ONE NIGHT ONLY SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8TH – 7:30 PM
Exposing apocalypse as current reality, DEAD PIXEL emerges as a spell for coping with inhospitable conditions. These experimental works use film and video as tools for charting underground networks where technology, surveillance, labor and desire intersect, engaging in dynamic conversations around queer ecologies, alchemy, transmutation, and haunting. Each of these works take place on the fringes of hostile society, forming worlds in the breakdown of what came before. They evolve, linger, amuse, distort, persist, and reconfigure themselves under the pressure of dystopia.
For one night only, Spectacle will present four short films along with a Q&A with filmmakers Alima Lee, Cherry Nin, and Clare Kinkaid.
VIRUS BECOMING
Dir. Shu Lea Cheang, 2022.
France. 6 min. 18 sec.
Derived from Cheang’s full-length feature film UKI (2023), Virus Becoming (2022) is a 3D sketch for the birth of UKI the virus. Taking the plot from UKI, Virus Becoming follows the trajectory of a defunct humanoid Reiko who was deemed redundant and dumped as a piece of e-trash at the Etrashville by Genom Corporation. Reiko unpacks their electro-body parts in an attempt to reboot themselves back to existence. Encountering the Etrashville’s inhabitants – the trans-mutants, the hackers, the coders, the migrants, the refugees and the native laborers, Reiko goes through a series of trans-formation, coding and coded, and finally emerges as UKI the virus.
REVOLVER MAGIC WAND
Dir. Cherry Nin, 2024.
United States. 24 min.
A prostitute named Haunted is troubled by the murder of her girlfriend—though not dead, she moves through the world like a ghost. Meanwhile, her client John, growing increasingly paranoid he is being spied upon, digs himself deep into a hole in his backyard.
THE SIREN’S LAMENT
Dir. Alima Lee, 2024.
United States. 18 min.
A siren emerges from the Atlantic, a product of Black Wrath, and proceeds to haunt the thirteen colonies.
2 *CURIOUS* GIRLS PLAY IN 1 **MUD**
Dir. Clare Kinkaid, 2022.
United States. 7 min. 45 sec.
Two girls are lured into a mud pit and play until exhaustion.
About the filmmakers:
Born in Taiwan in 1954, Shu Lea Cheang has lived and worked in the United States as well as Japan, Holland, the United Kingdom, and France. She has been a member of the alternative media collective Paper Tiger Television since 1982 and produced public-access programs for the group addressing racism in the media. Her career as a multimedia and new-media artist began in the 1980s. In her work, she engages in genre bending gender hacking practices. Brandon (1999) established her as a net art pioneer, as it was the first web art commissioned and collected by Guggenheim Museum, New York. Her filmography includes, How History Was Wounded (1990, short), Fresh Kill (1994), I.K.U. (2000), Love Me 2030 (2000, short), Fluidø (2017), Wonders Wander (2017), 3x3x6 10 cases 10 films (2019), UKI (2023).
Alima Lee is a transdisciplinary artist of afrodiasporic origin both from and currently based in New York City. Their work explores themes of identity and intersectionality. They are a recent Frieze LA x Ghetto Film School Fellow and Co-Host of the radio show “Rave Reparations” on NTS. Working in an uninhibited range of mediums from video installation and photography to printmaking and sculpture, Alima is on an ever-constant freefall from structure. Their video work is currently on view at HVW8 Gallery in Berlin and has been presented at the Tate Modern, MOCA, Smithsonian African American Museum, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, and ICA Boston, among other global entities.
Cherry Nin is a New York City-based artist primarily making films. Driven by an ongoing investigation of the potential of video to transmute violence, and a devout commitment to art making as spiritual endeavor, Nin’s projects situate the hyper-real, the underground, the unseen, and the in-between as sites of play, possibility, and refuge for gendered and sexualized people. Nin is a recipient of the Leeway Foundation’s Art & Change Grant (2020) and the Philadelphia Independent Media Fund (2021). Past residencies include KAJE, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and Outpost Artist Resources. Their work has recently been presented at Time & Space Limited, re:assemblage collective’s Diffusion Film Festival, The Kitchen’s online streaming room, Millennium Film Workshop, and Vox Populi. Nin is the founder of Krissy Talking Pictures, a video art collective creating opportunities for queer artists. Nin holds an MFA in Moving Image from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.
Clare Kinkaid is an intuitive filmmaker and amateur detective with a practice that spans video, photo, installation, and live storytelling. She is the founder of Mary’s Underground, a DIY art space in Iowa City, as well as Iowa City Video Zine at Public Space One. She is a member of Krissy Talking Pictures, a video art collective.
