All lectures are held on Fridays at 5:00pm in the SFAI Lecture Hall on the 800 Chestnut Street campus and are free and open to the public (unless otherwise noted).
Friday, November 13 — 5:00pm
Charles Atlas
“Video In and As Performance”
Since the mid-1970s, Charles Atlas has been working as a film and video artist in various mediums: multichannel video installations, feature-length documentaries, video artworks for television, live electronic performances, and pioneering media/dance works. He has collaborated with such choreographers/dancers as Michael Clark, Merce Cunningham, and Douglas Dunn, and with such performers as Marina Abramović, Leigh Bowery, and Diamanda Galás. In 2006, a selection of film and video works was screened in a retrospective at the Tate Modern in London. In 2009, he collaborated with Mika Tajima/New Humans and Judith Butler on Today Is Not a Rehearsal at SFMOMA. Venues at which his work has been exhibited include the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA in New York City; and the Musée National d’Art Moderne collection at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Atlas has received three Bessie Awards and was the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Art’s biennial John Cage Award in 2006.
Friday, November 20 — 5:00pm
Yvonne Rainer
“One Day When I Was Growing Up in the 60s . . . ”
Distinguished Professor in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UC Irvine, Yvonne Rainer began her career in the arts, in the 50s, as a dancer and choreographer. In the early 70s, after nearly twenty years working in modern dance, she turned her attentions to filmmaking. Over the subsequent twenty-five years, she made seven experimental feature films, including Lives of Performers (1972), Privilege (1990) (see below), and MURDER and murder (1996). Encouraged by a commission from the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation, she returned to choreography in 2000 for the White Oak Dance Project. Recent work includes choreography on AG Indexical, with a little help from H.M. (a revision of Balanchine’s Agon), on RoS Indexical (a revision of Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring), and on Spiraling Down (a meditation on soccer, aging, and war), as well as a video installation for a traveling solo exhibition comprising dance and texts that touch on art and politics in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Rainer published a memoir, Feelings Are Facts: A Life, in 2006.
Saturday and Sunday, November 21 and 22 — 7:30pm
Film Screenings: Journeys from Berlin/1971 (Nov. 21) and Privilege (Nov. 22)
Yvonne Rainer (director), in person
Conveying with wit and inventiveness the personal implications of sociopolitical issues, the films of Yvonne Rainer (who will be present at both screenings) interweave narrative and non-narrative elements, blur the line between fact and fiction, deconstruct cinematic conventions, and expand upon the immediacy, corporeality, and emotional complexity of her dance and performance work. Journeys from Berlin/1971 (1980) is a groundbreaking exploration, both personal and political, of psychiatry, feminism, terrorism, and power. Privilege (1990) takes on the rarely explored subject of menopause and constructs a witty, complex critique of empowerment and class by delving into issues of age, sexuality, and race. Both films are presented in conjunction with San Francisco Cinematheque (www.sfcinematheque.org). Admission: general public—$10.00; San Francisco Cinematheque members—$5.00; SFAI students, faculty, and staff—free.
Dance Studies Working Group 