• SCREENING / The Forgotten Space
  Tuesday, December 6, 7 pm
  co-directed by Noel Burch and Allan Sekula
  W Atlanta-Downtown, 45 Ivan Allen Boulevard, Atlanta
• ARTIST’S TALK / Critical Realism in a Time of Lies
  Wednesday, December 7, 7 pm
  Georgia Tech, College of Architecture Auditorium
• Institute of Liberal Arts (ILA) Colloquium
  Thursday, December 8, 1-2 pm
  Emory University, ILA Seminar Room, S423 Callaway Center

Allan Sekula’s lecture Critical Realism in a Time of Lies is co-sponsored by Georgia Tech, College of Architecture and Visual Arts, American Studies, the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts and the Visual Scholarship Initiative at Emory University and the Hightower Fund. The screening of The Forgotten Space is sponsored by W Atlanta-Downtown.

In his artist’s talk, Allan Sekula will provide a close look at a few of the works he made between 1974 and 2010. He will discuss the ways in which they both explore the unstable position of photography within the art system and acknowledge, if not assert, the “worldliness” of the image.

Born in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1951 and based in Los Angeles, Allan Sekula is a photographer, writer-critic, and filmmaker.

Since the early 1970s, his works with photographic sequences, written texts, slide shows, and sound recordings have traveled a path close to cinema. At times, they refer to specific films. In other instances, such as his 1973 work Aerospace Folktales, they operate like a “disassembled movie” while resisting the “dictatorship of the projector.” Yet, with the exception of a few video works from the early 70s and early 80s, he has stayed away from the moving image. This changed in 2001, with Tsukiji, titled after the Tokyo fish market: this is in fact the first work that Sekula was willing to call a film. His subsequent films include Short Film for Laos, 2006, and Lottery of the Sea, 2006. His most recent film, The Forgotten Space, has been screened in over 30 festivals worldwide since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2010, where it won a special jury prize.

Sekula’s books include Photography against the Grain, 1984; Fish Story, 1995; Geography Lesson: Canadian Notes, 1996; Dismal Science, 1999; Performance under Working Conditions, 2003; TITANIC’s wake, 2003; and Polonia and Other Fables, 2009. These works range thematically from critical investigations of the history of photography to studies of family life in the grip of the military-industrial complex, branching out into explorations of myths of national identity.

In addition, his longstanding interest in questions of sovereignty led to a number of widely exhibited works on the global maritime economy, including The Forgotten Space. His extended photographic works on this subject were included in Documenta 11, 2002, and Documenta 12, 2007, in Kassel, Germany.

Allan Sekula has taught in the Cinema Studies Program at New York University, in the now-defunct Department of Photography and Cinema at Ohio State University, and since 1985, in the Program in Photography and Media at the California Institute of the Arts.

Anna Grimshaw
Editing as Scholarly Practice

• Screening of Dr. Anna Grimshaw’s Spring in Dickinson’s Reach (92 minutes)
  Monday, November 14, 2011
  5pm, Group Viewing Room, Music and Media Library (4th Floor, Woodruff Library)
• ILA Colloquium
  Tuesday, November 15, 2011
  12 noon – 1 pm, ILA Conference Room – S423 Callaway Center

The intellectual seriousness of ethnographic film has long been contested. The genre is often understood to be part of a popularizing endeavor that is illustrative not generative, descriptive not analytical. Drawing on her current project, Anna Grimshaw explores the kind of anthropology that she seeks to pursue through the medium of film. What sort of scholarly inquiry is constituted by the use of particular shooting and editing techniques?

Professor Anna Grimshaw (ILA) is an anthropologist and filmmaker. She is currently completing a cycle of four films that explores the life of William Coperthwaite, who has lived in the Maine woods for over fifty years.

The ILA Colloquium is an open forum for intellectual exchange among faculty and graduate students. Brief presentations will be followed by open discussion. Light refreshments with be provided. All are welcome!

ECHOLALIA: The Spectrum of Childhood and the Documentation of a Relationwship—Photographs by Father and Son

• Thursday, October 7, 6PM, Center for Ethics Commons, Room 102
  Emory University Center for Ethics in collaboration with Marcus Autism Center presents:
  A Conversation with the Artist
• Friday, October 28, 7PM, School of Medicine Room 110
  Emory University School of Medicine in collaboration with Atlanta Celebrates Photography presents:
  Timothy Archibald, ECHOLALIA, Exhibit opening, artist talk, and reception
  (Parking and shuttle service available from the Peavine Parking Deck).

Timothy Archibald, celebrated San Francisco based commercial photographer, struggled to
connect with his five-year old firstborn, Eli—the tension in their home was palpable—until
Timothy started looking at his son through his camera. Together, the two orchestrated a
portrait series that depicts dreamy, intimate images not only of Eli but of childhood itself,
riddled as it is with mystery and fantasy. In doing so, Archibald documents the burgeoning
of a newly charted relationship with his son. Through their creative collaboration,
empowerment came to both Timothy and Eli. Timothy found a way to dial-in to Eli’s
different channel, thereby breaching the previously challenging obstacle posed by his son’s
autistic proclivities. And Eli found a powerful mirror both of his robust, imaginative
childhood and his renewed bond with his dad.

Read the New York Times review of ECHOLALIA.

Thursday, February 17, 5PM
Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, Room 208

Download a flier for the event or see our workshops page for more information.

White Hall 208, Emory University

Featuring commentary by:

• Rebecca Dimling Cochran, ArtsCriticATL
• Andy Ditzler, Frequent Small Meals
• Jason Francisco, Emory Visual Arts Department
• Joey Orr, Emory Visual Scholarship Initiative
• Michael Rooks, High Museum of Art

Directions/Parking

Emory University presents a special screening of films concerning the recent censorship controversy surrounding the exhibition “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. The screening will include David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly,” plus supplemental footage of ACT UP in Atlanta from 1990, and Wojnarowicz’s “ITSOFOMO.” The screening will be followed by a panel discussion on art censorship, public policy and artistic freedom, and the latest chapter in the so-called culture wars concerning religion and sexuality.

Emory is pleased to present this screening and discussion in solidarity with other institutions throughout the world that are hosting events surrounding the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s film “A Fire in My Belly,” as chronicled on HIDESEEK.ORG.

“A Fire in My Belly” and “ITSOFOMO” are courtesy of P.P.O.W. Gallery.

Footage from ACT UP is courtesy of Jeff Graham.

Event Sponsors:

• Emory Visual Scholarship Initiative
• Frequent Small Meals
• Emory Visual Arts Department
• Emory Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts (ILA)

Featuring: Terri Kapsalis, Voice; Danny Thompson, Film; John Corbett, Sound.

Thursday October 7, 7 PM.
Performing Arts Studio
1804 N. Decatur Road, Atlanta

26 letters of the alphabet. 26 episodes from the history of hysteria. 26 short films with live soundtracks.

Hysterical Alphabet is a collaboration among ILA, Visual Arts, Theater, Music, Women’s Studies, Film Studies, Psychoanalytic Studies and the Emory College Center for Creativity and Arts and was also supported by a grant from the Hightower Fund.

Mediating Stories: A study of Documenting Development, Sarah Franzen, 20 minutes

Mediating Stories explores how video can be used in collaboration with a community development project. Working with Euneika Rogers-Sipp, the co-founder of SURREF, this video uses different forms of observing, framing, and editing in presenting information and knowledge about SURREF’s efforts. Mediating Stories looks at how communication happens, and how information can be re-presented through video.

Graduate students as mothers: two portraits, Laura Quaynor, 12 minutes

As the proportion of female graduate students in the United States increases, more women are simultaneously mothers and scholars. This film follows two doctoral students at Emory University through their daily routines and responsibilities as they balance these two roles. We will meet: Latrise, a single mother with an eight-year-old daughter, who also watches her newborn nephew during the day; and Khalilah, a performing artist and single mother, with two sons, one who attends college and one in high school.

Orgazimation, Sarah Melton, 26 minutes

Chuck and Molly have spent the last year producing the web-based claymation series Orgazimation. As they prepare to pitch the series to Cartoon Network, they struggle with balancing life, work, and their artistic passion. This film explores the highs and lows of the creative process through the lives of those involved.

Alec and Carlisle, Jay Hughes, 16 minutes

This film is one of a series of pieces about my hometown, Chester, South Carolina. Once a community built by and around cotton mills, Chester faces an uncertain future in the wake of mill closures and a 23% unemployment rate. This work follows two Chester natives and county councilmen, Carlisle Roddey and Alec Oliphant, as they reflect on Chester’s past, present, and future.

A Trip to the Spring by D. S. Mote, 15 minutes

Since 1830 families have gathered almost every year at Shingleroof Campground in Henry County, Georgia to keep camp meeting together. A Trip to the Spring depicts a visit to the big spring of Shingleroof on the first day of camp meeting in July 2009 by members of four generations of one family. This piece is one of a series of seven short films that comprise the visual chapter of my doctoral dissertation entitled, Ancestors in the Laying-By Time: Revival of the Living and the Dead at Shingleroof Camp Meeting.

In addition to benefiting those practitioners presenting their work, the workshop will create a forum at Emory for scholarly and artistic exchange between the worlds of contemporary art, the humanities, and the social sciences. The aim of the workshop is to assist students in moving visual scholarly projects closer to completion.

Schedule:

Session 1 Thursday, October 29, 3-6 pm

• Presenter: Mary Battle, ILA, 3rd year
  Respondent: Professor Michael Elliott, Department of English
• Presenter: Jay Hughes, ILA, 5th year
  Respondent: Professor Angelika Bammer, ILA

Session 2 Friday, October 30, 9 am-12 noon

• Presenter: Sarah Melton, ILA, 1st year
  Respondent: Professor Kevin Corrigan, ILA
• Presenter: Sarah Franzen, ILA, 2nd year
  Respondent: Professor Eddie von Mueller, Department of Film Studies
• Presenter: Donna Mote, GDR, 6th year
  Respondent: Professor Jason Francisco, Department of Visual Arts