Join us at the August screening for Mills Folly Microcinema, the monthly showcase of experimental film and video presented by Arts + Literature Laboratory.
Mills Folly Microcinema will present You Were an Amazement on the Day You Were Born (2019) and Dear Lorde (2015), two recent videos by Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby, on Thursday, August 29 at 7:30 p.m. Admission $5, or free for Arts + Literature Laboratory members. Seating is limited, and doors open at 7:15 p.m.
Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby have been working collaboratively since June 1994. They work in printed matter, installation, new media, curation and sound, but their primary practice is in single-channel video. Their work has been exhibited in galleries and at festivals in North and South America, Asia and throughout Europe, including the Walker Center (Minneapolis), The Banff Centre (Banff), the New York Video Festival (NYC), Oberhausen, the European Media Arts Festival (Osnabruck), Impakt (Utrecht) and the Images Festival (Toronto).
In 2012 Pleasure Dome and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art published a book about their work,The Beauty is Relentless, edited by filmmaker Mike Hoolboom. In 2015, Duke and Battersby were awarded the grand prize from the European Media Arts Festival for Dear Lorde. Their most recent video, You Were an Amazement on the Day You Were Born, premiered at the 2019 International Rotterdam Film Festival. They currently teach at Syracuse University.
"At the thematic core of Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby’s art is their unflinching contemplation of the beautiful mess of what it means to be human. Drawing inspiration from pop culture, animated cartoons, environmentalism, sex, drugs, science, and magic, and often taking the perspective of various animal species, they wryly examine the idiosyncracies of human behaviour through our relationships to each other, to nature, and to the apparent inevitabilities and unseen forces that govern our existence. Their video work in particular is a trigger point for unexpected emotions and curious behaviour. It’s like accidentally stumbling upon a trap door that leads to a secret universe." -Andrea Cooper and David Liss, forward to The Beauty is Relentless.
Dear Lorde | Emily Vey Duke, Cooper Battersby | US | 2015 | 27:08
Fourteen-year-old bone collector Maxine Rose is looking for validation from her heroes, amongst them the primatologist Jane Goodall, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the New Zealand teen pop star Lorde. Offering them a gift of language, Maxine Rose stands for the desire to be visible and understood, not unlike the desire of an artist.
You Were an Amazement on the Day You Were Born | Emily Vey Duke, Cooper Battersby | US | 2019 | 33:00
You Were an Amazement on the Day You Were Born follows a woman through a life characterized by damage and loss, but in which she finds humor, love, and joy. With a score that follows the span of Lenore’s life, from her birth in the early 70s to her death in the 2040s, the film takes us from moments of harrowing loss to those of poignancy and dark humor. Her life is told through voice over, narrated by performers who range in age from nine to sixty-nine, and is beautifully illustrated with images of animals (including humans), insects and landscapes.
Artist and program descriptions by Video Data Bank.
ABOUT MILLS FOLLY MICROCINEMA
Mills Folly Microcinema showcases nationally recognized experimental film and video art work from the festival and microcinema circuit. We network with regional filmmakers and organizations to bring filmmakers and guest programmers to Madison for screenings. And we incubate local experimental filmmaking by providing screen time at at Project Projection events.
Mills Folly Microcinema is funded in part by a grant from the Madison Arts Commission, with additional funds from the Wisconsin Arts Board.
