Author Archives: lanazcaplan

OCEANO – Fall 2023

Posted by lanazcaplan

OCEANO (for seven generations)
a monograph by Lana Z Caplan

published by Kehrer Verlag
Fall 2023
ORDER NOW!

Oceano is portrait of the Oceano Dunes, a telling of their many stories: ATV riders and their RV village, the Chumash of the past and present, the Dunites (artists, poets, astrologers, mystics and hermits living in the dunes primarily in the 1920’s-40’s), the recently unearthed plaster sphinx from Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 Ten Commandments movie set, and a reimaging of Edward Weston’s modernist dune photographs.

Contributing essays by yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribal Chair Mona Olivas Tucker with her son Matthew Goldman, and by Hanna Rose Shell, Associate Professor of Critical and Curatorial studies, and Director of the Stan Brakhage Center for Media Arts in Boulder, Colorado.

More about this project

–

FESTIVAL DE L’HISTOIRE DE L’ART

Posted by lanazcaplan

FESTIVAL DE L’HISTOIRE DE L’ART

June 2, 18h30
Cinéma Ermitage, Belgium

programmed by Damien Truchot
En collaboration avec le Collectif Jeune Cinéma
Stefano Miraglia (Collectif Jeune Cinéma)

Patches of Snow in July & Les Bêtes du sud sauvage
more information

Theme for this 12th edition of the festival is “Le Climat”

The climate demands our attention, indeed makes us worry, but it would be arrogant to imagine that we are the first to entertain such concerns, which were already clearly present with our forebears. 

Weather and climate are two sides of the same coin. Meteorology refers to the daily experience of events such as wind, rain, and heat, whereas the climate considers the weather over much longer durations. The French language uses the same word, le temps, to designate both the weather and the passage of time. From this perspective, deep time, historical time, is inherent in the very notion of climate. https://www.festivaldelhistoiredelart.fr/

–

OCEANO (for seven generations)

Posted by lanazcaplan

OCEANO (for seven generations)

A monograph of images and texts will be available in fall 2023.
press release


-75 b/w and color images
-Contributing essay by yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribal Chair Mona Olivas Tucker and son Matthew Goldman
-Contributing essay by Hanna Rose Shell, Associate Professor of Critical and Curatorial studies, and Director of the Stan Brakhage Center for Media Arts in Boulder, Colorado.
-Published by Kehrer Verlag

Oceano (for seven generations), looks both back and to the future, in images and text, to describe histories and conflicts that question legacies of colonization, photographic history, utopian ideology, and the future for the politically charged and environmentally threatened Oceano Dunes.

These are the dunes of Edward Weston’s iconic photos; of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 buried movie set for The Ten Commandments; of the Dunites – the artists, poets, nudists, and mystics who lived in dune shacks from the 1920s to the 40s – hosts to Weston during shooting trips; and fundamentally, of the native Chumash. These dunes now host a landscape of ATVs, inciting a decade-long legal battle with nearby residents over air quality. Lana Z Caplan attended Air Pollution Control District hearings, met with historians, scoured archives, and collaborated with yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash tribal leadership to excavate these histories in images.

OCEANO

Posted by lanazcaplan

OCEANO

a monograph of images and texts will be available in fall 2023, published by Kehrer Verlag

I look to the white garden of the dunes.
The vast shadow-suckled sand.
Where the colors flash and never issue
But flow through hidden veinage;
I am naked to the sun.
I let the sun print on me as on the dunes.
With great passion of surrender, I have peace.

-Hugo Seeling (Dunite Poet) excerpt from L., published in Wheel of Fire, Round Table Book Co, Oceano, 1936

While these Dunes often appear as a blank, shifting landscape, Oceano weaves rich histories spanning over 12,000 years – from the expunged Native American inhabitants to the present-day ATV riders – to consider the current politically charged landscape of the Oceano Dunes. These are the dunes of the Chumash, nearly erased by the Spanish Missionaries; the dunes of Cecil B. DeMille’s ancient Egyptian The Ten Commandments movie set, buried in the sand in 1923 and currently being unearthed; the dunes of the Dunites – the artists, poets, nudists, and mystics living in the dunes in the interwar period; the dunes of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams’ modernist perfection; and the dunes of the current day Dunites – the ATV, motorcycle, and dune buggy riders and their RV village.

A THOUSAND SIGHS

Posted by lanazcaplan

A Thousand Sighs, 6:50, 4K video, 2022

“Lana Z Caplan’s A Thousand Sighs illustrates the intensity and borderline otherworldly joy experienced by the filmmaker through pregnancy during the pandemic. Psychedelic colours and upbeat music are paired with ultrasounds and images of a dancing, pregnant body to convey the range of conflicting emotions felt during that period.” Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival

OTHER CINEMA

Posted by lanazcaplan
still from A Jurist for Nothing

PSYCHO-GEO2: CALEXICO

OTHER CINEMA, SF
April 23, 2022

HODO + SCOTT + WATTS TOWERS +
OC presents the first of a dual-citizenship double-header locus-focused on the Southwest of the continent, with a compelling cadre of makers from Mexico as well as an audio-visual feast of provocative shorts from the North. Greg Berger‘s outrageous Joe T Hodo project demonstrates how a SF expat activist has managed to construct a potent satirical character on the margins of contemporary Mexican politics, Charles Fairbanks/Saul Kak‘s Echoes of the Volcano surveys the Oaxacan soundscape, and the Postcommodity Collective bisects the border wall with beautiful balloons! Whereas the psycho-politics of the LA area, layered in time and grounded on Simon Rodia‘s landmark sculpture hand-wrought in Watts, is echoed in Noah Purifoy‘s junk-art-park in the desert of Joshua Tree and reverberates through the mesmerizing Cali-fire reveries of San Luis Obispo‘s Lana Z Caplan. PLUS the legendary Matt Wolf/Guadalupe Rosales coverage of Latinx resistance to neighborhood gentrification in Boyle Heights, Georg Koszulinski‘s rhapsodic on-the-road collage-essay Continental Drifts, and Jake Scott‘s transformative farewell-to-Frisco hybrid performance.

–

FISURA

Posted by lanazcaplan

FISURA, INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF EXPERIMENTAL FILM & VIDEO

Program 12: Drift
April 22, 2022
Municipal Cineteca of Durango, Mexico
Mexico City
May 29 – June 29 – Streaming on Mexican Institute of Cinematography’s  FILMINLATINO

Including A Jurist for Nothing

More information

__

UVP: EVERSON MUSEUM OF ART

Posted by lanazcaplan

Light Work’s Urban Video Project presents

No Emoji for Ennui:
Lana Z Caplan, Ross Meckfessel, Alison Nguyen, Matt Whitman

January 27 – March 26, 2022
Thursday – Saturday, dusk – 11pm
Everson Museum of Art Plaza
401 Harrison Street

Plaza Projection Schedule
Jan. 27-Feb 5: Lana Z Caplan, Autopoiesis
Feb. 10-19: Ross Meckfessel, Estuary
Feb 24-March 5: Alison Nguyen, My Favorite Software Is Being Here
March 10-19: Matt Whitman, CAN’T ANSWER YOU ANYMORE (ON FACES) & HOW MUCH LONGER
March 24-26: combined loop

In-person Screening
Thursday | February 24 | 6:30 p.m.

Screening + Q&A
Thursday, March 10 | 6:30 p.m. EST
Streaming Online

About the Program

No Emoji for Ennui is a group show featuring the work of Lana Z Caplan, Ross Meckfessel, Alison Nguyen, and Matt Whitman that explores the difficult-to-define emotional tenor of our time—one that often leaves us overstimulated and underwhelmed at the same time it demands endless positivity. The seductive surface of the touchscreen shatters and the polygon meshes underlying our shared social reality peek out from under the digital skin.

What does it feel like to be a person in a world in which our sense of self has been thoroughly disoriented by technological entanglement and co-opted by neoliberal capital?

By turns unsettling, contemplative, humorous, and filled with existential dread, the resulting show is a collective selfie of who and what we are now.

more information

__

FISURA

Posted by lanazcaplan

FISURA
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL

Mexico City, Winter 2020-21

Including Autopoiesis
Streaming online and showing in cultural venues across Mexico City

Online: Friday, January 15, 2021 at 5:00 p.m. (CDMX time)

Program: Hologram Film projection # 7 / Program: Hologram
Stream: Facebook live
Filmmakers Program: Hologram
1. Federica Foglia-04/19/1968 (Italy)
2. Philippos Kappa – C wraps 9 (Greece)
3. Juana Robles – And a porcelain cat (Ireland)
4. Federica Leaf – Toad, Leaf, Grass, Rock (Italy)
5. Ildefonso Mercadillo – UP (Mexico)
6. Johannes Binotto – Prohibited Reproduction (Suiza)
7. ISABEL PEREZ OF THE THUMBER, JOSE CRUZIO – [SELF] INSERTIONS (Portugal)
8. Antonio Arango Vazquez – Untitled, Subtitled (Mexico)
9. Lana Z Caplan – Autopoiesis (USA)
10. Maxim Tatarintsev / +- (Russia)


Facebook
–

CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL

Posted by lanazcaplan

CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL

November 9-22, 2020

Including Autopoiesis – Saturday November 14 at 9pm
Shorts Program 5 – Virtual Screening
live Q&A after screening

Now approaching its twenty-seventh year, CUFF is officially the LONGEST RUNNING UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL IN THE WORLD. The fest is an internationally recognized program that screens documentary, experimental, avant-garde and cult cinema, and showcases films that explore new approaches to established practices.

https://cuff.org/
@chicagoundergroundfilmfest

–

CUTLOG NOVEMBER VIDEO SHOWCASE

Posted by lanazcaplan

CutLog Moving Image Artists Screening

Online program curated from Scotland

November 2 – 23, 2020

‘Collected Dispersal’ Rosemary Taylor | ‘Patches of Snow in July’ Lana Z Caplan | ‘ Residual Minority’ Mieke Vanmechele | ‘Boy and the Sea’ Sarahjane Swan & Roger Simian | ‘Ruru’ Denise Batchelor | ‘ Emotion Over Raisin’ Ruth Waters | ‘Frozen’ Adonia Bouchehri | ‘The Hearing of the Eye’ Alessia Cecchet | ‘River Ghosts’ Jonathan Johnson | ‘Passage’ Richard Ashrowan

https://vimeo.com/showcase/7719243

_

AREACODE

Posted by lanazcaplan

AREACODE ART FAIR

August 1-31, 2020
Online and Offline
areacodeartfair.com
@areacodeartfair

Area Code Drive In Digital Showcase
Friday August 14, 8:30-10pm
Salem State’s O’Keefe Sports Complex

Including Lana Z Caplan’s film play and repeat.

Juried by Leonie Bradbury and presented in partnership with LuminArtz, works in the Video and Digital-Art section of the fair will be screened for drive-in viewing events.




NEW MEDIA FEST 2020

Posted by lanazcaplan

NEW MEDIA FEST 2020 – July

IAM – Institut für Alles Mögliche Berlin – 09 July – 23 August 2020

Program 7 – Switching the Change
Curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne

Screening with Program 1 each Sunday, July 9-August 23, 14h-20h

Uri Kloss (Israel) – Word, 2017, 1:29
Fran Orallo (Spain) – Death Dance, 2017, 1:00
James Murphy (Ireland) – Moving Water, 2019, 1:59
Zlatko Cosic (Bosnia) – Even The Birds Know It, 2017, 2:55
Alan Sondhein (USA) – American Life, 2018, 6:03
Dmitry Kmelnitsky (USA) – URTH LING, 2019, 3:43
Brit Bunkley (New Zealand) – Pillard of Cloud, 2016, 4:00
Oleg Kharch (Ukraine) – Fakemet, 2019, 3:46
Lana Z Caplan (USA) – Canaries in the Mine, 2015, 8:19
Kristina Frank /Mervi Kekarainen (Sweden) – 2Rabbits in Purgatorio, 2019, 05:11
Arie Sigal & Ben-David Sigal (Israel) – Perlite, 2018, 4:17
Marcha Schagen (NL) – Melt Less CO2, 2019, 3:48
Adrien Gaumé (France) – Dry by innocence, 2018, 4’53”
Kate Walker (USA) – Cloudship, 2018, 14:33
Xia Han (China) – The Gift, 2019, 14: 23
Michael Carmody & Elissa Goodrich (Australia) – Common Time, 2018, 12:23
Boris Marinin (Israel) – Greenhouse, 2019, 3:19
Ausin Sainz (Spain) – Today, 2019, 5:00
Susanne Wiegner (Germany) – Sunrise, 2019, 5: 46
Gabriele Stellbaum (Germany) – Shame, 2019, 1:11

http://retro.newmediafest.org/wow-jubilee-2020-vii/

_

LABOCINE – UNEQUAL STATES

Posted by lanazcaplan

LABOCINE MAGAZINE, ISSUE 48, JULY 2020

Featuring Maelstroms
Now streaming: https://www.labocine.com/issues/unequal-states

About Unequal States
Stories of the continued struggle against oppression through movements, resistance, and solidarity are often documented and presented in many forms as acts of resistance themselves. In these stories, the notion of “inequality” draws together different worlds, cultures, and dimensions/scales (micro/macro). From animations to documentaries, these films shed light on the pervasiveness of this inequality on all fronts by exploring social, scientific, and political perspectives in our fight against racism, injustice, and inequality.



POSTCARDS FROM THE HANGING ON LENSCRATCH

Posted by lanazcaplan

LENSCRATCH
Fine Art Photography Daily

June 11, 2020

The photographic series Postcards from the Hanging: Sites of Public Execution was featured on the prominent Fine Art Photography Daily website Lenscratch.com.

“Trauma and horrific histories are held in landscapes in every corner of the globe. For the past twenty years photographer, filmmaker, and educator Lana Z Caplan has been documenting sites of public killings in her project, Postcards from the Hanging: Sites of Public Execution. She shares some stunning statistics in her statement, “The United States is one of only 20 countries in the world that continues to employ state sanctioned killing. In 2019 we ranked 6th in the world in the number of executions following (in order) China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt (execution totals not known for Vietnam, North Korea, and Syria).”  Her thoughtful examination of why our country continues to allow the death penalty adds another layer to its history of pain and suffering.”  Lenscratch.com