Untitled Document

BETTER HOMES

July 17, 2007

A screening by Jason Livingston

"Watch. Watch this wall respond to me. You Hear it? Watch this one. Watch this wall respond to me. Watch. See this wall respond to me because I’m looking at it this way. Now watch this wall come and bother me because I’m looking at it." -

from Tabula Rasa

Better Homes borrows its name from the ever-popular U.S. magazine dedicated to consumer-friendly transformation of domestic space. A titular connection, granted, but the program’s invitation to read landscape is more than a nominal gesture. Consider the physicality of the stones beside you and the screen before you. Regarding our relationship to the world we inhabit: do landscapes figure our movement? Are we contained by institutional architecture? We should not be surprised that we still – tired of body discourse, tongues dragging on the ground, stretch it out and dance! or watch until moved – that we still struggle to speak lived experience to development.

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. - Donovan

BETTER HOMES
A screening by Jason Livingston

PROGRAM

On Behalf Of The Lynx
Dara Greenwald (USA)
Excerpt from video installation, 2007, loop

Greenwald's installation excerpt remasters an iconic image of the militant anti-development movement (in this case, the Earth Liberation Front). At once inviting and threatening, the Lynx occupies the contested zone of property violence.

In 1998, frustrated with the failure of legal means to stop development in "wild" areas, and motivated by historical acts of political property destruction like The Boston Tea Party, a group calling themselves the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) claimed responsibility for burning down ski lodges owned by Vail, Inc. (a publicly traded multi-million dollar company).

No one was physically harmed but property damage was estimated at $12 million.

Vail, Inc rebuilt soon after.
In 2005, as part of what the Federal Bureau of Information calls Operation Blackfire, five people were accused of setting the fires. The FBI caught those accused through the help of a former ELF member who acted as paid informant in exchange for his freedom.One of the accused died in jail.
Two await trial.
One remains a fugitive.

Those being tried are being tried as "eco-terrorists."

The Two Boys:
Jason Livingston (USA)
1999, 9:00 min. (color video sound)

Begin with romance at the sea, end with nostalgia for the porch.

Plasma Theory in Five Minutes
Penny Lane (USA)
2007, 5:00 min. (color, video, sound)

An outer-orbit of digital innards. Heliocentricism for multiple selves in a sub-atomic pharmacy.

Strange Attractors
Michael Wechsler (USA)
2007, 8 min. (video, color, sound)

Strange Attractors presupposes that a border is actually a set of parallel lines with a debated territory in between. To this end, intersections between digital media are used to probe the question of how to represent an unordered system through an ordered one.

Stores
Franklin Miller (USA)
1973, 6:20 min.
(16mm transfered to video, color, sound)

Mall architecture repeats itself like a genetic chain. Figures will arise, figures will disappear.

Tabula Rasa
Vincent Grenier (USA/CAN)
1993-2004, 7.5 min, (video, color, sound)

Filmed in a South Bronx (NYC) high-school, Tabula Rasa explores the ambiguousness of appearances cultivated by institutions, the clues that tells the history of objects, colors, textures, architecture and ultimately, states of minds.

Only Just Begun
Jennett Thomas (UK)
2007, 5 min. (video, color, sound)

“We've only just begun to live.
White lace and promises,
a kiss for luck and we're on our way...

Mr. Thomas is in the back garden enjoying the sunshine. He makes his moves and the world moves back.” – J. Thomas

BETTER HOMES

July 17, 2007

BETTER HOMES A screening by Jason Livingston

BETTER HOMES
A screening by Jason Livingston