Gene Siskel Film Center
164 N State St
312.846.2600
This event has passed.
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- When
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Thursday Sep 23, 2010 (6pm)
- Where
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- Price
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$10
- Links
“Where so many found-footage assemblers settle for easy irony or literal-minded punchlines, local video artist Kent Lambert's work looms ominously. Security Anthem (2003) and Hymn of Reckoning (2006) — both of which screen tonight — appropriate clips of John "Let the Eagle Soar" Ashcroft and overlay dialogue from 24 onto Nintendo graphics, respectively. The mashed-up results can be funny; but Lambert's pointed political undercurrents usually feel more attuned to pioneers like Dara Birnbaum and Brue Conner than millennial freelance hell-raising. Jesse McLean is a natural fit for a screening partner (see last year's like-minded Invisible Tracks, an excellent Iraq-via-Photoshop meditation). McLean screens her Bearing Witness trilogy along with a new premiere and a recent collaboration with Lambert.”
Stephen Gossett, Flavorpill
Haunting and hilarious by turns, the works of Chicago artists Kent Lambert and Jesse McLean remix the banal debris of television culture into striking meditations on our mediated public sphere. Lambert culls footage from Lost, his own home movies, and the vocal stylings of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to explore the vagaries of national security in the age of international terror. McLean considers the possibility for genuine connection within the blur of televised emotion in her Bearing Witness trilogy. This evening also features a brand new collaboration between the two and the North American premiere of McLean's tricky Magic For Beginners (2010), among others.
-Siskel Center
