Park City, UT — Sundance Institute announced today the selection of 13 artists from six countries whose works will be presented as part of the 2010 edition of New Frontier at Sundance Film Festival. A collection of digital art, film screenings, multimedia performances, site-specific installations and video presentations will be presented in a fully immersive media lounge environment for Festival goers to experience throughout the Festival. Curated by Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer, these works can be experienced at New Frontier on Main, open to the public Thursday, January 21 through Saturday, January 30, 2010. New Frontier is presented by HP and Sony Electronics, Inc.
Through its New Frontier initiative, Sundance Institute has brought to Festival audiences the cinematic works of internationally renowned artists including Isaac Julien, Doug Aitken, Candice Breitz, Pierre Huyghe, Omer Fast, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Matthew Barney, offering compelling, innovative work that explores the fusion of film, art, technology and dialogue. In addition to innovative projects from Bulgaria, Germany, Iceland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and United States, the 2010 edition of New Frontier will also feature a digital workshop for feature filmmakers, live panels, discussions with artists, and live performances in a comfortable and creative environment featuring a DJ installation lounge and café.
“Creativity, innovation and experimentation are hallmarks of the Institute’s mission – in many ways best embodied in the work shown in the Festival’s New Frontier section, ” said Robert Redford. “I find it fascinating and illuminating to see the blend of art and technology presented by these filmmakers and performers.”
The 2010 New Frontier program will feature artists Nao Bustamante (USA), Gina Czarnecki (United Kingdom), Petko Dourmana (Bulgaria), Jens Franke and Thomas Gläser (Germany), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (USA), Eric Gradman (USA), Michael Joaquin Grey (USA), Ragnar Kjartansson (Iceland), Kalup Linzy (USA), Matthew Moore (USA), Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland) and Tracey Snelling (USA).
“At a time when the film industry is undergoing a sea change, these exceptional artists navigate new directions of cinematic artistic expression and open portals to pioneering modes of independent production and exhibition,” said Frilot. “The works this year are tactile, sculptural, physical and tangible, and engender the notion of the cinematic image breaking out of the screen and reintegrating with the world of living form.”
A sneak peak of the innovative works featured at New Frontier is available on the Sundance Film Festival website: click here.
Gina Czarnecki
NASCENT, CELL MASS N2, INFECTED
Multimedia artist, Gina Czarnecki, explores the convergence of biology, sensuality, dance, and the cinematic in her mesmerizing single channel installations. Developed in collaboration with biotechnologists, computer programmers, dancers, and sound artists, Czarnecki crafts gorgeous, digital meditations on the human form in motion, gazing across scale, blurring the boundaries between the mass and the cellular, and investigating what is possible when nature ends and the technologically manipulated begins. Czarnecki’s works have been exhibited throughout the world. Czarnecki currently lives and works in Liverpool, UK. For additional information on this artist go here: www.ginaczarnecki.com/
Petko Dourmana
POST GLOBAL WARMING SURVIVAL KIT
Petko Dourmana’s fascinating interactive multimedia installation invites audiences to explore a post apocalyptic landscape and visit the workplace of a person whose job it is to observe the border between land and the rising sea. Upon entering the room, viewers at first think there is nothing in it but an old caravan. However, once they alter their ability to see through the darkness with night vision devices, viewers can experience and explore the hauntingly futuristic landscape surrounding them. For additional information on this piece go here: www.dourmana.com/node/5
Petko Dourmana is a media artist based in Sofia, Bulgaria. As a founder and chairman of InterSpace Association since 1998 Dourmana has been involved in production and co-production of art events and projects with Bulgarian and international artists and activists. Additional Information on the artist can be found here: www.dourmana.com/
Thomas Gläser and Jens Franke
THE EARTHWALK
Attention Google Earth Junkies! Digital media designers Thomas Gläser and Jens Franke invite you to surf the globe with your feet! Their installation, THE EARTHWALK, offers an intuitive way of controlling Google Earth by letting the user navigate the earth’s surface by stepping onto a map projected on the floor. Fly around the world in one minute or descend upon they city of your choice and become immersed in your favorite tangle of streets. THE EARTHWALK lets you soar and explore the planet, one step at a time. To see a video of the piece go here: http://www.the-earthwalk.com/
Jens Franke is a German based user interface designer currently working at Intuity Media Lab GmbH. Thomas Gläser specializes in research and conception in the field of interface and interaction design. He is currently a managing partner of Envis Precisely.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
hitRECord.org
Part media workshop, part social network, and part art exhibition, hitRECord.org is a hybrid production enterprise that taps crowd sourced creativity and topples traditional ideas of artistic ownership, online communication, and art production. Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s (500 Days of Summer, Mysterious Skin, Brick) invites audiences to collectively collaborate with him in the filmmaking process, and create, record, and remix each other’s art (video, music, photos, writing, etc.) with the goal of creating cohesive short multimedia work that will have a special screening at the end of the Festival. To learn more about hitRECord go to: hitrecord.org/
Eric Gradman
CLOUD MIRROR
Artist and computer scientist, Eric Gradman brings online social networking back into the human realm with, Cloud Mirror, an interactive augmented reality art installation that merges audiences with their online identities. Step in front of the magic mirror and you will see yourself in the flesh. You will also see your “second skin” – a thought bubble with information from your Facebook, Twitter, and other social network identities. Anyone who has properly registered can participate in this playful and insightful work which aims to bring online intimacy back into human interaction. To see a video of the piece go here: www.exothermia.net/monkeys_and_robots/
Michael Joaquin Grey
VARIOUS TITLES
Michael Joaquin Grey’s work exists at the boundaries between art, science, and media. His projects contemplate the origins of life, language, and physical form. The films connect relationships of development and growth using body signals, sound and appropriated media. Beautiful, elegant, and fascinating to watch, Grey’s computational films and film objects are unrecorded emergent and dynamic cinematic systems.
In “Perpetual ZOOZ” the classic film, The Wizard of Oz, becomes a three-dimensional form – throbbing and spinning around its own axis and generated from the artist and his mother’s heartbeat; an orbiting earth and moon pulsate in “So What Moon Calendar” to the sounds of Miles Davis’ So What; the impossible life/death cycle of cartoon characters organically morph in “Sam Slime Stress Cycle” as they move along time and space with the real life cycle of a slime mold; and a cellular cinematic knot of micro and macro images articulates the continuum between teen sex, pregnancy and childbirth in “Rereentry”. In “Reentry” childbirth again unites the Eames’ Powers of Ten with John Glenn’s reentry in the Right Stuff, which are dematerialized thorough their own sound to form a new creation. In “Between Two Milkbars”, JFK’s space race speech and Neil Armstrong’s first words from the Moon reanimate the ultraviolent acts between the journey and return to the Karova Milk Bar in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
For the past twenty years, Michael Joaquin Grey has been creating work that emulates dynamic and living systems. Additional information on this artist can be found here:www.citroid.com. Images of Grey’s work can be found here: http://www.bitforms.com/michael-joaquin-grey-gallery.html.
Ragnar Kjartansson
THE END
A soulful siren song lures the viewer to attend a magical surround sound concert performed from five different locations in the Canadian Rockies. Icelandic musician and performance artist, Ragnar Kjartansson’s mesmerizing 5-channel installation is a portal to another time and place, transporting the viewer to a sweeping expanse of alpine landscape where just two musicians, Ragnar & Davio Por Jonsson fill the crisp snowy air with an entire ensemble band of electric and acoustic guitars, banjos, drums, and a grand piano.
Ragnar Kjartansson graduated from the Icelandic Academy of arts in 2001. His work spans durational performance, theatre, painting, video, and music. Kjartansson has been in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the world. For additional information on the artist go here: www.luhringaugustine.com
Matthew Moore
LIFECYCLES
As a fourth-generation Arizona farmer whose land is currently being encroached upon by suburban sprawl, Matthew Moore designs his installations to reconnect consumers to their local geographies and the life cycles of the Earth and its produce. Lifecycles is a multimedia installation that reconfigures the produce section of a Park City grocery store and transforms the experience of shopping for vegetables into a beautiful meditation that brings us closer to the lifecycles of the produce we buy and consume.
Moore grew up working on his family’s farm in Waddell, Arizona. Moore’s artwork grew out of his background in farming. Moore says, “As a farmer and an artist, I display the realities of the trials and tribulations of American agriculture, its roles in contemporary globalization, and its questionable ecological practices create a foundation for my explorations.” To see more of Moore’s artwork go to: www.urbanplough.com
Pipilotti Rist
LOBE OF LUNG: THE SALIVA OOZE AWAY TO THE UNDERGROUND
The deviously delicious imagination of internationally renowned multimedia artist Pipilotti Rist invites audiences to lie back and lounge inside her film. Lobe of the Lung is a fully immersive installation rendition of her debut feature film Pepperminta, which is being screened in New Frontier’s film program. Starring two humans, a pig, and an earthworm, Lobe of the Lung merges fantasy with reality as it opens up the walls of New Frontier onto a luscious panoramic poem that bathes audiences in audiovisual delight.
Pipilotti Rist was born in 1962 in Grabs, Switzerland. Rist’s works have been exhibited widely at museums and festivals throughout the world. Rist currently lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. Additional Information on the artist, and links to her gallery and feature film can be found here: www.pipilottirist.net/
Tracey Snelling
BORDERTOWN
Snelling’s exquisitely crafted miniature sculptures of buildings and landscapes conjure a visceral sense of time and place and emanate a life that comes from within. Incorporating architecture, photography, collage, film, and audio, Snelling presents a carnivalesque tableau of the Mexican/American border that tells the story of a sweeping locale and of the individual inhabitants residing inside the buildings, streets, and alleyways. The cinematic image stands in for real life and it unspools behind windowpanes, conjuring a sublime sense of both wonder and nostalgia. Snelling currently lives and works in Oakland, CA. Additional Information on the artist can be found here: traceysnelling.com/portfolio.html
PEFORMANCES:
Nao Bustamante
SILVER AND GOLD
Filmmaker and performance artist Nao Bustamante returns to Sundance with a deliciously outrageous and ambitious new work; her short film Untitled #1 (from the series Earth People 2507), starring her toy poodle as a herd of buffalo, appeared at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Silver & Gold combines film, live performance, and original costumes into a self-proclaimed “filmformance” that evokes the muse of legendary filmmaker Jack Smith and his tribute to 1940s’ Dominican movie starlet Maria Montez in a magical and joyfully twisted exploration of race, glamour, sexuality, and the silver screen.
Showtimes:
Sunday, January 24, 6:30pm
Tuesday, January 26, 6:30pm
Thursday, January 28, 6:30pm
Nao Bustamante’s work encompasses performance art, sculpture, installation, and video. Her work has been shown throughout the world. Bustamante lives and works in New York. She is Assistant Professor of New Media and Live Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. For additional information on the artist go to: www.naobustamante.com
Kalup Linzy
SWEET, SAMPLED, AND LEFT OVA
Kalup Linzy’s work is a splendid mix of southern culture, daytime soap opera, and the raunchy, shady humor of black gay culture, all turbocharged with fierce DIY Network determination. Linzy writes, directs, and stars in his hilariously melodramatic tales of love and flama. Following the video presentation, one of the characters, Taiwan, comes to life to star in a multimedia musical performance. Featuring the videos, Ride to da Club, Conversations wit de Churen VII: Lil Myron’s Trade, and episodes from the series Melody Set Me Free.
Showtimes:
Saturday, January 23, 6:30pm
Monday, January 25, 6:30pm
Wednesday, January 27, 6:30pm
Kalup Linzy is a video and performance artist currently living and working in Brooklyn, NY who has performed the world over. To see Linzy’s Youtube station, Da Churen and Company, visit: www.youtube.com/user/kklinzy
About the Sundance Film Festival
Presenting dramatic and documentary feature-length films from emerging and established artists, innovative short films, filmmaker forums and panels, live music performances ranging from solo acts to film composer events, cutting-edge media installations, and engaging community and student programs, the Sundance Film Festival brings together the most original storytellers of our time.
Supported by the non-profit Sundance Institute, the Festival has introduced global audiences to some of the most ground-breaking films of the past two decades, including sex, lies, and videotape, Maria Full of
Grace, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, An Inconvenient Truth, Trouble the Water, and Central Station. The Presenting Sponsors for the 2010 Festival are Entertainment Weekly, HP, Honda and Sundance Channel. www.sundance.org/festival
bit
