Announcing Squeaky Wheel’s Summer events

Solo show by Wenhua Shi, Silo City with Noveller + arc, and more

Contact: Ekrem Serdar (ekrem@squeaky.org)
A pdf of this announcement can be downloaded here.

Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Arts Center is excited to present its Summer 2016 schedule. Following in the steps of its successful summer programming from last year, Squeaky Wheel’s upcoming events will take place throughout the city of Buffalo, indoors and out, hosting a number of renowned artists for in-person appearances and performances, while continuing its signature events from years past.

Opening in the Squeaky Wheel gallery on June 17th, A Year from Monday is posited as a mini-survey of work by the Chinese-born film, video, and installation artist Wenhua Shi. Shi’s work, informed in equal parts by avant-garde art and Chinese culture, manifests itself in newer technologies like video mapping, video games, interactive video, and real time computer generated moving images. This solo exhibition features a number of works from the past two years, along with the unveiling of two new pieces, Computer will not make any more boring art and Wave Line. Shi will also be present the following day, on June 18th, for a screening of his moving image work.

We are also happy to announce that the Squeaky Wheel Animation Fest— now entering its 13th year—is now open for submissions. This family friendly, travelling group show, collecting some of the most imaginative works from the past year, will have its first screening on August 6th, following the Media AlleyCat Bike Race. See our website for details.

Squeaky Wheel has had an amazing relationship with Silo City, and we continue this relationship this year with two spectacular events at our historic grain silos. On July 2nd, Squeaky Wheel will turn its eye onto the Cineplex, and will be hosting an outdoor, Independence Day double-feature of Rocky III (1982) and the 2015 hit Creed. Meanwhile on August 12th, we will continue our Silent | Sound series with guitar-based sonic scapes of Noveller (Sarah Lipstate), joining us following a stint on Iggy Pop’s U.S. tour. Sharing the billing are the 16mm séances of Oakland resident arc, whose double- projector performance (conical signal) recently won accolades at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

We will also be collaborating with our friends at CEPA gallery, with a screening of the controversial Horrors of Malformed Men (1969), meant to tie-in with their exhibit Eikoh Hosoe: Revisitations to a Vacuum’s Nest.

All of these only some of our summer events however. We are also excited to host a number of artists working in film, video, and sound through the next few months including tape-artist Jason Lescalleet along with Buffalo’s own VWLS; films, videos, and performances by Dallas-based Michael A. Morris grouped under the title HYBRID-CINEMA; and STRONG-THING, a collection of work by the cinematic-detritus scraping minds of H.A. Campbell and Jon Dieringer. All of the artists mentioned will be present for their events.

We look forward to seeing you at all our gatherings in the beautiful summer days to come.

This event is supported by: The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, City of Buffalo – Arts & Cultural Funding, Erie County Arts & Cultural Funding, M&T Charitable Foundation and New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).

***

Detailed Summer Schedule
Check our website for exact times and details

lescalleet

June 12th, 2016
Jason Lescalleet + VWLS
Location: Squeaky Wheel
“For twenty years, Jason Lescalleet has been making electro-acoustic sound work, using all manner of source material to engage listeners in both site and narrative by providing a rich and physical sense of place.” – Bomb Magazine
Since establishing himself as a preeminent voice in contemporary electro-acoustic study, Jason Lescalleet has exploded the notion of what is possible within the realm of tape-based music. His recorded catalog acknowledges a diversity of application, from lo-fi reel-to-reel soundscaping and work for hand-held cassette machines, to digital sampling and computer generated composition. Lescalleet’s live actions further expand his ouevre to include work with video, dance, performance art and multi-media concerns.
In the past two decades, Lescalleet has gradually and painstakingly compiled a compelling discography on notable labels such as Erstwhile, RRR, Intransitive Recordings, Kye, Celebrate Psi-Phenomenon, Hanson Records, Chondritic Sound, and most recently via his own Glistening Examples imprint. He has collaborated with Kevin Drumm, Aaron Dilloway, Graham Lambkin, Phill Niblock, Joe Colley, John Hudak, Rafael Toral, Thomas Ankersmit, and CM Von Hausswolff, among others, and during this time he’s built a solid reputation for delivering a visceral live experience in concert.—bio via New Music USA
VWLS is the moniker of Buffalo-based drone musician and artist Bobby Griffiths.

Computer-Will-Not

June 17th, 2016 – September 3rd, 2016
A YEAR FROM MONDAY: Recent Work by Wenhua Shi
Location: Squeaky Wheel
“Not knowing exactly what day a year from Monday—the day eight of us had arranged to meet in Mexico—would be, I decided it was early June 1967.” John Cage
Taking its title from a collection of writings by John Cage, Squeaky Wheel presents a mini-survey of recent work by Wenhua Shi. Cage’s quote refers to a travel meet-up set by him and friends–unstable but with poetic determination–that never came to fruition. As the date approaches, and friends drop out, Cage’s resolve loosens and finds nuance: “We don’t have to make plans to be together… Circumstances do it for us.”
Shi’s work–utilizing newer technologies like video mapping, video games, and real time computer generation–tread a balance of determination and chance, creating circumstances within which his audience can explore their relationship to the works. Influenced by Chinese culture and avant-garde art and film, Shi’s work evokes egalitarian relationships between viewer and art, creating spaces for pleasure and meditation. Singing to the Sky (2015) is an interactive installation where visitors can vocalize into a microphone, which is then interpreted live as Chinese symbols in video projection. Fishing, Those Who Are Willing to Hook (2015) takes a Chinese proverb and transports it into a meditative video-game. The exhibit will also see the unveiling of two new pieces, the video mapped work Wave Line (2016), along with the real-time computer generated Computer will not make any more boring art (2016). A commissioned essay by Evan Meaney accompanies the exhibition. On Saturday, June 18th, Shi will present a selection of his work made for the black box, followed by a conversation between Shi and Ekrem Serdar.
Originally trained as a doctor in China, Wenhua Shi departed from the medical field and began working in radio and TV in his hometown of Wuhan. In 2000, he came to the US and began studying with with the experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage and Phil Solomon at the University of Colorado, Boulder. There he began making and exploring film/ Sound as and earned his BA & BFA. In 2009 he graduated with MFA from Art Practice at the University of California, at Berkeley. Since then his new works integrate new media, sounds, and installations. His work have been screened or exhibited at Pacific Film Archive, European Media Art Festival, Black Maria Film Festival, Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television (UK) ,Experiments in Cinema, Albuquerque, Denver Contemporary Museum of Art, Beijing Film Academy, Berlin International Directors Lounge, The Jack Kerouac School of Naropa University, and dozens of international film festivals, including Ann Arbor, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Bradford, and Mexico City.West Bund 2013: a Biennale of Architecture and Contemporary art, Shanghai, Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism, International Arte Laguna Prize, Finalists Exhibition,The Arsenale of Venice, Venice, Italy.

June 18th, 2016
Screening: A YEAR FROM MONDAY
Location: Squeaky Wheel
The day following the opening, Wenhua Shi will present a number of his work made for the black box, including Walking Cycle (2016), Descending a Staircase (2014), Palimpsest (1972, 2012, and 2014). A conversation between Shi and Ekrem Serdar will follow the screening.

July 2nd, 2016
Silo City Blockbuster: ROCKY III + CREED
Location: Silo City Meadow
Squeaky Wheel invites you out to its annual outdoor blockbuster double-feature! Just in time for the fourth of July, Squeaky Wheel will present two films from the ongoing saga of families Balboa and Creed. Charting the development of the friendship between Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) and Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), Rocky III (1982) has Apollo takes on his former rival as his apprentice to defeat the snarling Clubber Lang (Mr. T). Their friendship resonates years later in 2015’s critically-acclaimed Creed, as Apollo’s son, Adonis (Michael B. Jordan), seeks out the retired, aged Italian Stallion (Stallone) as his own trainer, as the young Creed attempts to break free of his fathers shadow. Bring out your blankets, lawn chairs, and star-striped shorts for two classic American tales of affirmation, friendship, and men beating each other.

July 6th, 2016
Teruo Ishii’s HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN
Location: Squeaky Wheel
Squeaky Wheel is excited to present Teruo Ishii’s controversial, long-suppressed 1969 film, Horrors of Malformed Men. After escaping from an asylum, young medical student Hirosuke assumes the identity of a dead man in order to solve the mystery of a weird doppleganger whose picture he sees in the newspaper. Traveling to faraway Panorama Island, he discovers a mad scientist surgically remaking normal human beings into misshapen monsters but that is only the beginning. Hirosuke soon learns the horrible truth about the island and his own family s shameful past, and finds himself plunged into the depths of incest, murder, and madness.
“Horrors of Malformed Men is a must-see unburied treasure for Asian cinephiles, mondo-cine fanatics and all connoisseurs of a slow-burning scare.” – Orlando Weekly
Presented as part of Eikoh Hosoe: Revisitations to a Vacuum’s Nest, organized by CEPA Gallery in collaboration with Squeaky Wheel and the Visual Studies Workshop.

mikemorris

August 3rd, 2016
HYBRID CINEMA: Films, Videos, and Performances by Michael A. Morris
Location: TBD
This program of works gathers together performances and single channel works in a variety of media created over the last several years. Each work, in its own way, taps into an anxiety around the dichotomy of archival and ephemeral forms of moving images. Blue Movie and I Can’t Wait To Meet You There are concerned with the mortality of the image and extend this concern to those people represented. Fires deals with the anxiety of personal stories being lost as the people and physical locations connected to them disappear. Several works combine imaging technologies to create hybrid systems. In the case of the expanded cinema works that make up The Hermeneutics series, encounters between different technologies are staged in such a way that one medium “interprets” another to produce a hybrid result in image and meaning. 16mm film, analog video, digital audio synthesis, and interactive software are each considered for their own qualities and for how they can be combined to create new instruments that are more than the sum of their parts.
Michael A. Morris is an artist and educator based in Dallas, Texas. He works primarily with film, video, and expanded cinematic forms. Much of his recent work responds to the rapid changes in how moving images are created and experienced in the 21st century. He has performed and screened his films and videos at museums, galleries, microcinemas, and film festivals internationally, including recent events at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, The International Symposium of Electronic Art in Vancouver, Oak Cliff Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque, and the Texas Biennial. He teaches at several institutions throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth area and curates film / video / new media programs around the region regularly, most recently as part of the first Dallas Medianale.

13th-Animation-Fest

August 6th, 2016
Squeaky Wheel’s 13th Animation Fest!
Location: TBD
Squeaky Wheel is pleased to announce our 13th Animation Fest! This traveling, rollicking show is a signature event for the organization, as we travel with the program and present it in a number of different locations, cities, and contexts. Designed for ages 6 and up, this family-friendly affair is a yearly showcase, featuring some of the most innovative artists working across media, shapes, and colors. The festival’s first screening will take place on August 6th, following the Media AlleyCat Bike Race! Application details here.

8-12_Noveller

Noveller

arc

Film strips by arc

August 12th, 2016
SILENT | SOUND: Noveller, arc
Location: Silo City
Noveller is the solo electric guitar project of Brooklyn-based composer and filmmaker Sarah Lipstate. Handling the guitar as her muse, Lipstate summons a sonic palette so rich as to challenge the listener to conceive of how it’s housed in a single instrument manipulated by a solitary performer.
In 2014, Lipstate announced her signing with Fire Records. Fire released Noveller’s latest full-length ‘Fantastic Planet’ in January 2015 and also re-issued Noveller’s critically acclaimed albums ‘No Dreams’ and ‘Glacial Glow’ in early 2016. She’s previously released records on No Fun Productions, Important Records, Weird Forest, Taiga, and her own imprint Saffron Recordings.
Noveller has toured with St. Vincent, Radiolab, Xiu Xiu, the Jesus Lizard, U.S. Girls, Aidan Baker, and Emeralds. Lipstate has collaborated with several renowned musicians, including live improvised duo performances with Carla Bozulich (Evangelista, The Geraldine Fibbers), David Wm. Sims (the Jesus Lizard, Scratch Acid), Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), and JG Thirlwell (Foetus, Manorexia).
She has previously performed as a member of Cold Cave, Parts & Labor, and One Umbrella. Lipstate has also participated in Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Army, Ben Frost’s “Music for 6 Guitars” Ensemble, and Glenn Branca’s 100 guitar ensemble.
arc refers to a process rather than an author. an indentation within a void which makes something momentarily visible. a form through which something moves but within which it neither originates nor terminates, nor is contained.
in this process, material elements are used to investigate immaterial states. framing the space of encounter as a site of unfixed ritual and sensory research — the cinema, gallery, studio, home, stairwell, street, etc.; countless iterations of the the open field or the enclosure. a coded and symbolic and language is used to trace lines between seemingly disparate paths of knowledge held in recurrent forms, manifesting in oscillating relationships between microcosm and macrocosm.
arc is usually initiated by tooth, an artist living in Oakland who has operated the microcinema/archive black hole cinematheque since 2009. their work has been presented locally and internationally at Other Cinema, ATA, San Francisco Cinematheque, The Lab, Shapeshifters Cinema, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Nightingale (Chicago), Massart Film Society (Boston), NDSM Treehouse (Amsterdam), and the Ann Arbor Film Festival, among others.

8-20_Strong-Thing

August 20th, 2016
STRONG-THING: Videos by H.A. Campbell and Jon Dieringer
Location: TBD
Featuring their mythic re-imagination of Arnold Schwarzenegger based on both his films and his biography which premiered at Museum of Arts and Design (NY), STRONG-THING features a number of collaborations between videos by H.A. Campbell and Jon Dieringer. Also screening will be TENDER PREY, their restructuring of the 1985 werewolf film Silver Bullet, starring Corey Haim, into a parable concerning the toxic atmosphere of pedophilia surrounding child actors in Hollywood.
Jon Dieringer is a media artist, film programmer, and the editor, publisher, and primary author of Screen Slate, a daily resource for New York City moving image culture.
H.A. Campbell is a graduate of the University of Chicago’s masters program for Cinema and Media Studies and currently part of the faculty at city Colleges of Chicago and a senior contributor to Screen Slate.
Dieringer and Campbell’s ongoing collaboration dates to their teenage years. They have edited more than one hundred custom trailers for daily Brooklyn microcinema Spectacle between 2011 and 2015, during which time Dieringer additionally programmed hundreds of shows. Their collaborative work has shown at the Museum of Arts and Design MoMA PS1, and Spectacle.