In this 2013 interview, experimental animator and School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumna Jodie Mack discusses the developments that have taken her from an interest in musical theater and playwriting to organizing microcinemas and DIY filmmaking.

Mack describes her interest in early cinema history and the relationship between its technologies and spectacle, particularly the manner in which video production incorporates planned obsolescence. Referring to the “scavenger nature” of her work, Mack discusses her interest in waste and her desire to use reclaimed materials in her work. Using fabric and paper to create shifting fields of color, Mack references corroded and glitched digital media in her work. Her use of quotidian materials reflects upon the role of abstract animation in everyday life, and serves to draw audience awareness to the spectacle of televisual technology.

– Kyle Riley

Bracketed by the Fall of Berlin Wall and the Collapse of the World Trade Center, a decade that saw the ossification of the neoliberal project, the rise of third-wave feminism, the proliferation of digital media, and even, perhaps, the “end of history":

A color-separation portrait of the Exarchia neighborhood of Athens, Greece, made during the Anti-Austerity protests in late 2011.

Since comets have been recorded, they've augured catastrophe, messiahs, upheaval and end times.

"Ursula Biemann’s Writing Desire is a video essay on the new dream screen of the Internet and how it impacts on the global circulation of women’s bodies from the third world to the first world.

The artist visits with seven cosmetic surgeons specializing in blepharoplasty (cosmetic eyelid creasing surgery) in the West Hollywood/Beverly Hills area for initial consultation sessions.

In this video, Glennda Orgasm and social critic Camille Paglia walk the streets of downtown Manhattan and discuss the status of mainstream feminism in the early 1990s.

The Choco area in Colombia is isolated between the sea and the forest. Religious missions, military operations, and tourists have come and gone within the region — coexisting and ignoring each other simultaneously.

Lucy Lippard (b. 1937) earned degrees from Smith College and New York University before beginning her career as an art critic in 1962, when she began contributing to publications such as Art International and, later, Artforum.

The works on Reel 3 were produced during 1972-73, and re-mastered in 2005 when several newly available titles were added. The focus here is on social relationships and attaining the perfect life, be it through making the right decision, getting something for nothing, or just having it all. Many of the comic skits parody television ads and infomercials, and Man Ray has to make some consumer choices.

Shot in the style of a silent film from the 1920s, Frida & Anita is a political fantasy, intersecting the lives of two queer radicals — Frida Kahlo and Anita Berber — who happen to meet one fateful Berlin night in 1924 at the infamous La Ga

Over grainy, black and white images of a woman giving birth, Montano reads the story of a nun’s sexual self-discovery—recounting Sister Joan’s growing awareness of her body’s sensuousness and sexuality.

In his signature photographic style, Donigan Cumming eulogizes a dying friend through his exploration of “culture” in all its manifestations: 1. culture: a particular civilization at a particular stage 2.

In Manpower, a bulldozer, a screaming man and a crying baby are among the images that Tanaka combines with a suggestive soundtrack to create an eerie portrait of male strength and weakness.

The discovery of a VHS tape of the artist’s films for sale on eBay triggers obsessive speculation about the seller’s identity.

Presidential candidates are sold like commercial products and naturally television is the ideal medium.

This video develops from a real event that took place during a theater seminar in the masters degree program at the University of Antioquia in Medellín, Columbia.  The seminar occurred during one of the university's worst periods of violence. 

An image of the curandero in Tlocalula, Mexico.

In Mute, fragmented images of the female body, recalling sensuous landscapes, suggest the objectification of women in a culture that renders them silent.

The music of John Bender punctuates a flow of processed images.

A compilation of five of Sadie Benning’s early works. In Jollies, Benning gives a chronology of her crushes and kisses, tracing the development of her nascent sexuality.

In this attempt to resolve the on-going crisis, Burns and Discenza find themselves in, variously, a childrens adventure playground, a garage and a yard.

Quoting Confucius, that “food and sex are human nature,” Chinese Characters builds a parallel between the Chinese legend about the search for the source of the Yellow River and contemporary Asian-Canadian gay men’s search for pleasure via their

Taking queer artistic license, Dougherty and Leslie Singer together portray a gay male playwright who took 1960s London by storm.

"Three months in an architects’ firm in Berlin. From the architecture down to the tiniest door handle, a questioning of matter and the verb."

— Harun Farocki

A historical interview originally recorded in 1983.

Interview by Joan Livingstone.

Laurie was inspired by Laurie Weeks’ uncanny ability to simultaneously embody her characters and write them from a clear distance.

In this video, the unseen narrator describes her inability to communicate to the camera what she wants to say and to whom she wants to say it.

Addressing the imbalance of information flow between the wealthy and the destitute nations of the world, Towards A New World Information Order suggests means by which this imbalance might be rectified, including ways to control the press.

A Two Spirited woman surrounded by spy signals and psychiatric walls attempts to make sense of love, global paranoia, and her place in the history of colonialism.

Best known for her carved wooden heads wrapped in black leather affixed with zippers, glass eyes, enamel noses, spikes and straps, Nancy Grossman (b.1940) is accomplished in draftsmanship, assemblage, and relief sculpture as well as carvings.

Book Report explores themes of sexual assault, the weaponization of language, and the futility of escape.

Shot during an NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) seminar in Berlin, a group fluxuates between guided meditation and discussion on consciousness and self-acceptance.

Joel Shapiro (b.1941) came to prominence in the early 1970s with his representational miniatures of everyday objects like chairs and houses. Since then he has become one of the most exhibited American sculptors.

In Over My Shoulder, Gordon uses hand gesticulations against a white sheet to communicate both violent and sensual emotions.

Gay Tape: Butch and Femme is Cecilia Dougherty's first video work. She was immersed in two things at the time: making artwork, and being a part of the Oakland, California lesbian bar scene. The tape is the child of those two activities.

Blind man: “It is bad to be alone.”

The Creature: “Alone, bad.”

—The Bride of Frankenstein

It can be so bad to be alone that even an artificial heat is better than none.

“I could do wonders if I didn't have a body. But the body grabs me, it slows me, it enslaves me.”

-- Ponce de Léon

Part of paraconsistent sequence series and the hauntology series.

Incorporating appropriated television footage as artistic experimentation and social critique, Chilean artist Magaly Ponce retells a history of violence and repression from her point of view.

“Spellbeamed uses the acts of translation and transcription to amplify the questions: ”what is a score?” and “what kind of musicalities can be transmitted through extended ideas of scoring?” The inspiration for the piece was

Panzano creates a matrix where the three most taken-for-granted elements of any film (camera, subjects, and the spaces they inhabit) are all delicately at odds with one another — allowed to float freely, gauge the terrain, and stake out a compr

This humorous video begins with two women—one white, the other Asian—attempting to fit into a Japanese bathtub.

Featuring a swirling spiral from video feedback, this video provides a contemplative visual space for viewers. The spiral appears on and off against colorful oscillation patterns. 

I was drawn to the early cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira for as long as I can remember. One day looking thru some reproductions in an art history book with portable video camera in hand I recorded a still of a Lascaux bull.

"Actions, states, one B+W video camera, the Paik Abe Colorizer, a video switcher. The two states, a b a b, I put my hand in the camera frame and saw a colored hand shifting.

Since his early days in Ant Farm, Lord’s evocation of the automobile has been the car as avatar, as the spirit of America—that consummate combination of superior organized corporate technology and the pioneering triumph of the willful individual driver.

In Spank an eight-second film clip has been re-edited, frame by frame, into a 7 1/2-minute video, tranforming discreet gestures into suggestive, pulsating sequences.

Shot in the northeast United States landscape, Willie and Brewsie reflects on the contemporary resonances of the last novella written by Gertrude Stein in 1946 entitled Brewsie and Willie.

Two women occupy one space. Without showing their faces, the camera lingers on their bodies in images that capture both from an extreme high angle. The camera distorts the female body, even creating a grotesque effect.