PREVIEW: “[we don’t know yet] what cinema can do:” Onion City Film Festival at Public Works
Image courtesy the Onion City Film Festival.
REVIEW
[we don’t know yet] what cinema can do
Onion City Film Festival at Public Works
2141 W North Ave.
Chicago, IL 60647
April 5th, 8PM - 11PM
By Levi Dayan
The Onion City Film Festival returns to Chicago April 4 and will run for ten days. Programmed by curator, writer and LITHIUM/TNL gallery co-founder Nicky Ni, Paige Naylor and Anna Johnson, the festival highlights experimental film and video art from internationally renowned artists. On April 5, the festival will join with the Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines [CCAM] to host [we don’t know yet] what cinema can do - a night of live A/V performances alongside three installations - at Public Works.
“The Question of Grief” (2023), a piece by Liyan Zhao incorporating lecture, light, sound and found footage, will interrogate the nature of grief and its effect on imagination and folklore. Hunter Whittaker-Brown’s “The Emissary (A Prayer)” (2024) is a vocal piece with live sound and visual processing. Brown’s work is informed by Black cosmology and Afrofuturism, and looks at mass media through an archival lens. “I am invested in breaking down the form of moving image and further unpacking the possibilities of its reconfiguration as a synecdochic act of disassembling and remaking contemporary culture at large,” Brown wrote of this piece.
Alan Perry, a multi-media interdisciplinary artist, creates work examining esoteric elements in everyday technology. His piece “Ritual Unbinding of Alexa” (2024) is essentially an occult ritual aimed at separating an Amazon Alexa from its intended functions as a virtual assistant. The ritual will be projected live for the audience to witness. Lastly, multidisciplinary artist Ruby Que will be performing their piece “The Distance of the Moon” (2024). The piece uses the Moon’s ever-expanding distance from the Earth as a jumping-off point to explore themes prevalent in much of their work, such as absence, the unknown and the out-of-reach.
Installation view, “The Distance of the Moon” Outdoor Installation at Ma’s House by resident artist Ruby Que. Image courtesy the artist and Ma’s House.
In addition to these performances, there will be three installed works at Public Works. Luciana Decker Orozco, an artist whose work explores political and environmental themes, will have a three-hour 5-channel CRT installation titled “Language of Entrails” (2024). The piece uses looping footage and an environmental sound score to represent the movement of entrails. Kristin McWharter, a multimedia artist who explores themes of competition and sports culture, will have a kinetic projection installation titled “Wave” (2021). The piece utilizes experimental technology to explore crowd dynamics, comparable to the wave cheer that is a familiar presence at sporting events across the country.
Lastly, multimedia artist Andrew John Wood will be presenting an interactive 3D game titled “Seventy Five Threads” (2024). Using town plans, the game tells the story of Peterlee, a town established in postwar Britain that bore a number of industrial efforts that never came to fruition. Though this is only one night of a ten day festival, [we don’t know yet] what cinema can do promises to be a truly singular showing of the margins of film, sound, performance art and video art.
Levi Dayan is a music journalist, amateur sound artist and experimental music obsessive.
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