Forum 65: Jones, Koester, Nashashibi/Skaer: Reanimation

Forum 65 brings together three moving-image works: silent, hypnotic loops that reanimate different forms of cultural history, actions, and images, awash in repetition, strobing, and abstraction. In Punctured, William E. Jones sequences hundreds of photographs shot for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression that were rejected, or “killed,” by program director Roy Stryker. Each frame zooms out from the black hole that mars the photograph, revealing the image around the hole and quietly accentuating an absence. Joachim Koester’s spastic film Tarantism takes its starting point from the effects of the tarantula’s bite and the possessed dance that it spawned. A group of dancers individually interpret this state of reverie, to “explore this grey zone: the fringes of the body.” In Flash in the Metropolitan, Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer capture statues and objects in the Metropolitan Museum of Art through rhythmic flashes of illumination. Ancient artifacts are reanimated, alternating moments of absence with moments of exposure.

General support for the museum’s exhibition program is provided by The Heinz Endowments and Allegheny Regional Asset District. Carnegie Museum of Art receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.