Walden [verb] is a collaborative show consisting of art made by members of the cast and crew of a 3-channel video installation called ‘Walden [verb]’. This 3-channel work will be the central piece of the show, and various satellite pieces in different art forms will form a creative grouping to accompany the main video installation in the space. Each satellite artwork will be connected to and inspired by the main work either by theme, underlying discussion, visual aesthetic, materials, or location/space. Of course, each artist is also connected to the main work because they in some way participated in the creation of it.
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Title 1: WALDEN [verb] – 3 channel video installation – Adapted and directed by Emma Rozanski
Description/Synopsis: ‘Walden [verb]’ is an experimental adaptation of the book ‘Walden’ by Henry David Thoreau, and playful abstractions relating to critiques of his life and work. Within three channels of video, we follow a young woman in the snowy woods as she undertakes various ritualistic procedures in nature and in symbolic spaces. The film links various themes of environmentalism and human discord to weave fragments of narratives and symbols, the three channels of video creating a specifically-crafted whole linked by a single soundscape.
23 minutes / 3-channel video: Scope in 16×9 container / Colour / Stereo
CAST/CREW: Performer: Liz Gomez ~ Cinematographer: Yoni Goldstein ~ Sound & Music: Guy Fixsen ~ Editor, Assistant Camera: Gonzalo Escobar Mora ~ Assistant Director & PM: Madigan Burke ~ Assistant Camera & Gaffer and in-camera FX: Zach Barner ~ Text FX: Ronen Goldstein ~ Location Assistance: Daniele Wilmot, Bobbi & Steve Meier ~ Production Support: Hadley Austin
Filmed on location in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana with additional footage at Walden Pond, Massachusetts.
Official page: www.emmarozanski.com/waldenverb
Writer/Director Bio: Emma is an Australian filmmaker and multimedia artist based between Colombia and Chicago. She studied under acclaimed Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr at his film.factory in Sarajevo where she received her MFA in filmmaking. Emma’s moving image works have been selected for over 300 festivals and exhibitions worldwide and won several awards. Her debut feature-length film premiered at SXSW and she has just completed her 2nd narrative feature film, EL VAQUERO (Colombia). In 2018 Emma was the artist in residence at Chicago’s International Museum of Surgical Science, culminating in her first solo show. She is happy to be back in Chicago to present Walden [verb].
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Title 2. ‘Oneness of Self and Environment’ – By Liz Gomez
Materials: Plastic bags, water bottles, and mixed media on thrifted garment.
Description: Tapping into the sense of urgency that emerges within Walden [verb] in relation to an impending climate crisis both on and off screen, Liz Gomez created a wearable object consisting of everyday items that otherwise would be discarded or overlooked. Water bottles, plastic bags, and found objects are transformed into a colorful garment, demonstrating the power creative reuse has to create sustainable pathways to a healthier Earth.
Artist Bio:
Liz Gomez is a queer Afro-Chicanx multidisciplinary artist, educator, and Nichiren Buddhist whose work utilizes portraiture, upcycling, and abstraction as a pathway to storytelling and liberation. They believe that only by facing our collective and inner truths can healing, wholeness and peace exist. Their new series focuses on the themes of creative reuse and wearable art to transform how viewers view supposedly single-use items.
Gomez utilizes reclaimed materials, paint, and intuition to create works that foster conversations about living in harmony with the Earth, consumerism, waste, excess, and adornment as protest.
Liz Gomez holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has completed residencies with Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, The Hunter Radcliffe Artist program, and the Field/Work Residency program at The Chicago Artist Coalition. Their work has been
shown at Rootwork Gallery, Stony Island Arts Bank; Nobel Peace Prize Forum, ACM CHI Conference; Phantom Gallery; William Hill Gallery, Chicago Cultural Center; The Museum of Science and Industry; Aplomb Gallery; The Gene Siskel Film Center; and Evanston Art Center 22nd.
Social Media links: https://www.instagram.com/liz_go_gomez/
Website: Liz-Gomez.com
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Title 3. ‘Two years, two months, and two days’ – a kinetic display by Gonzalo Escobar Mora
Description: The author Henry David Thoreau spent two years, two months, and two days, living in the woods at Walden Pond. A lot has been said and discussed about his intentions, and the reflections brought up by his book, Walden. This piece aims to evoke an image of accumulation, of time and ideas, of the individual’s thoughts against the collective world. By juxtaposing a personal object such as nail clippings, and by presenting them publicly, in an unusual quantity and manner, (alive, vibrating!); this piece invites the viewer to make amends with their own relationship to the personal and the political ideas behind this legendary work of literature.
Artist Bio: Gonzalo Escobar Mora is an artist who wants to be filmmaker, and a filmmaker who wants to be an artist. He loves this confusion. Gonzalo received a Master’s in film directing from Bela Tarr’s film.factory program in Sarajevo, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work encompasses short films, installations, video art, documentaries, film essay, animations, etc.; questioning formal definitions, narrative structures, and exploring intersections between the personal and the political. He has worked in a variety of projects throughout Latin America, Europe, and the United States. As a citizen of the world, he continues exploring and stretching the aforementioned confusion. Gonzalo is the recipient of a Make-A-Wave 3-Arts award.
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Title 4. ‘Vaquita’ – An environmental activist experimental documentary by Yoni Goldstein and Hadley Austin (FORMIDABLE ENTITIES)
Description: “Vaquita” is a video poem dedicated to a small porpoise on the brink of extinction. Inhabiting the shallow, turbid waters of the Gulf of California, it is likely that only 19 living Vaquitas remain alive today. They are critically endangered by illegal gillnets and pollution. With only a small handful of sightings in the wild, the Vaquita shimmers between observation and imagination, existence and nonexistence. It is possible that they are already extinct as you read this. This video loop imagines the possibility of mutual consideration between the human world and the lonely existence of this little-known porpoise. The hydrophonic voice over (an outtake from Carnival of the Animals, a performance piece by every house has a door) describes a humble encounter with the Vaquitas, musing about their bifurcated brains – “one side for wakefulness” and “one for dreams.” In between these textural scenes we offer an EMDR psychotherapy session for the audience. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) treatments use a light machine to provoke side-to-side eye movement, simulating the biological mechanisms involved in REM sleep. Once in this dream-like stage, patients are able to make internal associations and identify ecological anxieties.
Artists’ Bio: Yoni Goldstein and Hadley Austin comprise Formidable Entities, a documentary and moving image production collaborative based in Chicago. Hadley Austin is a writer and documentarian, a published poet and also a Pushcart nominee. She has been a Bay Area Video Coalition fellow and The Redford Center fellow and her directorial debut is Demon Mineral (2023), winner of the Slamdance Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature. Yoni Goldstein has been working in documentary and video art since the early aughts. His cinematography work has been shown at The Cannes Film Festival, South by Southwest, and The Whitney Biennial, among others.In 2018, he was selected as an Independent Film Projects documentary fellow, and has resided at the Alice Kaplan Institute at Northwestern, the Institute for Advanced Study at the Central European University, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. That year he was also named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces” of independent cinema.
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Title 5: “Not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be” An ephemeral Installation by Zach Barner
Description: A cyclical thawing time-space poem following Henry David Thoreau various observations made at the site of his cabin at Walden. Appropriating the words from Thoreau’s text and his observations of the bottomless pond. Uniting the desire for text to be deeply human and deeply ecological.
Artist Bio: Zach Barner is an artist who works in moving images using hybrid narrative methods. His recent work looks at play and silence as an act of resistance and a means against production, featuring the wind, chance encounters of the everyday, and finding joy. His work has premiered at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and projects he has collaborated on have been shown at Berlinale, Cannes, FID Marseille, Sundance, SXSW, TIFF, True/False, and Visions du Reel. He lives and works in Chicago.
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Title 6. ‘Water Study’ – Analogue TV installation by Ronen Goldstein
Artist Bio: Ronen Goldstein is an artist living in Chicago, USA. His work surrounds topics of digital camp and fabulation through videos, sound/noise/music, and various games (both digital and analog). Ronen extends his video art to ephemeral live performances: VJ-ing for clubs, discotheques and rave spaces – combining retro-technologies, repositioning digital artefacts, and threading together graphic SDKs (Software Development Kits). His live-video good-vibe moniker is Color Swim, an almost decade and a half old VJ group that frequently collaborates with other visual artists to perform alongside DJs, bands and audio artists. Ronen’s more play-based creations are syphoned through Color Swim Games, experimenting with fun mechanics and storytelling.
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Title 7. ‘‘Tobble Preara’ Experimental Sound Installation By Guy Fixsen
Description: Sound installation
About the artist: https://www.guyfixsen.com/
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Title 8. Collection, 2023 by Bobbi Meier
Description: Slip-cast glazed porcelain, thrifted wood shelf, enamel paint.
7 x 20 x 4″
Artist Bio: Bobbi Meier is a Chicago-based visual artist. Life’s frustrations, joys, and fears are embedded into her abstract sculptures, drawings, and installations through provocative use of materials including pantyhose, spandex, porcelain, and found home furnishings. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Kohler Foundation, and John Michael Kohler Art Center (Wisconsin). Selected artist residencies include The John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Program in the Pottery (Wisconsin), Ragdale Foundation (Illinois), Ox-bow School of Art and Artist’s Residency (Michigan), and a fellowship at Anderson Ranch (Colorado). In 2023 she was selected as an Artadia/Chicago finalist, awarded an Illinois Arts Council Grant, and is currently a selected artist in a new exhibition, Material Tales, at the Driehaus Museum in Chicago curated by Giovanni Aloi. Her work has been exhibited at The Hyde Park Center, Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center, Evanston Art Center, International Museum of Surgical Science, and The Franklin (Chicago); Lubeznik Center for the Arts, (Indiana), Riverside Arts Center, (Illinois), Galerija Zlati Ajngel, (Croatia). Meier served as a member and director of ADDS Donna Artist collective in Chicago (2018-2023). She earned her MA in Art Education and MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Title 9. Winter Afternoon, 2021 by Steve Meier
Description: Watercolor & Charcoal on paper, 9 x 11″ (plus frame)
Artist Bio: Steve Meier is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer working in drawing, painting, sculpture, fabrication, upcycled clothing, and collage. He works between Chicago and Gary Indiana. Art making has been a constant yet intermittent companion over his four-decade career in commercial design and architecture. Seeking the elusiveness of beauty and blending elements of craft, he examines the duality of identity, and temporality of our existence. Current bodies of work involve figuration as a means of contemplating shelter, sanctuary and transformation. He is inspired by vintage and contemporary fashion and the sublime elegance of natural environments. Exhibitions include Prairie State University IL, Gallery Pink, Oak Park Art League, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OH. Steve recently completed a three-week residency at Ox-Bow in Saugatuck, MI.
Meier earned a BS at the University of Cincinnati and was a Principal at Gensler from 2000 to 2020. He is currently the Board President of Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist Residency.
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Title 10. The Texture of Solitude [and other stories of life with Ponies] by Danièle Wilmouth
Description: 8 minutes, 16mm Color Film, finished on 4K Video with Sound, 2024
With post-production assistance by Yunju You
Description: The Texture of Solitude [and other stories of life with Ponies] is a pandemic memoir on 16mm film in conversation with Henry David Thoreau. With some shame, I confess that when the pandemic first closed the world down, I was secretly relieved, thankful for the change in what had become my monotonous, mind-numbing routine of daily life. So, during the autumn of 2020, while teaching online, I answered a friend’s desperate plea to take care of her farm in rural Wisconsin while she was needed at her sick husband’s bedside. Escaping my small oppressive apartment in Chicago, I spent the next months on that farm, together with four cats, Fernando the mule, and two ageless ponies – Pebbles and Wilma. Not unlike Thoreau’s transcendental journey of social emancipation, my withdrawal from the city gave me a distant vantage point from which to view the psychological effects of the Coronavirus as an unnatural and prophetic season in social evolution.
Artist Bio: Danièle Wilmouth is fascinated by the unconscious choreography of ordinary life and how cinema reveals the miraculous spectacle of the everyday. She creates hybrid forms of 16mm film, video, installation, and live art that explore ritual, pattern, monotony, and impermanence. Wilmouth’s works have been exhibited at a variety of venues and film festivals around the globe. Recently, a collection of her short films was included in the 2023 Chiayi International Art Documentary Film Festival in Taiwan. She was an ‘Artist in Focus’ at the 2022 Jumping Frames Hong Kong International Movement-Image Festival, as well as the 2016 BODY+ACT exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea. In 2013, she was featured in Dance Films Association’s ‘Meet the Artist Series’ with a solo show at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Retrospectives of Wilmouth’s works have been held in Russia (2004, St. Petersburg International Dance Film Festival), and South Korea (2012, EXiS Film Festival, Korean Film Archives, Seoul). Danièle Wilmouth currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago.
