JOHN POWERS
THE HOUSE YOU WERE BORN IN
2015, 10 min., b&w/color, sound, HD digital video
The House You Were Born In sets up a faux slideshow of Christmas lights, cloud atlases, and interior decorating manuals, all of which show their seams. Virginia Woolf and Gaston Bachelard respond to prompts designed for middle school writing exercises. A slide show of domestic interiors goes off the rails, slipping in and out of alignment. Word squares off against image, two versions of the same voice-over compete, and the macro butts up against the micro. The tone is affectionate, but cautious.
Language seems inadequate to describe a familiar place, but are images any better? Should we be troubled when we feel nostalgic?
SELECTED SCREENINGS:
2.23.16 CARBONDALE, IL
2.23-28.16 CARBONDALE, IL
SIU Carbondale University Museum
4.17.16 MADISON, WI
Wisconsin Film Festival
5.01.16 MILWAUKEE, WI
Milwaukee Underground Film Festival
To program The House You Were Born In, please contact me.
THE SOMBER VAULT
2014, 6 min, color, silent, HD digital video
A tripartite formal investigation of symmetry, non-transparency, and the illusion of depth in three different time periods and locations. Still images flutter, and plans are thwarted in the execution.
In June 1958, Mark Rothko accepted his first and only commission — to create a series of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building on Park Avenue. Under the influence of Michelangelo’s claustrophobic design for the vestible of the Laurentian Library in Florence (1534-71), Rothko subverted his assignment, producing “closed spaces” that suggest dark portals, “windows” in concept only.
The Somber Vault stages a conversation between a set of opaque windows shot in Fultonville, New York, in 2013, resembling stained glass (echoes of The Rothko Chapel) and Rothko’s Seagram Murals — superimposed and edited to the same pre-written score. Michelangelo makes a cameo.
“Michelangelo achieved just the feeling I'm after -- he makes the viewers feel that they are trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall.” — Mark Rothko
SELECTED SCREENINGS:
1.29.15 CHICAGO, IL
Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival
4.11.15 SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Crossroads Festival
4.11.15 MADISON, WI
Wisconsin Film Festival
3.04.16 DURHAM, NC
Unexposed Microcinema
02.27.17 ANCHORAGE, AK
The Anchorage Museum
To program The Somber Vault, please contact me.
