DUMBO FIRST THURSDAY SCREENING
On Thursday, December 4 at 6pm, BAC Gallery presents a screening of shorts in conjunction with the exhibition Creative Cartographies, curated by Jeanne Gerrity, now on-view in BAC Gallery.

PROGRAM

Rob Carter This England - (2007) 9:13 min

The basis for this video animation is a book called From the Pilot's Seat. It contains a nostalgic series of aerial photographs of England taken just after the end of World War II, along with poetic quotes chosen by the author (Cyril Murrell). The images give us the odd glimpse of the destruction and bankruptcy of the country at this time, but mainly focus on the romance of its historic and natural riches. This video attempts to literally bring a forgotten book back to life, taking the viewer on a continuous flight over the land and supplying a sense of the author's feeling towards these places. With the use of stop-motion and digital animation some of the locations have been manipulated to include the artist's comprehension and memory of his 'homeland'. These moments range from the trivial to the sinister and suggest a sense of frailty in these picturesque scenes. It is an attempt for the artist to rationalize and depict his understanding of the place he comes from, as well as the enculturation of his parents.

Grady Gerbracht & Claudia Vieira
underLINE: KYOTO (2004-7) 8:58 min loop (5:00 min excerpt)

Exploring experimental approaches to mapping a set of personal landmarks that is not their own, Claudia Vieira and Grady Gerbracht allowed themselves to be directed to places throughout Kyoto on daily journeys. Perpetual forward movement animates the white line that overlaps their urban experiences with those of the residents. It is a liminal map that traces the topography of the city, passing through a variety of geographical locations, times of day, and ambient conditions, always en route from one place to another creating a metaphor for the intersections of the collective experience.

Adam Shecter
Fable in 3 Colors (2006-07) 12:56 min

Borges states in his Book of Imaginary Beings that Hercules failed to kill the Hydra's last head, and so entombed it underground, where it lay dreaming and hating for all eternity. I began to wonder what the dream of a mythological creature would consist of, what sights, sounds, beauties and terrors would visit its sleep: Fable in Three Colors proceeds from this reflection, assuming the form of the changes, conflicts, encounters, raptures, silences, and travels, both geographic and psychic, of a consciousness slipping between the realms of personal dream and collective myth.

Emcee CM, Master of None
MOBILIZE (2006) 3:51 min

Creativity, which everyone has, requires energy to be expressed. Take me for example: my actual energy does not match my potential energy. Much of my energy is wasted, misdirected or latent - my own potential has not been met. I have many ambitions, but their actualization is often beyond my reach. I am not performing with optimal efficiency. So I wanted to tap the latent creative energy in myself, to mobilize it to mobilize me. The tricycle is a symbol of this process. It is powered by human energy. It carries tools, resources, entertainment and ideas. And it mobilizes me (literally) to creatively work for the good in our world.

Maria Dumlao
Eleventh Floor (2002) 9:00 min

Eleventh Floor is a series of travelogues of sorts; a navigation of the non-stop function of light fixtures and ventilators in hallways and corridors of an institutional building.

David Brody and Douglas Henderson
Disobey this Command! (2004) 8:00 min

David Brody, artist, and Douglas Henderson, composer, have collaborated on "Disobey This Command!" an 8 minute digital animation and soundscape loop in which a simple structure grows by increasingly complex iterations into a colossus. The imagery originated as a kind of hand-drawn algorithm with fractal properties. The computer, when it came into play, was used not algorithmically, but as a 3-D pencil to laboriously perfect the illusion of "programming." Douglas Henderson's score, composed to the finished animation, expresses its own eerie ambivalence about what is truly analogue or digital; about the often machiavellian way in which we construct our worlds and ourselves; and about the thread of logic between the very large and the very small.

Laura Napier
INTERSECTION (2006) 5:26 min with software by Zach Poff

This video shows everything that moves through an intersection; everything else has been masked out. The footage reveals patterns formed by groups of pedestrians and cars as they travel through the space. INTERSECTION was shot overlooking an intersection of four streets at Astor Place in Manhattan, and was made using frame differencing filtering software.

ARTIST BIOS

David Brody is a visual artist who makes paintings, wall drawings, and computer animations. His work has been shown at Pierogi in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Drawing Center (NYC), where an early version of this animation was shown in 2004. He attended Harvard and CalArts, where he studied animation with Jules Engel and William Moritz.

Douglas Henderson is a composer whose current work is focused on multi-channel electroacoustic compositions, sound-producing sculptural installations, and scores for modern dance. He studied with Milton Babbitt, Paul Lansky, and J.K. Randall at Princeton University and at Bard College. He has been composing and performing in the New York area for more than 20 years with a variety of musicians, including Elliott Sharp and John Zorn, and his awards include two Rockefeller Foundation grants, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) Berliner Kuenstlerprogramm residency in Berlin where he currently in lives. Brody and Henderson, who met in New York, have long recognized certain affinities in their work, including an interest in "visual music."

Rob Carter is a visual artist who creates re-constructed imagery of architecture and landscape, using photography and video animation. He received his BFA from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (Oxford, 1998). In August 2000 he relocated to New York to attend Hunter College, receiving his MFA in 2003. Since then he has exhibited his work in numerous locations in Europe and the USA. Most recently, in May 2008 he opened a solo show in Madrid at Galeria Fruela and a second solo exhibition in October at the Pastificio Cerere, Rome, Italy. In the same year he attended the Art Omi Residency, and was awarded a Marie Walsh Sharpe studio space for 2008-09. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Grady Gerbracht was born in 1974, New York, USA and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Inspired by personal observations and life experiences, Gerbracht's work focuses on the ordering systems of everyday life. His projects employ art, architecture, sound and social dynamics to render these systems temporarily visible. Gerbracht's projects have been published and exhibited in the US, Canada, Brazil, Asia, and Europe. He is a professor at the Art Department of Stony Brook University and has organized exhibitions such as Back and Forth, Global Priority, and Civic Performance that have traveled internationally. Gerbracht and his collaborators were awarded a Danish Arts Council Grant for 2006 - 2007.

Born in Manila, Philippines, Maria Dumlao currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her art has been exhibited and screened at Art in General, Momenta Art Gallery, and Schroeder Romero Gallery in NYC, The Contemporary Museum in Hawaii and internationally in Utrecht, Barcelona, Vancouver, London, Madrid, Berlin, and Tokyo. Dumlao has been awarded two residencies at Experimental Television Center in Owego, NY, and AIRtime residency at free103point9's Wave Farm in Acra, NY and was most recently selected as a finalist for Public Art Fund's In The Public Realm. She received an MFA from Hunter College in 2003 and currently teaches at SUNY College at Old Westbury. Dumlao also works collaboratively with artists Elaine Kaufmann, Danielle Mysliwiec, and Anne Polashenski as Brainstormers, with whom she has performed at Brooklyn Museum of Art, outside of both PS1 and the Armory Show and collaborated with the Guerrilla Girls for a project featured at the Bronx Museum of Art. They have co-written and co-published articles and photo essays in Women's Studies Quarterly and Women & Environments International Magazine, as well as artists books funded by a grant from The Puffin Foundation. Brainstormers' video received an Official Selection award for the 41st BAC International Film and Video Festival.

Emcee C.M., Master of None was born in Coventry, Connecticut, in 1979. Grew up in a family of six boys. Played outside a lot. Ran a paper route. Played in bands with friends. Wrote stories. Studied Linguistics, Russian and Art at Brandeis University. Worked at a small Siberian village trade college for a year. Got an MFA at the University of Connecticut. Worked on a goat farm making cheese for a while. Moved to New York and started doing odd jobs. Through all this developed a cooperative life practice focused on active, public works utilizing books, music, vehicles, film, events, play and conversation. Received institutional support from LMCC, Chashama, CUE Art Foundation, Smack Mellon, Skowhegan, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Independent Performance Group, and Artspace (New Haven).

Laura Napier moved to New York in the mid-nineties to attend Cooper Union, and more recently earned an MFA from Bard College. Her current work, project for a street corner, is an ongoing series of actions in public space, designed to highlight and disrupt pedestrian behavior. She finished a Swing Space residency project with LMCC in September 2008, and has shown at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx River Art Center, chashama window space, and in the classroom at PS122 Gallery.

Born in Dallas, Texas, Adam Shecter is an artist living in Long Island City, New York. Working primarily in 2D animation, he works within the idiom of cinema, fiction, cartoons, and popular culture. His current work, New Atlantis, will be exhibited at Eleven Rivington in New York this July. He has maintained his online test site, theworldofadam.com, since 2001.

Claudia Vieira was born in 1964 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Lives and works in Brooklyn and in Porto Alegre. BFA and BA in Communication Studies from the Federal University in Brazil, and an MFA from Pratt Institute, New York. She has exhibited internationally at the International Performance Festival, Sao Paulo, Kyoto Arts Center, Japan, Kunsthalle/Malmo in Sweden, Huntlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin and the Museum of Modern Art, in Bahia, Brazil. She is a recipient of the FUNARTE,Projeteis Contemporary Art Prize from the Brazilian Ministry of Culture. and the NYFA Urban Arts Initiative fellowship in 2008. In 2007, has started an international art residency recognized by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, which received the Conecies Artes Visuais Prize.