Death Is Green

Floor Three, Susan and John Hess Family Gallery and Theater

The films in this program explore the arc of the natural world’s evolution from the primeval environment to the Anthropocene. Animated Hollywood dinosaurs, fossil traders and scientists try to reconstruct the plot of natural history. Black ice and storms threaten imminent collapse. Film buried then excavated from a landfill, images created from decomposition, and abandoned technologies turn dig sites into crime scenes.

Lily Jue Sheng (b. 1987) with Michael Sidnam (b. 1987), Mercurial Matter, 2014
Stan Brakhage (1933–2003), Black Ice, 1994
Daniel Spangler (b. 1985), Storms, 2014
Jennifer Reeves (b. 1971), Landfill 16, 2011 
Sandra Gibson (b. 1968), NYC Flower Film, 2003
Anna Zett (b. 1983), This Unwieldy Object, 2014 
Eric Leiser (b. 1981), Anthropic Principle, 2016

Interval

Jennifer Reeves (b. 1971), When It Was Blue, 2008

In this superimposed double projected film, a stream of richly layered surfaces take us on a journey through the natural world, sweeping through water—the ocean, rivers, icicles, melting icecaps, rain speckled with crimson red, deep purple and midnight blue. A moving tornado, lava flows, earthquake diagrams, fields, flora, animals running, treetops and the sky envelop us in a bombardment of sensations, as our eyes move across images of landscapes from Iceland, Central America, Canada, the United States and New Zealand. The dreamlike quality of Reeves' semi-abstracted imagery combines an unease about the natural world’s fragility with a sense of nature as a metaphor for the unconscious.

Music by the Icelandic composer Skuli Sverisson

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.