Armory Film 2013

Moving Image are very pleased to announce the program for the 2013 edition of Armory Film, a series of 5 screenings of contemporary film and experimental video, each followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers/artists over the course of The Armory Show. 2013, as you may have read (in perhaps by now 100 places), is the 100th Anniversary of the 1913 Armory Show which nearly single-handedly ushered in the love affair New York still has with the avant garde (let me have that one, ok?). Indeed, the Friday film in the Armory Film program is a special documentary about that "show that shook the world," with a very special Q&A between the film's producer Richard Miller and renown dealer and Duchamp expert Francis Naumann.

In keeping with The Armory Show 2013's theme of all things Americana, the Armory Film program focuses this year on a wide range of ways in which the American experience is expressed in video art and film.

The full program is below. We hope you can make 4 or 5 of them at least! :-)

 
ARMORY FILM 

Each Armory Film screening is followed by a Q&A with the artist/filmmaker. 
Armory Film 2013 is organized by Moving Image. 

Wednesday March 6th 

Time: 5:00 – 6:30 PM 
Artist: Matthew Day Jackson 
Film: In Search Of...Zombies (2011) 
Duration: 47:27 
Panel: Matthew Day Jackson, David Tompkins (co-writer/director), and Joseph Hung (co-director) 
Gallery: GRIMM, Amsterdam 

In Search of... Zombies is the third in Matthew Day Jackson’s series of videos based on the '70s TV show hosted by Leonard Nimoy investigating supernatural and paranormal phenomena. Filmed in New York and across the American West, from Las Vegas to the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in South Dakota, the episode focuses on the ubiquitous contemporary figure of the zombie. The program tries to figure out why zombies are everywhere, or at least appear to be, and proposes alternate or expanded ways in which we might think about them. 

Thursday March 7th 

Time: 5:00 – 6:30 PM 
Artist: Pavel Büchler 
Film: High Noon (2008) compilation 
Duration 40:00 
Gallery: Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin 

Each of the 13 separate loops in Pavel Büchler’s video installation High Noon is made of stills harvested from a single Google image search. As with all of Büchler's film loop works, they are made from images found on the Internet and provide a reflection of the fragmented modes of reception that Internet browsing seems to encourage. Created as very basic animations of just one or two frames, the loops each use a different animation technique, resulting in works that evoke drama without maintaining a narrative. The screening will include other short loops by Büchler as well. 

Friday March 8th 

Time: 3:00 – 5:00 PM 
Film: The Show That Shook the World: Marcel Duchamp and the 1913 Armory Show  
Duration: 1:00:00 
Panel: Richard Miller (producer) and Francis Naumann (scholar and art dealer) 

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the original Armory Show, Armory Film is pleased to host the national debut of a new documentary on the famed International Exhibition of Modern Art. The one-hour film features a previously unknown illustrated talk by Marcel Duchamp. The object of much derision in 1913, Duchamp exhibits his famous candor as he gives us his take on the seminal event, including a critique of a number of iconic works. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the film’s producer, Richard Miller, led by Duchamp scholar Francis Naumann. 

Saturday March 9th 

Time: 5:00 – 6:30 PM 
Film: The Armory Show Focus Group (2012-2013) 
Artist: Liz Magic Laser 
Duration: 30:00 
Panel: Liz Magic Laser, focus group moderator Ben Allen (Labrador Agency), producer David Guinan (Polemic Media), student Justin Thornton, and dealer Esther Kim Varet (Various Small Fires) 

As the commissioned artist for The Armory Show 2013, Liz Magic Laser conducted a series of six focus groups in November 2012 to determine the nature of her limited-edition artworks and the visual identity of the fair. She invited members of the art community—a range of collectors, curators, museum directors, advisers and critics—to participate in group discussions that would ultimately determine how she would lend her identity to The Armory Show. Laser enlisted professional moderator Ben Allen to lead these groups of “art world consumers”, framing artistic decision-making as a matter of market research for the art fair. The resulting video, edited from twelve hours of focus group discussions, highlights the complex web of opportunities and compromises that define the relationship between market forces and artistic production today. 

Laser’s The Armory Show Focus Group (2012-2013) will also be displayed throughout the course of the fair in the Various Small Fires (Los Angeles) booth in the Focus section curated by Eric Shiner. This film will be shown alongside the contractual documentation of the commission as well as the paraphernalia that ultimately gave form to the 2013 visual identity of The Armory Show. 

Sunday March 10th 

Time: 5:00 -6:30 PM 
Artist: Janet Biggs 
Films: Fade to White / A Step on the Sun (2010 / 2012) 
Duration: 9:05 / 12:28 
Gallery: CONNERSMITH, Washington DC 

These two films by Janet Biggs were shot in near opposite, yet equally inhospitable, locations: the frozen wasteland of the Arctic Circle and the hellish sulfur mine deep inside an active volcano in Indonesia. Fade to White was shot while Biggs was traveling aboard an ice-class, 2-masted schooner, built in 1910, and focuses on a crew member as he navigated the ship through iceberg -filled seas, and paddled a kayak past glacier walls and polar bears. In A Step On the Sun, the artist focuses on hardships overcome by a sulfur miner in the Ijen volcano. Amid clouds of toxic sulfur dioxide gas, he carries heavy loads up a steep, rocky path from the crater floor to the rim, then to a distant weigh-station.