EXHIBITION PREVIEW
seen only, heard only through someone else’s description engages filmmakers and artists whose interdisciplinary practices draw from performance, film, photography, research, and writing. The program’s title stems from Audience Distant Relative (1977) by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982)—a poem, performance, and mail art piece that uses language to unravel dynamics of distance, visibility, hearing, and communication.
The program is organized in two sessions of experimental short films by women and nonbinary artists from the 1970s through the 2010s. Sometimes We Stand Alone explores personal identity and history through experimental processes and found footage. Drawing Energy is concerned with communities of women and their collective power to document and deeply engage with artistic, cultural, or familial lineages. The collected works interweave varied perspectives to probe formal tensions between the moving image and still photography. Featured filmmakers include Brenda Contreras, sair goetz, Onyeka Igwe, Lily Jue Sheng, Lucy Kerr, Deborah Stratman, Tina Takemoto, and Paige Taul, among others.
seen only, heard only through someone else’s description is guest curated by Gina Basso in conjunction with Image Gardeners, an exhibition of modern and contemporary photography from the McEvoy Family Collection. The exhibition identifies emergent visions of the self and collective selves through portrait photography.
Sometimes We Stand Alone screens daily from January 14 through March 4, 2022. Drawing Energy debuts March 5 and runs through April 30, 2022.
PROGRAM RUNNING ORDER
Sometimes We Stand Alone
January 14 – March 4, 2022
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Permutations, 1976
Marie Losier
Lunch Break on the Xerox Machine, 2003
Lucy Kerr
Sensible Ecstasy, 2018
Stephanie Barber
Oh My Homeland, 2019
Paige Taul
10:28,30, 2019
Brenda Contreras
La Lucha Sigue: Marichuy in Mexico City, 2018
Tina Takemoto
Wayward Emulsions, 2018
Everlane Moraes
Aurora, 2019
Drawing Energy
March 5 – April 30, 2022
Ilene Segalove
Mom in Famous Women, 1978
sair goetz
me and my army, 2017
Deborah Stratman
Vever (For Barbara), 2019
Onyeka Igwe
Her Name in My Mouth, 2017
Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich
Spit on the Broom, 2019
Lily Jue Sheng and Rita Ferrando
Ikebana, 2020
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Gina Basso is a San Francisco-based independent film programmer and visual artist. She has organized programs for revered San Francisco movie houses including The Roxie Theater, The Castro Theater, and Alamo Drafthouse. Additionally, she has curated programs for Design Within Reach, San Francisco, CA; Hunter’s Point Shipyard, San Francisco, CA; and the Northwest Film Forum, Seattle, WA and is the former film curator for San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In her creative practice, she uses video to explore transitional or altered states of being. Through moving collage, handmade animation, and sound she draws on a rich tradition of experimentation with various forms, materials, and processes, combining found and original footage to harness the energy of poetic montage. Her video work has been presented in the Bay Area at San Francisco’s Cinematheque’s Crossroads Festival, Artist Television Access, San Francisco, the Roxie Theater, HAXAN Film Festival, Antimatter Experimental Film Festival, Vancouver, BC, and online via publicrecords.nyc. She was the 2017 recipient of a Curatorial Travel Grant for film research awarded by the French American Cultural Society and San Francisco French Consulate.
seen only, heard only through someone else’s description is guest curated by Gina Basso. The program was commissioned on the occasion of the exhibition Image Gardeners at McEvoy Arts.