Cinematic Voices: Alexander Stewart

Event DateEvent Date

See individual times in event details.

Event LocationLocation

CalArts Campus

Bijou Theater

Share

Export event

 

CalArts, Bijou Theater

Biography

Alexander Stewart (1981, Mobile, Alabama) received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His short films have screened internationally, including at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Ottawa International Animation Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Image Forum in Japan. He is co-founder of the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, and curated the film and video screening series at Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center in Chicago from 2006 to 2013. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the experimental animation program at CalArts.

Program: Films by Alexander Stewart, 2005-2015


Here There - TRAILER from Bonobostudio on Vimeo.

Representing 10 years of work, this program demonstrates Stewart’s ongoing interests in abstract animation and experimental film. The films collectively reveal a fascination with gradual accumulation of marks and movements; with self-imposed challenges and limitations; and with the legacies of structural film and psychedelic cinema. Included in the lineup is his 2005 film Errata, an abstract animation made using photocopiers; Crux Film, an animation made with his frequent collaborator Lilli Carré; Here There, an animation made in conjunction with research into experimental cinema practices in Croatia; and Fort Morgan, a six-years-in-the-making piece exploring a star-shaped brick fort near Stewart’s hometown on the Alabama Gulf Coast. Also featured in the program are several projects representing Stewart’s recent work with musicians, including What I Want, a found-footage film with a score by Sam Prekop (The Sea and Cake), and a music video for the Chicago band Disappears.

Section 1.

  • Errata, 2005, 5:00, 16mm An animation made using photocopiers. Each frame is a photocopy of the previous frame.
  • Crux Film, 2013, 5:00, video. With Lilli Carré. Animated forms in moments of transition loop and interrupt one another.
  • Power, 2013, 4:15, video Drawn fragments of animation accumulate into geometric fields. Music video for the Chicago band Disappears. 
  • Here There, 2015, 5:00, video Here There begins as a traveler’s sketchbook, drawn in Zagreb and on the Croatian coast. As the film progresses, observational fragments of landscape and architecture are refined into geometric forms and minimal marks. Details fade away, morphing into abstract impressions on the edges of memory. Here There is a travelogue through the Croatian coast in the summer of 2014 that gives graphic form to memory’s malleable, straying lines. 

Section 2.

  • 100 Foot Pull, 2010, 2:45, 16mm, silent A camera is pulled 100 feet across a field in the time it takes to shoot 100 feet of 16mm film. Rocks are attached to the camera to make it appropriately challenging.
  • 4000 Frame Throw, 2011, 2:45, 16mm, silent A 16mm camera is set up with a piece of Plexiglas in front of the lens. The Plexiglas is attached to a lever and a string that clicks one frame of film each time it is struck. Tennis balls are thrown at the Plexiglas from across the room 4,000 times. Each ball that hits the Plexiglas exposes one frame of film. All of the missed throws are added together, and that many frames of film are run off at 24 frames per second at the end of the roll. 
  • Battle of the Stand-Stills, 2010, 15:00, video A re-creation of a 1990 world championship bicycle race focuses on an unusual tactic; an announcer's narration of an invisible race is set against an abandoned and decayed velodrome. A film about speed and standing still. 

Section 3.

  • What I Want, 2013, 6:30, video A found-footage film using material from the Chicago Film Archives. The urban environment prompts a desire for peaceful isolation. A research facility gets to work to make that fantasy a reality.
  • Very Similar To, 2009, 2:45, 16mm, silent. With Peter Miller. Mirror experiments to fold, collapse, and refract a forest.
  • Fort Morgan, 2014, 22:00, video Fort Morgan uses animation and live action footage to examine the geometry, materials, and structure of a star-shaped brick fort on the Alabama gulf coast. A wandering figure begins to construct a fort, following an intricate geometric diagram. The fort grows of its own accord like an oyster shell or a crystal forming, until it is eccentrically shaped, encrusted, and overgrown. Eventually the fort succumbs to the calcification of its own geometric logic.
  • Peacock, 2014, video, 5:00 An exploration of pattern, repetition and visual overload. A small geometric form unfolds into a shimmering display of color and movement.