Another interesting thing to add to the calendar from Light Industry – I’ve never heard of them before but it sounds promising. From the press release:

Light Industry is a new venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project has begun as a series of events at Industry City in Sunset Park, each organized by a different artist, critic, or curator. Conceptually, Light Industry draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the

presentation of time-based media and foster an ongoing dialogue amongst a wide range of artists and audiences within the city.

Rites of Return

Presented by Liza Johnson, Julia Meltzer and David Thorne, and Michael Rakowitz

Sunday, February 15, 2009 at 7:30pm

220 36th Street, 5th Floor – NEW SPACE

Brooklyn, New York

“Whether it is the bones immured in the Syrian fortifications, a word whose form or use reveals a custom, a narrative written by the witness of some scene, ancient or modern, what do we really mean by document, if it is not a ‘track,’ as it were – the mark, perceptible to the senses, which some phenomenon, in itself inaccessible, has left behind?”

 – Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft

“Little by little, belief became polluted, like the air and the water. The motive energy, always resistant but manipulable, finally begins to run out. People notice at the same time that no one knows what it is.”

 – Michel de Certeau, “Believing and Making People Believe”

This evening features three artists whose work is linked by its situation on the ever-shifting border between documentary investigation, aesthetic contemplation, and critical play. Formed by travels in war-torn and storm-ravaged sites beyond the ken of CNN, the film, video, and visual art of Liza Johnson, Julia Meltzer and David Thorne, and Michael Rakowitz offers a compelling vision of contemporary history between dreamworld and catastrophe. The recent and in-progress work presented tonight retrieves real and imagined artifacts from these ruins, creating, in the process, gestural and memorial ruins of another kind. And they testify to the enduing power, in a secular age, of the rituals of “believing and making people believe,” a power that haunts and inspires the work of documentary art in the age of mechanical destruction.

more info after the jump….

Works to be presented in whole or in part include:

Searching Ruins on Broadway for Dead Bodies, Galveston, Albert E. Smith (USA, 1900)

It’s Not My Memory of It: Three Recollected Documents, Julia Meltzer and David Thorne (USA, 2003)

there is no time like the present, Julia Meltzer and David Thorne with Rami Farah, (Syria/USA, work-in-progress)

South of Ten, Liza Johnson (USA, 2007)

“One of the rare works of film or visual art made in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to look beyond the devastation of New Orleans, South of Ten is a small gem of a film that opens our eyes to the possibilities of other images, and other meanings, of this American tragedy. It catalogues a set of ordinary people and extraordinary actions – carrying a toilet, finding a

trombone, lifting a house – by Mississippi survivors of the flooding, capturing the charmed and terrible nature of survival. Without uttering a word, South of Ten asks: after all, what does it mean to act?” – Jonathan Kahana

Return, Michael Rakowitz (USA, 2006)

The invisible enemy should not exist, Michael Rakowitz (USA, 2007)

The invisible enemy should not exist unfolds as an intricate narrative about artifacts stolen from the National Museum of Iraq, Baghdad, in the aftermath of the US invasion of April 2003; the current status of their whereabouts; and the series of events surrounding the invasion, the plundering and related protagonists. The centerpiece of the project is an ongoing series of sculptures that represent an attempt to reconstruct the looted archeological artifacts. The exhibition’s name comes from the direct translation of Aj-ibur-shapu, the ancient Babylonian processional way that ran through the Ishtar Gate. Reconstructions of the artifacts are made from the packaging of Middle Eastern foodstuffs and local Arabic newspapers, moments of cultural visibility found in cities across the US. This exhibition extends a commitment to recuperate the 7,000+ objects whose whereabouts remain unknown.

Plus other works…

To be followed by a discussion with the artists and Jonathan Kahana.

Liza Johnson is an artist and filmmaker. Her work has been exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, and film festivals, including the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Walker Art Center, and the Centre Pompidou, as well as the New York, Berlin, and Rotterdam Film Festivals, among many others. She has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner Kunstlerprogramm and the

Sundance Institute, and has published a number of articles and interviews about art and film. Johnson is Associate Professor of Art at Williams College.

Jonathan Kahana is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at New York University, where he is co-director of the graduate Certificate program in Culture and Media. He is the author of Intelligence Work: The Politics of American Documentary (Columbia UP, 2008), and of articles on documentary and avant-garde film, cultural theory, and American film and television history, published or forthcoming in Afterimage, Camera Obscura, Film Quarterly, Millennium Film Journal, and Social Text. He is the editor of a forthcoming anthology on the history of documentary film, and of “What Now? Re-enactment in Contemporary Documentary Film, Video, and Performance,” a dossier of critical work forthcoming in Framework: The Journal of Film and Media.

Michael Rakowitz is a Chicago-based installation and public artist. His work has appeared in venues worldwide including P.S.1, MoMA, MassMOCA, Castello di Rivoli, Sharjah Biennial 8, Tirana Biennale, National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt, and Transmediale 05 in Berlin. He has had solo exhibitions at Lombard-Freid Projects in New York, Alberto Peola Arte

Contemporanea in Torino, and Stadtturmgalerie/Kunstraum Innsbruck. He is the recipient of a Sharjah Biennial Jury’s Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the Dena Foundation Award, and the Design 21 Grand Prix from UNESCO. Rakowitz is an Associate Professor in Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University.

Julia Meltzer and David Thorne produce videos, photographs, and installations. From 1999 to 2003, their projects centered on secrecy, history, and memory. Current works focus on the ways in which visions of the future are imagined, claimed, and realized or relinquished, specifically in

relation to faith and global politics. Recent projects have been exhibited at Steve Turner Contemporary (Los Angeles), the Walraff-Richartz Museum (Köln), Argos Center for Art and Media (Brussels), the Wexner Center (Columbus, Ohio), the 2008 Whitney Biennial, the 2006 California Biennial, Akbank Sanat Gallery (Istanbul), Apex Art (New York), and as part of the

Hayward Gallery’s (London) traveling exhibition program. Video work has been screened at Homeworks IV (Beirut), the International Film Festival Rotterdam, The New York Video Festival, the Margaret Mead Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival, among many others.

Tickets – $7, available at door.

Support for this event was provided, in part, by the Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds Program, which is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, a public agency.

About Light Industry

Light Industry is a new venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project has begun as a series of events at Industry City in Sunset Park, each organized by a different artist, critic, or curator. Conceptually, Light Industry draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the

presentation of time-based media and foster an ongoing dialogue amongst a wide range of artists and audiences within the city.

About Industry City

Industry City, an industrial complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is home to a cross-section of manufacturing, warehousing and light industry. As part of a regeneration program intended to diversify the use of its 6 million square feet of space to better reflect 21st century production, Industry City now includes workspace for artists. In addition to offering studios at competitive rates, Industry City also provides a limited number of low-cost studios for artists in financial need. This program was conceived in response to the lack of affordable workspace for artists in New York City and aims to establish a new paradigm for industrial redevelopment–one that

does not displace artists, workers, local residents or industry but instead builds a sustainable community in a context that integrates cultural and industrial production.

For more information, please visit http://www.industrycityartproject.org