Past Perfect Future Tense

Past Perfect • Future Tense
Friday, June 26th, 2015
GAZE • ATA
San Francisco, CA
A show dedicated to our relationship with time—looking into the past, the present, and the future—contemplating our tumultuous connection to the clock and calendar. Seasons, cycles, phases, orbits and generations. How do we understand the longing for things that are gone or¬ our desire to rewrite the past? What can we make of our anxiety of the unknown or the anticipation of things yet to be? Join us for an early celebration of the summer solstice, when the days are longest and the nights are shortest.

Featuring:

Roundtrip, by Caroline Blais, 3:11// Montréal, Canada

Leaving to travel, uprooting yourself, discovering new geographies, getting lost, finding yourself.

The Alien Project, by Catron Booker, 5:28//Oaxaca, Mexico

Alien imaginings? Alien times? Alien futures? Alien lives matter. An Afro-Futurist vision of resistance.

Over Fractured Water, by Olivia Ciummo, 5:00//Brooklyn,  NY

Over Fractured Water is a retelling of an industrial narrative. Legend swells in a hard to identify location as the land extraction leaves a workforce numb and petrified.

The Conversation, by Kim Collmer, 3:30//Cologne, Germany

Mundane, inane and without any real direction, two offline characters converse about trying to locate a smart phone. The Conversation draws attention to the ephemeral nature of contemporary conversations and the growing space that occupies our relationship with technology and media devices.

Pulling Up Roots, by Cecelia Condit, 7:35//Ballyvaughan, Ireland

Pulling Up Roots is the emotional journey of a woman who is navigating the tenuous strain between the past and the future. Filmed in an abandoned housing project in Western Ireland, she uproots exotic plants and flowers, as one might collect stories and memories one can’t understand. Condit’s operatic songs and childlike rhymes give a sense of naiveté and strength that comes from her solitude. From a playful skip around the yard, to a moment where profound sadness gives way to unexpected laughter, she explores an entire lifetime of emotions in mere minutes.

Ceallaigh at Kilmainham, by Kelly Gallagher, 7:14//Iowa City, IA

Ceallaigh at Kilmainham is a 16mm collaged and handcrafted personal essay short film that serves as an exploration of land and roots, and the struggle and strength of the perservering “brave, warrior” women acestors who came before the filmmaker. This essayistic exploration is set against the backdrop of Ireland’s radical history.

 dear, by Carolina González Valencia, 4:53//Chicago, IL

dear, is a hand process film that wants to be a letter and that hopes not to be received.

Velocity, by Karolina Glusiec, 5:53//London, UK

I always thought I had a perfect memory. I wanted to show these drawings to you. A collection of memories, drawings and loss.

Computers (in our Lives), by Traci Hercher, 1:58//Chicago, IL

A glitch-musical reinterpretation of an educational film. If 1980 : Computers in our Lives :: 2014 : Computers (in our Lives).

Swallowed Whole, by Heidi Kumao, 4:06//USA/Norway

Swallowed Whole is a somber, animated, experimental film about surviving extreme isolation and physical limitations as a result of traumatic injury.

Reciprocity Failure, by Mirka Morales, 8:03//San Francisco, CA

In analog photography, reciprocity failure is the failure of dim light to create a chemical reaction on the film’s emulsion. As in film, our interactions, with each other or with nature, are often not one to one. Sometimes we give more, sometimes we take more. I also wanted to embrace a word we are superstitious about – failure.

Sea of Vapors, by Sylvia Schedelbauer, 15:00//Berlin, Germany

A cascade of images cut frame-by-frame flow into an allegory of the lunar cycle.

Anywhere But Here, by Shubhangi Singh, 14:20//Navi Mumbai, India

Anywhere But Here explores the meaning of home while attempting to break away from the romantic nostalgia that nests within its traditional definition. In this process, the piece attempts to derive at newer and perhaps more complex understanding of an abode in relation with one’s own forever-in-transition identity. The work also questions accumulation, chronic cycles of desire and the consequences of abundance.

Trapped Between Frames, by Nazare Soares, 10:00//Brighton, UK

Trapped between Frames is inspired by pre-cinematic stereoscopic images. The character is based on the Japanese mythology of the sun goddess Amaterasu. Her presence functions as an allegory of the embodiment of memory. In 2002 her tomb was thought found and only very recently the remains of her palace have been discovered near Nara. The film functions as an oracle of how a mythological figure can be inspired by real lives.

Second Sighted, by Deborah Stratman, 5:05//Chicago, IL

Obscure signs portend a looming, indecipherable slump. An oracular decoding of the landscape. Made in collaboration with composer Olivia Block, and by invitation of the Chicago Film Archives, utilizing solely films from their collection.

The Sea [is still] Around Us, by Hope Tucker, 4:00//Amherst, MA

“Rachel Carson is dead, but the sea is still around us…this small lake is a sad reminder of what is taking place all over the land, from carelessness, shortsightedness, and arrogance. It is our pool of shame in this, ’our particular instant of time.” -E.B. White, 1964