discuss her work during an . at the Everson Museum of Art. Reception follows. This event is free and open to the public.

Haunted Ethnographies: group show
Exhibition
Feb. 2-March 25, 2017
Thursday-Saturday, dusk to 11 p.m.

Event
Screening + Panel Talk
Thursday, March 9, 6:30 p.m.

This group exhibition and related screening/talk will showcase an international selection of recent video and experimental film working in the experimental ethnographic mode to explore the ways in which traces of history haunt places and the communities that dwell in them. Panel talk and Q&A with attending artists and reception will follow the screening.

Deborah Stratman: “Parables”
Exhibition: Deborah Stratman: recent video work
April 6-June 1, 2017
Thursday-Saturday, dusk to 11 p.m.

Event: “The Illinois Parables”
Screening + Q&A
Thursday | April 20 | 6:30 p.m.

Still from “The Illinois Parables” (2016) by Deborah Stratman

During the months of April and May 2017, UVP will present recent video work by filmmaker and multimedia artist Deborah Stratman. This exhibition will be paired with a screening of her most recent long-form film, the award-winning “The Illinois Parables,” followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker and reception at the Everson Museum of Art.

“The Illinois Parables,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016, is an experimental documentary comprised of regional vignettes about faith, force, technology and exodus. Eleven parables relay histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism and resistance, all occurring somewhere in the state of Illinois. The state is a convenient structural ruse, allowing its histories to become allegories that explore how we’re shaped by conviction and ideology.

Stratman is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker interested in landscapes and systems. Much of her work points to the relationships between physical environments and human struggles for power and control that play out on the land. She has exhibited internationally at venues including MoMA NY, Centre Pompidou (Paris) and Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and has been selected for the Whitney Biennial and festivals including Sundance, Viennale, CPH/DOX, Oberhausen, Ann Arbor, Full Frame, Rotterdam and Berlinale. Stratman is the recipient of Fulbright, Guggenheim and USA Collins fellowships, a Creative Capital grant and an Alpert Award. She lives in Chicago, where she teaches at the University of Illinois.

Past Cinematheque events

This year’s film selection will be J.J. Abrams’ critically acclaimed 2016 film “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Using its extra-large venue high-definition projector, UVP will project the film onto the façade of the iconic Everson Museum of Art with sound by OnCenter, making for a spectacular film screening in a venue unique to Syracuse.

As part of the event, dozens of local arts and culture organizations will have representatives on hand with information about upcoming events, exhibitions and interactive art experiences for the audience to engage with. Confirmed participants include ArtRage Gallery, Connective Corridor, Everson Museum of Art, Light Work, La Casita Cultural Center, Point of Contact Gallery, SALT Makerspace, Salt Quarters, SU Art Galleries, Symphoria, Syracuse Stage, Syracuse City Ballet and Urban Video Project, among others.

Additional planned festivities include complimentary lemonade and popcorn and multiple (pay) food truck vendors, including Toss ’n’ Fire Pizza and Recess Coffee & Roastery.

The entire event is free and open to the public. Audience members who are able to do so are advised to bring blankets or portable chairs. Limited seating will be available on a first come, first served basis. Street parking, as well as pay parking lots, are ample in the immediate vicinity.

For students coming from the Syracuse University campus, charter buses will run every 15 minutes between Schine Student Center (outside the University Place entrance) on the Syracuse University campus and the Everson Plaza from 7-11 p.m.

Urban Cinematheque 2016 is presented in partnership with the Everson Museum of Art and Onondaga County Office of the County Executive and the Connective Corridor.

Urban Cinematheque 2016 is made possible through the generous support of CNY Arts with additional support from Syracuse New Times and Visual Technologies.

Still from Maria Whiteman’s “Touching Grizzly (Far from your home” (2013)

“” is a group show of short video works exploring the idea of “the animal” and attempts to imagine and engage with nonhuman animals through visual technologies. “Between Species” features work by artists Sam Easterson, Leslie Thornton, Robert Todd and Maria Whiteman.

The exhibition takes place at UVP’s outdoor architectural projection venue onto the north façade of the Everson Museum of Art from Feb. 11-March 26, every Thursday through Saturday from dusk to 11 p.m.

A related indoor screening featuring additional works and a panel talk featuring artistWhiteman and theorist Cary Wolfe will take place on March 10 in the Everson Museum of Art’s Hosmer Auditorium. This event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

This exhibition will be the fourth installment of a year-long program of exhibitions and events at Urban Video Project and partner organizations exploring the shifting idea of what it means to be human, feature the work of established and emerging artists who explore the shifting idea of what it means to human, the notion of posthumanism and encounters with the nonhuman.

Curated by Anneka Herre, the “Between Species” Outdoor Exhibition Program includes:

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About the Artists
Easterson is an award winning video artist with over a decade of experience collecting wildlife imagery for museum, web and television venues. Past venues include the Whitney Museum of American Art (Biennial), the Exploratorium, dOCUMENTA (13), Discovery Channel, the International Center of Photography, The Learning Channel, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Late Show With David Letterman (CBS), MASS MoCA, MTV, the Walker Art Center and Animal Planet, among others. Select press: Newsweek, NPR, The New York Times, CNN, The LA Times, Harper’s, Audubon Magazine and The New Yorker, among others. Easterson is a graduate of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City.

Thornton’s rigorously experimental film and video work draws from archival material, texts, found footage and dense soundtracks. Exploring the aesthetics of narrative form as well as the politics of the image, Thornton forges a unique and strangely beautiful syntax, one that poses its critique at the same time that it mesmerizes and confounds.

Installation view of Robert Todd’s “Undergrowth” (2011) at UVP Everson

Todd is a lyrical filmmaker as well as a sound and visual artist. In the past 20 years he has produced a large body of short- to-medium-format films that have been exhibited internationally at a wide variety of venues and festivals, including the Media City Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Le Rencontres Internationale, Black Maria Film Festival, Nouveau Cinema in Montreal, Cinematheque Ontario, the Harvard Film Archive, the Paris Biennial and others. His films have won numerous festival prizes, grants and artist’s awards. He teaches film production at Emerson College in Boston.

Whiteman’s current art practice explores themes such as art and science, relationships among industry, community and nature, and the place of animals in our cultural and social imagery. In addition to her studio work, she conducts research in contemporary art theory and visual culture. Whiteman has published critical texts in Public: Art/Culture/Ideas, Minnesota Review and Antennae and an essay on Visual Culture in the John Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. In 2011, Whiteman was a recipient of an Interdisciplinary Course Seminar Grant from the Kule Institute for Advanced Studies and was a scholar in the Canadian Institute for Research Computing in the Arts. In 2011, she had a solo exhibition at Latitude 53. She exhibited in the Alberta Biennial at the Art Gallery of Alberta 2013. Whiteman was a co-director of the 2012 (BRIC) Banff Research in Culture/ documenta 13 research residency and participated in the Geoffrey Famer Residency at the Banff Centre in 2012. She has been presenting conference papers and exhibiting artworks at the SLSA 2012-2015. She has also been selected as a recipient of the Visiting Scholar Lynette S. Autrey Fellowship 2015-2016.

The event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow on the plaza.

The indoor screening of “Leviathan” is an official part of the Syracuse International Film Festival program. To view the entire schedule of SIFF events, go to: .

This special event is held in conjunction with the exhibition of “Leviathan” from Sept. 17-Oct. 24 at UVP’s outdoor architectural projection venue at the Everson Museum of Art. The related piece, “He Maketh a Path to Shine after Him; One Would Think the Deep to Be Hoary,” is being shown in the Everson Museum’s Cloud-Wampler Gallery from Sept. 19- Nov. 29.

This exhibition is the first installment of�� a year-long program of exhibitions and events at Urban Video Project and partner organizations exploring the shifting idea of what it means to be human, feature the work of established and emerging artists who explore the shifting idea of what it means to human, the notion of posthumanism and encounters with the non-human.

About ‘Leviathan’

“Leviathan” (2012) is a groundbreaking, immersive portrait of the contemporary commercial fishing industry. Filmed off the coast of New Bedford, Mass., “Leviathan” follows a hulking groundfish trawler into the surrounding murky black waters on a weeks-long fishing expedition. But instead of romanticizing the labor, filmmakers Castaing-Taylor (“Sweetgrass”) and Paravel (“Foreign Parts”) present a vivid, almost kaleidoscopic representation of the work, the sea, the machinery and the players, both human and marine. The film that emerges is unlike anything that has been seen before. Entirely dialogue-free, but mesmerizing and gripping throughout, it is a cosmic portrait of one of mankind’s oldest endeavors. “Leviathan” will be on view as an outdoor projection at Urban Video Project (UVP) on the north facade of the north Everson Museum of Art through Oct. 24, every Thursday-Saturday, dusk to 11 p.m.

About ‘He Maketh a Path to Shine after Him; One Would Think the Deep to Be Hoary’

The related video installation, “He Maketh a Path to Shine after Him; One Would Think the Deep to Be Hoary” (2013), is a meditative, durational piece that came out of Castaing-Taylor and Paravel’s desire to return to and re-work the thousands of hours of footage shot for “Leviathan.” Where “Leviathan” is intensely visceral, even brutal, in its depiction of the lived reality of deep-sea fishing, “Hoary” opens up space for reflective encounter. Slowed down to 1/50 of the original recording speed, much of the imagery in “Hoary” borders on pure, almost painterly abstraction. In the filmmakers’ own words, “In this flux, one beholds a netherworld of aqueous forms that appear in one frame and disappear or transmogrify into something else in the next.”

“Leviathan” at UVP Everson

Posthumanism has become an umbrella term under which a diverse array of contemporary intellectual currents across all disciplines in the humanities can be grouped. While the term is not unproblematic, it does capture the sense that both a radical rethinking of the humanities/humanism, and a rapprochement between the humanities and the sciences, are an urgent necessity in order to address the most pressing issues that we as a species currently face. Part of this urgency comes from the pressure placed on the very notion of the human by our rapidly changing understanding of ourselves in light of developments in neuroscience and genetics, human-caused climate change, the increasingly sophisticated and insidious forms assumed by biopolitical power, capital’s increasingly neoliberal turn, and exponential advances in computational and communications technologies, to name but a few examples. At the same time, posthumanism entails a decentering of the human subject that opens up critically important questions about how to reconstruct ethics without the notion of an implicitly human “worthy subject” at its center.

UVP’s 2015-2016 program “We Were Never Human” features the work of contemporary artists exploring these complex themes through their content, form and style. Featured artists include Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, the Otolith Group, Mary Mattingly and Saya Woolfalk, among others.

Below is an overview of “We Were Never Human” main exhibitions and related events at UVP and related programming at partner organizations.

All exhibitions are at UVP Everson, UVP’s permanently installed outdoor architectural projection and sound system projecting onto the façade of the Everson Museum of Art, and all events are in the Everson Museum of Art’s Hosmer Auditorium, unless otherwise noted. All exhibitions and events are free and open to the public.

Sept. 17- Oct. 24
Thursday-Saturday, dusk-11 p.m.
Screening, talk and reception: Thursday, Oct. 15, 6:30 p.m. (Lucien Castaing-Taylor in person)

“Leviathan” (2012) is a groundbreaking, immersive portrait of the contemporary commercial fishing industry. Filmed off the coast of New Bedford, Mass., “Leviathan” follows a hulking groundfish trawler into the surrounding murky black waters on a weeks-long fishing expedition. But instead of romanticizing the labor, filmmakers Castiang-Taylor (“Sweetgrass”) and Paravel (“Foreign Parts”) present a vivid, almost kaleidoscopic representation of the work, the sea, the machinery and the players, both human and marine. The film that emerges is unlike anything that has been seen before. Entirely dialogue-free, but mesmerizing and gripping throughout, it is a cosmic portrait of one of mankind’s oldest endeavors.

A related video installation, “He Maketh a Path to Shine after Him; One Would Think the Deep to Be Hoary” (2013), will be on view in the Everson’s Cloud-Wampler gallery from Sept. 19-Nov. 29.

Still from “Anathema” (2010) by The Otolith Group

Nov. 5-Dec. 19
Thursday-Saturday, dusk-11 p.m.
Screening, talk and reception: Thursday, Nov. 12, 6:30 p.m. (Anjalika Sagar in person at the Everson)

“Anathema” (2011) reimagines the microscopic behavior of liquid crystals undergoing turbulence as a sentient entity that possesses the fingertips and the eyes enthralled by the LCD touch-screen. “Anathema” can be understood as an object-oriented video that isolates and recombines the magical gestures of dream factory capitalism. “Anathema” proposes itself as a prototype for a counter-spell assembled from the possible worlds of capitalist sorcery.

Jan. 20-30, 2016
Gallery talk and reception at Light Work: Thursday, Jan. 28, 5-7 p.m.

This short exhibition of selected video work by multimedia artist Mary Mattingly is held in conjunction with her solo show at Light Work’s Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery Jan. 19-March 10, 2016. Through the building of ecosystems and mobile environments, Mattingly’s work explores issues of access to basic resources, supply and waste chains, and our shared present and future.

Still from “Touching” (2013) by Maria Whiteman

“Between Species”: group show
Feb. 4-March 26, 2016
Curated screening and panel talk: Thursday, March 10, 6:30 p.m.

“Species Meet” will be an exploration of our changing understanding of the relationship between “the human” and “the animal.” A small group exhibition at UVP Everson will be paired with an indoor curated screening of video works that range from the critical deconstruction of our current relationship to non-human animals, to pieces that propose both plausible and more fantastical re-imaginings of that relationship and its fluid boundaries. The screening will be followed by a panel talk led by theorist Cary Wolfe, whose work explores posthumanism, deconstruction and the burgeoning field of animal studies. Wolfe will be joined by several participating artists, including Maria Whiteman. A related multimedia exhibition is planned for the Member’s Council Gallery inside the Everson Museum of Art.

Saya Woolfalk: new work
February-May 2016 in the Everson’s Robineau and Cloud-Wampler Galleries
April 7-May 28, 2016, at UVP Everson
Artist talk and reception: Thursday, April 14, 6:30 p.m.

Multimedia artist Woolfalk will premiere new video, 2D and 3D work at UVP and inside the Everson Museum of Art created during her 2015 Light Work UVP artist residency. According to the artist, her work “considers the idea that symbolic and ideological systems can be activated and re-imagined through collaboration, imaginative play and masquerade.” Woolfalk is perhaps best known for the work she has done relating to her “Empathics” mythos, which imagines the culture of a society of alien beings who are plant-human hybrids.

This year’s film selection will be George Miller’s critically acclaimed 2015 film “Mad Max: Fury Road,” starring Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy. Using its extra-large high definition venue projector, UVP will project the film onto the façade of the iconic Everson Museum of Art, making for a spectacular film screening in a setting truly unique to Syracuse.

This year’s Urban Cinematheque boasts over 30 different participating arts and cultural organizations, including the Everson Museum of Art, 40 Below Public Arts Task Force, Light Work, Point of Contact Gallery, La Casita, Community Folk Art Center, The Redhouse, SU Art Galleries, Syracuse Stage, CNY Arts, the Delevan Center, SALT Makerspace, Landmark Theatre, Syracuse Improv Collective, Apostrophe‘S Gallery, Syracuse International Film Festival, LadyFest Syracuse, Syracuse In Print, Connective Corridor and Urban Video Project, among others.

Each participating organization will have a representative on hand with information about upcoming events, exhibitions and opportunities to become involved, as well as interactive art experiences for the audience to engage with. Additional planned festivities include multiple (pay) food truck vendors, including Toss N’ Fire Pizza, Recess Coffee & Roastery and Byblos.

The entire event is free and open to the public. Free popcorn and lemonade will be provided. Audience members who are able to do so are advised to bring blankets or portable chairs. Limited seating will be available on a first come, first served basis. Street parking, as well as pay parking lots, are ample in the immediate vicinity.

Charter buses will run every 15 minutes between Schine Student Center (outside the University Place entrance) on the Syracuse University campus and the Everson Plaza from 7:30-10:30 p.m. The event may also be accessed for free via the Centro Connective Corridor bus line.

Urban Cinematheque 2015 is presented in partnership with the Everson Museum of Art, The Oncenter, Onondaga County Office of the County Executive and the Connective Corridor.

Urban Cinematheque 2015 is made possible through the generous support of Syracuse Cooperative Federal Credit Union and Central New York Community Foundation; with additional support from Syracuse New Times, Visual Technologies and The OnCenter.

A still from “Crow Requiem”

“Crow Requiem” is a new work created by Smith for UVP during her December 2014 residency at Light Work. Smith’s interdisciplinary practice merges improvisational music, speculative fiction, African-American history and processional forms to create temporal and spatial ruptures that make room for new affinities, empathies and consciousnesses.

The artist will discuss her practice at two related events on April 7. Smith will deliver a formal artist talk from 2-4 p.m. in Shemin Auditorium on the Syracuse University campus. She will also present her work as part of “Speculations: Science Fiction, Chronopolitics and Social Change”—a panel talk, performance and reception—beginning at 6:30 p.m. in Hosmer Auditorium at the Everson Museum. A reception and special Tuesday night screening will follow on the plaza. A related workshop, “DIY Time Travel in the Afrofuture” with Rasheedah Phillips, creative director of “” and founding member of will take place from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. on April 7 at Light Work Lab, 316 Waverly Ave.

All events are free and open to the public.

Crows are well known for their mythological reputation as tricksters and harbingers of death, but less for the reality that they are creatures of remarkable intelligence who lead complex social lives. Smith became fascinated by these misunderstood creatures when she noticed the massive flock of crows roosting outside her bedroom window during her artist residency at Light Work. She learned that the native population of crows circulates between Syracuse and nearby Auburn, and that this migration is partly in response to harassment and, at times, state-sanctioned violence at the hands of a human population that views them as a nuisance. Smith interweaves the figure of the crow through the histories of these two cities, both of which were key stations on the Underground Railroad and innovators in early cinematic and 3D optical technologies. “Crow Requiem” connects this history to recent and ongoing violence against people of color at the hands of the state. The video was shot on location in Central New York and features selections from the Onondaga Historical Association’s extensive archive of 19^th century stereoscopic images.

Smith’s films, objects and installations have been featured in group exhibitions at the Studio Museum of Harlem; Houston Contemporary Art Museum; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art; Yerba Buena Center for Arts, Calif; D21 Leipzig, Germany; and the New Museum, N.Y. She has had solo shows at The Kitchen in New York City, MCA Chicago and Threewalls in Chicago; and Women & Their Work in Austin, Texas. Her film work has been featured in such high-profile festivals as Sundance and screened twice by demand at the prestigious Robert Flaherty Film Seminar Exhibition. In 1999, she was selected as one of Ten Directors to Watch by “Variety” magazine. Smith is the recipient of several grants and awards, including a Creative Capital grant, the Rockefeller Media Arts Award, Chicago 3Arts Grant and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Smith earned an M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles. She currently lives in Chicago while teaching at the Vermont College of Fine Art low-residency M.F.A. program. More information: http://

“Shuffle,” the first part of Sanford Biggers’ trilogy, is shown outside the Everson Museum.

“Shuffle” and “Shake” will be exhibited at UVP’s Everson venue, a year-round outdoor projection onto the north facade of the Everson Museum of Art located in downtown Syracuse. The projection runs every Thursday through Saturday from dusk to 11 p.m. As part of the exhibition, Biggers will give an in-person artist talk on Tuesday, Nov. 11, at 6:30 p.m. in the Everson’s Hosmer Auditorium. The talk will be followed by a reception on the plaza. Biggers’ talk is presented in collaboration with the Visiting Artist Lecture Series.

“Shuffle” and “Shake” form the first two parts of Sanford Biggers’ Odyssean trilogy about the formation and dissolution of identity. “Shuffle” explores the struggle between our own perception of self vs. others’ projections onto us. “Shuffle” also examines how we matriculate through society, often masking our insecurities, pain, longing and the internal schizophrenia of the id. The original soundtrack is composed from the artist’s field recordings made in Indonesia. Both videos feature Ricardo Camillo—a Brazil-born, Germany-based choreographer, stuntman, clown and DJ. In “Shake,” the second video of the trilogy, Camillo walks from the favelas (or shantytowns) of Brazil, to the ocean before finally transforming into an androgynous silver-skinned figure. Biggers’ imagery and narrative simultaneously reference Greek mythology and the quintessential afrofutrist aesthetics of Parliament Funkadelic.

Biggers creates artworks that integrate film, video, installation, sculpture, drawing, original music and performance. He intentionally complicates issues such as hip hop, Buddhism, politics, identity and art history in order to offer new perspectives and associations for established symbols. Through a multidisciplinary formal process and a syncretic creative approach, he makes works that are as aesthetically pleasing as they are conceptual.

In “Shake,” the second part of Biggers’ trilogy, the main character walks to the ocean.

Biggers’ recent solo exhibitions include the Brooklyn Museum, Sculpture Center and Mass MoCA. His work has appeared in venues worldwide, including Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London; the Whitney Museum and Studio Museum in Harlem; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco; and institutions in China, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Poland and Russia. He has been a fellow of the Creative Time Global Residency, the Socrates Sculpture Park Residency, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council World Views AIR Program, the Eyebeam Atelier Teaching Residency, the Studio Museum AIR Program, the P.S. 1 International Studio Program and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency. His works are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Bronx Museum. Awards include the American Academy in Berlin Prize, Greenfield Prize, New York City Art Teachers Association Artist-of-the-Year, Creative Time Travel Grant, Creative Capital Project Grant, New York Percent for the Arts Commission, Art Matters Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Award, the Lambent Fellowship in the Arts and the Pennies From Heaven/ New York Community Trust Award, among many others. Biggers is assistant professor at Columbia University’s Visual Arts program. He is a Los Angeles native, working and living in New York City. For more information, go to .

“Celestial Navigation: a year into the afro future” is a year-long curatorial program applying an afrofuturist lens to art work by established and emerging artists including Isaac Julien, Biggers, Xaviera Simmons, Jeanette Ehlers (as part of “The Black Radical Imagination 2014,” curated by Erin Christovale and Amir George), Cristina de Middel and Cauleen Smith. In addition to the video projection series, this year-long program also includes co-sponsored events and exhibitions with the Community Folk Art Center (CFAC) and Light Work. For more information about forthcoming artist talks, screenings, panel discussions and other events, visit .

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A still from Isaac Julien’s “Western Union: Small Boats (The Leopard)” series

Urban Video Project (UVP) and parent organization Light Work have announced the opening of their 2014-15 programming year with “Western Union: Small Boats (The Leopard)” (2007) by world-renowned visual artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien, from Sept. 11-Oct. 25. This exhibition marks the beginning of “Celestial Navigation: a year into the afro future,” a year-long program of exhibitions and events at Urban Video Project and partner organizations that takes afrofuturism as its point of departure.

“Western Union: Small Boats (The Leopard)” will be exhibited at UVP’s Everson venue, a year-round outdoor projection onto the north facade of the I.M. Pei-designed Everson Museum of Art, overlooking a public plaza and reflecting pool in downtown Syracuse. The projection runs every Thursday-Saturday night from dusk to 11 p.m. during the exhibition.

As part of the exhibition, Julien will give an in-person artist talk on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6:30 p.m. in the Everson’s Hosmer Auditorium, followed by a reception on the plaza. This event will be co-sponsored by the Transmedia Department Film Program.

Julien’s “Western Union: Small Boats (The Leopard)” will be shown as part of UVP from Sept. 11-Oct. 25

“Celestial Navigation: a year into the afro future” will explore the work of major established and emerging artists through an afrofuturist lens, including works by Julien, Sanford Biggers, Xaviera Simmons, Jeanette Ehlers (as part of “The Black Radical Imagination 2014,” curated by Erin Christovale and Amir George), Cristina de Middel and Cauleen Smith. Artist talks, screenings and a panel discussion in spring 2014 will be included in the programming. Partner venues featuring cross-programmed exhibitions include Community Folk Art Center (CFAC) and Light Work.

For more information, go to .

“Western Union: Small Boats (The Leopard),” which premiered at the 67th Venice Film Festival, is a single-channel edit of Julien’s 2007 three-channel piece, “WESTERN UNION: Small Boats.” Shot on 35mm film and transferred to digital video, “WESTERN UNION: Small Boats” forms the final installment of his compelling “Expeditions” trilogy, which also includes “True North” (2004) and “Fantôme Afrique” (2005). The works explore the impact of location—both cultural and physical—to resounding effect through a juxtaposition of opposing global regions.

Expanding on the themes of voyages, excursions and expeditions, “WESTERN UNION: Small Boats” is being produced at a time when advances in global telecommunications and new technologies are continually celebrated. One of the major questions arising from this development is the part individuals may play in this flow of information. Questions surrounding the circulation of human lives, the movements of bodies and their personal stories are timely when immigration policies generate controversy on a daily basis and the relationships between nations are the source of much debate.

“WESTERN UNION: Small Boats” concerns journeys made across the seas of the Mediterranean by so-called “clandestines” who leave Libya, escaping wars and famines. They can be seen as economic migrant workers, along with certain Europeans—“Angels” in Walter Benjamin’s terms—who bear witness to modernity’s failed hopes and dreams, and who now travel across oceanic spaces, some never to arrive or return.

About the Artist

Julien’s film is part of “Celestial Navigation: a year into the afro future”

Julien was born in 1960 in London, where he currently lives and works. While studying painting and fine art film at St. Martin’s School of Art, from which he graduated in 1984, Julien co-founded Sankofa Film and Video Collective, in which he was active from 1983-1992. He was also a founding member of Normal Films in 1991. Julien has taught at Harvard University and Goldsmiths College, University of London, and is currently a faculty member at the Whitney Museum of American Arts; professor of media art at Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, Germany; and chair of Global Art at University of the Arts London.

Julien first rose to prominence for his feature-length and short-form films and received a Turner Prize nomination in 2001 for “The Long Road to Mazatlán” (1999) and “Vagabondia” (2000). Earlier works include “Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask” (1996); “Young Soul Rebels” (1991), which was awarded the Semaine de la Critique Prize at the Cannes Film Festival the same year; and the acclaimed poetic documentary “Looking for Langston” (1989), which also won several international awards. More recently, he received a Special Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival for his film on Derek Jarman, called “Derek” (2008), created in collaboration with Tilda Swinton.

Julien’s most recent work has focused on immersive single- and multi-channel video installations. At once minutely detailed and epic in scope, these works constitute layered meditations on the massive social, ecological and economic ramifications of global neoliberalism. Recent audio-visual installation works include “Ten Thousand Waves” (2010), which was shot in China and recently exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, as well as “Playtime” (2014), an ambitious new body of work exploring the dramatic and nuanced subject of capital, starring an international roster of actors

Julien’s honors and awards include the Performa Award (2008), the prestigious MIT Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts (2001) and the Frameline Lifetime Achievement Award (2002). Most recently, he received the 2014 Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award from the San Francisco Film Society. Julien has had solo shows at the Pompidou Centre in Paris (2005), MOCA Miami (2005) and, most recently, at SESC Pompeia in Brazil (2012), among others. His film “Ten Thousand Waves” (2010) was on a world tour including 16 countries. His work “Paradise Omeros” was presented as part of Documenta XI in Kassel (2002). Julien is represented in both public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern; Centre Pompidou; Guggenheim Collection; Hirshhorn Collection, Albright-Knox; Goetz Collection; the Louis Vuitton Art Foundation; LUMA Foundation; and the Zeitz Foundation.

Last year’s Urban Cinematheque

This year’s film selection will be Wes Anderson’s art-house smash hit “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” on Friday, Aug. 29, from 7:30-10:30 p.m. Using its extra-large venue high definition projector, UVP will project the film onto the façade of the iconic Everson Museum of Art, making for a spectacular film screening in a venue truly unique to Syracuse.

This year’s Urban Cinematheque boasts over 30 different participating arts and cultural organizations, including Art Rage Gallery, the Everson Museum of Art, 40 Below, Light Work, Point of Contact Gallery, the Redhouse, SU Art Galleries, Syracuse Stage, CNY Arts, Th3, the Delevan Center, SALT Makerspace, the MOST, Landmark Theatre, Salt Market, Echo, Connective Corridor and Urban Video Project, among many others.

Each participating organization will have a representative on hand with information about upcoming events, exhibitions and opportunities to become involved, as well as interactive art experiences for the audience to engage with. Additional planned festivities include multiple (pay) food truck vendors and a DJ’ed pre-show.

The entire event is free and open to the public. Free popcorn and lemonade will be provided. Audience members who are able to do so are advised to bring blankets or portable chairs. Limited seating will be available on a first come, first served basis. Street parking, as well as pay parking lots, are ample in the immediate vicinity.

Charter buses will run every 15 minutes between Schine Student Center (outside the University Place entrance) on the Syracuse University campus and the Everson Plaza from 7:30-10:30 p.m. The event may also be accessed for free via the Centro Connective Corridor bus line.

A still from “Sunset Donut” by Yui Kugimiya

This year’s UVP Summer Review will feature the following videos from the 2013-14 programming year:

Dani Leventhal: “”
Phil Solomon: “”
Yui Kugimiya: “”
Michael Bühler-Rose: “”
Ann Hamilton: “”

��All works will be presented as a continuous loop each exhibition night.

About the Works:

”

In Leventhal’s “Platonic,” geometric specters twirl in space, pet cats foam at the mouth, a little boy mistakes his junkie dad for a superhero and a confused adolescent worries he has sired a centaur. “Platonic” references both the ancient philosopher’s metaphysics of ideal forms—which simultaneously exist outside our perceptions and yet give rise to them—and the related meaning in common parlance of non-romantic love. Leventhal trains her searching lens on the distance separating bodies, moments and perspectives. The result is a study in the awkward gaps between appearance and reality, seeing and understanding, desire and its object.

”

“Still Raining, Still Dreaming” re-purposes the virtual world of the controversial “Grand Theft Auto” video game series, with its imperatives to random violence and crime, transforming Liberty City—the fictitious metropolis based on New York City in which the game is set—into a reflective space of stillness: depopulated of players, full of melancholy, longing and moments of compelling poetic beauty.

Kugimiya’s work is unique in its use of traditional painting techniques to create quirky stop-motion animations. Each of the 30 frames per second that make up the moving image is a unique painting, lending the videos a visceral quality in which the traces of time are materially present. The stars of this suite of short pieces are all anthropomorphic cats deeply engaged in some everyday task—brushing their teeth, placing their order at the counter of a fast-food stand, savoring a donut in the sunset—the cats are at once stand-ins for everyone and eccentrically specific individuals. The result is a whimsical and light-handed meditation on how the transcendent reveals itself within the mundane.

”

“I’ll Worship You, You’ll Worship Me” reflects on the artist’s background of years of studying and teaching Hindu rituals as a Brahmin priest in India. By creating parallels between the artist as priest, the art object as a deity and viewing it in the gallery/museum as a pilgrimage, he explores how conceptual art practice translates to thousands of years of intricate Hindu theory on dealing with imagery. In the two-way viewing theory of darsana, the pilgrim/viewer takes darsana of, or sees, the deity. Just as important, though, is that the deity is always looking back at the pilgrim/viewer, creating an acknowledgement of the viewer’s reverential presence.

”

Can the weight in the touch of a percussionist’s hand be visualized? How can a recording reveal the many subtle actions that bring forth musical virtuosity? What is the space between hearing and seeing, and how do we—the viewer-hearers—occupy this space? Inspired by the variety shows of his youth, composer David Lang envisioned a nearly impossible synchronization of two percussionists when he originally wrote the composition “Table of Contents.” After seeing a performance in 2011 by percussionists Susan Powell and Joseph Krygier, who were the first to perform the work as Lang originally envisioned, Hamilton imagined attaching an array of low-resolution mini-surveillance cameras to the hands of the percussionists and instruments. In the resulting video piece, Hamilton’s “table,” the cameras occupy the gap between hearing and seeing, and the edit generates a counterrhythm, a back-and-forth that brings us intimately into “impossible” virtuosity.

Ann Hamilton’s video piece “table of contents” will begin at the Everson UVP site on April 8.

Urban Video Project will present renowned multimedia artist Ann Hamilton on Tuesday, April 8, for the opening of a new video piece, “table of contents,” at UVP Everson.

Hamilton will give a talk in the Everson Museum of Art’s Hosmer Auditorium at 6:30 p.m. A special Tuesday night screening and reception will follow on the plaza.

Both the talk and the reception are free and open to the public. For the most up-to-date information, join the event on Facebook.

Ann Hamilton

Best known for her large-scale installations, including last year’s enthusiastically received Park Avenue Armory Show, “the event of a thread,” Hamilton has created work for many of the world’s great venues, such as the Guggenheim, Mass MoCA, the Tate Liverpool and the Dia Center for the Arts, and she represented the United States in the 1999 Venice Biennale.

With this installation, Hamilton utilizes the brutalist monumentality of I.M. Pei’s building and the adjoining public plaza as the proscenium stage for a piece about the space of performance—simultaneously public and intimate—and how the audience might occupy that space.

Taking composer David Lang’s notoriously difficult composition, “Table of Contents” as its starting point, Hamilton’s piece poses a series of rhetorical questions to the viewer: Can the weight in the touch of a percussionist’s hand be visualized? How can a recording reveal the many subtle actions that bring forth musical virtuosity? What is the space between hearing and seeing, and how do we—the viewer-hearers—occupy this space?

When he wrote the score for “Table of Contents,” Lang envisioned a nearly impossible synchronization of two percussionists. “My original idea for the piece was a visual image that reminded me of the television variety shows of my youth—someone would come out onstage and make music by picking up an odd array of noise makers, in lightning succession, all of which produced sound in different ways.”

Fellow musicians were incredulous, telling Lang it was too difficult. In 2009, the Pendulum Percussion Duo (Susan Powell and Joseph Krygier) took on the challenge of playing the piece the way he intended. Other duos thought it impossible to pick up the instruments and shake them; until the Pendulum Percussion Duo’s performance, Lang had never witnessed its proper execution.

After seeing their performance in 2011, Hamilton imagined attaching an array of low-resolution mini surveillance cameras to their hands and instruments. This technique builds upon a process specific to her practice since 2001, which uses an inexpensive single-chip miniature surveillance camera held in the hand. The appendage of touch becomes the “eye.” This technique of “handseeing”—reading, recording and in effect rewriting—causes the picture to come in and out of focus. This is the first time Hamilton has used this many cameras simultaneously, undertaking the challenge of synchronizing their multifarious perspectives into one single projection.

In Hamilton’s “table of contents,” the cameras occupy the gap between hearing and seeing. They insert a motion that is neither the percussionist’s hand nor the static unblinking eye of an overhead stationary camera. The spliced video channels generate a counter rhythm, a back-and-forth that possibly brings us intimately into “impossible” virtuosity.

For more information about “Ann Hamilton: table of contents” or UVP, go to .