by ·Comments Off on Cauleen Smith volcano shorts

Cauleen Smith came to town to open an art exhibit and screen two nights of shorts programs – I made it to one of those.

Songs for Earth and Folk (2013)

Subtitle conversation between EARTH and FOLK
Soundtrack by The Eternals, aka Damon Locks

–
Sine at the Canyon, Sine at the Sea (2016)

Racism and outer space
Seems tragic that letterboxd just lists “Cast: Richard Spencer”
Learned: Kelly Gabron = Cauleen Smith.

–
Triangle Trade (2017)

Volcano and puppets
Collaborators include Jérôme Havre, a Toronto sculptor, and Camille Turner.
Music by Justin Hicks.

–
My Caldera (2022)

Part one of The Volcano Manifesto (this + Mines + Deep West). Volcano Manifesto is also the title of an actual manifesto, released as a chapbook at an art exhibit, which was also titled My Caldera, and featured the handmade banners people were holding in Deep West. Metal soundtrack by Salvadore & Diego Rafael Rivera. “Cameraless print” process, awesome. Per the notes: “The scratchy, chaotic aesthetic is created through Smith’s proprietary process of placing TikTok video stills onto 35mm film then rendering it in 4k as an artifact of the original footage.”

–
Mines to Caves (2023)

Geology / wild animals
This one’s also an installation.

–
All The Money (2024)

Photographs / fire
Music video for a Moor Mother song from her insane album The Great Bailout.

–
The Deep West Assembly (2024)

“to understand the world through extraction”
populations irrupt / volcanoes erupt
Closes with a sign-language interpretation of a Nina Simone song.

–
see also:
Last Things (Deborah Stratman, rocks)
Rock Bottom Riser (Fern Silva, volcanoes)

from Cauleen’s essay “The Association for the Advancement of Cinematic Creative Maladjustment”:

The Maladjusteds liberate image from narrative. Narrative is the oppressor of the Moving-Image … the Moving-Image can and must do more than slave for narrative. The Moving-Image must rise up and reclaim the power it has for so long surrendered to story.
…
The Maladjusteds project their love of the Spectator onto the screens. The Maladjusteds resist corporate pressure to fuel the desires of the Spectator. Rather they seek to excavate her needs.
…
The Maladjusted Spectator does not expect to be pleased. She expects to be respected … When she watches a Moving-Image, she revels in the freedom of being responsible for her heart and mind, while trusting the filmmaker to expand and enliven both.

by ·Comments Off on Last Things (2023, Deborah Stratman)

Kicking off Saturday with lovely mellow music by Mold Gold. Trying to tip the artists after the fact – it’s not their fault that stupid venmo won’t let me add a credit card in their broken app.

Lost Things has a beautiful ending, choir with titled lyrics into a field of star people, the artistic peak of the festival for me. Rocks, tho. Visible rocks, and microscopic, and caves made out of rock. The coolest images, with apocalyptic sci-fi voiceover blending with proper-sci explanations, all kinds of spacey music with a minimum of high-pitched drone.

NOV 2025: Watched again at home.

Mouseover to get flashed by the star people:
image

That Day on the River (2023, Lei Lei)
This played first but deserves to be mentioned last. Artificially degrades its archive images with screens and grains, slows down and Martin Arnoldizes the motion and adds clunky sounds of analog tape cueing and fluttering, while telling a couple unilluminating stories from a son’s and dad’s childhood. Mostly excruciating. I wouldn’t want to see the director’s 100-minute feature about his family history, but I would check out the 6-minute photo flicker.