On January 22nd (2023) I participated in opening a new screening series at Vancity Theatre dedicated to the latest Sight & Sound poll of the “Greatest Movies of All Time.” The series programmer invited me to introduce Chantal Akerman’s 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, which emerged as the top film in the latest iteration of the poll. This result delighted many cinephiles, while eliciting condescending dismissal from some. As a scholar and curator who remains dubious about the merits of the Sight & Sound poll, I took the opportunity to frame this remarkable film for audiences and celebrate its challenge to the established film canon.
Continue reading “Public Talk: On Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman…””
My first visit to the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and Len Lye Archive was more than a decade ago (my post from that trip). What was meant to be a single research trip to cover one case study of my dissertation grew into an enduring relationship with Len Lye’s work and with the gallery more broadly, especially following the construction of the beautiful Len Lye Centre. I’m so grateful that the gallery is supporting my vision for a curatorial project that brings together experimental animation and textile arts!
Over the next two years I’ll be working with them (mostly remotely) to realize a project that expands my interest in curatorial forms of sharing research. I’m fortunate to have a supportive gallery director in Zara Stanhope and great on-site partner in Paul Brobbel.
[2025 Update: this residency led to the major exhibition Interlaced: Animation and Textiles, publication of an accompanying book under the same title, and the publication of my first monograph Graphite: Animated Traces].
When do feminist artists put their body on the line? Is decolonial feminist art praxis possible in the art institution?
“Art in the Flesh: A Public Class” was a two-part special event co-organized by Dr. Sue Shon and me for This Exhibition is not an Exhibition (curated by Valérie Walker and Patryk Tom) at the Libby Leshgold Gallery in Vancouver (Canada). Our two public classes within the gallery space were an experiment to imagine and practice an anticolonial pedagogy that bridges, among other contradictions, the arts university and the arts gallery.
Continue reading “Event: “Art in the Flesh: A Public Class””
Last year I encouraged artist and curator Celina de Leon to adapt her moving-image work I am the same, I am always changing into a triptych installation. Celina first developed this project as a speculative response to the work of Ana Mendieta in my course on avant-cinema histories. On November-10-2022 it debuted as part of Celina’s first solo show, at the RBC Media Gallery. I am proud and grateful to have written a short curatorial text for this bold and vulnerable work.
Continue reading “Curatorial text: “I am the same, I am always changing””
I’ve been following the Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival (GIRAF) remotely for years, but it wasn’t until they went online during the pandemic that I got to experience their wonderful programming and community feel. This year, I was giddy to be a guest curator and judge with the festival. During the festival, I presented a special programme devoted to animating graphite that came out of the Animate Materials Workshop.
Continue reading “Announcement: Guest Curator and Jury Member at GIRAF’18”
On October-1-2022 I gave a public talk on artistic production and/as cultural memory at the ACT Arts Centre (Maple Ridge), in connection with their exhibition Labour and Memory: Ukrainian-Canadian Contexts.
Continue reading “Public Talk: Rites of Passage and Return”
How can animation explore nomadic and indigenous cosmologies?
Continue reading “Event: Nomadic Cosmologies: Conversation with Alisi Telengut”
I’m stunned and grateful to receive the 2022 SCMS award for best essay in an edited collection. My colleague Perrin Grauer published a lovely profile of the essay and the award here. The published essay, devoted to a feminist history of film editing, owes much to my editors James Leo Cahill and Joshua Malitsky, as well as the staff of RGALI and Muzei Kino archives in Moscow.
On May-27-2022 I had a chance to present the Rear-Window Cinema project at a curated speaker series organized by the Digital Arts Community extension of SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques). The theme of this particular edition was “Expanded and Experimental Animation.”
Continue reading “Talk: SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community”
Alla Gadassik: Media Scholar and Animation Curator 