June 13th @ NMASS – How to Build a Fire: Films and Videos by Michael A. Morris

Experimental Response Cinema and the Church of the Friendly Ghost are excited to host Dallas based filmmaker and 2013 Texas Biennial artist Michael A. Morris! Morris will present his films, videos and his multi-projector performances in the final ERC screening of the New Media Art and Sound Summit! See the full lineup of festivities for the festival here.

Event Details
June 13th, 2013
8:30pm
@ Salvage Vanguard Theater (map)
$15 day pass / $35 fest pass / ERC pass
Both day and ERC passes will allow you to see all NMASS events taking place on June 13th.

Michael Alexander Morris is an artist and educator working primarily in film, video, and expanded cinematic forms.  His recent work has moved toward two not-completely separate points of focus: essayistic works in film and video that mine accumulations of meaning attached to objects, sites, and experiences; and performative works that both initiate hybrid situations where an act of interpretation occurs between various technologies and question the evolving understanding of the space of cinematic reception. Morris studied at the University of Illinois-Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of North Texas. He currently teaches at several universities and colleges in Dallas and has recently shown work at the Dallas Museum of Art as part of the Dallas VideoFest, the Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, The Lab in San Francisco, and Oliver Francis Gallery in Dallas.

city of austin_550x792_139x200This project is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Economic Growth & Redevelopment Services Office/Cultural Arts Division believing an investment in the Arts is an investment in Austin’s future. Visit Austin at NowPlayingAustin.com.

Program

Fires 
14 min / 35mm on HD / 2013
A wide view of the jagged line between landscape and skyscape.  An arranged collection of fragments. A study in the limits of autobiography.
Fires was shot with a Lomokinosuper 35mm camera on the 135 format and transferred using a flatbed scanner. During the shooting of the film, difficulties were introduced by the elimination of the consumer line of 135 film. The result is a series of stories and landscapes in which objects and the memories attached to them are constantly disappearing.

Confessors 
20 min / 8mm on digital video / 2010
Confessors is a short, personal essay that attempts to retrace bits of lost or inaccessible family histories.The artist’s grandparents give him a can of film marked “x-rated” without explanation, as well as an old 8mm camera. The film was lost before he was able to watch it. The resulting video is a consideration of the ephemeral nature of home movies and the lives they can’t help but fail to preserve.

We Would See A Sign 
14 min / super 8mm and HDV / 2009
We Would See A Sign considers first hand vs. mediated experience of possible supernatural phenomena. It invokes situations where one must choose to trust or distrust what they see and experience in both solitary and public situations.

I Can’t Wait To Meet You There
12 min / digital video / 2010 – 2012
A meditation on subjective experiences of public mourning and the ways recorded media affect our understanding of mortality. An elegy and a prayer for Kurt Cobain.

Second Hermeneutic
7 min / silent / 16mm / 2013
The second in a cycle of “hermeneutical” works that explore various modes of interpretation. In this work, 2 color 16mm projections create a synaesthetic interaction with component video information.

First Hermeneutic
approx. 15 min / 16mm + video / 2012
A multi-projector performance utilizing the interpretive artifacts that occur between 16mm film and analogue NTSC video.