All That is Solid Melts into Data
Screening: Thursday March 17 & Friday March 18, 8pm
Thursday’s screening will be followed with a panel discussion and Q&A with filmmaker, Ryan S Jeffery and LACA archivist Clarice De Veyra moderated by Travis Diehl.
The 54 minute film traces the evolution of the structures that make-up “the cloud,” the physical repositories for the exponentially growing amount of human activity and communication taking form as digital data. Equal parts building and machine, a library and a public utility, data centers are the unwitting monuments of knowledge production to the digital turn. While our “smart tools” and devices for communication become increasingly smaller, thinner, and sleeker, the physical infrastructure they require grows larger, effecting and shaping the physical landscape and natural resources. This film looks to the materiality of networked technologies in order to elucidate their social, environmental, and economic impact, and call into question the structures of power that have developed out of the technologies of global computation.
The film will be proceeded by a screening of The Information Machine, a 10 minute short animated film produced by the office's of Charles & Ray Eames, for IBM's pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair.
“The Information Machine is ultimately the story of our continual need to process and communicate larger and more complex amounts of data, and how we learn to manipulate abstractions with increasing sophistication and skill."
- Ray & Charles Eames
About the filmmakers:
Ryan S Jeffery (b. 1978) is an American filmmaker living in Los Angels, California. He received a BFA from Lewis & Clark College, an MFA from the Film and Video program at the California Institute of the Arts, and additionally studied at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Jeffery’s work focuses on how political, cultural and economic structures are imprinted in the physical landscape. Jeffery has taught Film & Video in the department of Transmedia at Syracuse University, the New Genres Program at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and the department of Photography at California State University, Long Beach. His films have shown in venues such as the European Media Arts Festival in Osnäbruck (Germany) El Matadero Center for Contemporary Art in Madrid (Spain)The Museum of Modern Art in Minsk (Belarus) Festival Nouveau Cinema, Montreal (Canada) NGBK Berlin, The Museum für Fotografie in Berlin, FidMarseille (France) La Gaîté Lyrique (France) and the Kiev Biennial (Ukraine). http://www.ryansjeffery.com
Boaz Levin (b. 1989) is an artist, writer and occasional curator. He studied fine arts at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and has completed his Meisterschüler studies under Hito Steyerl at the Universität der Künste, Berlin. He currently holds a position as a research associate at the UDK, Berlin, where, together with Hito Steyerl, Maximillian Schmoetzer and Vera Tollman, he runs the Research Center for Proxy Politics (RCPP). Levin has presented his work at the Transmediale (Berlin), CCA (Tel-Aviv), Former West (HKW, Berlin) and Recontres Internationales (GAÎTÉ LYRIQUE, Paris. HKW, Berlin). Recently, he has co-edited, together with Vera Tollman Filipo Spreafico and Oliver Leron Schultz, the online video-vortex Hybrid reader. He is also the co-founder, together with Daniel Herleth and Adam Kaplan, of Trois Chaînes press where they have published "It’s Twilight Again”. http://boazlevin.net
About the panelists
Clarice De Veyra is an archivist living and working in Los Angeles. She received a BA in Gender Studies and Art History as well as a Master's in Library and Information Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her interests lie in art and non-traditional collections. She has done archival work for ONE Archives, the Tom of Finland Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute. Currently she is the archivist at The Colburn School of Music and Performing Arts, and the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA). She helps run the Art Libraries Society of Northern America Southern California Chapter and the Los Angeles Archivists Collective.
Travis Diehl lives in Los Angeles. He holds an MFA in Writing and Photo/Media from the California Institute of the Arts. His videos and prints have been exhibited at ITP Space, Jackson; Curtat Tunnel, Lausanne; Anthony Greaney, Boston; Tif’s Desk, Los Angeles; Human Resources, Los Angeles; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. His writing appears in P&Co., Objektiv, Art Papers, X-TRA, CARLA, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Brooklyn Rail, East of Borneo, Even, Salon, Artforum, and Frieze. He is a 2013 recipient of the Creative Capital / Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. He is presently Critic in Residence at Otis College of Art and Design. He serves on the editorial board of X-TRA Contemporary Arts Quarterly. He edits the artist-run arts journal Prism of Reality, founded in 2012.
Trailer:
https://vimeo.com/123780553
