Calder Films by Ephraim Asili, Rosa Barba, Lucy Raven, and Agnès Varda

Floor Three, Susan and John Hess Family Theater

This screening program presents new films by Ephraim Asili, Rosa Barba, Lucy Raven, and Agnès Varda, four artists who were commissioned by the Calder Foundation, in collaboration with curator Victoria Brooks, to produce a film or video in response to an artwork by Alexander Calder. The series seeks to extend the legacy of Calder’s collaborations with filmmakers during his own lifetime, such as Herbert Matter and Hans Richter, through the distinctive potential of moving images to explore duration, motion, and materiality. 

Each artist has taken a radically different approach to their subject: both Barba and Asili used 16mm film—Barba’s Enigmatic Whisper captures a mobile in Calder’s Roxbury studio, and Asili’s Calder For Peter, a stabile at Storm King Art Center—while Raven photographed the performance of Earle Brown’s Calder Piece, featuring a standing mobile that acts as both an instrument and a conductor, as a series of animated still images in Shape Notes. Varda, a friend of Calder, also approached the commission by animating archival images in order to weave her own photographs of the artist with filmed footage. 

The screening will be followed by a discussion with Asili, Barba, Raven, and Varda, moderated by Victoria Brooks.

Tickets are required ($12 adults, students, and seniors; free for members). Doors open thirty minutes before the program begins. Ticket holders are guaranteed admission until the start of the program, at which time any unclaimed seats will be released.

Films

Rosa Barba, Enigmatic Whisper (2017). Produced and commissioned by the Calder Foundation, New York, in collaboration with Victoria Brooks. Color, sound; 7:59 min. Original music by Jan St. Werner, John Colpitts, and Andrew Barker.

Lucy Raven, Shape Notes (2017). Produced and commissioned by the Calder Foundation, New York, in collaboration with Victoria Brooks. Color, sound; 3:22 min. Performance by Talujon Percussion Quartet.

Ephraim Asili, Calder For Peter (2017). Produced and commissioned by the Calder Foundation, New York, in collaboration with Victoria Brooks.16mm HD transfer, color, sound; 11:18 min.

Agnès Varda, When Sandy Dreams (2017). Produced and commissioned by the Calder Foundation, New York, in collaboration with Victoria Brooks. Color, sound; 1:53 min.