From: Thomas Beard (email suppressed)
Date: Thu May 14 2009 - 06:18:56 PDT
Light Industry
220 36th Street, 5th Floor
Brooklyn, New York
http://www.lightindustry.org
Films by Kevin Jerome Everson
Monday, May 18, 2009 at 7:30pm
Grounded in historical research and a strong sense of place, Kevin Jerome
Eversonıs films and videos combine documentary and scripted elements with a
sparse, rugged formalism. His ongoing subject matter is the lives of African
Americans and other people of African descent, often working class, but he
eschews standard realism in favor of strategies that abstract everyday
actions and statements into theatrical gestures: archival footage is
re-edited or re-staged, real people perform fictional scenarios based on
their own lives, historical observations intermesh with contemporary
narratives. His films suggest the relentlessness of everyday lifealong with
its beautybut also present oblique metaphors for art-making.
Many of his works return to Mansfield, Ohio, where Everson was born and
raised. The community's past is examined in Company Line, in which city
employee Curley Lanier explains why he and his family left Alabama in the
late 1950s to migrate North: ³To do betterI guess.² The remarks betray a
sense of deep ambivalence about the promises of upward mobility in America
that runs through this collection of recent projects; fifty years later, the
people of Mansfield still arenıt sure what ³better² means.
Company Line, 2009, 30 mins
Lead, 2009, 3 mins
North, 2007, 2 mins
Second and Lee, 2008, 3 mins
Fifeville, 2005, 14 mins
Ike, 2008, 3 mins
Undefeated, 2008, 2 mins
The Reverend E. Randall T. Osborn, First Cousin, 2007, 3 mins
Home, 2008, 2 mins
The Wilbur, 2008, 2 mins
Two-Week Vacation, 2005, 1 min
Honorable Mention, 2009, 2 mins
among others.
Followed by a conversation with Everson and Michael Gillespie.
Born in 1965, Everson now lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Eversonıs artwork and films has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art
in New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cleveland Museum of
Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles;
Whitechapel Gallery in London; the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art;
Wurttenbergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany; the Spaces Gallery in
Cleveland; the American Academy of Rome in Italy, the Sundance Film
Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Cinematexas, Ann Arbor Film
Festival, New York Underground Film Festival, and many other venues
worldwide. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a NEA Fellowship,
two NEH Fellowships, two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships, an American Academy
Rome Prize, residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell Colony and numerous
university fellowships.
Tickets - $7, available at door.
About Light Industry
Light Industry is a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York.
Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project has begun
as a series of events at Industry City in Sunset Park, each organized by a
different artist, critic, or curator. Conceptually, Light Industry draws
equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in New
York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid film
exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and
lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the presentation of
time-based media and foster an ongoing dialogue amongst a wide range of
artists and audiences within the city.
About Industry City
Industry City, an industrial complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is home to a
cross-section of manufacturing, warehousing and light industry. As part of a
regeneration program intended to diversify the use of its 6 million square
feet of space to better reflect 21st century production, Industry City now
includes workspace for artists. In addition to offering studios at
competitive rates, Industry City also provides a limited number of low-cost
studios for artists in need of reasonably priced space. This program was
conceived in response to the lack of affordable workspace for artists in New
York City and aims to establish a new paradigm for industrial
redevelopment--one that does not displace artists, workers, local residents
or industry but instead builds a sustainable community in a context that
integrates cultural and industrial production. For more information:
http://www.industrycityartproject.org
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.