Whitney Biennial 2017

Floor 3

Born 1972 in Columbus, OH
Lives in Columbus, OH

Dani Leventhal’s films make palpable the emotional life of disparate worlds. Using both original scripted and found material, Leventhal creates complex layers of meaning through montage, which renders micronarratives of mortality and desire. In Platonic (2013), a series of recounted stories are interwoven with collected and manipulated images, revealing some of the innumerable idiosyncrasies of human relations. In a narrative turn, Leventhal and Jared Buckhiester made Hard as Opal (2015), which slowly oscillates between expressions of desire and biological instinct to interrogate reproductive proclivities. Strangely Ordinary This Devotion (2017) by Leventhal and Sheilah Wilson, is a visceral exploration of domesticity, queer desire, and fantasy in a world under the threat of climate change; both utilizing and exploding archetypes, the film offers a radical approach to collaboration and the concept of family. In each of these works, Leventhal (and her collaborators) collect and arrange images and moments that are at once peculiar and banal, precious and disturbing, creating resonance and contrast through experimental modes of storytelling.

Screenings: April 22–23