Part of the Jack H. Skirball series, screening at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater to be held on Monday, March 13.
Still from ‘#11, Marey <-> Moiré’ courtesy of the artist.
In a body of mesmerizing abstract films made since the early 1990s, visionary Dutch artist Joost Rekveld has explored the inner depths and outer reaches of optical expression at the nexus of technology and natural phenomena. Rekveld’s films combine a startling ingenuity and facility with the image-making capabilities of various machines (many of his own design) with his radically inventive theories on and approaches to form, motion and perception.
Film at REDCAT and the Los Angeles Filmforum present a screening of Rekveld’s work Monday, March 13.
Joost Rekveld is an artist who is motivated by the question of what we can learn from a dialogue with machines. In his work, he explores the sensory consequences of systems of his own design, often inspired by forgotten corners in the history of science and technology. These systems combine temporary dogma’s in the form of procedures or code, with more open-ended elements such as material processes or networks of interactions that are too complex to predict. His films, installations and performances are composed documentaries of the worlds opened by such systems. In their sensuality they are an attempt to reach an intimate and embodied understanding of our technological world.
His abstract films have been shown worldwide in a wide range of festivals and venues for experimental film, animation or other kinds of moving image. Most of his recent films had their premieres at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and he had retrospectives at the Barbican in London and the Ann Arbor film festival amongst others. Individual films were screened at hundreds of venues, including the ICA and the Tate Modern in London, The Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. His film #11, Marey <-> Moire was the first Dutch film to be ever shown at the Sundance Film Festival.
He has realized several installations and was involved in many collaborative projects involving composers, music ensembles, theatre companies, dance companies and artist’s labs. These included dance company Emio Greco | PC (Amsterdam / Marseille), music theatre ensemble De Veenfabriek (Leiden), contemporary music ensembles such as ASKO / Schonberg (Amsterdam) and ensemble Intercontemporain (Paris), Opera North (Leeds) and The Royal Opera (London) and electronic art and music laboratories such as IRCAM (Paris), STEIM (Amsterdam) and the V2 Institute for Unstable Media (Rotterdam).
As a side-effect of his artistic work, he has been putting together many film programs about the history of abstract animation and light art since 1990, has been curating several exhibitions and has published a number of essays. He has been giving lectures since 1993, has been teaching since 1996, and from 2008 to 2014 he was the course director of the ArtScience Interfaculty of the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. He is currently a board member of Sonic Acts (Amsterdam) and of the Centre for Visual Music (Los Angeles).
The event is curated by Mark Toscano, as part of the Jack H. Skirball Series and is co-presented with Los Angeles Filmforum with generous support from the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts.
Source: REDCAT
