Film and Music

LIZ WENDELBO AND RAHA RAISSNIA, with FOOD PYRAMID AND DEEP EARTH

Thursday, 19 May, 8-10pm 2011
at 319 N. 11th Street, 2nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107

Please join Marginal Utility on Thursday, May 19, for a night film and music organized by Jonathan Thomas, featuring a selection of new films by Liz Wendelbo, scored by Sean McBride; a projected image performance by Raha Raissnia, accompanied by Food Pyramid; and a live set of music by the Chicago trio, Deep Earth.



The program will begin promptly at 8pm with Liz Wendelbo’s Sets and Lights, a series of short films shot on 16mm and presented in three chapters: a group of abstract films, Opticks XVIII, XIX, XX; footage featuring her band in a deserted military compound by the sea; and a reworked industrial film from the 1950s. A photographer and filmmaker, Wendelbo is also a member of the Minimal Wave duo Xeno & Oaklander (Wierd Records, NY). When Sets and Lights premiered at the New Museum in New York in October, 2010, curator Ethan Swan described X & O as “the brightest duo in the contemporary minimal electronics world.” Band mate Sean McBride (aka Martial Canterel) created an original composition for Sets and Lights, designed to correspond with the analogue, “one take, gear fetishism” inherent to Wendelbo’s practice of Cold Cinema. (Approximately 40 minutes)

After an intermission, artist Raha Raissnia will present a painterly performance of expanded cinema involving hand manipulated 16mm film and 35mm slides: a time-based compositing of materials and processes that sediments a set of tensions between the still and moving image; painting and film; abstraction and figuration; the gestural and the photographic. As an artist who probes the practices of painting, drawing, and filmmaking, Raissnia articulates something along the lines of a synesthesic energy-system, underscored here by the avant-garde electronics of Minneapolis ensemble Food Pyramid.

The film program will be followed by a live music performance by Deep Earth, an experimental kosmiche / kraut rock trio out of Chicago.

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Liz Wendelbo
Liz Wendelbo is a French/Norwegian artist, now living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She is also a member of the analog electro-synth duo Xeno & Oaklander (2004- present). Wendelbo works primarily with photography & film. Inspired by the early light and color experiments by physicists Isaac Newton and J.C Maxwell, Wendelbo describes her work as a stripped down fetishistic comment on film-making as a process. In an effort to comprehend their complex color and light theories, Wendelbo re-enacts and deconstructs Newton’s and Maxwell’s color experiments-through practice, with the hand and through the body. She has exhibited at Artist’s Space, Andrew Kreps Gallery, White Columns, Microscope Gallery, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New Museum, and Galerie du Jour (Agnčs b., Paris).

Raha Raissnia
Raha Raissnia emigrated from Iran to the United States in 1983. She received her B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1992 and her M.F.A. from Pratt institute in 2002. From 1992 to 1995, between her two degrees, Raissnia worked at Anthology Film Archives in New York. She has exhibited at Miguel Abreu Gallery, The Kitchen, The Stone (all New York), Museum of Contemporary Art (St Louis), Midway Contemporary Art (Minneapolis), Galeria Marta Cervera (Madrid), and Thomas Dane Gallery (London). Raha Raissnia is represented by Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York, and Galerie Xippas in Paris.

Food Pyramid
A collective of musicians and sound artists based in Minneapolis. Their music can be found on the Moon Glyph record label.

Deep Earth
A trio from Chicago noted for their adept reworking of the traditions of kraut rock and 1980s synth wave, Deep Earth’s music can be found on the Moon Glyph and Mighty Shocks record labels.

Jonathan Thomas
Jonathan Thomas is a two-time alumnus of the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program, has an MA in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society from the University of Minnesota, and teaches at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. His writings have appeared in October, Art Journal, caa.reviews, and Contemporary Literary Criticism. He has curated programs for Marginal Utility Gallery and Midway Contemporary Art.

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