with filmmaker Jeanne Liotta
Observando El Cielo has been hailed as one of the 10 Best Films of 2007 by Chrissie Iles (film and video curator at the Whitney Museum) in Artforum
magazine. In it, “Liotta assembles seven years' worth of field
recordings from her astronomical observations - accelerated night skies
in over a dozen distinct locations, all with their own unique
character. The film is remarkable for its meticulous,
neo-Constructivist organization; her edits feel both agile and
inevitable, like stonemasonry achieved through light. We see stars
streaking by, stars in frozen time, slices of the sky at differential
moments of the night….These images do more than transform the
familiar; they practically vanquish the familiar, preconceived images
of the skies we've accumulated over time, along with their needless
symbolic freight. Observando El Cielo asks us to
watch the skies for themselves, as an ever-shifting set of locations,
trajectories and triangulations. The soundtrack, composed by fellow
filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh, is a dense yet buoyant collage of broadcasts,
short waves, and palpable interference.” (Michael Sicinski) Part
of the film was shot at Cornell’s Fuertes Observatory. It will be
shown with some of Liotta’s earlier films, which recall the
standpoint of amateur scientists of the 19th century, taking it upon
themselves to break the world down into its component parts and see
what's inside. Cosponsored with the CCA and the Experimental Television
Center’s Presentation Funds Program, supported by the New York
State Council on the Arts. 16mm and video projection