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Animal Intent |
Public Program NYC |
| Re.Animating Caterpillars
Saturday, February 11, 2017, 2 pm Alison Reiko Loader will present En Masse, an interdisciplinary and interspecies media art project made with caterpillars. |
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En Masse is an interdisciplinary and interspecies media art project made by an animator (Alison Reiko Loader), an entomologist (Christopher Plenzich), and hundreds of forest tent caterpillars. Though initially inspired by Brakhage’s Mothlight and other animations that feature dead insects, they explored the potential of living caterpillars as innately creative and social bodies. For En Masse, insects and humans made charcoal drawings and performed geometric dances captured on videos that they projected onto five-foot screens made of one hundred cocoons. Alongside demonstrating their screen-making process, Loader will present and discuss artwork and documentation from their 2015 exhibition, which they and several families of experimental research caterpillars inhabited throughout its six-week duration.
Alison Reiko Loader collected so many grasshoppers as a kid that her father dreamed she would become an entomologist. However, she studied animation, went to Tokyo in the early years of game design, and returned to Montreal as a National Film Board of Canada director. Since 2001 she has taught at Concordia University, where she is also completing a Communication Studies PhD. When she isn’t researching old optical technologies, Alison makes media installations and short animated films. Sometimes she collaborates with biologists and bugs. This event is free and open to the public. apexart's programs are supported in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Buhl Foundation, the Degenstein Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Greenwich Collection Ltd., Affirmation Arts Fund, the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, the Fifth Floor Foundation, and with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. This exhibition is funded in part by the Canada Council for the Arts. This program was made possible in part by the Concordia University Part-Time Faculty Association. |
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