Microscope is very pleased to present a screening night of Super 8mm and 16mm films by Rachael Guma and Grace Sloan as part of our emerging artists series YES, including several premieres, works in progress, and fresh-from-the-lab film prints by the two New York-based artists.
A champion of small gauge film and sound experimentation, Rachael Guma makes works including stop motion animations, diaristic and personal observations, experimental narratives, and film performances where the visuals and sound are expanded through the use of mirrors, filters, and other objects and hybrid tools/instruments she has devised. Themes of the works in the program — which features three never-before-seen works “Walosi (The Frog)”, a shadow animation, and the Super 8mm films “Whiplash” and “Hidden Planet” — include the poetry of William Blake, ritual and dance, and celestial bodies and occurrences.
Grace Sloan comments on popular culture through the use of a variety of found films, ranging from holiday children’s programs to adult films, to create compositions that sabotage the original purpose or meaning. Sloan heightens the sense of transience of the film medium by often choosing as her subjects people and places that no longer exist. The title of her first film “Tease" — a hand-processed found footage film treated with bleach, dye, and nail polish to obscure the underlying imagery — may describe by extension all of her works to date in that they create a tension between showing and not showing, whether through stuttering of the frame, painting and scratching on film, or other manipulations. The program marks the debut of her 2018 Super 8mm film “Carol Wright Catalog”, a hand processed and animated/flicker film of the pages of the direct mail marketing catalog "Carol Wright".
Both Guma and Sloan will be in attendance and available for a Q&A following the screening.
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Rachael Guma is a filmmaker and sound artist in Brooklyn, New York. Since graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute, her films have screened at the San Francisco Cinematheque, RX Gallery, Mono No Aware, Northern Flickers, UnionDocs, AXWFF, Black Maria, Echo Park Film Center and Microscope Gallery where she was invited to present her first solo screening in 2013. In 2016-2017, Rachael participated in Dreamlands: Expanded, a series of expanded cinema events organized by Microscope Gallery in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the exhibition “Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema & Art, 1905-2016”. In this series, she provided live sound and additional visual support for a re-staging of Kurt Schwerdtfeger's 1922 “Reflektorische Farblichtspiele” (Reflecting Color-Light Play), premiered a film, light, and sound composition REDNOWWONDER, and performed as part of The Owl Flies at Twilight with Optipus. As a member of Optipus Film Collective, she has performed live foley and record manipulations at the Kitchen, Participant Gallery, 2011 Index Festival, Roulette, the Museum of Art and Design (MAD), Morbid Anatomy Museum, Transient Visions, and Unseen Cinema. Guma plays theremin for the sound collective, Underworld Oscillator Corporation, most recently performing a live score for the silent film version of The Phantom of the Opera (1925). She is also a founding member of the liquid light projection group, A Clockface Orange. Her teaching experience includes introducing avant-garde film to at-risk teens at Reel Works, artist visits at UC Boulder, Brooklyn College, Pratt Institute and Sarah Lawrence, animation, sound for film and theremin workshops at the Children's Museum of the Arts, Professional Development workshops for Magic Box Productions, and Super 8mm workshops for Mono No Aware.
Grace Sloan is a New York based experimental filmmaker, designer, and cultural critic. She works with found footage, direct animation, and hand processes to subvert narratives and to highlight film’s ephemerality. Her work has screened at the Telluride Film Festival, Artists Television Access in San Francisco, and Anthology Film Archives. She received a BA from San Francisco State University, and an MA from the New School for Social Research.
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Microscope Gallery Event Series 2018 is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).