Threshold to Threshold:
Films by Wenhua Shi:
let the light in
Thursday, June 22, 2023 8pm
AUTOMATA presents
Threshold to Threshold is pleased to welcome Boston-based, time poet, experimental filmmaker Wenhua Shi to present a solo screening of selected work from 2012 to 2023. There will be a post-screening Q/A with the filmmaker.
Tickets
$10 students, members, underemployed
$12 general admission
click here to purchase tickets
Seating is extremely limited, advance reservations strongly encouraged
Note: Masks are required for all events at Automata.
Die Nacht (2017- 2018, 4:00, Color, Sound, 16mm>Digital)
(DEDICATED TO PHIL SOLOMON)
Prelude to Senses of Time: depicts the lyrical and poetic passage of time. The work reflects on time and focuses on defining subjective and perceptual time with close attention to stillness, decay, disappearance, and ruins.
Die Nacht
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Lucas Bouk (They/them), mezzo-soprano
Markus Syperek, piano
Sense(s) of Time (2017- 2018, 5:00, Color, Sound, 16mm>Digital)
Sense(s) of Time is evocative. The image propels us into a space of contemplation. Erosion is implied as the sequences fade one into another like waves lapping the shore of an uninhabited beach. The monotone values of the film produce a somber mood and the insistent dropping out to black frames create a longing for life, for color.
— Marilyn Carren, University of Texas
Sound by Dajuin Yao
Morgen (2018, 4:00, Color, Sound, 16mm>Digital)
The cine-poem "Morgen" draws its inspiration from Richard Strauss's final lieder, "Morgen!", which the composer himself recorded in 1919. The evocative lyrics were penned by John Henry Mackay.
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Lucas Bouk(They/them), mezzo-soprano
Markus Syperek, piano
English edition by John Bernhoff, 1925 Universal Edition:
Tomorrow!
Tomorrow's sun will rise in glory beaming,
And in the pathway that my foot shall wander,
We'll meet, forget the earth, and lost in dreaming,
Let heav'n unite a love that earth no more shall sunder...
And towards that shore, its billows softly flowing,
Our hands entwined, our footsteps slowly wending,
Gaze in each other's eyes in love's soft splendour glowing,
Mute with tears of joy and bliss ne'er ending…
Because the Sky is Blue (2020, 4:00, Color, Sound, Cyanotype, 35mm>Digital)
Muybridge captured the galloping horse one hundred forty years ago in a brief 12 frames. The duration of today's social media video clips is similar to Muybridge's brevity. Wenhua tries to reimagine what subject Muybridge would capture today. All source footage is from Wenhua's social media feed. He used the cyanotype method to reprint the individual frames to create the final short videos.
Walking Cycle (2016, 8:00, Color, Sound, SD>HD digital)
Walking Cycle is an abstract audiovisual piece that celebrates the line, its quality, and its movements.
Sound by Wang Changcun
Artist Residency
Signal Culture, Owego, NY
Gutai (2019-20, 7:31, Color, Sound, 16mm>Digital)
Gu-Tai (2018 - ) Wenhua took on a radical use of single frame image capture and examines his strange and familiar hometown in China, which he has been away from for nearly two decades. The film title comes from postwar Japanese avant garde artist group Gu-Tai. The kanji ( Chinese) used to write 'gu' means tool, measure, or a way of doing something, while 'tai' means body. The film is the result of intense looking and seeing what might not be there.
Mother (excerpt, 4:46, Color, Sound, 16mm>Digital)
Mother is an excerpt taken from a full-length composition exploring the themes of displacement and migration.
Sound by Shanghai based artist Xu Cheng
monosabishii (物寂) (2023, 4:00, Color, Sound, 16mm>Digital)
A visual poem was composed, when no one is at home.
Descending a Staircase x3 (2012, 10:00, Color, Sound/Silent, 35mm>Digital)
This work is a homage to Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. Created 100 years after the original piece, it is a meditation on the mechanical nature of cinema/ Moving Images, through its dynamic movement and fragmentation. The footage was captured at an apartment building in Beijing, China.
Steadicam by Patrick Selvage
Girl by Jiang Shu
Part 3: Sound by Dajuin Yao
About the Artist:
Wenhua Shi pursues a poetic approach to moving image making, and investigates conceptual depth in film, video, interactive installations and sound sculptures. His work has been presented at museums, galleries, and film festivals, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, European Media Art Festival, Athens Film and Video Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, West Bund 2013: a Biennale of Architecture and Contemporary art, Shanghai, Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism, and the Arsenale of Venice in Italy. He has received awards including the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and Juror’s Awards from the Black Maria Film and Video Festival. He is the founder and one of curators of RPM Fest.
About the Curator
Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu (b. 1982, Taiwan) is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker and writer whose work is grounded in literature and the conceptual avant-garde. Cherlyn’s media-based works have been shown internationally at venues and festivals including Edinburgh International Film Festival, Helsinki Festival, Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris, 25 FPS Festival (Zagreb), Antimatter [Media Art] (Victoria, BC), Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, Crossroads Film Festival at SFMoMA, among others. She is a lecturer at CalArts, where she has taught: “Aesthetic Inquiries - Contemporary Asia," "Gender and Sexuality in Asian Cinema – A Preliminary Study of Urban Phenomenon and Postmodern Cinema" and "History of Experimental Film." She is the curator of the film series Threshold to Threshold at Automata (LA), co-curator of Move Screen, Process Cinema, the founder of Experimentalist Media Collective, and the editor of B-Journal.