Tirtza Even’s presentation, “The Story of Telling,” will review her efforts to communicate social and political realities in visual media. Even’s linear and interactive video work have consistently been engaged with representing the encounter with a variety of groups and individuals, typically ones whose lives embody complex or decentralized social/political settings (in Palestine, Turkey, the U.S and Germany, among other locations).  At the same time (and perhaps especially) the work could also be described as an exploration of the inevitable, yet nuanced, failure of this very act of representation.

Even’s most recent projects include Land Mine (A feature length documentary, 2014, work-in progress); Natural Life (a feature length documentary on incarcerated youth, 2014), and Once a Wall, or Ripple Remains (a multi-channel video / 3-D animation reflecting on personal encounters in Palestine, 2009.

Land Mine (Tirtza Even, Palestine/Israel, 2014, feature length work-in progress) — segment

Natural Life (Tirtza Even, USA, 2014, 77 minutes) — segment

Once a Wall, or Ripple Remains (Tirtza Even, Palestine/Israel, 2009, 59 minutes/ multi channel installation) — segment

Video artist Tirtza Even takes a documentary approach to sociopolitical issues and uses interactive installations to communicate her ideas; her latest work, designed as a dual projection for museum exhibition, employs split-screen imagery to look at the crimes of six adult prisoners, each sentenced as youths to life without parole, or “natural life.” The paradox that someone might lead a natural life behind bars is central to the film; the director couples interviews with archival footage and staged scenarios to create a sense of confusion and injustice; she never pardons her subjects’ actions, but she convincingly condemns the more archaic aspects of our penal and judiciary systems as they process lower-class minority teens. Unlike other recent documentaries on prison issues, this has a riveting performance element that transcends stodgy journalism.

-Drew Hunt, The Chicago Reader

A practicing documentary maker and video artist for over fifteen years, Tirtza Even has produced both linear and interactive video work representing the less overt manifestations of complex and sometimes extreme social/political dynamics in specific locations (e.g. Palestine, Turkey, Spain, the U.S. and Germany, among others).  Even’s work has appeared at the Museum of Modern Art, NY, at the Whitney Biennial, the Johannesburg Biennial, as well as in many other galleries, museums and festivals in the United States, Israel and Europe, including Rotterdam Film Festival, San Francisco Film Festival and The New York Video Festival, Lincoln Center. It has won numerous grants and awards, including Fledgling Fund; Artadia Awards, Chicago (winner of top award); Golden Gate Awards Certificate of Merit, San Francisco International Film Festival; Best Experimental Film, Syracuse Film Festival; Media Arts Award, The Jerome Foundation; First Prize, L’immagine Leggera Festival, Italy; Individual Artists Program Awards, NYSCA, and many others; and has been purchased for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Jewish Museum (NY), the Israel Museum (Jerusalem), among others. She has been an invited guest and featured speaker at many conferences and university programs, including the Whitney Museum Seminar series, the Digital Flaherty Seminar, Art Pace annual panel, ACM Multimedia, the Performance Studies International conference (PSI), the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts conference (SLSA) and others. Even’s work is distributed by Heure Exquise, France, Video Data Bank (VDB), USA, and Groupe Intervention Video (GIV), Canada. She is an Associate Professor in SAIC’s Film, Video, New Media, and Animation department