this week in film and television

TWI-NY TALK — JANET BIGGS: AUGMENTATION AND AMPLIFICATION

ary Esther Carter reunites with A.I. Anne, Richard Savery, and Janet Biggs for Fridman Gallery pandemic commission (photo courtesy Janet Biggs)

Mary Esther Carter reunites with A.I. Anne, Richard Savery, and Janet Biggs for site-specific Fridman Gallery commission (photo courtesy Janet Biggs)

Who: Mary Esther Carter, Richard Savery, A.I. Anne, Janet Biggs
What: Final presentation of “SO⅃OS: a space of limit as possibility”
Where: Fridman Gallery online
When: Thursday, July 30, $5 for access to all twelve performances, 8:00
Why: In July 2019, I experienced multimedia artist Janet Biggs’s workshop presentation of her work-in-progress performance of How the Light Gets In, an extraordinary collaboration at the New Museum exploring the ever-growing relationship between humans and technology, with singer and dancer Mary Esther Carter; machine learning program A.I. Anne; composer and music technologist Richard Savery; drummer Jason Barnes, who lost an arm in an accident so uses a robotic prosthesis; marathon runner Brian Reynolds, a double (below-knee) amputee who is fitted with carbon fiber running prostheses; and violinists Earl Maneein and Mylez Gittens.

The Pennsylvania-born, Brooklyn-based Biggs has traveled to unusual places all over the world for her video installations, including a sulfur mine in the Ijen volcano in East Java (A Step on the Sun), the Taklamakan desert in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China (Point of No Return), a coal mine in the Arctic (Brightness All Around), the crystal caverns below the German Merkers salt mine (Can’t Find My Way Home), and the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah (Vanishing Point). She’s also all set to go to Mars after several simulated adventures.

During the pandemic lockdown, Biggs has been hunkering down at home with her her husband and occasional cinematographer, Bob Cmar, and their cat, Hooper, but that hasn’t kept her from creating bold and inventive new work. On July 30, she will debut the site-specific multimedia performance piece Augmentation and Amplification, concluding the Fridman Gallery’s terrific “SO⅃OS” series, cutting-edge performances made during the coronavirus crisis that incorporate the empty gallery space on Bowery, delving into the feeling of isolation that hovers over us all. (The program also features Daniel Neumann’s Soundcheck, Luke Stewart’s Unity Elements, Abigail Levine’s Fat Chance, Hermes, and Diamanda Galás’s Broken Gargoyles, among others; a five-dollar fee gives you access to all the works.)

In her third conversation with twi-ny, Biggs takes us behind the scenes of her latest innovative, boundary-pushing project.

twi-ny: You’re so used to traveling. What’s it been like being stuck at home?

janet biggs: Working on the performance has been a saving grace for me — to have something to focus on that feels exciting. But it has also had its share of interesting challenges.

twi-ny: How did it come about?

jb: I was asked by experimental sound artist and audio engineer Daniel Neumann if I would be interested in doing a performance for the series he was organizing for Fridman Gallery. The premise was that he would set up the gallery space with audio mics, projectors, and cameras, clean the whole space, and leave. The performer would be given a code to the lock on the gallery so they could safely enter the space by themselves and perform within shelter-in-place guidelines. During the performance, Daniel mixes the sound remotely from his home and livestreams it.

I loved his premise, but I don’t perform. I direct. I said I was eager to figure out a way to direct from home and send both a live performer and an Artificial Intelligence entity into the space. Both Daniel and gallery owner and director Iliya Fridman were excited about my proposal and gave complete support to the idea.

twi-ny: And then you turned to Mary Esther Carter and Richard Savery.

jb: Yes, I reached out to Mary and Richard, both of whom I worked with on the performance you saw at the New Museum. Happily, they were up for the challenge.

Richard Savery, Janet Biggs, and Mary Esther Carter rehearse Augmentation and Amplification over Zoom (photo courtesy Janet Biggs)

twi-ny: Which led you back to A.I. Anne.

jb: Richard has been working on expanding A.I. Anne’s abilities and neural diversity. A.I. Anne was trained on Mary’s voice and named for my aunt, who was autistic and had apraxia. Since the performance last year, A.I. Anne has gained more agency through deep machine learning and semantic knowledge. The entity can now express and respond to emotion. We are also using phenotypic data and first-person accounts of people on the autism spectrum for vocal patterning.

We want to explore neural diversity and inclusion in creative collaborations between humans and machines. Our challenge was how to get A.I. Anne in the gallery so she could perform live. A.I. is a disembodied virtual entity. Richard lives in Atlanta. While A.I. Anne is autonomous, Richard needed to be able to receive a single audio channel of Mary’s voice from the gallery and then send back a single channel audio response from A.I. Anne. With strong wifi and the right software, our tests from Atlanta to the gallery have been successful, so keep your fingers crossed for Thursday.

twi-ny: What was it like collaborating long distance?

jb: I’ve been having rehearsals with Mary and Richard for the last couple weeks via Zoom. We have been able to work out the choreography remotely and even developed some new camera angles due to the constraints of cellphone cameras and apartment sizes. The percussive soundtrack that Mary will dance to was generated by EEG sonification, the process of turning data into sound. Richard developed a process where he could use his brainwaves to control a drumset, creating a kind of brain-beat.

And lastly, I’ve been editing video images. Some will be projected on walls in the gallery and some will be a video overlay, run by the streaming software so that we essentially will have multiple layers of images and live action. If all goes well, I think this will be a pretty exciting performance.

twi-ny: Is that all? You don’t exactly make things easy for yourself.

jb: I’ve been to the gallery myself to see the layout and make some staging/lighting decisions. I will send Daniel a floor plan marked with my staging decisions and a tech-script. Daniel will set up the space (projector angles, lighting, camera and microphone placements) during the day on Thursday and then completely clean the space. Thursday evening, Mary will enter the space alone. Richard will run A.I. Anne from his computer in Atlanta. Daniel will mix the sound and images remotely into a livestream Vimeo channel that the audience can access from their homes. And I’ll be watching from home, holding my breath that everything works!

JAPAN CUTS 2020: FESTIVAL OF NEW JAPANESE FILM

Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Labyrinth of Cinema is a highlight of Japan Cuts festival

Who: Koichi Sato, Ken Watanabe, Chigumi Obayashi, Noriki Ishitobi, Yo Nakajima, Takako Tokiwa, Aaron Gerow, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Yuko Iwasaki, Yuichi Watanabe, Noriko Yamasaki, Aiko Masubuchi, Nanako Hirose, Ian Thomas Ash, Kaori Oda, Kaori Sakagami, Amber Noé, Shinichiro Ueda
What: Annual Japan Cuts film festival
Where: Japan Society online
When: Through July 30, film rentals $3-$7, panel discussions free
Why: My favorite film festival every summer is Japan Cuts, Japan Society’s annual survey of the state of new Japanese film. One of the joys is the wide range of genres represented, from horror, romance, martial arts, goofy comedies, sci-fi, and crime dramas to anime, family stories, historical epics, musicals, war movies, and, well, the unexplainable. Just about all of them are evident in Labyrinth of Cinema, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s last work, and one that is almost impossible to explain. The legendary auteur behind such films as Hausu, Casting Blossoms to the Sky, Seven Weeks, and Hanagatami died in April at the age of eighty-two, and Labyrinth of Cinema is quite a grand finale. Obayashi wrote, directed, photographed, and edited the three-hour surreal marvel, a colorful, endlessly clever celebration of the movies, made while he was battling cancer. On closing night, July 30, at 9:00, there will be a live Q&A with the yet-to-be-announced recipient of the Obayashi Prize, named in honor of the master.

In addition, you can watch “Nobuhiko Obayashi: A Conversation” at any time, a ninety-seven-minute discussion of the life and legacy of Obayashi, with his daughter, Chigumi Obayashi, journalist Noriki Ishitobi, Theater Kino founder Yo Nakajima, and actress and Obayashi regular Takako Tokiwa, moderated by Yale East Asian Cinema and Culture professor Aaron Gerow, as well as “Shinya Tsukamoto on Nobuhiko Obayashi,” a video tribute from the Tetsuo trilogy director, and the 2019 documentary Seijo Story — 60 Years of Making Films, which traces the personal and professional relationship between Obayashi and his wife, Kyoko Hanyu.

There will also be a live panel discussion on July 23 at 9:00 about the centerpiece presentation, Setsuro Wakamatsu’s fast-paced thriller Fukushima 50, a minute-by-minute suspense yarn that follows the earthquake, tsunami, and deadly disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant that occurred on March 11, 2011. Based on the book On the Brink by Ryusho Kadota, the film is a terrific companion piece to the Netflix series Chernobyl; while the latter focuses on the governmental cover-up, Fukushima 50 is all about people coming together bravely to try to do the right thing. The stars of the film and winners of the 2020 Cut Above Award, Koichi Sato, who plays shift supervisor Toshio Izaki, and Ken Watanabe, who portrays plant manager Masao Yoshida, will participate in the talk, which will be archived after its live airing.

The date 3/11 also figures prominently in Taku Tsuboi’s time-twisting debut, Sacrifice, a supernatural tale involving a cult, a college student with unusual abilities, a serial cat killer, and other mysterious elements. It’s dark and creepy, filled with plenty of shocks; make sure your cat isn’t around when you’re watching this Best Picture winner at the Skip City International D-Cinema Festival.

It doesn’t get much stranger than Takuya Dairiki and Takashi Miura’s Kinta & Ginji, a thoroughly charming existential tale in which Beckett’s Waiting for Godot meets Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise by way of The Iron Giant and “Little Red Riding Hood.” In their twelfth film together, Dairiki and Miura (Honane, Fine as Usual, Koroishi) star as the title characters, a robot and a raccoon dog who go for long walks in the woods and across large swaths of land, discussing the absurdities of life and asking such questions as “Why are we here?” The camera never moves as set pieces play out in real time (there are only a handful of cuts within scenes), the two beings often barely visible, hidden in nature as they share their unique worldviews. It’s an absolute hoot, especially when seen during the current pandemic, when so many of us crave even the most mundane of conversations with someone, anyone else.

And speaking of conversations, there are a few more you can check out: “Collaboration and Community in Japanese Cinema During the Pandemic” features Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Yuko Iwasaki, Yuichi Watanabe, Noriko Yamasaki, and moderator Aiko Masubuchi; “New Approaches to Documentary from Japan” brings together Nanako Hirose, Ian Thomas Ash, Kaori Oda, Kaori Sakagami, and moderator Amber Noé; and Opening Night Live Q&A with Shinichiro Ueda is a July 17 discussion with Ueda, director of the opening-night selection, Special Actors.

The festival continues through July 30 with such other films as Natsuki Nakagawa’s Beyond the Night, Kana Yamada’s Life: Untitled, several of Yoji Yamada’s old and new Tora-san films, and a one-day-only preview streaming of Toshiaki Toyoda’s The Day of Destruction.

APOLLO AND THE ODYSSEY: THE SHARED ORBIT OF NASA’S LUNAR MISSION AND STANLEY KUBRICK’S 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

Online MoMI talk will explore relationship between the Apollo 11 lunar landing and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Who: Todd Douglas Miller, Barry Miller, Bert Ulrich, Eric Hynes, Sonia Epstein
What: Illustrated online discussion
Where: Museum of the Moving Image online
When: Thursday, July 23, free with RSVP (suggested donation $10), 7:00
Why: In Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s horror novel The Shining, young Danny is seen riding his Big Wheel through the hallways of the Overlook Hotel wearing an Apollo 11 sweater. According to Rodney Ascher’s terrific documentary Room 237, that is only one piece of evidence confirming the conspiracy theory that Kubrick was involved in faking the footage of the moon landing. Look for that to come up in the Museum of the Moving Image program “Apollo and the Odyssey: The Shared Orbit of NASA’s Lunar Mission and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey,” which airs live online on July 23 at 7:00. Held in conjunction with the exhibition “Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey,” which has been closed during the pandemic lockdown, the talk features Apollo 11 director Todd Douglas Miller, NASA chief historian Barry Miller, NASA multimedia liaison Bert Ulrich, MoMI curator Eric Hynes, and associate curator Sonia Epstein. Written by Kubrick and sci-fi legend Arthur C. Clarke, the mindbending 1968 film was a game changer; the discussion will include rare archival footage as it explores elements of the U.S. space program, which has added relevance as President Trump gets Space Force under way.

A CONVERSATION WITH DARA BIRNBAUM: SCREENING AND LIVE Q&A

Kiss the Girls: Make Them Cry (still), 1979. Dara Birnbaum (American, born 1946). Color video, sound; 6:50 min. Courtesy of the artist and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

Dara Birnbaum, Kiss the Girls: Make Them Cry, still, color video, sound, 1979 (courtesy of the artist and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York)

Who: Dara Birnbaum, Alex Kitnick, Asad Raza, Marianna Simnett
What: Special streaming and live conversation with Q&A
Where: Marian Goodman Gallery Zoom
When: Thursday, July 23, free with registration, 2:00
Why: New York native Dara Birnbaum has been making video and installation art since the 1970s, at the cutting edge of the emerging discipline. On July 23, Marian Goodman Gallery will host a screening of the pioneer’s breakthrough five-minute 1978-79 video, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, which welcomed visitors to the contemporary galleries at the new MoMA prior to the pandemic lockdown (it was initially displayed in a SoHo storefront), and Kiss the Girls: Make Them Cry, a seven-minute video from 1979 in which Birnbaum uses clips from the popular Hollywood Squares game show to explore coded gestures, pop culture imagery, and gender representation. (The setup for the show is like a modern-day Zoom meeting come to life in three dimensions.) The screening will be followed by a live conversation and audience Q&A with Birnbaum, art historian Alex Kitnick, and artists Asad Raza and Marianna Simnett.

JODY SPERLING / TIME LAPSE DANCE: SINGLE USE

Jody Sperling dances on the Upper West Side in plastic bags in Single Use

Who: Jody Sperling, Jennifer Congdon
What: World premiere livestream from Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance
Where: Time Lapse Dance YouTube channel and Zoom
When: Wednesday, July 22, free with RSVP for Zoom talkback, 7:00
Why: Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance has been celebrating its twentieth anniversary season over twenty weeks during the pandemic, with online repertory works and new dances that you can view on its YouTube channel, including Turbulence, Book of Clouds, Wind Rose, and the quarantine dance Plastic Virus. Sperling continues the environmental theme with Single Use, which premieres on July 22 at 7:00. The nine-minute film is choreographed, performed, and edited by Sperling, with cinematography by Angela Hunter, costume by Lauren Gaston, and music by Matthew Burtner. As Single Use begins, Sperling, wearing a mask and gloves, is standing outside the Urban Outfitters store at Broadway and One Hundredth St.; signs in the window announce that March 20 was its last day in business. Sperling then drapes herself in plastic bags from numerous retail stores and dances around the neighborhood, embracing poles and hopping atop barriers, the swishing of the plastic bags in the wind accompanying her, along with the natural sounds of a nearly empty city. She looks like a homeless person or some lost plastic creature, seeking solace somewhere while taking risks and lamenting what we’ve done to the world.

The livestream will be followed by a Zoom talkback with Sperling and Jennifer Congdon, the development director of Beyond Plastics, a Bennington College-based organization whose “mission is to end plastic pollution by being a catalyst for change at every level of our society. We use our deep policy and advocacy expertise to build a well-informed, effective movement seeking to achieve the institutional, economic, and societal changes needed to save our planet, and ourselves, from the plastic pollution crisis.” Single Use will have you thinking not only about recycling but about how we can rejuvenate and revitalize New York City and the country in these challenging times. Time Lapse Dance’s twentieth anniversary continues July 29 with the online release of another new short film, along with a live chat, July 30 with an ecokinetics workshop, and August 6 with the online premiere of Ice Cycle, followed by a conversation with Sperling and Burtner.

CARMEN ARGOTE’S LAST LIGHT SCREENING AND Q&A

Carmen Argote goes for a haunting walk in new short film Last Light

Who: Carmen Argote, Erin Christovale
What: Livestream premiere and live Q&A
Where: The Hammer Museum at UCLA
When: Tuesday, July 21, free with RSVP, 9:00 EDT
Why: Mexican-born, LA-based multidisciplinary artist Carmen Argote was scheduled to open her latest exhibition, “Hand Dog Glove,” at Clockshop in Los Angeles, but the Covid-19 pandemic has put that on hold. In the interim, Argote, the gallery, and the Hammer Museum at UCLA have teamed up to present the livestream premiere of Argote’s haunting twelve-minute film, Last Light, which she started making just before the lockdown and continued during the crisis. “Is this fear so paralyzing?” she asks as she walks through the emptying streets of her city, considering ideas of loneliness, childhood, and demolition. “I feel like I’m not made to last; I’m not the one who’s gonna make it.” Argote, who was hospitalized early in the crisis for a non-cornonavirus-related illness, takes walks as part of her discipline. In her artist statement she explains, “I explore notions of home and place. I respond to architecture and site to reflect on personal histories and on my own immigrant experience. My practice uses the act of inhabiting as a starting point, working within a space and its cultural, economic, and personal context as a material. I work at a human scale and in relationship to how my body inhabits space.” The premiere will be livestreamed on July 21 at 9:00, followed by a Q&A with Argote and Hammer associate curator Erin Christovale. (Click on the above photo to watch the trailer.)

KAYE BALLARD — THE SHOW GOES ON!

kaye ballard

Who: Special guests
What: Livestream film premiere of Kaye Ballard — The Show Goes On! with bonuses before and after screening
Where: Facebook Live
When: Tuesday, July 14, free, 8:00
Why: In January 2019, the one and only Kaye Ballard passed away at the age of ninety-three. If you don’t know anything about her, you need to, and you can do so on July 14 when the documentary Kaye Ballard — The Show Goes On! makes its virtual premiere for free on Facebook Live. Ballard was a beloved singer, actress, and comedian perhaps best known for her many guest appearances on talk shows, game shows, and variety programs, from The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (and Jack Paar) and The Mike Douglas Show to Hollywood Squares and The Perry Como Show; she also appeared on such sitcoms as The Mothers-in-Law, The Doris Day Show, and What a Dummy in addition to a bunch of films, burlesque and vaudeville, and more than two dozen stage shows, going back to 1946.

In Kaye Ballard — The Show Goes On!, director Dan Wingate speaks with Ann-Margret, Jerry Stiller, Carol Burnett, Harold Prince, Carol Channing, Michael Feinstein, Rex Reed, Joy Behar, Peter Marshall, and Ballard herself, who is seen in new interviews, classic archival footage, and clips from her 2017 one-woman show about her life. “I don’t know where I got it, I don’t know why it happened, but I think I’m lucky because I always knew what I wanted to do,” she says in the film. And now you can consider yourself lucky to discover the great Kaye Ballard either for the first time or all over again; the advance screening (the virtual release is set for July 17) will be preceded by a special introduction and followed by a surprise bonus.