The Force of Beauty, The Beauty of Force

The Force of Beauty, The Beauty of Force

2008 · 3 min

Based on a series of ads in 2008 on Телеканал звезда [the Star Channel], owned by the Russian Department of Defense. The ads seek to draw parallels between stereotypical feminine daily gestures of fashionable self-imaging and stereotypical activities of male soldiers. These ads are sequenced, then juxtaposed with “upskirt” footage of a famous Italian fashion model, downloaded from Youtube. By means of this juxtaposition and strategic interventions in speed and chronological orientation (backwards and forwards) two forms of gendered construction of the gaze are compared and contrasted. This work is a single channel version of part of an on-going series, called Equivalences, generally presented in the format of a site specific installation.

Directed by Keith Sanborn

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The Genius

The Genius · 1993

MovieComedyCrime

A ramshackle underground SF satire set and shot in the self-absorbed art world of lower Manhattan, written, produced, and directed by Joe Gibbons, who also plays one of the lead parts. Gibbons plays a mad scientist who's developed a technique for transferring personalities from one person's body to another; he becomes obsessed with an outlaw artist (played by performance artist Karen Finley) who destroys paintings in various galleries as a form of anarchist, anticapitalist protest.

Mirror

Joan of Arc and Dorothy of Kansas become one thanks to Hildegard von Bingen.

The Deadman

The Deadman · 1989

Made in collaboration with Keith Sanborn, The Deadman is based on a story by Bataille, charting "the adventures of a near-naked heroine who sets in motion a scabrous free-form orgy before returning to the house to die — a combination of elegance, raunchy defilement and barbaric splendor." — Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader.

Slow Death

Slow Death · 2023

A slow four-part film on death and the persistence of the dead. Where ignorant armies clash by night: the dolphin-torn and gong-tormented sea.

Kapital

Kapital · 1982

1982, 3.5 min, 16mm, anaglyph 3D

Negative Capability

Negative Capability · 2024

Negative Capability

An exploration of Keats’s proposition, that “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason…the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.” We live in an age of contradictions and uncertainties and no one was more adept at holding these contradictions together visually and with more finesse than Vincent Grenier to whose memory this film is dedicated, along with a certain amount of lunacy.

Fascination

Fascination · 1988

1980-88, 11 min, 16mm, silent. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. Separate digital soundtrack accompaniment.

Terrain

Terrain · 2023

A short essay on the triangular Square du Vert-Galant, one of the favorite repairs of the vanishing Paris of Guy Debord. Yet another slow film.

The Vision Machine

The Vision Machine · 1997

The Vision Machine

Here Ahwesh's heterogeneous textual approach comes to the fore, as she juxtaposes narrative, faux documentary, comedic and "serious" footage, and merges film, video, and Pixelvision. Suggestions and meanings accumulate: austere, theoretical text is interrupted by shots of women relating bawdy (sexist) jokes; classic R&B music plays while women stomp on records and pour alcohol on the floor. The Vision Machine is a fragmented inquiry into issues of gender, language and representation.

One Minute for Jonas on the Day of His Occultation

One Minute for Jonas on the Day of His Occultation · 2019

One Minute for Jonas on the Day of His Occultation

2019, 1 min, digital

The Artwork in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility by Walter Benjamin as told to Keith Sanborn

The Artwork in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility by Walter Benjamin as told to Keith Sanborn · 1996

The Artwork in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility by Walter Benjamin as told to Keith Sanborn

An attempt to problematize ownership and authorship in the age of digital reproduction. Inspired by the Walter Benjamin essay of the same name and the activities of the Situationists.

Man with a Movie Camera (Blonde; He Appears to Be Young)

Man with a Movie Camera (Blonde; He Appears to Be Young) · 1982

Man with a Movie Camera (Blonde; He Appears to Be Young)

"A didactic treatment of the Reagan assassination event /coverage as spectacle. Nearly anyone in the world who turned on a television that day, or with regularity in the following six months, has had the images of the event burnt into his or her consciousness at the level of myth. Like language itself, these images have entered consciousness at a depth and with such universality that they seem for the present to be inaccessible to analysis. These are 'images that understand us.' The film is an attempt to display something of the institutional quality of the event/experience as it exists in us: as the control of images and the images of control. An anti-Report ." - K.S.

Joan's Studio

Joan's Studio · 2024

An exploration of Joan Jonas’s studio in Nova Scotia in August 2019, by night with torch, but no spear. Special thanks to Peggy Ahwesh for pelican lighting effects.

A Public Appearance and a Statement

A Public Appearance and a Statement · 1988

A Public Appearance and a Statement

In one incredibly long take we see the arrival and disappearance of John Kennedy's body as it is delivered from Dallas aboard Air Force One.

Something is Seen But One Doesn't Know What

Something is Seen But One Doesn't Know What · 1986

Something is Seen But One Doesn't Know What

A film by Keith Sanborn

The Gift

The Gift · 1991

An experimental film essay on architectural excess, with its aim not functional shelter but conspicuous destruction of wealth

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