[Frameworks] March 19 Screening: Unlimited Subjectivity: The Written and Sung Work of Duke and Battersby

[Patrick Friel]

Of course, when I finally remember to post something to the This Week in
Avant-Garde list I accidentally post here as well!

So to clarify ­ this is in Chicago.

Best to all,

pf


On 3/11/13 4:12 PM, "Patrick Friel" <patrick.friel at att.net> wrote:

> 
> The Nightingale and White Light Cinema Present
>  
>  
>  
> Unlimited Subjectivity: The Written and Sung Work of Duke and Battersby
> Screening and Book Release
> With Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby in Person!
>  
> Tuesday, March 19 ­ 7:00pm
> At the Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
>  
>  
> Copies of Mike Hoolboom¹s (Ed.) new book, "The Beauty is Relentless: The Short
> Movies of Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby," will be available for
> purchase.
>  
>  
>  
> The Nightingale and White Light Cinema are please to welcome Canadian artists
> and video makers Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby to present a
> mini-retrospective of their videos, including two Chicago premieres, and to
> continue the launch of a new publication on their work. Many of Duke and
> Battersby¹s videos include original songs, sung by Duke, and tonight¹s program
> will feature Duke singing a number of these songs live in accompaniment to the
> videos.
>  
>  
> ³The literary post-punk short movies of Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby
> have been tearing up the festival/gallery circuit for the past fifteen years
> with their blend of bedroom pop, perverse animations and hopes for fame.²
> (Mike Hoolboom)
>  
> "Often working with the disconnects between human and animal - and their urge
> to reconcile the sterile mechanics of our world versus the intuitive
> viscerality we keep buried within - their dark sense of humour has yielded a
> slate of bizarre taxidermies, installations, videos and sculpture, all tinged
> with a gutsy, mystical longing that's sweet, sinister, hilarious and
> disturbing all at once." (Murray Whyte, Toronto Star)
>  
>  
>  
>  
> Program Details:
>  
> Bad Ideas for Paradise (2001, 20 min)
> Steve Reinke on Bad Ideas for Paradise: "There is no such thing as
> self-esteem. Self-esteem as a construct is illogical and contradictory, so its
> frequent deployment as the lynch-pin of New Age discourse seems to me
> satisfyingly appropriate. I don't trust anyone who doesn¹t have frequent bouts
> of self-loathing. There is something truly monstrous about the self-righteous.
> Eating a well-balanced diet is a horrible act of aggression. Whenever I hear
> the word "culture" I think of bacteria mutating under an ultraviolet light and
> I'm happy again for a while. Within the petri dish: unfettered egoless desire,
> the proliferation of new possibilities ideas made flesh, uncaring and finally
> airborne. Empathy is a tool for making the cruelty more precise. Beauty is
> independent of taste; the sublime only works for suckers. Whenever I laugh I
> feel guilty." Bad Ideas for Paradise is a 20-minute episodic videotape. Funny,
> touching and ambitious in scope, Bad Ideas continues to deal with many of the
> themes addressed in Duke and Battersby's earlier works: addiction,
> spirituality, identity, relationship dynamics and the ongoing quest for joy.
>  
> Perfect Nature World (2002, 4 min) - with live singing
> Perfect Nature World is a short single-channel animation. The genesis for the
> work was Emily Duke's song of the same name, which describes the feelings of
> longing and inadequacy we experience when faced with the exquisite
> indifference of the natural world. The song was beautifully illustrated on a
> twenty foot scroll of butter-coloured paper by Shary Boyle and then animated
> by Cooper Battersby.
>  
> Songs of Praise for the Heart Beyond Cure (2006, 15 min)
> Songs of Praise for the Heart Beyond Cure marks Emily Vey Duke and Cooper
> Battersby¹s return to the episodic structure of their earlier works Rapt and
> Happy, Being Fucked Up and Bad Ideas for Paradise. As with earlier works,
> Songs of Praise takes on difficult, often painful subject matter.  Themes of
> addiction, violence, the destruction of the natural world and the agonies of
> adolescence are woven through the work, but as Sarah Milroy writes for the
> Globe and Mail, the work is "anything but depressing... [it is founded in] a
> sense of wonder at the endearing weirdness of life and all the vulnerable,
> furry little creatures immersed in it (especially us)."
>  
> Beauty Plus Pity (2008, 14 min)
> Beauty Plus Pity sets a colourful single-channel video within a lush viewing
> environment populated by costumed taxidermic animals. Presented in seven
> parts, the video considers the potential for goodness amidst the troubled
> relations between God, humanity, animals, parents and children. While an
> animated cast of animal ³spirit guides² quote Philip Larkin¹s poem, This Be
> the Verse, and implore us to ³get out as early as you can² from life and our
> parents¹ grasp, a hunter dreams of a zoo where he might lie next to
> tranquilized animals calmed of their savagery. A senile and unstable God
> stumbles, forgets to take his medication, and turns frost into diamonds.
> Beauty Plus Pity contemplates the shame and beauty of existence; it is part
> apologia, part call to arms.
>  
> The Beauty Is Relentless (2010, 4 min) - with live singing
> A diary of incidental images: a bedazzled cat in a deciduous wood; a dead or
> sleeping woman; a scarred arm; some whisky in a tumbler; a song that makes
> promises its singer cannot keep. Commissioned by Mercer Union's Flipworks
> project, all footage was shot on a Flip Camera.
>  
> Here is Everything (2013, 15 min) - with live singing
> Here Is Everything presents itself as a message from The Future, as narrated
> by a cat and a rabbit, spirit guides who explain that they¹ve decided to speak
> to us via a contemporary art video because they understand this to be our
> highest form of communication. Their cheeky introduction, however, belies the
> complex set of ideas that fill the remainder of the film. Death, God, and
> attaining and maintaining a state of Grace are among the thematic strokes
> winding their way through the piece, rapturously illustrated with animation,
> still and video imagery.
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
> About:
> Cooper Battersby (b. 1971, Penticton British Columbia, Canada) and Emily Vey
> Duke (b. 1972, Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada) have been working collaboratively
> since 1994. They work in printed matter, installation, curation and sound, but
> their primary practice is the production of single-channel video. Their work
> has been exhibited in galleries and at festivals in North and South America
> and throughout Europe, including the Walker Center (Minneapolis), The Banff
> Centre (Banff), The Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver), YYZ (Toronto), The New
> York Video Festival (NYC), The European Media Arts Festival (Osnabruck),
> Impakt (Utrecht) and The Images Festival (Toronto). Their tape Being Fucked Up
> (2000) has been awarded prizes from film festivals in Switzerland, Germany and
> the USA. Bad Ideas for Paradise (2002) was purchased for broadcast by the
> Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and for the libraries at Harvard and
> Princeton, and has won prizes from the NYExpo (NYC) and the Onion City
> festival (Chicago). I am a Conjuror (2004) has received prizes from the Ann
> Arbor Film Festival and the Onion City Festival.
>  
> Emily Vey Duke received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and
> Design, and completed her Masters at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
> She then worked for a year as Artistic Director at the Khyber Centre for the
> Arts in Halifax, NS.
>  
> Cooper Battersby received his diploma in computer programming at Okanagan
> College, and completed his Masters at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
> He was the recipient of a Canada Council Production Grant in 2001. Duke and
> Battersby are currently teaching at Syracuse University in Central New York.
>  
>  
> dukeandbattersby.com
> whitelightcinema.com
> nightingaletheatre.org
>  
>  
> $7-10 Suggested Donation
>  
>  
>  
> 
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