Artist in person!
Microscope is pleased to present as part of our emerging series YES, a solo screening of video works by Madsen Minax, an interdisciplinary artist whose work is influenced by his participation in justice-oriented communities and concerned with “the entanglements of human connectivity” and “the nature of transformation”. In his works, Minax approaches identity and personal experience, often by connecting them to larger technological, existential, social, alchemical, or cosmological themes and through the use of narrating voice. His videos employ both original and appropriated footage and combine various approaches - documentary, experimental, narrative, 3D animation, and performance, among others.
The 55-minute program features four short videos completed between 2016 and 2018. In “To Summon and Chase Away” (2016), shot in video and Super 8mm, Minax’s camera follows a boy in the cold winter scape of a post-industrial, rural town as scenes from his past and future conflate with his present. “Because of Us” (2017), which includes text from the 1998 book by Marshall T. Savage “The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps", blends together sequences from educational found films with 3D animated night sky imagery, and reflects upon the mystery of the beginning of life in the universe, our human-centered view of technological advancement, and the implications of dreams of colonizing the galaxy.
“The Source is a Hole” (2017), perhaps the most personal and autobiographical work by Minax, is “a video about love and mythology and fucking and death and dads and moms and dogs and gods”. The work considers our corporeal existence, and the role played by our body in the definition of who we are. And, it does so through the skillful orchestration of sequences from archival footage and appropriated movies — with snippets from “Blade Runner” and “Back to the Future” among others — as well as animation, reenactments, computer graphics, and digitally manipulated footage.
In his most recent work “The Eddies”, a transexual man with an obsession for war movies and machine guns seeks company via a Craigslist post titled “Masturbate on camera with your firearm”. The video documents the protagonist’s encounters with two men of the same name, taking place between underground and overground locations in Memphis, TX.
Madsen Minax will be in attendance and available for Q&A following the screening.
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Madsen Minax works in documentary and hybrid filmmaking formats, narrative cinema, experimental and essay film, sound and music performance and media installation. His projects have screened and exhibited at spaces including the European Media Art Festival (Germany), the Ann Arbor Film Festival (MI), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Anthology Film Archives (NYC), The British Film Institute (UK), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), REDCAT (Los Angeles), and hundreds of LGBT film festivals around the world from Osaka, Japan to Montevideo, Uruguay. Minax has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Core Program, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Berlinale Doc Station, and numerous others. He is currently a Samuel Edes Foundation fellow as well as a Queer|Arts|Mentorship fellow. Minax currently divides his time between Brooklyn and Burlington, Vermont.
Program:
To Summon and Chase Away
Single-channel HD video, 2016, 8 minutes 14 seconds
Amid a ceaseless, still winter, coldness engulfs. Frolicking through a snowy rural expanse (and a legacy of post-industrial decay), a boy encounters his own death and bears witness to his past, present, and future. Paralleling industry and body as transitory, a meditation on growth and death, progress and process emerges. The wood(s) holds many spirits.
Because of Us
Single-channel HD video, 2017, 4 minutes 40 seconds
Constructed skyscapes and a near-death experience reveal the American drive to cultivate, to own. Stars, planets, networks, and connections are alchemical and the nature of industry, progress and technology, are themselves icons for worship. On-screen text is sourced from "The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps," a 1998 book by Marshall T. Savage.
The Source is a Hole
Single-channel HD video, 2017, 25 minutes 5 seconds
In a series of love letters to feminine deities, a disembodied voice recounts memories and longings, both real and imagined. Mythology, science fiction, art history, sex, and death become a series of holes: through which to travel, through which to perceive, through which to accept, through which to speak.
The Eddies
Single-channel HD video, 2018, 16 minutes 7 seconds
From a network of underground tunnels, a man describes flood lines, levees and trivial histories of the crumbling infrastructure of Memphis, TN. In this same city, the filmmaker, a recent transsexual transplant, watches war films and contemplates masculine connectivity in the American South. He posts a Craigslist advertisement asking men to masturbate on-camera with their firearms. He receives a single response.