EXPS/SLC Screening #3: Beauty is a Verb
Resisting what a traditional hetereonormative, non-disabled society considers to be “normal”, this program of experimental films uses a DIY filmmaking ethos to resist mainstream ideology and honor personal movement stories which fiercely reimagine an inclusive future. The title of the program comes from the book of disability poetry of the same name, edited by Sheila Black, Jennifer Bartlett & Michael Northen.
Thursday December 1 at 8PM. Union Theatre, 200 Central Campus Drive, Salt Lake City. All programs are free and open to the public. For more information about EXPERIMENTAL SERIES – SALT LAKE CITY and upcoming screenings visit IG @exps.slc
All films in the program are subtitled.
**ARTIST PETRA KUPPERS IN ATTENDANCE FOR Q&A AFTER SCREENING**
Beauty is a Verb artist Petra Kuppers will share her research and offer conversation on her recent book, Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters at the University of Utah the day after her Beauty is a Verb screening.
FREE! Open to all students and faculty interested in disability and the arts. Masks are encouraged for in-person attendance. The conversation will be live streamed with ASL intrepretation. For access requests and other questions please reach out kym.mcdaniel@utah.edu.
Marriott Center for Dance (MCD) - Hayes Christensen Theatre (first floor)
Friday Dec. 2nd from 11am-12pm.
Watching the Leaves Age As I Do the Same (2021, 16mm to Video, 8:36min), dir. Gabby Sumney
A yearlong meditation on aging with a chronic illness using hand painted film, chemical abstraction, 16mm footage, and digital composites.
Angles (2019, video, 4:56), dir. Robyn Ehrlich
This piece is a personal art project, and an attempt to recontextualize my relationship with my body by means of traditionally “unflattering” angles and photoshop.
Inclinations (2019, video, 5:33), dir. Danielle Peers & Alice Sheppard
Choreographed, directed and shot from disability perspectives, this dance-on-video short contrasts the playful connections when disability aesthetics, community and a ramp meet the institutional histories and discordant inclinations that can lurk just below the surface.
INFUSION #1 (2020, 16mm to video, 3:03), dir. Lauren Henschel
INFUSION NO. 1 brings consciousness around the “condition,” of residing in the temporary shelter of a body and of the impermanent and illusory concept of being well. The film is hand-processed in my own bodily fluids and medications as a visible reflection of my internal struggle with an invisible disability.
Psychic Meat (2020, 16mm to video, 9:27), dir. Stephen Wardell
"The film is a diary and act of bearing witness in which Wardell tells of his father’s artificial heart valve, the industrial farming industry that both provided the tissue for it and arguably hastened its necessity, and their somewhat distant father-son relationship. Wardell hand-developed this film in salt which resulted in a shimmering pock-marked effect on the celluloid which emphasises the film’s own materiality and physical precarity in line with the earthbound fleshiness of the maker’s voiceover narrative. However, the salt’s implications as a curing agent for meat and the way its visual impact brings together threads of preservation – of his father’s life, of their mutual love, of the detachment they have felt for years – and the latent imagery of these things hanging and curing over time, becomes quietly overwhelming." - Ben Nicholson, Alt/Kino
Material Bodies (2020, 16mm to video, 4:22), dir. Dorothy Allen Pickard
Through interweaving dance and dialogue, Material Bodies is a sensual and cinematic look at the relationship between amputees and their limbs. This visceral and colourful short film explores how a prosthetic leg can be more like a piece of jewellery, a dance companion, or a part of you.
Starship Somatics (2022, video, 24:26), dir. Charli Brissey & Petra Kuppers
Starship Somatics is a modality Petra Kuppers developed during the early days of the pandemic, looking for a way to create online environments for accessible, disability-culture-focused somatic creative movement. This dancevideo shares a starship somatics experience in dialogue with the luscious alternative gravity of an underwater world. Charli Brissey shot the video on Odawa territory, in what is colonially known as Lake Charlevoix, at The Croft Residency in Michigan.