Automata presents
How Light Enters My Home
A Projection Series
(Free Events)
April 16-17, 2022 Gallery Viewing
April 23, 2022 Workshop Performance
In How Light Enters My Home, six Los Angeles-based artists present a series of works over the course of two weekends. The first weekend features a collection of projection/video installations by Erica Sheu (徐璐), Phoebe Hart, Gavati Wad, Nehal Vyas, and 莫茹杰 (Rujie Mo), while the second weekend focuses on a single live overhead projection/video workshop performance currently being devised by Brooke Harbaugh with Gavati Wad and Olivia Xing 邢淅璇. All pieces pair film/video with an element of liveness, merging pre-recorded work with the spontaneity of a moment.
Weekend 1 Program:
Gallery Viewing
Timed entry.
Limited Capacity: RSVP HERE
Saturday, April 16: 5PM-8PM
Sunday, April 17: 3PM-6PM
Where Will She Go?
by Phoebe Hart
In this single person viewing experience, the guest enters a shrouded space to find a miniature ceramic theater. Center stage is a pepper’s ghost (a character illuminated onto a small piece of glass) of a stop-motion puppet moving through space. The main character’s performance animates through a magic lantern operated by the viewer.
Who's Coming For Dinner?
by Phoebe Hart
Inspired by the artist’s eclectic dinner parties growing up, this miniature installation includes a dinner table, hand-crafted ceramic food, and papier mache arms protruding out of a wall, ready to eat. Opposite the table is a magic lantern operated by the viewer, projecting a series of faces above the arms and creating the illusion that you are guessing who might come to your dinner table!
until there is no more sound from afar
by Erica Sheu (徐璐)
"When we were hiding from the bomb at night, we could only light our way with incense." These are words from the artist's father on growing up in Kinmen during the Taiwan Strait Crisis (1958-1979). Through one physically extended loop of film, Sheu projects a slowed-down image of burning incense to reimagine and meditate on her father's childhood. An accompanying collage of texts and images scatter memories of the island around a 16mm projector, turning this installation into a somber monument built to understand her father.
Special Thanks: Janie Geiser, Brooke Harbaugh, everyone in the 'How Light Enters My Home" team.
Superpower 2024
by Gavati Wad and Nehal Vyas
Superpower 2024 is an installation that responds to the absurd ideas and language used by political figures in India to manufacture a glorious legacy based on fiction and non-truths. It uses the format of a TV infomercial show to sell quick-fix products for any inappropriate dissenting thoughts that one may have. On the other hand, materials in the installation counter the narrative seen on television.
Special Thanks: Rhea Iyer, Alexia de Montalembert, Riley Olson
I Sliced a Frame of the Time
by 莫茹杰 (Rujie Mo)
Departing from her individual experience, the artist rethinks "photography" in terms of how it should exist and be communicated to the eye. In the constant interaction of light and time, “photography,” per se, has been made present through the primitive and instinctive nature of human eyes – viewing.
Special thanks to Siyan Ji, Zengyi Zhao, Shiqin Ban, Meihui Wu, Leo Wang
Weekend 1 timed entry to view all installations.
Limited Capacity: RSVP HERE for WEEKEND 1
KN95/N95 Masks required for all audience members, regardless of vaccination status.
Weekend 2 Program:
Workshop Performance
Saturday, April 23: 2PM, 3:30PM, 5PM
"Miss You, Desert Rat": A Workshop Performance
by Brooke Harbaugh with Gavati Wad and Olivia Xing 邢淅璇
Miss You, Desert Rat is a love letter to a relationship that warps over time, changing from the fears of attachment, commitment, and intimacy and eventually leading towards a journey of selective isolation. These two lovers’ stories are laid out with shadow puppetry and object performance using two overhead projectors and one video projector. In this workshop presentation, the artist invites the audience to view the devising process and to mingle afterwards to share their observations and questions...and to play with a puppet or two. Duration: 30 minutes.
A note on process: Having dove into recycling bins, picked over the CalArts main lawns, and scavenged through her closet, Brooke repurposes discarded paper, used cardboard, gel samples, Eucalyptus bark, California pepper tree buds, fresnel lenses, an old slip, and a ping pong paddle as props for shadow play. She uses iPhone footage for all pre-recorded content. The artist turns to locally sourced and widely available materials to explore more affordable, minimally wasteful production and to play with what is naturally found around us.
“Miss You, Desert Rat” Special Thanks: Janie Geiser, Charlotte Pryce, Ernest Marrero, Rachel Scandling, Travis Preston, Patrick Smith, Kathryn Dewall, Tim Tsang, Chris Swetcky, Jeffrey Teeters, Yara Yousef, Natalie Ferguson, Lucas Brahme, Dallas Small, Pam Harbaugh, and John Harbaugh.
Seating is limited.
Please RSVP HERE for WEEKEND 2.
Masks required for all audience members, regardless of vaccination status.
This series is supported by California Institute of the Arts School of Theater
and the California Institute of the Arts Interdisciplinary Project Grant.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Phoebe Hart is an animator, filmmaker, and fabricator based in Los Angeles. She creates fantastical worlds with bold colors, often to tell a true story through a surreal lens. Her work is multi-media but often returns to stop-motion animation, building miniature sets and puppets and animating them. Her last short film JamieSonShine, an experimental documentary about her relationship to her brother who lives with schizophrenia, was selected for Slamdance, San Diego Underground Film Festival and won Director’s Choice at the Thomas Edison Film Festival. Phoebe is currently working on a stop-motion short film that is about relationships, jealousy, and sexual tension told through insect and animal puppets set in an isolated desert diner. She is an MFA candidate in Experimental Animation at CalArts. www.phoebejanehart.com
Erica Sheu (徐璐) works with short films, expanded cinema and installation based on celluloid film. Her interests include memory and the quotidian, abstract emotion/expression, isolation/belonging, and Taiwanese identity politics. Her work has been shown at NYFF Currents, TIFF Wavelengths, IFFR, (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periferico, EXiS, among other film festivals and venues. Sheu is currently an MFA candidate in Film/Video at CalArts. Sheulu.co; @sheu.lu.
Nehal Vyas is a filmmaker and video artist from India, currently based in Los Angeles. Her work explores the idea of national identity through memory, personal history and inheritance. She is currently a Film/Video MFA candidate at California Institute of the Arts.
Gavati Wad is an artist from Pune, India. She is interested in questions of identity in contexts such as gender, the domestic environment and the nation-state. She primarily works with performance and self-portraiture on 16mm film, responding to tropes and standards present in commercial media practices, including those of the photo studio, television broadcasting, and political propaganda. Gavati is currently based in Los Angeles, California where she is pursuing her MFA in Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts.
Together, Nehal and Gavati run the Artists In Revolution Collective, focused on developing a nuanced understanding of socio-political conditions across the globe through screenings and discussions in collaboration with fellow artists and filmmakers.
莫茹杰 (Rujie Mo) works primarily in photography. Her methodology uses sentimental expression based on nature and life. Her photography always scavenges for the dimensional coincidence among her subject matters, usually taken from nature or city life. This coincidence could be a subjective connection or an objective similarity - a sensitivity towards colors and shapes, maximized by the texture of microcosm and shared through a “visual field” with the audience. Through her camera, vision acts in a reflective fashion and intuition has a universal structure. Mo is a BFA candidate in Photography & Media at CalArts.
Olivia Xing 邢淅璇 is an interdisciplinary artist who acts, writes, puppeteers, and does stand-up comedy. Multilingualism, voyage, and nostalgia are constant themes in her work, which she began exploring while getting her B.A. in Comparative Literature and French from Bryn Mawr College. In February 2020, during the pandemic, she co-founded How Bang! Club 好棒俱乐部 , a virtual collective of Chinese artists. Using the elements of fantasy and humor, she strives to confront social issues, resist censorship, and understand their history and the history of others. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Acting at California Institute of the Arts.
Brooke Harbaugh is a writer/producer/director for theater and film. She is currently in the Automata Internship Program and is the curator/producer for How Light Enters My Home: A Projection Series. Her recent original work includes abstract filmmaking, narrative screenwriting, and object/puppetry performance. Brooke frequently uses diegetic or impressionistic sound design rather than dialogue to narrate her stories. Currently, her work includes navigating loss, feeling stuck, examining loneliness, and satirizing excess. Her short The Space Between screened at San Diego Underground Film Festival in 2021. Brooke is an MFA candidate in the Creative Producing program at California Institute of the Arts.
Projection Series Special Thanks: Janie Geiser, Susan Simpson, Tim Tsang, Rachel Scandling, Amanda Shank, Travis Preston, CalArts School of Theater, CalArts Office of the Provost, CalArts School of Film/Video, CalArts School of Art.
Free.
Capacity is limited.
Masks required for all audience members, regardless of vaccination status.
PARKING
On Yale Street west of W College Street is inexpensive 4-hour metered parking as well as some free street parking.
There is a $5 Public Parking lot on W College St. between N Hill and N Broadway, by the Shell gas station.
Bamboo Plaza Parking Garage on Bernard Street between N Hill and N Broadway offers off-street parking for $8 /day max.
Street parking is free on Sundays in Chinatown.
For any questions, please contact automataarts@gmail.com.
*For past events please click HERE