With the attributes of “The Greatest Generation” continually being hawked as an idealized promise of what it means to be the perfected sacrificial American.There is nowhere to go but down in this brave new Post American Century.

2.15 – 2.27.2010
God Shaped Hole, 2007
single channel digital video – TRT 3:29 minutes
      
The spiritual and material worlds collide in video installation piece.Referencing the void that death leaves in this world and the human quest to understand the true nature of God.

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

John Criscitello b.1967 Binghamton New York – Currently residing in Ithaca New York.

www.vimeo.com/jcrisci

A woman struggles to find her place in the relationship to the infinite nature.

direction and editing: Kika Nicolela
performer: Luciana Canton
director of photograph: Ching C. Wang
music: Thierry Gauthier & Delphine Meas

A body defies its exterior; wanders through the path from the impotency to the vital force. It gradually fuses with the elements around it – a clay building, a valley, a river – striving to balance the inner and outer world.

direction: Kika Nicolela & Suzy Okamoto
performer: Leticia Sekito
director of photography: Ching C. Wang &Kika Nicolela
editing: Kika Nicolela
music: Ruria Duprat

AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS
Best Experimental Video at the CineAmazonia International Festival of Environmental Films
Honorary Award at the Sopot Independent Film Festival
Finalist of the Best Experimental Film Award of the Izmir Short Film Festival

I work primarily with video and photography.

I’m concerned with examining the connections between the camera, subject, author and viewer. I’m interested in issues such as the construction of identity, communication and voyeurism. I also investigate how the relationship between our body and the surrounding world (ie. nature or urban settings and culture) shapes our identity.

My greatest challenge is to find new forms of narrative by confronting established film language. I construct narratives, strategies and perceptions of reality, in search of fresh ways to connect with the viewer, defying his/her own perception of the world and proposing thought-provoking sensorial and emotional experiences.

Windmaker … 1.4 – 1.17.2010
Flux … 1.18 1.30.2010

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Born in 1976, Kika Nicolela is a Brazilian new media artist. Her works include single-channel videos, video installations, performances, experimental documentaries and photography.

Graduated in Cinema and Video by the University of Sao Paulo in 2000, Kika Nicolela also completed film courses at UCLA – University of California in 2002. Since then, she has developed her personal works, which have been screened and awarded in festivals of more than 30 countries, such as: Videoformes New Media & Video Art Festival (France), Kunst Film Biennale (Germany), ACA Media Arts Festival (Japan), VAD Festival Internacional de Vídeo i Arts Digitals (Spain), International Electronic Art Festival Videobrasil (Brazil), AluCine Toronto Latin@ Media Festival (Canada) and Exis Experimental Film & Video Festival (Korea).

In 2005, her first feature film, the documentary “Woman Cries Out!”, received the award of Best Film at both the festivals CineEsquemaNovo (Brazil) and Cineport (Portugal). UNESCO also nominated the same film for the Breaking The Chains Award.

She has participated of about 30 solo and collective exhibitions in Brazil, USA, Canada, France, Spain, Portugal, Poland and Sweden.

She won the following grants: Support to Production in Visual Arts from São Paulo Arts Council, Support to Production from Recife Art Week, Exhibition Program by São Paulo Cultural Center and Cultural Diffusion and Exchange Program of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture. She received nominations for the Sergio Motta Award of Art and Technology (2007) and the Nascente Art Award (2000). She was selected for the Sumu artist-in-residence 2009 program, in Finland.

Currently Kika Nicolela also coordinates the EXQUISITE CORPSE VIDEO PROJECT, a collaborative series of videos that envolves 36 artists from 15 countries.

Kika Nicolela – Sao Paulo Brazil

www.dilemastudio.com

Gun Play

Language of the Rope, 1998-2005

When I went to graduate school I started a series of videos called the Language of the Rope, which stemmed from my lessons in trick-roping that I received from a wild-west rodeo performer. The videos depicted wild-west acts such as trick roping, bullwhipping, knife throwing and trick-riding.

Rope Tricks … 11.16 – 12.2.2009
Gun Play … 12.3 – 12.18.2009

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Louise Noguchi challenges her audience with themes that pose psychological questions. Using photography, sculpture, video and other media, Noguchi’s concepts confront the spectator’s notions of identity, perception and reality. Her work includes exhibitions at the Power Plant, Toronto, Neuer Berliner Kuntsverein, Berlin and the Deutsches Museum, Munich, as well as exhibitions across Canada, the United States, Europe, and Japan.

Born in Toronto, Canada, she received her MFA from the University of Windsor, Canada and AOCA from the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. She is a professor in the Art and Art History program, a collaborative joint program between Sheridan Institute and the University of Toronto Mississauga where she teaches photography and performance-based art.

Louise Noguchi is represented by Birch Libralato Gallery in Toronto, Canada.

Louise Noguchi – Toronto Ontario Canada

www.louisenoguchi.com

Codex is a clearing house of video clips, audio sound bytes and textual pieces created but never finished since I moved to NYC in 2003. Through the use of a semi-random algorithm the narrative body flows through sorted sets and grouping of ideas and movie clips that deal with fictional and non-fictional mini-narratives. The mini-narratives range from subjects concerning geography, technology, capitalism, socialism, political history, spiritualism, the occult, multiplicity, and direct observations of urban life on both broad and micro levels.

It’s a movie that is never complete, never ending and never the same twice. It’s about me, you and everything around us past present and future. Call it artful dodging by computational power, call it laziness, call it a hopeless but beautiful mess because who has time to sort out interrelated ideas, who has time for anything longer that 30 seconds ? I don’t but the codex, or rather algorithm does and can neatly sort it all out for us.

Codex … 11.1 – 11.14.2009

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Chris Borkowski is a media maker from Buffalo, NY that is now living and working in New York City. He has worked professionally as video editor, network administrator, media arts center Technical Director, and University instructor in digital arts. He is a co-founder of the video art portal Perpetual Art Machine [PAM]. He has shown work internationally at various galleries and media festivals and has also performed a number of real-time audio and video pieces.

Chris Borkowski – New York New York

Christopher Borkowski

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Leah Rico’s art practice explores the function of language in relation to what defines individual and group identity. Most recently, she uses the phenomenological characteristics of audio to take the work into the lived space of the audience. Casting language as quintessence, Rico breaks down the sonic structure of speech, revealing its hidden histories and mapping its unspoken politics.

Leah Rico – Los Angeles California

www.leahrico.com

Les Langues, running time 3:10 mins.

This whole business of images started when the doctor recommended that I look, and look and look again until I understood something. On his kindly advice, I looked intently at images in order to understand them, amazing images of extraordinary bodies. Images in which one understands nothing. Images of succubi and those possessed by the devil, images of anger and irony, of impersonation and crucifixion, of wonder and possession, images of ecstasy and convulsion.

I looked at the images of bodies that produced the images. Bodies that were simply vulnerable surfaces, presented for photographic recording and dermographical inscription. Public bodies on which floating words had been fixed by hands become cynical through indifference. Words that were no longer read as words but rather as symptoms. A symbolic violence exerted by the intersection of reifying hands and gaze. A risk that is part of the desire to become an image.

Can you believe that I could be held by these images to the point of being almost maternal towards them? I protected them, loved them, took care of them, revived them, cleaned them up and made them speak. I even reintroduced them into the incessant circulation of images. I hear said that images are appropriated, that they are used as citations but never is it said that one takes care of images, that one would like to make up for the abuse and humiliation that they have been subjected to.

Les Langues … 9.1 – 9.15.2009

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Nicole Jolicoeur was born in the province of Quebec and now lives and works in Montreal. She studied at École des Beaux-arts in Quebec City and at Rutgers University in New Jersey (USA) where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree. From 1972 to 1990, she taught at École des arts visuels of Université Laval and from 1990 to 2007 at École des arts visuels et médiatiques of Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

In 1980, she began developing her installation practice using photography and text and now video, which puts into perspective various discourse and contexts concerning the representation of a female subject. She creates spatial settings with reference to fields as diverse as the beginnings of psychiatry, the exploration of the polar regions, anthropology, strolling in the city, Roman Catholic religious iconography and now the operatic duo. Her practice has been built up around the implications relative to how women are represented as well as her interest in the found image, the theatricality of photographic records (more precisely the body of images J. M. Charcot and his followers produced at La Salpêtrière, Paris, at the end of the 19th century), the narrative created by image/text relationships, the performative aspects of self-representation and the use of one’s own voice.

Since 1973, her work has been exhibited in solo, duo and group shows in Quebec, Canada, England, France and the United States, and has been the subject of numerous critical comments published in books, catalogues and periodicals concerned with art. In addition to her photographic installation practice, she has a strong interest in the production and publication of artist’s books, and artist’s projects and writings in art books and magazines. She has made many public presentations of her artwork at symposiums and as lectures.

She has received financial support for her work from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, UQAM and PRIM (Productions Réalisations Indépendantes Montréal).

Her works are in numerous public collections, among them, that of the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée-Château d’Annecy in France, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Université du Québec à Montréal and in private collections as well.

Nicole Jolicoeur – Montréal Québec

www.nicolejolicoeur.com

A film within a video that uses bad timing to draw out a classic joke, this work highlights how language lessons teach you more than proper pronunciation. The motif of the circle, the wheel, and the spiral conspire to confuse and befuddle. Made in collaboration with sound artist Will Redman.

Essential Chair
3.19 – 3.31.2009

16mm experimental film about the ideal and the embodiment of the Father figure.

10th Lesson … 3.9 – 3.18.2009
Essential Chair … 3.19 – 3.31.2009

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Joanna Raczynska earned her masters degree in documentary production from the University of London. She is a member of the video collective Termite TV and a founding member of the programming collective Stateless Cinema. Her short videos have shown internationally and across the US. Screening history includes: Festival of Women’s Film & Media Arts, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, September 2007 – The Takoma Park Film Festival, Takoma Park, MD, October 2007 Videopolis – The Metro Gallery, Baltimore, MD, May 2008

Joanna Raczynska – Baltimore Maryland

http://jraczynska.com

44 Meaningful Sounds derives its name from the number of meaningful sounds (or phonemes) in the English (American) language. Each sound was extracted from representative words in order to obtain as closely as possible the way it might vary slightly from the beginning or end of a word to its interior. These sounds have been assembled into a library and are played back in random order using an algorithm designed to mimic the consonant and vowel patterns of the English language.

I am curious about the effects of randomness and the ways it can be wielded as a tool to upset our expectations and create representations that defy predictable meaning. While most of my work plays with or against language, 44 Meaningful sounds is the first to directly engage with systems of linguistic representation.

44 Meaningful Sounds … 2.11 – 3.7.2009

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Patrick Craig Manning is an Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of New Mexico. Born in Seattle, WA, he received degrees in photography and archeology from the University of Washington and his MFA from the University of New Mexico before going on to teach as a professor at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis. His photographic, digital, and video work invokes loss to explore the intersection of representation, language, and history and has been exhibited at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Eiteljorg Museum of Indian and Western Art and galleries from coast to coast.

Patrick Craig Manning – Alburquerque New Mexico

http://pcm.pcmxa.com

Lee Wells
Metropolis (1800 Frames Plus), 2008
Digital Video (color/sound)
Duration: 54 minutes

An anonymous figure roams the maze-like streets of an ancient marble city. Although there are signs of contemporary life present, a bike, garbage bins, shops and some cats, no humans are present outside of occasional voices and the artists footsteps echoing down the claustrophobic walkways. More than a simple document of place and that of light and color. The work creates a subtle sense of suspense, mystery and discovery as the camera passes from areas of darkness that open up to theatrically lit ancient architecture and back again, eventually leading the viewer to a final destination.

This video was shot on location in the city center of Split Croatia, formerly Roman Emperor Diocletian’s 4th century palace.

Metropolis (1800 Frames Plus) … 1.26 – 2.7.2009

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

Lee Wells is an artist, independent curator and consultant currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. His artwork primarily questions systems of power and control and has been exhibited internationally for over 10 years, including the 51st La Biennale Di Venezia, NCCA Moscow, Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, the Museo d’arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto (MART), Chelsea Art Museum and the PS1 Contemporary Art Center. He is a co-founder and director of IFAC-arts, an alternative exhibition and installation program for artists and curators. He is also a co-founder of the video art portal, Perpetual Art Machine His projects and exhibitions have been written about by various national and international art and news publications to include: The New York Times, Art Newspaper, The Washington Post, Art inAmerica, WPS1 Art Radio. Wells is currently a curator at large for Scope Art Fairs and is a site editor emeritus for www.rhizome.org.

Lee Wells – Brooklyn New York

www.leewells.org

This video highlights the work of Western New York area media and sound artists interested in composition and new methods of collaboration. This is a witness to the development of original sound and image works that are collaborative and improvised, trustful and open to new ways of working between media and sound artists.

Twelve media artists were invited to produce an original, silent (or near silent) short film or video piece to be “read” as a graphic score by variations of performers from The Open Music Ensemble. Live recordings and performances of the scores in sound are paired with visual works, developed especially for this exhibition, now video. A live concert of selected works was originally performed on September 23, 2005.

Siew Wai Kok

Featured media artists include: Dorothea Braemer, Elliot Caplan, Stephanie Gray, Siew-wai Kok, Carl Lee, Brian Milbrand, Vince Mistretta, Jan Nagle, Alan Rhodes, Kelly Spivey, Carolyn Tennant and Stephen Vitiello.

Participating musicians include: Steve Baczkowski (horns), J.T Rinker (trombone), Josh DeScherer (bass), Ben Harris (violin), Leah Muir (cello), Otto Muller (accordian), Chris Reba (bass), Will Redman (percussion), Bill Sack (electric guitar), Andrew Walsh (contrabass) and Todd Whitman (horns and various alternative noise makers).

The Open Music Ensemble is a collective of over a dozen Buffalo-based musicians affiliated with The Open Music Foundation, a not-for-profit organization for composers and artists dedicated to the promotion of artistic expression based on unconventional, experimental, open-form, and — especially — graphical, forms of communicating musical ideas. For more information, visit http://www.openmusic.us

July 4, 2005 NYC
i: Elliot Capalan
s: Will Redman + N. Andrew Walsh

New York, 8pm, 8/25/05
i: Kelly Spivey
s: Todd Whitman

Intensity Priority
i: C. Tennant + David Jones
s: Otto Muller, Ben Harris + Chris Reba

Untitled
i: Brian Milbrand
s: Bill Sack, JT Rinker, Todd Whitman, N. Andrew Walsh, Chris Reba + Steve Baczkowski

Greta’s Ball
i: Dorothea Braemer
s: JT Rinker, Todd Whitman, Leah Muir + Steve Baczkowski

Leaving
i: Alan Rhodes
s: Ben Harris

Grass Roots, Moth Light
i: Stephen Vitiello
s: Will Redman + Bill Sack

Storm at Lacock Abbey
i: Jan Nagle
s: Steve Baczkowski + Josh DeScherer

Fire Escape
i: Carl Lee
s: JT Rinker + Otto Muller

Faces
i: Siew-wai Kok
s: Otto Muller, N. Andrew Walsh, Leah Muir, Chris Reba + Steve Baczkowski

Zig Zag
i: Vince Mistretta
s: Bill Sack

Governor’s Island
i: Stephanie Gray
s: Leah Muir

Eyes and Ears: Sound Needs Image … 1.5 – 1.21.2009

Atrium Gallery – Western Michigan University

A second version of this project was commissioned by Hallwalls in Buffalo NY in the spring of 2008.

Joanna Raczynska and Will Redman, curators