SF Camerawork | Past Exhibitions: Fall 2007

Fall 2007 Exhibitions
6 September - 17 November 2007
Opening Reception: Thursday 6 September, 5 - 8 pm

SF Camerawork’s galleries become a global gathering place,
a research lab, and an ongoing experiment in visual
communication with this interactive exhibit of work
sourced from and inspired by the Internet.

6 SEPTEMBER — 17 NOVEMBER
Jeanne C. Finley & John Muse
Flat Land, 2007, 4-channel video installation

Jeanne C. Finley and John Muse's Flat Land
explores the visual culture of men and women at war by
looking at publicly available images of "Flat Daddies" (life-size
cut-outs of soldiers that are carried through daily activities by
families and friends back home), and "Flat Stanleys" (small cut-outs
of a cartoon boy, sent by American school children on adventures
around the world, sometimes to war zones). While a government
is empowered to send men and women overseas, families
and friends create their own compensatory circuit of deployment.
Both the Stanleys and the Daddies enact this circuit though in
different ways. The government sends the soldier, and then families
create a photographic proxy, a "Flat Daddy," to mark his absence.
Photographs of the proxy with the family are sent to the soldier,
both confirming and denying his absence. On the other hand,
Flat Stanley, as a proxy family member, is sent overseas and
photographed with the soldier to share in his daily life, and
then he is returned home, completing his "tour of duty."

6 SEPTEMBER — 22 SEPTEMBER
Mary Magsamen & Stephan Hillerbrand
Lick, 2002, 1 minute 40 seconds

Mary Magsamen and Stephan Hillerbrand's Lick
consists of three elements: a video image of a male mouth
licking a female hand, the sounds of creatures screaming taken
from Internet web sites that advertise "Free Sound Effects,"
and the identifying title of each effect. This parody on horror
films playfully examines the confluence of technology
and interpersonal relationships.

6 SEPTEMBER — 22 SEPTEMBER
Lars Laumann
Morrissey Foretelling the Death of Diana, 2007, 16 minutes

Lars Laumann's Morrissey Foretelling the Death
of Diana is based on conspiracy theories posted online regarding
the 1997 death of Princess Diana. One site in particular,
www.dianamystery.com, posted by David Alice, links the
death of Britain's beloved princess to another British pop
culture hero: Morrissey, former lead singer for 80s post-punk
band The Smiths. Morrissey Foretelling the Death of Diana
merges Alice's theories and Laumann's research by dissecting
each song on The Smiths' 1986 album The Queen is Dead.
The ensuing narrative, by turns comical and chilling, bestows
an unnerving prescience to the famed singer's lyrics.

25 SEPTEMBER — 13 OCTOBER
Jenny Vogel
The Desert, 2002, 11 minutes 10 seconds

The footage in Jenny Vogel's The Desert is taken
from actual web cameras found on the Internet; the accompanying
text, written and read by Vogel in her native German, is fictional.
Her disembodied narrative voice recounts a personal but also
generic love story. The viewer is left to imagine the failed relationship
that is being recounted. Exploting the visual and narrative tropes of
cinema, Vogel presents a melancholic lamentation
on longing, distance, and communication.

An Attempt for a Documentary on the
Assassination of Dzorkhar D., 2002, 9 minutes 30 seconds

Vogel's An Attempt for a Documentary on the
Assassination of Dzorkhar D. tracks the assassination of
Chechen secessionist leader Dzorkhar Dudayev by Russian missiles
that were guided by his cell phone. Taken from a news channel,
seen over the Internet, the images present an unchangeable reality.
As an observer of history, Vogel finds herself in possession
of a "knowledge without participation" and asks: "Now that
we see most everything, do we understand more? Now that
we know most everything, do we perceive differently?"

16 OCTOBER — 27 OCTOBER
Ursula Biemann
Writing Desire, 2000, 25 minutes

Ursula Biemann's Writing Desire is a video essay on the
new dream screen of the Internet, how it impacts the global
circulation of women's bodies from the third world to the first world.
Under-age Philippine 'pen pals' and post-Soviet mail-order brides
have been part of the transnational exchange of sex in the post-colonial
and post-Cold War marketplace of desire well before the dawning of
the digital age, through the Internet has undoubtedly accelerated
these transactions. Writing Desire provides viewers with a thoughtful
meditation on the obvious political, economic, and gender
inequalities of these exchanges by simulating the gaze of the
Internet shopper looking for the imagined docile,
traditional, pre-feminist, but Web-savvy mate.

30 OCTOBER — 17 NOVEMBER
Matthew Hughes Boyko
Matthew Looking For Friends, 2006, 2 minutes 47 seconds

Matthew Hughes Boyko's Matthew Looking for Friends
finds the artist giving a very broad explanation of what he is into
and what he is looking for in people while wearing a very tight, wet,
pink see-through shirt. His plea to meet people online, performed
in fits and starts, perfectly captures the sometimes awkward
desperation of first encounters.

30 OCTOBER — 17 NOVEMBER
Matt Wolf
Smalltown Boys, 2003, 21 minutes

The historical relationship between AIDS activist
and artist David Wojnarowicz and Sarah Rosenberg, a
fictional teenage lesbian from New York's Upper West Side are
imagined in Matt Wolf's experimental documentary Smalltown Boys.
The year is 1994 and as Sarah fights to save the televsion show
My So-Called Life from cancellation via email petitioning, David has
died amid the fury of culture wars and an aggressive AIDS activist
movement. These overlapping biographies consider generational
politics and the relevance of activism in contemporary America.

Curatorial Statement
There is always a machine between us is a
generative exhibition that provides access to an evolving
global line-up of artists, filmmakers, writers, curators, and
other cultural producers, many of whose work and research
draws from online source material. The exhibition transforms
the gallery into an interactive socially engaged space;
experimenting with expanded notions of how the traditional
institutional 'machine' function and can act as a connective tissue
between audience, artists, and ideas. Communication and its
contemporary conduits, mechanisms, and processes underscore
the exhibition conceptually -- taking a cue from online
communities and strategies of information flow like viral videos.
Reinterpreting the meaning of 'cultural outlet,' countless
virtual spaces are permeable and porous, often generated
by many and continuously growing. There is always a
machine between us follows in an attempt
to imbue the real space of the arts institutions
with the qualities of similar sites of
participation and engagement.

Organized by curators Kate Fowle, Karla Milosevich,
Chuck Mobley, and Dan Orendorff, the show is designed
to generate new material as it evolves. SF Camerawork will
continually post notices of upcoming artist projects and chat
opportunities taking place in the gallery on its website.
Visitors are encouraged to check the website frequently for
for updates and additions.

There is always a machine between us is supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation and Alexander Lloyd.

Opening in mid-October
23 October - 17 November 2007
Opening Reception: Thursday 1 November @ 5 pm

2007 James D. Phelan Art
Award in Photography

Presented in conjunction with

The James D. Phelan Art Award in Photography is a biennial award given in recognition of artistic achievements by California-born artists. Established by the Trust of James D. Phelan, former San Francisco Mayor, United States Senator and arts supporter, the annual competition in a variety of disciplines is sponsored by the San Francisco Foundation. SF Camerawork administers the photography award and displays selected works in its galleries.

This year's winners include:

Geoffrey Ellis
Ellis travels around the country, documenting forgotten and
neglected objects and signs in our everyday lives, sharing with
viewers the places they ignore or never see.
www.geoffreyellis.com

Apollonia Morrill
Morrill creates color site studies of places of transition and
historic sites in flux including a series focused on
Kalaupapa, a Hansen's disease (leprosy)
settlement in Hawaii.
http://sitespecificdocumentary.com

Walt Odets
Odets has chronicled everyday America in black and white
portraits and landscapes for 40 years.
www.waltodets.com/photo

This year’s winners were selected by jurors Daniell Cornell, Curator of American Art and Director of Contemporary Art Projects at the de Young Museum, and Lisa Dent, director of the Lisa Dent Gallery in San Francisco.
In addition, three Honorable Mentions were chosen: Rebecca Goldfarb, San Francisco; Kirk Thompson, Berkeley; and Sergio De La Torre, Oakland.

Past Exhibitions
View descriptions and selected photos from
exhibitions of the past few years here.

Admission:
(suggested donation)
$5 for general public
$2 for students and seniors
FREE for SFCW members
Open late First Thursday of each month
Free admission First Tuesday of each month