A POTENTIALITY (2020, digital, 16mm film, 16 minutes)
Winner of the Alice Guy Prize Special Mention at FID Marseille 2020. Notes from the Jury: A film which meticulously reflects upon the materiality of time following specific histories. While focusing on details, the images prevent us from accessing the whole. This gesture reflects the subject where voice has been violently stripped from the people, left silenced. The Special Mention for Prix Alice Guy goes to “A POTENTIALITY” by Dana Berman Duff.
A POTENTIALITY is a continuation of my interest in using film to shoot printed material, as in the Catalogue series. I'm especially interested in the equivalence of the film grain to the halftone print dot at the base level of the construction of reproduced image and language.
This piece is built on a graphic project by Susan Silton in which she reprinted five pages of the New York Times from the 1930s. Her project has a disturbing resemblance to present day newspaper reports.
Opera "The Emperor of Atlantis" composed in 1944 by Viktor Ulmann, libretto by Peter Kien.
2-MINUTE TRAILER
WORK SAMPLES 2021
Video: Clips from The Gringas (2013, 59:45 minutes, Mexico/USA, HD digital video)
A highly subjective record from the filmmaker's friendship with the family of a teenage American-Mexican girl growing up in rural Mexico set around the planning of her quinceañera and its aftermath.
Image: Installation shot from 2019 What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes, Chicago. 2-Channel video with sound, plus sculptures. Collaboration with Sabina Ott (1955-2018), who died during the planning of the exhibition.
Video: 3-minute simulation of 2019 installation of What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes . Simulation showing the action across two screens with viewer at center. Sound: A.J.McClenon; haiku: Stephanie Barber
Proposal mockup: Sabina in the Afterworld, Oratorio with animated projections, live chorus, and cello quartet.
The World Is Round: Re-membering Sabina ( 2019) and The World Is Round: Sabina Goes ( 2021)
6-channel videos on monitors and goose-neck stands. Audio compositions by Karen Finley, A.J. McClenon, John Cage (“Living Room Music” 1940; words from Gertrude Stein’s The World Is Round, performed by Gert Sorensen and Ars Nova Copenhagen). Viewers are able to control the volume of individual monitors creating their own sound mix.
Video: 1-minute excerpt of Mishap (2013) 3-channel video installation
Video: Catalogue Vol.3, (2017, 02:43). Third in a series of thirteen films on the topic of the mercantile catalogue. "Merchandise is always a pleasure." — Gertrude Stein
Image: Still from Catalogue Vol.6 (2016, 11:30, B&W, sound, 16mm film on digital scan) Shot using the Restoration Hardware “Interiors” catalogue while recording audio from a horror movie. The film clips are organized as a tour through the rooms of a house: foyer, living room, dining room, kitchen, study, bath, ending at the bedroom.
Video 01:30: Catalogue Volume 10, (2017, Digital video and 16mm film, color and B&W, sound, 05:40). Text from George Perec's "Things: a Novel of the Sixties"
Video still from Birdsong Room (2022). Installation with computer generated animation, sound, live birds.