Friday, August 23, 2024, 7 pm ET
Online and in-person @ Squeaky Wheel
Free or suggested donation. Catering from AliBaba Kebab provided for in-person attendees.
ASL interpretation available; request by Tuesday, August 20.
Register below

Squeaky Wheel is pleased to present this hybrid artist talk with our Summer 2024 Workspace Residents! Ahmed T. Ragheb & Lily Ekimian Ragheb (Pittsburgh, PA) and Kathryn Ramey (Roslindale, MA) will be presenting on their previous and current projects, along with a Q&A with the residents moderated by curator Ekrem Serdar.

For in-person attendees: The event will take place at Squeaky Wheel. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm.

For online attendees: A private link will be sent to you; the event will be available at the link at the start date and time. You will have access to the event for 24 hours; Squeaky Wheel members receive 72 hour access. Not a member yet? Sign up here.

Ahmed T. Ragheb & Lily Ekimian Ragheb will be working on Visitor, a short experimental essay film about an Egyptian vampire who travels to America in search of family. The film will pair a fictional voiceover narrative with docu-style video footage of the post-industrial landscapes of Pittsburgh and Buffalo. Consisting of hand-held, point-of-view shots with no on-screen actors, the observational style of Visitor will facilitate an exploration of Arab and Arab-American cultural identity, immigration, family and the changing landscape of the American Rust Belt.

During her residency, Kathryn Ramey will be working on SILVER & earth: Marina A which will be presented to the public on Friday, September 6 at Silo City. The multi-channel digital and 16mm projection performance will highlight environmentally conscious artistic practices within reclaimed post industrial sites such as Silo City. Part of a larger suite of work, SILVER & earth: Marina A, focuses on analogue film, using outdated material that would otherwise find its way to a landfill through a variety of experimental gestures. These include: phytograms in which Vitamin C, plant material and soda or wood ash is used to print onto film; burying film in compost; among other methods. Ramey’s project marks a deepening of Squeaky Wheel’s partnership with Silo City to also support ecological media arts practices.

Biographies of the residents

Ahmed T. Ragheb & Lily Ekimian Ragheb are a married experimental filmmaking duo based in Pittsburgh. Lily – American, Russian and Armenian – grew up between Washington, D.C., and Cairo, Egypt. Ahmed – Egyptian, Dutch and American – was born and raised in Cairo. Their films emphasize identity, place, feminism, cultural dislocation and domestic relationships and are noted for their use of voiceover and mixed media. Their work has screened at Oscar-qualifying festivals including Uppsala Short Film Festival (Nominated, Ingmar Bergman Award), Athens Int’l Film & Video Festival and RiverRun, as well as the Arab American National Museum, Pittsburgh Shorts, and the Arab Film and Media Institute’s Arab Film Festival. Together they founded the independent production company Studio Ragheb.

Kathryn Ramey (1967), Vancouver, WA / USA. A Guggenheim and Creative Capital fellow with an MFA in film and a PhD in anthropology who has made over a dozen films and installations, contributed numerous articles to anthologies and journals and written the essential text Experimental Filmmaking: BREAK THE MACHINE (2015). Her films operate at the intersection of experimental analogue processes and ethnographic research and are characterized by hand-processing, optical printing, and animation. She has screened at several festivals such as Toronto, Ann Arbor, TriBeca, Ji.hlava, and 25fps, among others.

Banner photo: Two photographs side by side: Ahmed Ragheb and Lily Ekimian Ragheb sitting side by side in a black and white photograph. Kathryn Ramey, a white woman in her 50’s with long gray blond hair in a bun wearing a black and white plaid mock turtle-neck blouse and a black cotton blazer and pink glasses sits smiling facing the camera in front of a white picket fence with green trees and blue sky in the background. This photo was taken at Camden Film Festival.