We’re excited to share Kodak and Mediums, a pair of films programmed by Aily Nash that blur the lines of fiction and reality and draw from a diverse array of source material.

A semi-biographical fiction inspired by his father’s work at one of Kodak’s first processing labs, Andrew Norman Wilson’s speculative gloss on the evolution of photochemical science entwines multiple perspectives and personas. Co-written by James N. Kienitz Wilkins, Kodak imagines a dialogue between a blind, mentally unstable former film technician and George Eastman himself, recordings of whom play out over a procession of photographs, home video footage, vintage Kodak ads, and animations.

Pivoting around the voir dire examination that precedes a trial in which prospective jurors are questioned about their background and potential biases, James N. Kienitz Wilkins’ film Mediums blends scripted dialogue with appropriated text from jury-selection pamphlets, automotive manuals, fast-food franchise contracts and blog posts. The result is a collage of semi fictional characters with real-world knowledge who trade information and form alliances, ultimately emphasizing the value of autonomy within mandatory civic participation. The film features UNDO Special Projects Director Alison S. M. Kobayashi as one of these characters.

We’re delighted to screen these pieces side by side and have both filmmakers in attendance for a conversation following the screening with Aily Nash.

A medium-length movie filmed exclusively in medium shots about a group of potential jurors who channel tips and insights to pass the day.

KODAK imagines a dialogue between a blind, mentally unstable former film technician and George Eastman himself, recordings of whom play out over a procession of photographs, home video footage, vintage Kodak ads, and animations.

James N. Kienitz Wilkins is a filmmaker and artist based in Brooklyn. His work has been selected for international film festivals and venues including the New York Film Festival, CPH:DOX, MoMA PS1, Toronto IFF, Locarno IFF, Rotterdam IFF, Migrating Forms, and beyond. In 2016, he was awarded the Kazuko Trust Award presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and selected as one of “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine. In 2017, he participated in the Whitney Biennial.

Andrew Norman Wilson is an artist based in Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions include the Center for Contemporary Art Futura (2018), the Broad Art Museum in Michigan (2017), and a forthcoming exhibition at the Kunstverein Braunschweig (2019). Recent exhibitions include Techne and the Decency of Means at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2017), Dreamlands at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2017), the Gwangju Biennial (2016), the Berlin Biennial (2016), Bread and Roses at the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw (2016), and On Sweat, Paper and Porcelain at CCS Bard in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2015). He has lectured at Oxford University, Cambridge University, Harvard University, Yale University, and UCLA, where he is now visiting faculty. His work has been featured in Aperture, Art in America, Artforum, ArtReview, Frieze, The New Yorker, and Wired. He has published writing in Artforum, e-flux, DIS, and a Darren Bader monograph from Koenig Books.

Aily Nash is a curator based in New York. She is co-curator of Projections, the New York Film Festival’s artists’ film and video section, and program advisor to the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Short Film section. She recently served as a Biennial advisor and co-curator of the film program for the 2017 Whitney Biennial, and was Head of Programming for the 2018 edition of the Images Festival in Toronto. She has curated programs and exhibitions for MoMA PS1 (New York), Brooklyn Academy of Music (New York), Anthology Film Archives (New York), Kiasma (Helsinki), Tabakalera (San Sebastian), FACT (Liverpool), Image Forum (Tokyo) and others. She curated five seasons of the Basilica Screenings series at Basilica Hudson (2012-2016). Her writing has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, Artforum.com, Film Comment, and elsewhere. In 2015, she was awarded a Curatorial Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation.

She is currently commissioning new works by James N. Kienitz Wilkins and Lucy Raven through the Finnish Cultural Institute New York’s MOBIUS Curatorial Fellowship in partnership with PUBLICS and Heureka, Finnish science center.