Stills from Pierre Huyghe’s 19-minute video, Untitled (Human Mask) have haunted me since its 2014 debut. The image of the ghostly porcelain face touched ever so gently by the impish hairy hand has appeared and reappeared before me in magazines…
Film is perhaps not the first medium that comes to mind when thinking about mimesis in visual art. Mimesis is something that painting and sculpture, for example, do well. Yet an entire gallery at the List Visual Art Center at…
“Horror films don’t create fear. They release it.” -Wes Craven Wes Craven, who died on August 30th at 76, was a gentle, avuncular, and piercingly intelligent individual who created films horrific in their violence, sadism, and brutality. Raised in a…
A graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Lili White is a fixture in the history of avant-garde filmmaking, and throughout her career she has maintained a dedication to work by women artists. As the founder of the Another…
As the commercial film industry completes its migration to digital technology, analog film, and the processes and projection technologies associated with it, face obsolescence. A number of artists continue working with celluloid film however, drawn to its unique material and…
This winter, Courtney Klemens, Campus Community Outreach Coordinator for the List Visual Art Center at MIT, asked if I would give a gallery talk on the work of Pauline Curnier Jardin, through an explicitly feminist lens, representing both my role…
Price with #9 A Study in Decay at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Photo: John Kennard. Some of my fondest memories during my college years can be traced back to my art and architectural history courses, sitting in a…
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sam Green and indie rock legends Yo La Tengo brought their “live documentary” on the life and work of Buckminster Fuller to Boston for two performances at the ICA on Saturday, October 20. Similar to Green’s earlier Utopia…
Everything will be ok, just close your eyes little thing go to sleep little fuck feel my hand on your warm forehead It’s cold isn’t it? Ice cold. Dream of something real sweet for mommy Mommy likes sweet things Dream of merry-go-rounds…
The phenomenon of the cinematic “midnight movie” emerged, not surprisingly, out of local television. Facilitated by a new agreement under a Screen Actors Guild residuals payment plan, stations in the 1950s United States began the practice of lacing late-night programming…
Belgian artist David Claerbout’s first museum survey exhibitition in the US will open this Friday at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center. In an article I wrote about his work in 2004, I summarized: “In his work, David Claerbout moves between…