This Week in the Arts, November 4-11

Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 4-6: Light Matter Film Festival

Alfred University will host the second annual Light Matter Film Festival Nov. 4-6. The three-day event will present 70 experimental films and media art works from 20 countries.

The festival is supported by the New York State College of Ceramics (NYSCC) at Alfred University, the Institute for Electronic Arts, and Divisions of Art History and Expanded Media. Light Matter is co-curated by James Hansen, assistant professor of Art history, and Eric Souther, associate professor of video art.

Dedicated to the integration of experimental film and media art worlds, Light Matter seeks to bring together often disparate voices and highlight the work of international, emerging, and under recognized artists.

All programs are in-person and free to attend. Please visit www.lightmatterfilmfestival.com for complete program information.

Festival highlights will include an in-person visit from legendary avant-garde filmmaker Larry Gottheim, alongside the World Premiere of his new video Entanglement, as well as four additional World Premieres, fourteen North American Premieres, nine US premieres, and twenty-one New York premieres.

Following is a schedule of events:

• Program One: Liquid Traits—Friday, Nov. 4, 2022, 5:30 p.m., Holmes Auditorium, Harder Hall. Films by Vera Sebert, Maxime Hot, Patrick Tarrant, Justin Clifford Rhody, Mati Pirsztuk, Lewis Klahr, Stephanie Castonguay Michael Lyons and Haruka Mitani, Abigail Smith, Kasta Yazdani and Golrokh Hemmati, Jodie Mack, Owen Klatte, and NO1.
• Spotlight: Larry Gottheim—Friday, Nov. 4, 7:30 p.m., and Saturday, Nov. 5, 1 p.m., Holmes Auditorium, Harder Hall Light Matter is proud to welcome legendary avant-garde filmmaker Larry Gottheim to the festival for two programs curated by the artist himself. The first includes recent video work, including the World Premiere of a new video. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Light Matter co-founder and co-programmer James Hansen. The second program includes two earlier films followed by a lecture on Four Shadows from Gottheim.
• Program Four: Within the Fold—Saturday, Nov. 5, 3:30 p.m., Holmes Auditorium, Harder Hall. Films by Brandon Wilson, Kalpana Subramanian, Chap Edmonson, Carlos Velandia, Nuria González Pimentel, Abinadi Meza, Sounak Das, Ben Russell, Masha Vlasova, Justin Clifford Rhody, and David Witzling.
• Program Five: Potential Spaces—Saturday, Nov. 5, 7:30 p.m., Holmes Auditorium, Harder Hall. Films by Alix Blevins, Leonardo Pirondi, Amanda Katz, Mandy Eugeniou, Crystal Z Campbell, Federico Cuatlacuatl, Lucía Malandro & Daniel Saucedo, Christopher Tym, Carleen Maur, Priscyla Bettim and Renato Coelho, and Sofia Theodore-Pierce and Grace Mitchell.
• Program Six: Tilted Perception— Saturday, Nov. 5, 3:30 p.m., Holmes Auditorium, Harder Hall. Films by Stephen Wardell, Siegfried Fruhauf, Brandon Wilson, Maxime Hot, Noé Grenier, Lydia Nsiah, Linnea Nugent, and Alexandre Alagôa.
• Program Seven: Fugitive Detectives—Sunday, 6, 1 p.m., Holmes Auditorium, Harder Hall. Films by Lilian Robl, Mary Helena Clark, Maxime Corbeil-Perron, Josh Weissbach, Lucrecia L. Henrique, Tulapop Saenjroen, DOPLGENGR, and Simon Liu.
• Program Eight: The Plains (David Easteal, Australia, 2022, 180 minutes)— Sunday, 6, 3 p.m., Holmes Auditorium, Harder Hall. Every evening a man in his late 50s commutes home at the end of the working day in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. As the seasons pass in gentle rhythm we observe dramatic events of his life as well as mundane quotidian details, and learn more about the man, his inner conflicts and the relationships in his life – with his wife, his mother, deceased sister, and a younger co-worker whom he occasionally drives home. Within the microcosm of the car the film ultimately becomes a meditation on the passage of time, memory, work, and how love and the relationships in our life sustain us.

Alongside the shorts program, Light Matter Film Festival is proud to present a selection of works specially curated for the TS1 / Harland Snodgrass Gallery from October 31 to November 6. Films, videos, and media art works by Karen Donnellan, Mark Reynolds, Jen Kutler, Monica Duncan and Senem Pirler, Charline Dally and Gabrielle Harnois-Blouin, Crystal Z Campbell, Yvette Granata, Victor Galles, Wrik Mead, KT Duffy, S4RA, VLM, Rosita Piritore, Chris O’Neill, JesterN, Alex Broadwell, Parnian Donvari, Genadzi Buto, April Lin, Yanbin Zhao, Christine Drake, and Colleen Keough.

Friday, Nov. 4: Solo exhibition by alumnus Jonathan Faber ’94 opens at the Cohen Gallery, Main Street, Alfred.

Abstract artist and Alfred University alumnus Jonathan Faber ’94 will be showing new paintings and drawings in a solo exhibition which opens Friday, Nov. 4, at the Cohen Gallery, Main Street in Alfred.

The exhibition, titled in "Idyll Currents," will remain on view through Dec. 4. An opening reception will be held Friday, Nov. 4, from 6-8 p.m.

For Faber, who earned a B.F.A. degree from Alfred University in 1994 and an M.F.A. degree from the University of Texas, Austin, in 2003, "painting is a physical thinking process—a way of getting involved in a kind of internal dialogue. I am engaged in making works that are primarily abstract but are also connected to a lexicon of real-world imagery."

Faber, who lives and works in Austin, TX, is currently an assistant professor at Texas State University in the School of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited at numerous galleries and museums across the country, including Cue Art Foundation, the Galveston Arts Center, David Shelton Gallery, and the Blanton Museum of Art. Among his awards are those from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation.

As part of his visit to the Alfred University for the opening of the “Idyll Currents” exhibition, Faber presented a talk as part of the School of Art and Design’s Wednesday Arts Speaker Series on Wednesday, Nov. 2.

Wednesday, Nov. 9: Wednesday Art Speaker Series, presented by George Ferrandi. The lecture, “George Ferrandi: we are each other’s atmosphere,” is at 7 p.m. in Nevins Theater, Powell Campus Center.

Ferrandi is an American artist originally from Baltimore, MD, whose performance, installation and participatory projects address issues of vulnerability, impermanence, fallibility, and spectacle, often through experimental approaches to narrative. Employing a unique humor and a deep sense of humanity, her work stimulates a rethinking of cultural assumptions.

Ferrandi, who lives in Brooklyn, NY, is the director of Wayfarers Studio Program and Gallery in Bushwick and was the founding member of the touring performance project Cloud Seeding: Circus of the Performative Object. Her work has been performed/exhibited around the world—at the International House of Japan in Tokyo, Abrons Arts Center in New York; the Kitchen in New York; Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn’ the McKinney Contemporary in Dallas, TX; the Wexner Center in Columbus, OH; the Harn Museum in Gainesville, FL; Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia, PA; and at Sluice in London.

She is an NEA fellow of the Japan-US Friendship Foundation and has also been awarded grants from the Franklin Furnace Fundwinners for Performance Art, and the Mid Atlantic Arts Council. She is currently doing the groundwork and spacework for an intergalactic festival related to the North Star(s).

Ferrandi teaches Sculpture and Performance Art periodically at Pratt Institute, at Virginia Commonwealth University and at the Rhode Island School of Design. She also runs a small business specializing in the restoration of statues of saints for churches.

Nov. 10-12: Alfred University Theater Department presents Shakespeare’s comedy, “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” The three shows, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Fireman’s Theatre, Alfred Village Hall, 7 W. University St., Alfred.

The 90-minute version of the classic Shakespeare comedy combines creative elements and inspiration from the contemporary and modern world as well as the classical world.

The shows, directed by Eliza Beckwith, visiting professor of theater at Alfred University, promise a great time for the entire family, and are free. For reservations, please visit this link.