Screening Room: 'certainty is becoming our nemesis'

Image Gallery

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Zach Blas Facial Weaponization Communiqué: Fag Face, 2012, digital video, color, sound, 8 min. Courtesy the artist — Zach Blas, Facial Weaponization Communiqué: Fag Face, 2012, digital video, color, sound, 8 min. Courtesy the artist

Nazli Dinçel Shape of a Surface, 2017, 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 9 min. Courtesy the artist — Nazli Dinçel, *Shape of a Surface*, 2017, 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 9 min. Courtesy the artist

Rajee Samarasinghe The Queen of Material, 2014, 16 mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 2 min. Courtesy the artist — Rajee Samarasinghe, *The Queen of Material*, 2014, 16 mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 2 min. Courtesy the artist

Karly Stark the problem is that everything is fleeting, 2015, digital video, black-and-white, sound, 1 min. Courtesy the artist — Karly Stark, *the problem is that everything is fleeting*, 2015, digital video, black-and-white, sound, 1 min. Courtesy the artist

Alice Anne Parker Riverbody, 1970, 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 6 min. Courtesy of the artist, Canyon Cinema and University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive — Alice Anne Parker, *Riverbody*, 1970, 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 6 min. Courtesy of the artist, Canyon Cinema and University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Rosa John Rote Linie, 2015/2016, digital video, color, silent, 3 min. Courtesy the artist — Rosa John, *Rote Linie*, 2015/2016, digital video, color, silent, 3 min. Courtesy the artist

Pere Ginard Métamorphoses du Papillon, 2013, digital video, color, sound, 5 min. Courtesy the artist — Pere Ginard, *Métamorphoses du Papillon*, 2013, digital video, color, sound, 5 min. Courtesy the artist

Julia Dogra-Brazell Between Dog and Wolf, 2018, digital video, color, sound, 8 min. Courtesy the artist — Julia Dogra-Brazell, *Between Dog and Wolf*, 2018, digital video, color, sound, 8 min. Courtesy the artist

Antoinette Zwirchmayr Jean Luc Nancy, 2018, 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 5 min. Courtesy the artist — Antoinette Zwirchmayr, *Jean Luc Nancy*, 2018, 16mm screened as digital video, color, sound, 5 min. Courtesy the artist

Late twentieth-century art as a platform for individual projection has inaugurated an aesthetic of ambiguity which permeates contemporary examples of cultural reflections. Informed by the resonances of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando in the exhibition and Issue #235 of Aperture magazine, certainty is becoming our nemesis presents works that trace the blurred boundaries of self-expression and how ambiguity of identity manifests as an emotional survival strategy.

From the continuous dissolve of bodies in Alice Anne Parker’s Riverbody (1970), to the biometric facial recognition of Zach Blas’ Facial Weaponization Communiqué: Fag Face and the lush visualization of intergenerational transgender identity in Zackary Drucker’s Unison (2013–2017), the program probes the rich, strange, and provocative canon of contemporary self-expression in film, foregrounding the expansiveness of the self in relation to recently mainstreamed discourses on the fluidity and malleability of gender and identity. New media technologies and conditions of time and place give shape to these artworks.

In the editor’s introduction to Issue #235, Swinton proposes “how the once essential search for a definable, and immutable, identity has become stifling to our sense of development and the possibilities of finding true fellowship with other complex, variously wired, hesitant sensitive beings,” as a framework for considering Orlando, the novel. certainty is becoming our nemesis, while flirting with notions of timelessness and perpetuity, extends this framework to refute notions of stability and instead offer radical gestures of intimacy.

The program runs daily in the Screening Room at the top of the hour.

FEATURED ARTISTS

Zach Blas
Nazli Dinçel
Julia Dogra-Brazell
Zackary Drucker
Pere Ginard

Rosa John
Alice Anne Parker
Rajee Samarasinghe
Karly Stark
Antoinette Zwirchmayr

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Steve Polta is a writer, archivist, historian, and Director of San Francisco Cinematheque where he has worked since 1998. He is the co-founder and current curator of Cinematheque’s CROSSROADS film festival, founded 2010, now presented annually at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2014 he was awarded a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for the study of contemporary and historic performance cinema which resulted in Perpetual Motion, an extensive series of live cinema performances presented in San Francisco in 2016. He holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Masters of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from San José State University. He is co-editor with Brett Kashmere of Craig Baldwin: Avant to Live! documenting the film and curatorial work of the Bay Area artist to be published in collaboration with Incite: A Journal of Experimental Media in 2020. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

ARTIST INTERVIEWS

Artist Interviews

Poking Around in Consciousness with Alice Anne Parker

Apr 29, 2020 Read More

Artist Interviews

Siren Landscapes and Alien Shores with Julia Dogra-Brazell

Apr 29, 2020 Read More

certainty is becoming our nemesis is guest curated by Steve Polta, director, San Francisco Cinematheque. Special thanks and recognition to Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, the Canyon Cinema Foundation, and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles for their support and inspiration for certainty is becoming our nemesis.