Join us as we welcome experimental animator Jodie Mack to the VSW Salon for the grand finale of the Spring 2022 season! Jodie will present a program of short 16mm films that shine a light on her evolution as an artist, illuminating the broad range of techniques she has developed in her practice. Along with Jodie’s films, this program will feature colorful selections from the VSW Film Archive that create a dazzling dialogue with Jodie’s work, sparking a stimulating discourse between the artist and the archive.

We are very excited to have Jodie in Rochester as a VSW Project Space Resident through the month of June! During her residency, she will be presenting her work at the George Eastman Museum as well. Don’t miss her ongoing exhibition Jodie Mack: Matter Matters (March 29-June 19), and her artist talk following the screening of her 2018 feature film, The Grand Bizarre on May 28th at 7:30 pm.

Jodie Mack is an experimental animator and an Associate Professor of Animation at Dartmouth College. Combining the formal techniques and structures of abstract/absolute animation with those of cinematic genres, her handmade films use collage to explore the relationship between graphic cinema and storytelling, the tension between form and meaning. Musical documentary or stroboscopic archive: her films study domestic and recycled materials to illuminate the elements shared between fine-art abstraction and mass-produced graphic design. The works unleash the kinetic energy of overlooked and wasted objects and question the role of decoration in daily life.

Program: (all films shown in 16mm)

Anemic Cinema (Marcel Duchamp/Rrose Selavy, 1926, 7m, 16mm, b/w, silent)
Mesmerizing surrealist masterpiece.

Unsubscribe #2: All Eyes on the Silver Screen (2010, 2m45s, 16mm, color, silent)
Everybody’s watching…

Lilly (2007, 6m10s, 16mm, color, sound)
Animated photo-negatives illustrate a WWII tragedy.

Point de Gaze (2012, 5m, 16mm, col., silent.)
Named after a type of Belgian lace, this fabric flicker film investigates intricate illusion and optical arrest.

Possibly in Michigan (Cecila Condit, 1983, 12m, video, color, sound)
Musical horror film, soundtrack by Karen Skladany

A Joy (2005, 3m, 16mm, color, sound)
A collaboration with Four Tet for Everything Ecstatic (Domino, 2005). Direct
animation with stained-glass contact paper, ink, and acetate.

Diagram Film (Paul Glabicki, 1978, 12m, 16mm, color, sound)
Scenes from everyday life juxtaposed with animation sequences reducing the scene to diagrams of abstract lines and curves.

Wasteland No. 2: Hardy, Hearty (Jodie Mack, 2019, 6m40s, 16mm, color, silent)
Garden ghosts flirt with the weeds of spring, cycling matter[s] and lives and deaths.

Angular Momentum (Bill Brand, 1973, 18m, 16mm, color, sound) Preservation print courtesy of the artist
Nearly continuous color changes rotate around a spectrum at varying speeds of rotation and degrees of intensity. Improvised electronic soundtrack by Richard Teitelbaum.

Let Your Light Shine (Jodie Mack, 2013, 3m, 16mm, b/w + color, sound)
A spectacle for prismatic spectacles. Handmade optical polyrhythms and a thousand rainbows explore the grating equation.

Download Program PDF