In a world overloaded with visual material, accessible footage there for the taking, and endless streams of ‘content’ we encounter and generate every day, there is infinite potential towards a practice of remixing, reappropriating and rewriting. How do we organize and arrange these images towards new narratives? How can the use of archival imagery be used to challenge and create counter-narratives? What is the difference between shooting vs. finding material? And how can we approach the question and ethics of reappropriation? 

Over the course of three days, join acclaimed filmmaker and artist Leslie Thornton (Luna, Peggy and Fred in Hell) and an all-star lineup of media artists creating the most compelling uses of found footage and archive materials in their work to discuss and think through various modes and approaches to the “sourcing” of images.

This workshop will unfold as an investigation into the many ways we accumulate raw material, whether through revisiting our own footage, or acquiring found imagery. We will explore a range of non-fictional practices to discuss how the use and mixing of shot and found footage expands the space of media in many potential and radical directions.

Participants will have the opportunity to learn from guest speakers including archivists, archival researchers, nonfiction filmmakers, and visual artists- as well as to present their own work during work in progress sessions- to initiate or expand their own creative journey into the archival world.

On Friday, Rebeca Cleman (Executive Director at Electronic Arts Intermix) will explore modes of presentation and curation. On Saturday, Onyeka Igwe (a so-called archive, No Dance, No Palaver) will discuss the process of recovering history through colonial archives, and Keith Sanborn will introduce workshop participants to his archival research on pioneering Soviet filmmaker Esfir Shub, the French situationists, and Putin-era Russian television. On Sunday, interested participants will be able to share a work-in-progress and receive feedback on a current project, and Sid Iandovka (horizon, signal to Noise, a minor piece of damage) will close the weekend sharing his approaches to working with archival and appropriated images.

Come spend a weekend exploring various methods of working with archives, and come away with inspiration and information to guide your own work!

Any and all questions, please reach out to [email protected].

NOTE: This workshop will require in-person participation from all participants. Each participant must present proof of vaccination. Any and all questions, please reach out to [email protected].

Details

Schedule

10:30a

First Workshop Session

12:30p

Lunch

2:00p

Second Workshop Session

4:00p

Wrap Up

Bios

Rebecca Cleman is the Executive Director of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), a leading nonprofit resource that has fostered the creation, exhibition, distribution and preservation of media art since 1971. EAI’s catalogue of over 4000 titles by over 200 artists is one of the most important collections of video and media art in the world.

Onyeka Igwe is an artist and researcher working between cinema and installation, born and based in London, UK. Through her work, Onyeka is animated by the question —  how do we live together? — with particular interest in the ways the sensorial, spatial and non-canonical ways of knowing can provide answers to this question. She uses embodiment, archives, narration and text to create structural ‘figure-of-eights’, a form that exposes a multiplicity of narratives. Her works have been shown in the UK and internationally at film festivals and galleries. She was awarded the New Cinema Award at Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival 2019, 2020 Arts Foundation Fellowship Award for Experimental Film, 2021 Foundwork Artist Prize and has been nominated for the 2022 Jarman Award and Max Mara Artis Prize for Women.

Sid Iandovka is a New York-based musician and visual artist whose practice extends across many different media, including moving images. Together with Anya Tsyrlina (though only selected works of theirs are co-authored in a traditional sense), they have collaborated (on and off) for almost thirty years, ultimately creating a joint, entirely independent, “homemade” production approach for their films. Their practice is not rooted in any state; it is immaterial and doesn’t benefit from any national/international funding, resources, or structures. The foundations of their work and sensibility can be traced back to the context of their formative years, when they met as teenagers playing experimental noise in their hometown in Siberia. This music practice morphed into experiments with VJing and new media, with the same sense of punk’s DIY spirit taken up in their practice of recording, manipulating, cutting together, and fucking with moving images, ranging from archival film to crazy CGI. Recently, their films have been screened at festivals including Art of the Real, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam and Viennale.

Keith Sanborn is a media artist, theorist and translator based in New York.His artistic practice includes film, video, photography, installation, and performance. That work has been the subject of numerous one-person shows and has been featured in major museum surveys including the Whitney Biennial, the American Century, and Monter/Sampler (Centre Pompidou) and festivals including EMAF, OVNI, and The Rotterdam International Film Festival. He has translated the work of Debord, Viénet, Wolman, Bataille, Napoleon, Gioli, Brecht, Farocki, Kuleshov and Shub. He has taught at Princeton, Columbia, Bard, UCSD, SUNY/Buffalo and the San Francisco Art Institute, among others. He now blissfully ignores academia to follow his own artistic and intellectual pursuits.