Saturday, April 20, 2024 at 12:00 pm
The Pond at Hyde Park Art Center
5020 South Cornell Ave
Chicago, IL 60615
Free Admission
Join artist Sandra Binion, filmmaker Amos Poe, and film historian Bruce Jenkins in a screening of Binion and Poe’s recently uncovered 1978 collaborative film Ascending Descending. The film offers a rare insight into the early careers of Binion and Poe, both of whom went on to prolific careers. In Ascending Descending, Poe’s hand-held camera followed Binion in her ascent and descent of a multi-story fire escape, while oboist Joel Marangella improvised on the street below.
Now restored from the original super-8 film with a recording of the original music, Ascending Descending is a direct and personal example of the collaborations and intersections among performers, media artists, and musicians in the experimental crucible of 1970s New York. Film historian Bruce Jenkins will provide important insights into the film, putting it into the context of 1970s New York experimentalism, punk and No Wave sensibilities, and the increasing agency of female artists in performance and media arts during the period that continue to influence artists today.
Sandra Binion and Bruce Jenkins will appear in person, with Amos Poe joining on Zoom. This special Open Archive Session screening of Ascending Descending is presented as part of the exhibition Sandra Binion: Autobiography of Looking, taking place at Experimental Sound Studio and throughout Chicago from April 12 – June 9, 2024
Sandra Binion: Autobiography of Looking is a retrospective survey of five decades of the artist's interdisciplinary work taking place from April 12 through June 9, 2024 throughout Chicago. Curated by Mariana Mejía, the program includes an exhibition at Audible Gallery, a series of performances at auxiliary venues, and guided sessions of the artist's archives at Hyde Park Art Center.
Sandra Binion is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago. The works on display convey the trajectory of her career, from her early stages as a solo performance artist in the mid-1970s through her expansions into installation, video, sound, photography, painting, scent, and literature. The exhibition Sandra Binion: Autobiography of Looking contains visual artworks, artist's journals, and drawings; performance props, scripts, scores, and documentation; as well as promotional materials and reviews from her archives. It also reflects her many collaborations with artists, such as musicians Lawrence “Butch” Morris, Tatsu Aoki, Leroy Jenkins, and Harrison Bankhead; performer Eponine Cuervo Moll; filmmaker Amos Poe; photographer Dirk Bakker; and architect Marc Dilet. An installation of Searching for Emma (2021), a photographic series accompanied by a sound composition by Lou Mallozzi, is also included in this exhibition.
Performances include Sandra Binion's "Duras Piece" (1998) and "Suite for Bass and Ironing Bored Variation" (1983) at Asian Improv Arts Midwest on April 28; "Figure, Painting" (1983) at Roman Susan on May 18; "Yellow at Noon" (1979) at Experimental Sound Studio on June 2; and “Homage à Odilon Redon" (1979) at Galerie Fledermaus on June 6.
On the occasion of this retrospective survey, the artist is self-publishing a 260-page monograph that includes descriptive annotations of over 50 performances, installations, exhibitions from her career; with an introduction written by curator Mariana Mejía and essays by musicologist Ryan Dohoney, performer and scholar Tara Aisha Willis, and art historian Chris Reeves.
Public collections that hold works by Sandra Binion include The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art (New York), Musée Flaubert (Rouen, France), Monasterio de San Lazzaro degli Armeni (Venice, Italy), and University Art Museum of Kyoto City University of Arts (Japan). Her multimedia project Distillé (based on Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary) has been shown in various iterations since 2014 in the US, France, and Japan. She is currently under commission to create a transhistorical video in dialogue with the Norwegian painter Harriet Backer (1845–1932), which will premiere at the Musée d’Orsay (Paris) in September 2024.