Through Saturday, May 3…

Make sure to check this out before it closes.

And also, be sure to catch Mary Billyou presenting her own video works at UnionDocs on May 19.
High Risk Citizen
Films curated by Mary Billyou and Eva Díaz

High Risk Citizen explores forms of political resistance and public engagement today, as considered by contemporary artists working in film and video. In this heated year of presidential electioneering, an ongoing, costly war in Iraq, and growing economic recession, both the precarity and possibilities of the moment are incredibly high.

The exhibition examines the stakes of active civic participation in an era of increased privatization and market- or wealth-driven access to state power. The works in High Risk Citizen move between depressed responses to the ways in which collective, political efficaciousness has been intentionally curtailed, and euphoric re-imaginings of sites of robust social and civic culture. While other forms of community affiliations (religious, military, or perhaps even consumer) are frequently invoked as possible substitutes, this exhibition revisits the role and affect of citizenship as one of potential tendentiousness, and questions how what we are told about our relationship to government may be in conflict with how we constitute ourselves as a public.

The program includes films by artists Peggy Ahwesh; Harun Farocki; Glass Bead Collective; Sabine Gruffat; Leopold Kessler; Les LeVeque; Jeanne Liotta; Keith Sanborn; and many, many more.

YOGA NINJA NYC begins this Sunday at 3pm at UnionDocs.

Ninja Yoga is a subtle attack upon the dominant paradigm using self-improvement and spiritual calisthenics to awaken ones awareness to the “whole” of creation, thusly heightening awareness in the overall community through ripples of contagious mirth.

Basically, this is classical hatha yoga excercise, facilitated with a light heart and focus on flow and essence, effect and energy, rather than on particulars and entrapments of formality. Bring yourself and a mat (if possible). Wear clothes that you can move freely in. Best not to eat a heavy meal within 1.5 to 2 hours of the practice. All ages and levels of experience welcome.

(suggested donation $1 to $5 or fresh fruit)

Click for flickr set.

Click for flickr set.

Click for flickr set.

Click for flickr set.

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The voices heard in this installation were collected from a series of flyers that were posted around New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area between the months of December 2007 and April 2008. The flyers, mimicking the form of the common street tear-off, contained short, nondescript statements derived from personal thoughts (for example, one set read, “I remember every word you said to me. 646-607-5550”). Public response was collected via voicemail. Every few weeks, a new set of flyers was posted hundreds of times in the same areas.

After flyering was completed, the voicemails were edited and reassembled into a new whole, creating a sonic patchwork of public response and a constructed dialogue between the participants.

The project adopts the informative and advertising medium of the flyer and replaces standard marketing rhetoric with a personal, anonymous gesture. Private thoughts are displaced into the public realm, thereby simultaneously appropriating and disrupting the existing vernacular of a visually and textually fragmented urban landscape. In a city oversaturated by information and advertisements, the public has become indifferent to the constant demand for visual consumption. With the flyers, the intent is to utilize solicitation not for self-service or promotion, but as a plea for an intimate response from the passerby. By turning the recognizable commercial object into an unexpected personal engagement, an anonymous dialogue is created between the flyer and the pedestrian, the maker and the spectator, the private and the public. The rhetoric of advertising no longer interpellates the passerby as consumer, but suggests a more familiar relationship.

By revisiting and recycling, the messages take on new meaning: they are no longer individualized reactions; they are redefined as parts of a whole. Each caller becomes a recontextualized fragment of a broader realm, extensions of personal thoughts in a universal forum.

On Display @ UnionDocs || April 18th & 19th

High Risk Citizen
VIDEO EXHIBITION @ ART IN GENERAL
04.17.08—05.03.08
Organized by Mary Billyou and Eva Díaz.

High Risk Citizen explores forms of political resistance and public engagement today, as considered by contemporary artists working in film and video. The works in the exhibition move between depressed responses to the ways in which collective, political efficaciousness has been curtailed, and euphoric re-imaginings of sites of robust social and civic culture.

more info

Expression = Life
VIDEO SCREENING AND PANEL
APRIL 18TH, 7:00PM @ CANTOR FILM CENTER

On April 18th, a video screening and panel discussion with ACT UP members, filmmakers, and media theorists entitled “Expression = Life: ACT UP, Video and the AIDS Crisis,” will be held at the Cantor Film Center of New York University. Activists, filmmakers, and media theorists will be on hand to discuss the history and significance of this powerful, grassroots work, and how it contributed to movement organizing and the culture of resistance that evolved from this crisis period.

More info

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See what the legendary Albert Maysles has to say in our first Full Frame Day One UnionDocs video!

A series of interviews with directors from the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in
Durham, North Carolina. We asked directors (including the legendary Albert Maysles) about their takes on film festivals, being a filmmaker in 2008, what makes a good story, being daring, and when to end your film.

The result is some amazing insights into making a documentary film: the highs, the lows, the last minute editing sessions, the struggle for funding, inspiration, and what makes a compelling, sucessful film.