PORTLAND UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL
January 17-19, 2020
Clinton Street Theater
2522 SE Clinton Street
Portland, OR 97202
Including Autopoiesis and Patches of Snow in July
Screening Sunday January 19, 2:45pm
Author Archives: lanazcaplan
SPACE TIME EVENT SERIES
SPACE TIME SCI-FI SCREENING
Space Time is happy to present an evening of contemporary, experimental Science Fiction videos.
Screening of works by James Fotopoulos, Lana Z Caplan, and Michael Trigilio
January 17th, 2020
at Bread & Salt
1955 Julian Ave., San Diego, CA 92113
Doors: 7:30pm, Screening: 8pm
Dignity, James Fotopoulos, (2012, 82 min.)
Autopoiesis, Lana Z Caplan, (2019, 7:20 min.)
Glimmer Exodus Overture, Michael Trigilio, (2019, 12:31 min.)
STUTTGARTER FILMWINTER
33. STUTTGARTER FILMWINTER – FESTIVAL FOR EXPANDED MEDIA
January 16-19, 2020
Including Lana Z Caplan’s Autopoiesis in the special program “Digital Detox”.
Friday 17th of January 2020 at 5:30 p.m.
“For over 30 years, the Festival has been devoted to crossing the border between cinema and media art with an adventurous international programme comprising films, workshops, Expanded Media exhibition and performances for people of all ages. The Festival’s core are the international competitions for short film, Media in Space and Network Culture – flanked by a comprehensive programme. This year’s thematic focus is “Absence”. The Festival edition is located at the interface between a media-dominated society in all its facets and all of the things falling through or getting blurred by the grid of such a society: what is not said or depicted, the things pushed aside or rejected. We are longing for absence and its traces. Like a test strip, our Festival delves into the big house of absence – placing it at the macro focus.” https://filmwinter.de/en
SSA/CUTLOG MOVING IMAGE EXHIBITION
Society of Scottish Artists / CutLog
Artists Moving Image Exhibition
December 22nd and February 5th 2020
Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh
Including Lana Z Caplan’s Maelstroms and Patches of Snow in July
OPEN SSA+VAS, is presented in partnership with Visual Arts Scotland and will be the largest exhibition of contemporary art and craft to be held in Scotland this year giving an audience of over 30,000 people the opportunity to discover and enjoy artworks across all mediums.
http://cutlog.co.uk/
NEW MEDIA FEST 2020
New Media Fest 2020
New Museum of Networked Art & The Wake Up! Memorial
Launching 25 December 2019
curated by Agricola de Cologne, artvideoKOELN
Lana Z Caplan’s Canaries in the Mine is included in the collection “Wake-up – Climate Change!”, part of The Wake up! Memorial project.
“NewMediaFest 2020 – an event structure to take place in an exchange between virtual and physical space – starting on 25 December 2019 in Ethiopia – running until 31 December 2020 – will honour and include all artists, curators and other cultural instances like festivals, museum , galleries etc which were collaborating with Agricola de Cologne during the past 20 years since 2000 – in the basic program online – there will be at least 12 physical venues- each month another one in another country presenting an individual Jubilee program – to be complemented by monthly features online in video, netart and soundart.” http://retro.newmediafest.org/
View the videos here: http://wake-up.engad.org/
PLEASURE DOME SCREENING
Lost and Found in Late Capitalism
curated by Shahbaz Khayambashi, Co-Chair, Pleasure Dome
Fri., Dec. 6, 2019
at the Small World Music Centre
180 Shaw St, Toronto, ON
Lost and Found in Late Capitalism, Curatorial Statement:
In recent years, with the election of right-wing and fascist politicians around the world, the link between fascism and capitalism has become impossible to ignore. As profit overtakes happiness as the endeavour of humanity and austerity becomes the way of the land, the citizens of the modern nation have no choice but to go with the pack or get trampled in the process. Of course, since it was left to fester for so long, capitalism has reached its inevitable zenith, reaching that time that we have been warned about for decades, the age of late capitalism. Existing somewhere between apocalypse and parody, the age of late capitalism has brought about dystopian ideals presented to its subjects as standard societal practices. No longer will people fight for their own rights, because their rights have been established as unrealistic, their fighting as criminal. Late capitalism is the current state of affairs. It cannot be stopped, unless people wake up to it, become aware of it. Perhaps the response from the art world could help that occur.
That is the idealistic background for Pleasure Dome’s Lost and Found in Late Capitalism, a response to this stage of late capitalism by using its own products. While capitalism continues to destroy our environment, wage wars on our people, and destroy our social fabric, this program will attempt to speak truth to power by speaking power’s language. This program consists of a series of short videos constructed from found footage, coming from a variety of formats, sources and levels of legality. These videos use footage from Hollywood films, business promotional videos, public domain artefacts and military footage to tell stories of life under the thumb of capitalism. It is through this re-appropriation of the products of capitalism that today’s artists can attempt to come to terms with the struggle of living under an unquestionable dictatorial system.
Beyond Human, Pete Burkeet (Ohio, USA), 2018.
Mad as Hell, Emily Pelstring (Kingston, ON, CND) and Meg Remy (Toronto, ON, CND), 2017.
Gone Sale, Matt Meindl (USA), 2018.
Public Domain, Jason Britski (SK,CND), 2018.
A Feverish Fascination, Imogen Clendinning, (Windsor, ON, CND), 2018.
Music of Desire, Kristin Reeves (KY, USA), 2016.
Painting with the Man, Freya Björg Olafson (Toronto, ON, CND), 2017.
What is an Object, Stephanie Deumer (NY, USA) 2015.
Maelstroms, Lana Z Caplan (CA, USA), 2015.
Flat Pyramid, Kevin Doherty (NY, USA), 2017.
Lost and Found in Late Capitalism
PROFESSIONAL WORK SAMPLE – PHOTOGRAPHS
Click on thumbnails to expand images
After Adams
Aerial Campers
Black Rider
Hillside Tattoos
Her Father's Dune Buggy
American Family #4
Training Wheels
After Weston
Chumash Basket at the Mission Museum San Luis Obispo, CA
Chumash Necklaces (in hand) at the Mission Museum San Luis Obispo, CA
Chumash Arrowheads at the Mission Museum San Luis Obispo, CA
Chumash Elder Joe Talaugon at the Guadalupe Cultural Center, Guadalupe, CA
Site of Public Execution by Burning at the Stake of Giordano Bruno February 17, 1600 (Campo de'Fiori, Rome)
Site of Public Executions by Hanging June 10, July 19, August 19 & September 22, 1692 (Gallows Hill Park, Salem, MA)
Site of Public Executions by Hanging of Pirates and Thieves 18th - 19th century (Grand Canal Square, Dublin)
Site of Public Executions by Human Sacrifice c. 900-1500 AD (Nohuch Mul Pyramid, Coba, Mexico)
Site of Public Execution by Tomahawk of Chief Leatherlips, June 1, 1810 (Franklin County, Ohio)
Site of Public Executions by Guillotine 1792-1793 (Place du Carousel, Louvre, Paris)
Site of Public Executions by Beheading and Hanging c. 1750 - 1826 (Piazza del Popolo, Rome)
Site of Sentencing and Public Executions by Beating c. 1420 - 1912 (Wumen Gate, Forbidden City, Beijing)
Subway Sleepers Beijing #1
Subway Sleepers Beijing #2
Subway Sleepers Beijing #4
Subway Sleepers Beijing #5
Back to Work Sample Portfolio Page
Project Descriptions
Shed on Passive Sands
Photographs, 24″ x 32″ Archival Pigment Prints, 2018
Shed on Passive Sands (2018), is a weave of historical threads that creates a fabric of the place. These histories, spanning over 12,000 years, are comprised of the Dunes of the Chumash, a people nearly erased by the Spanish Missionaries; the Dunes of Cecil B. DeMille’s ancient Egyptian The Ten Commandments movie set; the Dunes of the Dunites, the artists, poets, nudists, and mystics living in the Dunes during the depression era; the Dunes of photographers Edward Weston and Ansel Adams’ sensual perfection; and the Dunes of the current day Dunites – the ATV riders who tear through the endangered plant species and pollute the air.
The seemingly empty expanse of sand of the Oceano Dunes has been a fertile tabula rasa for each successive cultural engagement. Today it has become a political and environmental battleground. The 18-mile coastal Dunes complex north of Santa Barbara, CA allows driving cars and off-road vehicles on the beach and the Dunes in the approximately 5-mile area owned by State Parks. The current 8-year war is between the multi-million dollar ATV industry and those residents in the adjacent communities whose health has been compromised due to the dust the ATVs create.
While the white dunes often appear as a blank, shifting landscape, through media and image, this project aims to pull up a history from beneath the surface to populate the Dune site with a more profound sense of place and meaning. This specific place is also representative of the larger current climate in the United States, the clashing of environmental conservation and public health with economic interest, and a document of the impact of the social landscape on yet another unique physical landscape and population of indigenous people.
Recent exhibitions including images from this series:
Griffin Museum of Photography, Boston, MA
Gallery NAGA, Boston, MA
San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA
University Art Gallery, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA
for more images from this series: http://lanazcaplan.com/shed-on-passive-sands/
Postcards from the Hanging
Photographs, 20″ x 21″ sepia-toned silver gelatin prints in French mats, 2001-present
Recorded across three continents, this series includes photographs and short films from sites that have been used for public executions at different times in history.
When I began this ongoing project, there was petitioning for Timothy McVeigh’s execution to be televised, a modern form of a public arena. The desire to watch or show people being killed, as perceived justice or as a political act, is still alive today all over the world evidenced in the ghastly videotaped beheadings broadcast on Youtube and social media sites.
I began this project with questions; What does a society choose to show of its history in public space? Are shifting values visible in the function of the space? Can images reflect the power of society to evolve a public consensus on state killing?
I found some sites that were quite venerated as places for public execution, such as St. Peter’s Square in Rome or the field in Salem, MA (now named Gallows Hill Park) where accused witches were hung. Some places are now well known for other reasons, such as the Louvre, in front of which the guillotine was installed during the French Revolution. The different ways in which the history of these places has been dealt with (some capitalizing on the executions, others concealing the execution history with other events that also occurred in these places) spoke more to me about present day morality and values in each country than the abolishment or continuation of capital punishment in those countries.
The photographs in this series are sepia-toned silver prints presented in French mats. This presentation is a reference to historical photographs and cataloguing of images made for documentation purposes. Each of the mats have calligraphic titles describing the dates and types of executions that occurred on that site, rather than the customary name and place pictured.
In 2007, the book “Sites of Public Execution” was published in conjunction with a solo exhibition of this series at the Danforth Museum (MA).
for more images from this series: http://lanazcaplan.com/postcards-from-the-hanging/
Subway Sleepers, Beijing
Tintypes, 8″ × 10″, 2014
Subway Sleepers uses the form of the historic process of tintypes to transform digital images of contemporary people sleeping on the subway of Beijing into reminiscences of death portraits in a reflection on the effects of the pace of modern life.
Back to Work Sample Portfolio Page
NEW DIGITAL ART BIENNALE
The Wrong / New Digital Art Biennale
In Absentia Pavilion
including Lana Z Caplan’s play and repeat
‘Connect’ Video arts program
November 22nd, 2019
at the In Absentia Digital Pavilion
Cineporto Foggia, Italy
sponsored by Apulia Film Commission
https://www.facebook.com/InAbsentiaDigitalPavilion/
PROFESSIONAL WORK SAMPLE – VIDEO AND INSTALLATION
The Loveliest Mountain of China
3-channel video installation
Total running time of loop in installation: 45 minutes
Total running time of installation documentation: 9 minutes
The Loveliest Mountain of China (2012/14) is a 3-channel video installation that lays bare the bones of the participatory documentary medium, deconstructing narrative film production modalities, and presenting them across a wall space on three screens simultaneously. Comprised of one screen of interviews, one of fixed camera landscape views and one of “B-roll” of tourists posing in front of the mountain, a self-reflexive epi-narrative unfolds between the screens with an awareness of the illusion of ethnographic representation, gaps in translation, and the complexities of the politics of landscape. Ecological change is approached through the voices and perspectives of people who inhabit and visit – the locals and the tourists – the picturesque landscape of Huangshan (Yellow Mountain).
Installations:
– Clark Gallery, Lincoln, MA, February 2014
– Gallery NAGA, Boston, January 2014
– Inside Out Art Museum, Beijing, September 2012- March 2013 (2-channel)
– Gallery NAGA, Boston, January 2014
– Inside Out Art Museum, Beijing, September 2012- March 2013 (2-channel)
Maelstroms
7:30 duration, HD video, 2015
Using animation, heat sensitive camera footage from US border patrol screens, military bombing drone monitors, and other collected footage, Maelstroms is a mediation on the dehumanizing use of image technology to control borders by land, air and sea.
audio: Upon Maelstroms of Unbearable Reality by Steerage, courtesy of caduc. records
Selected Screenings:
– *Winner of Audience Choice Award* CROSSROADS 2016 (San Francisco, April 2016)
– Anthology Film Archives, Another Experiment by Women Film Festival (New York, NY, February 2016)
– Microscope Gallery Event Series (Brooklyn, October 2016)
– San Diego Underground Film Festival (San Diego, Nov 2016)
– Havana Film Festival (Havana, Cuba, December 2016)
– Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival (Hawick, Scotland, March 2017)
– Montreal Underground Film Festival (Montreal, May 2017)
– Chicago Underground Film Festival (Chicago, June 2017)
– Currents New Media Festival (Santa Fe, June 2017)
– Sign on / Sign off (Stuttgart and ACRE TV, June 2017)
– SDSU Downtown Gallery (San Diego, July 2017)
– WDNX Festival of Moving Image (Winnipeg, October 2017)
– Twisted Oyster Film Festival (Chicago, October 2017)
– Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson (Tucson, AZ, October – December 2017)
– Experimental Response Cinema (Austin, TX, January 2018)
– That One Film Festival (Muncie, IN, April 2018)
– The Vast Lab (Los Angeles, July 2108)
– Empirical Ideologies, Labocine, issue 26 (Online, September 2018)
– Other Cinema (San Francisco, October 2018)
– Revolutions per Minute Festival (Boston, February 2019)
– Short Movie Club Festival (Minsk, Belarus, March 2019)
– Festival de Cine Independiente de San Antonio (Ecuador, March 2019)
– Anarchivia (Mexico City, March 2019)
Dunites
Documentation Video from Solo Exhibition at Gallery NAGA, Boston
September 2018
Includes video, photographs, 35mm slides and 360-video installation.
podcast interview with Lana Z Caplan discussing this project:
hollywoodchicago.com/news/28800/podtalk-media-artist-lana-z-caplan-on-her-new-exhibit-dunites
MANIFEST DISMANTLING
MANIFEST DISMANTLING @Boston Cyberarts Gallery
including Lana Z Caplan’s Patches of Snow in July and Maelstroms
program details here
more information: http://www.mobius.org/aevents/2019/10/31/manifest-dismantling-boston-cyberarts
facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1061362700861472
Optronica2 at OTHER CINEMA
OPTRON2 at Other Cinema
MEDIA ARCHEOLOGY 1
curated by the magical Craig Baldwin
Other Cinema
@ ATA Gallery
992 Valencia St, San Francisco
November 2, 2019
MEDIA ARCHEOLOGY 1
SCOTT STARK + TOMMY BECKER + BILL BAIRD + LANA Z CAPLAN +
A Live A-V luv-fest fer sure, with distinctive, daring demonstrations of creative expression from four of Cali’s leading media-artists! Prodigal son Scott Stark proffers a para-cinema set featuring the premiere of CLYPPS and his in-house 35mm scope projector, while twinkling SLO satellite Lana Z Caplan orbits back with the NorCal launch of her 35mm piece Apollonian Light and her Autopoiesis short. SF stalwart Tommy Becker sets up screen-left with the debut of his Side Two of Tape Number One–music and poetry exploring our entangled relations with auto-mobile machines. AND here’s the unveiling of The Cube by ex-Austinite Bill Baird–musical performance-art inside a projection-mapped tent! PLUS a sprinkling of cine/sonic tricks by Ryan Worsley, Bruce Haack, Brett Ingram, et al. Dizzying documentation of Brown/Gruffat’s Unsettling Texas film–performance follows Russ Forster‘s theremin busking.
“Other Cinema is a long-standing bastion of experimental film, video, and performance in San Francisco’s Mission District. We are inspired and sustained by the ongoing practice of fine-art filmmaking, as well as engaged essay and documentary forms. But OC also embraces marginalized genres like “orphan” industrial films, home movies, ethnography, and exploitation, as media-archeological core-samples, and blows against consensus reality and the sterility of museum culture.” http://www.othercinema.com/
CANYON CINEMA SALON
A Salon with Lana Z Caplan
Friday, November 1st, 2019 // 7:30 PM (doors 7:00 PM)
We are delighted to welcome multimedia artist Lana Z Caplan to present a Canyon Cinema Salon screening at 16 Sherman Street in San Francisco. Caplan has curated a program that elegantly weaves films from Canyon’s deep catalog along with her poignant and visually rich work.
“Chosen from subconscious memories and deep influences, the films in this program relate to the ideas and approaches that I have been wrestling with in my own work: harmony and disharmony with the rhythms and gifts of earth — persuasive and abusive use of media — ritual, ceremony, mysticism — and the fleeting preciousness of it all. ” – Lana Z Caplan
As always, this event is free and open to the public, with refreshments served beginning at 7:00 and the doors closed for the start of the show at 7:30. An informal conversation with the filmmaker will follow the screening.
Program includes:
Kalendar by Naomi Uman (2008, 12 min, 16mm)
A Depression in the Bay of Bengal by Mark Lapore (1996, 28 min, 16mm)
My Name is Oona by Gunvor Nelson (1969, 10 min, 16mm)
HedonHeathen 1 by Lana Z Caplan (2013, 2 min, HD)
Aspect by Emily Richardson (2004, 9 min, 16mm)
Patches of Snow in July by Lana Z Caplan (2017, 8 min, HD)
http://canyoncinema.com/about/canyon-cinema-salon/1112019-a-salon-with-lana-z-caplan/
16 Sherman Street, SF, CA
Facebook Event
TRANSIENT VISIONS FESTIVAL OF THE MOVING IMAGE
Transient Visions Festival of the Moving Image
October 18 – 19, 2019
including Autopoiesis
Spool Contemporary Art Space
138 Baldwin Street
Johnson City, NY 13790
United States
http://www.transientvisions.org/
ANTIMATTER [MEDIA ART]
Antimatter [media art]
22nd Annual Festival
Victoria, BC, Canada
October 16 – 26, 2019
including Autopoiesis
CONNECT: INTERNATIONAL VIDEOARTS FESTIVAL
CONNECT: INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL VIDEO ART
October 23, 6-9pm
Reeves Theater
University of Tampa
At the intersection of art and technology the artists selected for CONNECT 2019 are experimenting with space, time, form and sound while re-examining the way we communicate ideas and tell stories.
The eighteen artists represent thirteen countries and a variety of styles and processes. The results range from sensual abstraction to the strange visual effects of computer coding.
The work addresses personal, social and political issues relevant to our times.
Our common thread is an interest in expanding the concepts of art/film/technology and exploring the medium itself. We initially connected via Internet – Facebook / YouTube / Vimeo.
Most of us have never met in person but we have established a strong camaraderie through shared screenings around the world and/or our common love of the moving image.
Dee Hood, Curator, CONNECT 2019
http://www.videoartes.org/lana-z-caplan/
AGITATE:21C on FB https://www.facebook.com/groups/2964836420208278/members/
VASTLAB Experimental Film Festival
VASTLAB EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL
Sept 20-21, 2019
624 North Victory Boulevard
Burbank, CA 91502
Including Autopoiesis
http://vastlab.org/experimental19/
CINEAUTOPSIA – Festival de Cine Experimental de Bogotá
CINEAUTOPSIA
Festival de Cine Experimental de Bogotá
August 13-23, 2019
Including Patches of Snow in July
AXW Film Festival
ANOTHER EXPERIMENT BY WOMEN FILM FESTIVAL
COMMUNITY
curated by Lili White
Anthology Film Archives
2nd and 2nd, NYC
July 17, 2019. 6:00 PM
with works by Lana Z Caplan, Evelin Stermitz, Giselle Chien, Meredith Moore, Sarah Harbridge, Caryn Cline & Linda Fenstermaker, Morrison Gong, Lisa Danker, Karissa Hahn, Maureen Zent
including Autopoiesis (still above) – US Premiere!
ARTISTS WITHOUT A CAUSE
Consciousness of Changing Climate
Environmental Film Screening
Tuesday, July 16th at Böttgerstraße 13, Berlin
Artists Without a Cause invites you to join us for our film screening “Consciousness of Changing Climate”! Featured films surround the topic of climate change and human relationships with this issue. This screening aims to explore, familiarize, and bring awareness to the environments around us. Along with this, AWAC and featured artists hope to show both abstract and direct examples of how climate change is effecting humans and other ecological functions.
– “Oro Blanco” by Gisela Carbajal Rodríguez
– “Questions for a Dinosaur” by Rachel Garber Cole
– “Panorama Panik Botanik” by Vera Sebert
– “Techno Inferno” by Farhanaz Rupaidha
– “Patches of Snow in July” by Lana Z Caplan
– “Totem” by Alex MacKenzie
video still from Patches of Snow in July
SHED ON PASSIVE SANDS
Click on thumbnail to expand image
After Weston
Black Rider
Chumash Basket at the Mission Museum, San Luis Obispo, CA
Hillside Tattoos
Training Wheels
Chumash Arrowheads at the Mission Museum, San Luis Obispo, CA
American Family 2
Hitchhikers
Chumash Necklaces (in hand) at the Mission Museum, San Luis Obispo, CA
Sphinx Torso at the Dunes Center, Guadalupe, CA
American Family 3
Aerial Campers
Camper with Boards
Teenager 1
For Sale
Fire
Chumash Elder Joe Talugon at the Guadalupe Cultural Center, Guadalupe, CA
Night
Solar One-Wheel
Three Motorcycles
Kids with Dune Buggy
Dust Circles
Placard at the Mission Museum, San Luis Obispo, CA
General Store
Chumash Necklaces at the Mission Museum, San Luis Obispo, CA
Placard at Gavin's Cabin, Oceano Depot, Oceano, CA
After Adams
Forth Issue of Dune Forum, 1933
Dunite Historian and Author Norm Hammond in front of last remaining Dunite cabin, Oceano, CA
Aerial Crawlers
Sphinx Head at the Dunes Center, Guadalupe, CA
Red Sweater
Shed on Passive Sands
Photographs, Archival Pigment Prints, 24″x32″, 2018
Shed on Passive Sands (2018), is a weave of historical threads that creates a fabric of the place. These histories, spanning over 12,000 years, are comprised of the Dunes of the Chumash, a people nearly erased by the Spanish Missionaries; the Dunes of Cecil B. DeMille’s ancient Egyptian The Ten Commandments movie set; the Dunes of the Dunites, the artists, poets, nudists, and mystics living in the Dunes during the depression era; the Dunes of photographers Edward Weston and Ansel Adams’ sensual perfection; and the Dunes of the current day Dunites – the ATV riders who tear through the endangered plant species and pollute the air.
The seemingly empty expanse of sand of the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes has been a fertile tabula rasa for each successive cultural engagement. Today it has become a political and environmental battleground. The 18-mile coastal Dunes complex north of Santa Barbara, CA allows driving cars and off-road vehicles on the beach and the Dunes in the approximately 5-mile area owned by State Parks. The current 8-year war is between the multi-million dollar ATV industry and those residents in the adjacent communities whose health has been compromised due to the dust the ATVs create.
While the white dunes often appear as a blank, shifting landscape, through media and image, this project aims to pull up a history from beneath the surface to populate the Dune site with a more profound sense of place and meaning. This specific place is also representative of the larger current climate in the United States, the clashing of environmental conservation and public health with economic interest, and a document of the impact of the social landscape on yet another unique physical landscape and population of indigenous people.
Recent exhibitions including images from this series:
Griffin Museum of Photography, Boston, MA
Gallery NAGA, Boston, MA
University Art Gallery, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA
DUNITES INSTALLATION
Dunites
Installation Documentation and Excerpts of Videos
Solo Exhibition
Gallery NAGA, Boston
September 2018
Including 5 works:
“Shed on the passive sands”, 23 min 4k video, monitor
“Naked to the sun”, 14 min 4k video, looping projection
“On the sands become these lilies”, forty 35mm text slides, auto-advancing slide projector, installation
“These chromatic gardens”, 6 min 360-video in headset, revolving stool, 12’x6’x1′ structure, Virtual Reality installation
Dunites, 6 archival pigment prints from the series, 24×32″
POSTCARDS FROM THE HANGING
Click on thumbnail to expand image
Site of Public Execution by Burning at the Stake of Giordano Bruno February 17, 1600 (Campo de'Fiori, Rome)
Site of Public Executions by Human Sacrifice c. 900-1500 AD (Nohuch Mul Pyramid, Coba, Mexico)
Site of Public Executions by Guillotine 1792-1793 (Place du Carousel, Louvre, Paris)
Site of Public Executions by Hanging June 10, July 19, August 19 & September 22, 1692 (Gallows Hill Park, Salem, MA)
Site of Public Execution by Tomahawk of Chief Leatherlips, June 1, 1810 (Franklin County, Ohio)
Site of Public Executions by Burning, Hanging & Beheading c. 14th - 18th century (Carlisle Bridge, Dublin)
Site of Public Executions by Estrapade 17th century (Place de Estrapde, Paris)
Site of Public Executions by Sport c. 80 – 476 (Colosseum, Rome)
Site of Public Executions by Guillotine 1794 (Place de Bastille, Paris)
Site of Public Executions by Hanging c. 1861 – 1865 (Fort Warren on Georges Island, Boston Harbor, MA)
Site of Public Executions by Hanging of Pirates and Thieves 18th - 19th century (Grand Canal Square, Dublin)
Site of Public Executions by Guillotine 1792-1793 (Hôtel de Ville, Paris)
Site of Public Execution by Hanging under the Charge of Sheriff Charles F. Prevatt, sheriff, 1897 - 1905 and 1908 - January 19, 1912 (Osceola Courthouse, Kissimmee, Florida)
Site of Public Executions by Hanging from the Tyburn Tree Gallows, up to 25 people hanging at a time, averaging 35 hangings per year 1571 - November 3, 1783 (Marble Arch, London)
Site of Public Executions by Hanging, c.1300 – 1400 AD (Campo San Polo, Venice)
Site of Public Execution by Burning at the Stake of Girolamo Savonarola May 23, 1498 (Piazza della Signoria, Florence)
Site of Public Executions by Beheading and Hanging c. 1750 - 1826 (Piazza del Popolo, Rome)
Site of Public Executions by Beheading, Hanging & Quartering 16th - 19th century (Ponte Sant'Angelo, Rome)
Site of Public Execution by Crucifixion of St. Peter c. 64 - 68 AD (Piazza San Pietro, Rome)
Site of Sentencing and Public Executions by Beating c. 1420 - 1912 (Wumen Gate, Forbidden City, Beijing)
Postcards from the Hanging // Sites of Public Execution
20″x21″ sepia-toned silver gelatin prints in French mats, 2001-present
Recorded across three continents, this series includes photographs and short films from sites that have been used for public executions at different times in history.
When I began this ongoing project, there was petitioning for Timothy McVeigh’s execution to be televised, a modern form of a public arena. The desire to watch or show people being killed, as perceived justice or as a political act, is still alive today all over the world evidenced in the ghastly videotaped beheadings broadcast on Youtube and social media sites.
I began this project with questions; What does a society choose to show of its history in public space? Are shifting values visible in the function of the space? Can images reflect the power of society to evolve a public consensus on state killing?
I found some sites that were quite venerated as places for public execution, such as St. Peter’s Square in Rome or the field in Salem, MA (now named Gallows Hill Park) where accused witches were hung. Some places are now well known for other reasons, such as the Louvre, in front of which the guillotine was installed during the French Revolution. The different ways in which the history of these places has been dealt with (some capitalizing on the executions, others concealing the execution history with other events that also occurred in these places) spoke more to me about present day morality and values in each country than the abolishment or continuation of capital punishment in those countries.
The photographs in this series are sepia-toned silver prints presented in French mats. This presentation is a reference to historical photographs and cataloguing of images made for documentation purposes. Each of the mats have calligraphic titles describing the dates and types of executions that occurred on that site, rather than the customary name and place pictured.
In 2007, the book “Sites of Public Execution” was published in conjunction with a solo exhibition of this series at the Danforth Museum (MA).
MAELSTROMS
https://vimeo.com/154542512/2615192284
Maelstroms
7:30 duration, HD video, 2015
Using animation, heat sensitive camera footage from US border patrol screens, military bombing drone monitors, and other collected footage, Maelstroms is a mediation on the dehumanizing use of image technology to control borders by land, air and sea.
audio: Upon Maelstroms of Unbearable Reality by Steerage, courtesy of caduc. records
Selected Screenings:
– *Winner of Audience Choice Award* CROSSROADS 2016 (San Francisco, April 2016)
– Anthology Film Archives, Another Experiment by Women Film Festival (New York, NY, February 2016)
– Microscope Gallery Event Series (Brooklyn, October 2016)
– San Diego Underground Film Festival (San Diego, Nov 2016)
– Havana Film Festival (Havana, Cuba, December 2016)
– Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival (Hawick, Scotland, March 2017)
– Montreal Underground Film Festival (Montreal, May 2017)
– Chicago Underground Film Festival (Chicago, June 2017)
– Currents New Media Festival (Santa Fe, June 2017)
– Sign on / Sign off (Stuttgart and ACRE TV, June 2017)
– SDSU Downtown Gallery (San Diego, July 2017)
– WDNX Festival of Moving Image (Winnipeg, October 2017)
– Twisted Oyster Film Festival (Chicago, October 2017)
– Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson (Tucson, AZ, October – December 2017)
– Experimental Response Cinema (Austin, TX, January 2018)
– That One Film Festival (Muncie, IN, April 2018)
– The Vast Lab (Los Angeles, July 2108)
– Empirical Ideologies, Labocine, issue 26 (Online, September 2018)
– Other Cinema (San Francisco, October 2018)
– Revolutions per Minute Festival (Boston, February 2019)
– Short Movie Club Festival (Minsk, Belarus, March 2019)
LOVELIEST MOUNTAIN OF CHINA
The Loveliest Mountain of China
3-channel video installation
Total running time of loop in installation: 45 minutes
Total running time of installation documentation: 9 minutes
The Loveliest Mountain of China (2012/14) is a 3-channel video installation that lays bare the bones of the participatory documentary medium, deconstructing narrative film production modalities, and presenting them across a wall space on three screens simultaneously. Comprised of one screen of interviews, one of fixed camera landscape views and one of “B-roll” of tourists posing in front of the mountain, a self-reflexive epi-narrative unfolds between the screens with an awareness of the illusion of ethnographic representation, gaps in translation, and the complexities of the politics of landscape. Ecological change is approached through the voices and perspectives of people who inhabit and visit – the locals and the tourists – the picturesque landscape of Huangshan (Yellow Mountain).
Installations:
-Clark Gallery, Lincoln, MA, February 2014
-Gallery NAGA, Boston, January 2014
-Inside Out Art Museum, Beijing, September 2012- March 2013 (2-channel)
-Gallery NAGA, Boston, January 2014
-Inside Out Art Museum, Beijing, September 2012- March 2013 (2-channel)
PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING
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Peach Blossom Spring Installation View
Peach Blossom Spring Installation View
Shangri-La
Tree-Lined
Space Doctors
Moon and Mothlight
Sunrise
Weeping
Roots
Roofscape
Under the Sea
Seed of the Lotus
Fish Bike Legs
Mountain View UFO
Red Wishes
Spectrum
Peach Blossom Spring
Installation including Photographs and Video Installation
Solo Exhibition
Gallery NAGA, Boston
January 2014
from ARTnews, April 2014, Review
Lana Z Caplan, Gallery NAGA, Boston
“This is a place which cannot be described completely,” a female hotel worker in the mountains of China’s Huangshan region tells the artist Lana Z Caplan. The observation, included in Caplan’s three channel video installation The Loveliest Mountain of China (2014), captures the challenge the artist faced in creating the images in this show, “Peach Blossom Spring.” Also featuring 12 ink-jet prints and a wall-size photomural, the exhibition conveyed the impossibility of representing a given location with a single objective description.
In the video piece, one monitor shows the Hunagshan mountains from several vantage points during shifting light and weather. The next monitor displays tourists posing for pictures on a scenic overlook, and the third focus on people in the Huangshan tourism business – including porters, hotel employees and a local artist – explaining their impressions of the location where they earn a living. Change is a constant: clouds hide the sun, gusts stir branches and ponytails, cell phones ring. Caplan’s video highlights just how disparate experiences of the same spot can be, juxtaposing the magnificent spectacle of towering peaks with the bustle of tourism and the realties of everyday life.
Even Caplan’s still photographs suggest worlds colliding. In the wall-size photomural Shangri-La (2013), two roosters pause by a gate before a huge, postcard-pretty panorama of waterfalls and pagodas. Spectrum (2013) zeros in on a patch of rainy pavement where a yellow ginkgo leaf has landed on the yellow band of an oil slick’s rainbow. The most confounding picture of all, Tree-Lined (2013), appears to depict a woodsy scene with a gash through it. The forest is a fiction, though – a mere printed image on a pair of curtains – and the geometric shard slicing the pastoral landscape turns out to be a sliver of a construction site. Just beyond the scrim of the curtains, the chaotic scene of buildings being erected jostles against a vision of uncorrupted nature as vivid and insubstantial as a dream”
-Joanne Silver
STUDENT WORK SAMPLES
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Student Work Samples
Basic Digital Photography - Assignment: Portraits
Basic Digital Photography - Final Project: Work in a Series
Visual Language - Assignment: Elements of Design made with the Body
Basic Digital Photography - Stop Motion
Advanced Camera & Lighting - Assignment: Series of Portraits
Advanced Camera & Lighting - Assignment: Self-Portrait
Alternative Processes - Assignment: Artist Book
Basic Digital Photography - Assignment: Portraits
Basic Digital Photography - Assignment: Natural Light
Advanced Camera & Lighting - Assignment Self-Portrait
Alternative Processes - Final Project
Basic Digital Photography - Assignment: Inspired by...
Intro to Digital Photography - Assignment: Visual Storytelling
Basic Digital Photography - Assignment: Inspired by...
Basic Digital Photography - Assignment: Inspired by...
Editorial Photography - Assignment PhotoEssay
Artificial Lighting - Assignment: Final Project
Intro to Digital Photography - Assignment: Visual Storytelling
Basic Digital Photography - Assignment: Inspired by...
Black and White Photography - Final Project
Back to Work Sample Portfolio Page
Deviate / Landscape
Deviate / Landscape
San Diego Art Institute
Curated by Carlos Castro Arias & Sarah Trujillo-Porter, Deviate / Landscape revolves around contemporary approaches to artmaking that deal with the idea of landscape as a constructed and deconstructed space. The selected artists use painting, video, installation, photography and other mediums to explore landscape. The selected works use landscape as a metaphor for time and transformation but also highlight contemporary political and environmental issues.
Exhibiting Artists
Miguel Arzabe, Lana Z Caplan, Carolina Caycedo ,Remi Dalton, Ashley Fenderson, Jessica Ling Findley, Eleanor Greer, Richard Keeley, Adam Manley, Carolina Montejo, Hillary Mushkin, Arzu Ozkal, Scott Polach, Rachelle Reichert, Jon Rodley, Daniel Ruanova, Ali Silverstein, Eva Struble, Bradley Tucker, Cesar Vasquez, Jevi Joe Vitug
Image: Daniel Ruanova, History of Manimals III, 2017. Photo courtesy of the artist and Parque Galería CDMX
ECHOFLUXX
ECHOFLUXX 19
International Festival of Experimental Film, Music, Dance, Texts
May 1-4, 2019
Prague
Including Autopoiesis
more information: http://echofluxx.org/ECHOFLUXX19/PressReleaseE19.pdf
Braziers Mini Indi Film Festival
Braziers Mini Indi Film Festival
May 24 to 27, 2019, at Braziers Park, Oxfordshire
UK premiere of Autopoiesis
Lana Z Caplan at ANARCHIVIA
Solo screening with the works of Lana Z Caplan
Viernes 29 de marzo, 18:00 hrs.
Atletas No. 2 (Estudios Churubusco).
Bodega D, PB.
Colonia Country Club.
México, D.F. 04220
Presentados por Anarchivia A.C. y ULTRAcinema
Facebook Event Page
SOMA Mexico City
San Antonio Independent Film Festival (FESCISA)
Festival de Cine Independiente de San Antonio
San Antonio de Ibarra, Imbabura. Ecuador
March 21, 22, 23, 24 – 2019
FESCIASA website
Screening Maelstroms
SHORT MOVIE CLUB FESTIVAL
Short Movie Club
March 15-17, 2019
Minsk, Belarus
Maelstroms is included in
Experimental Section
March 16, 2019, 18:50
Cinema Theatre «Belarus»
Ramanaŭskaja Slabada, 28
REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE FESTIVAL
Revolutions per Minute Festival
Boston, Feb. 2 & 3, 2019
Program 8: The Inner Life of Space
Lumen, Richard Ashrowan, 16mm, 2018
Girl Becomes Snow, Ryan Betschart, SD, 2017
The Future, Pamela Breda, HD, 2017
The Symphony of Names: No Man is and Island, Elizabeth Withstandley, 16mm, 2018
Re-entry , Pierre Yves Clouin, HD, 2017
Boral Pather Panchali, Alex Cunningham, HD, 2018
Gibraltar Point (transformed), Penny McCann, 16mm, 2018
Anxiety, Muge Yildiz, Super8/16mm, 2016
Gede Vizyon, Marcos Serafim, Jefferson Kielwagen and Steevens Simeon, HD, 2018
Winter’s First Moons, Kathleen Rugh, 16mm, 2018
In front of the Sea, Yaniv Touati, SD, 2017
Farewell Transmission, Mike Rollo, 16mm, 2017
Maelstroms, Lana Z Caplan, HD, 2017
OPTRONICA at OTHER CINEMA
OPTRONICA
Valentine’s Day at Other Cinema with “Love, Erotica and Porn”…
including Mating Call a 16mm found footage film made while an Artist-in-Residence at MCLA/MassMoCA
February 16, 2019
Other Cinema
@ATA Gallery, 922 Valencia, SF, CA
I Love to Ride My Bicycle
I Love to Ride My Bicycle
SDSU Gallery
November 15 – January 27, 2019
curated by Tina Yapelli
Reception: Downtown at Sundown
in conjunction with Musuem of Contemporary Art San Diego
November 15, 2019
including Welcome to Suzhou
PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIES at OTHER CINEMA
PSYCHO-GEO3: MARGINS OF THE MAP
Presented by Other Cinema
October 20: 8:30pm: GRETA SNIDER’s 3-D + L.CAPLAN + A.COPPOLA +
“The second half of our Focus on Locus double-header features two world premieres—exquisite expanded cinema/retinal rivalry pieces by the Mission’s own Greta Snider, plus a timely revival of her epochal 16mm diary Portland, train-hopping with Ivy McClelland and Iggy Scam!
Lana Caplan breaks away from her SLO college gig to unspool a NorCal debut, Patches of Snow in July (Hawaii volcano), as well as her earlier Maelstroms (Mexico border).
In his farewell appearance, long-lost ally Alex Coppola flies in from Philly to not only open the show, but close it as well, with his world-class World Music vinyl selections, set to an absolutely sublime sampler of mid-20C personal travelogues—Glimpses of the Global South, glorious Kodachrome shot in four sites, moving east around the planet—Hong Kong, Tahiti, the Andes, and the Amazon.
As to marginal spaces in the US interior: Brea Weinreb debuts Framing History, a collective S8 remediation of home movies from Japanese internees in the Amache, Colorado camp.
PLUS: Matt McCormick’s cautionary America Nutria, on a Southern mammal now munching on Coast rhizomes!” … othercinema.com
ATA Gallery, 992 Valencia (@ 21st), San Francisco
THE FUTURE OF HISTORY
The Future of History
Boston Cyberarts Gallery
November 10 – December 16, 2018
Reception Friday November 16, 6-8pm
Liz Blum, Lana Z Caplan, Rocio Delaloye, Antony Flackett, Jess Holz, Matt Kushan, Yuko Oda, Nancy Sepe, Zenovia Toloudi
The Future of History is the second in a series of two exhibitions that present works that pair art and technology in a thought provoking and visually engaging manner. Works that address, rather than use, technology on a conceptual level are featured as well. The Future of History features work by nine artists from as far away as Pakistan to local Boston based artists. From video montage saturated with contemporary media, to uncanny landscapes imaged with a scanning electron microscope, to delicate 3D printed butterflies the works in this exhibition leverage art and technology to delve into questions about culture and the environment.
more information: https://bostoncyberarts.org/future-of-history-a-group-exhibition-of-art-and-technology/
KASSEL DOKFEST
Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival
Patches of Snow in July
Saturday November 17, 2018
Program curated by Théo Deliyannis and Collectif Jeune Cinéma
N.E.W. at OTHER CINEMA
AVANT TO LIVE
DEC.22: NEW EXPERIMENTAL WORKS
“For over 30 years now, the OC season has been consummated with an energized evening of radical expression and film form, with many of the artists in person (7!). Spot-lit on this round are Jeremy Rourke’s performance may two thousand and eighteen, Bryan Boyce’s Fake but True, Tim Johnson’s March of Tim, and David King’s Male Men, all world premieres with makers present. ALSO Greta Snider’s A Small Place, Julie Murray’s Wind Wire Wound, Sabine Gruffat’s A Return to the Return to Reason, Lana Caplan’s Play and Repeat, Haley McCormick’s Dancer, Mark Street’s ZOOM, Montgomery Cantsin’s Smythe, Anthony Buchanan’s I, Chris, and the No. American debuts of Michael Fleming’s Never Never Land and Bori Mate’s Silent Spring Seahorse. A Robert Todd short is also included, in memory of this lovely gentleman who has passed from our world. Closing this colossal group show is Alex Cruse and Kevin Lo (Drought Spa), with a new performance A Fume, on fractured pressures in volatility’s mouth. Fruitcake and free pencils!!” Other Cinema
Other Cinema
@ATA Gallery, 922 Valencia, SF, CA