Off The Screen: Installations
Published March 9th, 2022
The Ann Arbor Film Festival is happy to welcome back Off The Screen! (OTS!) installations to the 60th AAFF! Meant to expose attendees to intermedia art, OTS! is free, open to the public, and in-person only unless otherwise noted.
This years' OTS! program includes live cinema performances, new media installations, and other intermedia moving image artworks. OTS! engages artists, festival attendees, the general public, students and educators. The program provides opportunities for constituents to experience expanded cinema art, and to more deeply engage with festival subject matter, as well as each other.
See below the full list of installations including locations and times they will be available. OTS! is free, open to the public, and in-person only unless otherwise noted.
Installations
111 South 4th Avenue
Now on view from the street!
Thunder Scene by Vijay Masharani
A single-channel video loop of the front of a wrecked 1983-88 Ford Thunderbird that appears to have been set on fire. Each passing car has been removed; their presence is registered through their headlights and brake lights illuminating the broken glass on the ground and the body of the Thunderbird.
Ann Arbor Art Center (A2AC)
117 West Liberty Street
Now on view from the street!
Metamorphism by Manda Moran
This video installation reveals the hypnotizing interplay between light and metamorphic rocks through movement.
A graduate of USC School of Cinematic Arts, Manda Moran is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans film, photography, and installation. Her GIF installation Laser Loops premiered at the 2016 Ann Arbor Film Festival. She is an MFA candidate in Cranbrook’s 3D design department and a 2018 Applebaum Photography fellow.
A2AC Aquarium Gallery
Next to the Ashley Street Exit of the S. Ashley Street Lot
Now on view from the street!
Inside the Box (Outside the Box) by Jeremy Liesen & Matt Wilken
The Inside the Box (Outside the Box) installation explores how technology can shape our ideas of connection, collaboration and cooperation, while moving us away from past perceived boundaries.
Michigan Theater
603 East Liberty Street
March 22-27 (Festival Week)
Amalgamate! by Alexandra McDonald
A life-size, three-channel, interactive video sculpture. Three 32-inch TV monitors each display videos of a different segment of the body, the top monitor being the head, the middle the torso, and the bottom legs.
Three buttons on the side of the monitors allow viewers to randomly flip through dozens of outfits and performances, creating a variety of different versions of just one person.
All videos play on a loop, so viewers may stay and interact with the piece for as little or as long as they like.
Four Dreams by Natalia Rocafuerte
Artist Natalia Rocafuerte depicts the passing of time like the movement of a train across America. Her work highlights symbols and video aesthetics of Mexican-American culture like a pocho, a Mexican-American deemed not Mexican enough derived from a Spanish work meaning “spoiled fruit,” DIY graphic aesthetics, and Televisa Commercials from the ’90’s.
Persistent Wave
by Noel Stupek
This year the grand foyer installation was fabricated while musing on the Manupelli launch, the persistent wave of Ann Arbor’s enthusiasm, and the celebration of this sixth decade of presenting inventive films.
What We Saw
by Everyone
Blank cards are provided in the Grand Foyer Lobby for you—the audience—to write down what you observe at the festival, onscreen and off. Leave your card in the box provided at the What We Saw station to be photographed and added to the ongoing slideshow. This presentation is an experimental remix documentary made possible by you: the savvy, diverse, and experimental-film-loving AAFF audience. All are invited and encouraged to participate!
U-M Institute for the Humanities Gallery
202 South Thayer Street #1111 | March 16 - April 29 Mon–Fri 9am–5pm
How to Build a Disaster Proof House by Tracey Snelling
Artist Tracey Snelling contemplates the uncertainty, displacement and disenfranchisement that frames the present day, answering the question of how we can find a safe place protected from bad weather in an era of floods, fires and pandemics. In partnership with the U-M Institute for the Humanities Gallery.
Snelling will create a mobile unit of How to Build a Disaster Proof House for Opening Night of the AAFF, placed in front of the Michigan Theater.
U-M North Quad Space 2435
105 South State Street | March 22-27, 2022 (Festival Week)
Tue - Thu: 12pm - 5:30pm
Fri: 9:30am - 5:30pm
Sat: 10am - 5:30pm
Sun: 10am - 2pm
Deep Sophia by Yvette Granata
A three-channel interactive installation that remixes the film close-up by using facial recognition technology to map the face of Sophia Robot onto the faces of actors in historical films. Rather than a “deep fake” video, the superimposition of Sophia’s face onto the nuanced emotional performances of human actors creates a series of deeply strange facial expressions that are not anatomically possible for a human face.
New Voices
Featuring work by students from the College for Creative Studies (Detroit, MI); Edge Hill University (Ormskirk, UK); the University of Michigan Department of Film, Television, and Media in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (Ann Arbor, MI); and the University of Michigan Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design (Ann Arbor, MI).
OPTX.drips by Maxime Corbeil-Perron
OPTX.drips is a media archeological work that features an outdated optical technology and an obsolete media revisited through digital technology. This installation explores the notion of an optical texture that is only visible using anaglyph stereoscopy (3D, red/cyan), thereby transforming flat projection surfaces into optical membranes that are rich in relief and depth, and with an abstract and expressive aesthetic.
Sign Stealing by Megan Young
Artist Megan Young introduces the Sign Stealing project, considering aerial surveillance and predictive policing through creative practice and public experiments. A series of experimental shorts feature footage from semi-autonomous drones tracking participants playing simple games in public spaces. They point to the entrenched culture of surveillance in the United States and to the general acceptance of this behavior. They include AI data processing iconography and text-based reminders that these technologies, for better or worse, are shaped through human experience. Combining kinesthetic exploration and political activism, the images, patterns, and boundaries reflect visions for a free and limitless future.
Uku Pacha by Diego Bonilla
Uku Pacha showcases a clever generative approach to the production of cinematic narratives. It tells the story of three people on a road journey through the Ecuadorian Andes: a businessman, a journalist, and the son of a politician. As the plot moves forward, the passengers seem caught in time loops, or a multiplicity of journeys, and start questioning why they were summoned, why together. As it turns out, for each of the main characters the recurring dream is closer to a recurring nightmare, although for different ethical reasons.
U-M Stamps Gallery
201 South Division Street
Wed–Sat 11am–5pm
Close but Not Touching
A group show featuring new works in interdisciplinary installation, video, and sculpture from University of Michigan MFA candidates Nick Azzaro, martha daghlian, Razi Jafri, Natalia Rocafuerte, Kristina Sheufelt, Ellie Schmidt, and Georgia b. Smith.
