Mediations III: Madsen Minax and Kami Chisholm

MEDIATIONS III: Madsen Minax in conversation with Kami Chisholm and a screening of Kairos Dirt and the Errant Vacuum

Admission by donation – suggestion of 3$ – 5$ (no one is turned away)

MEDIATIONS III is the third and final iteration in LOMAA’s Summer.17 artist talk series, which brings artists on the forefront of media art and activism to the Forest City. With a line-up of provocative contemporary practitioners, each event hosts 2 artists to present on their practice and research.

For the final event in the series, LOMAA will present Brooklyn-based artist Madsen Minax’s film Kairos Dirt and the Errant Vacuum with an introduction and conversation led by Toronto-based filmmaker Kami Chisholm.

Madsen Minax, Kairos Dirt and the Errant Vacuum, 2017, 89 min.

‘Kairos Dirt’ follows the strange happenings of two middle school lunch ladies, an androgynous student, a lesbian hospice provider, a grieving ministry worker, a transgender elder, a mystical mortician, and an astrologer/life coach/phone sex operator as their lives intertwine to skirt alternate dimensions amid the post-industrial decay of the American South. Through a series of collective dreams a transworldly being invades the characters’ dream spaces, revealing wanton subconscious desires and a carnal alternate realm. Relationships unfold in unusual and fantastical landscapes as television monitors, radio frequencies, orifices and dreams all become portals to access this mysterious dimension. The characters are forced to ask “what is self?” What is other? What must we give up to become something else?

Madsen Minax makes film, video and sound projects inspired by the collective socio-politics and the individual bio-politics of belonging, and considers where fantasy, desire and embodiment interfere. Madsen’s participation in LGBT, sex workers’ and BDSM communities inform his projects immensely. Works have shown at Anthology Film Archives (NYC), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), REDCAT (LA), the British Film Institute (London), the European Media Art Festival, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Yale University’s Green Gallery, and numerous film and video festivals around the world. Madsen received an MFA from Northwestern University, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has attended residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2014), The Core Program (2012-2014), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (2015), and the Berlinale DOC Station (2016). He is currently an Edes Foundation Fellow and a Queer Arts Mentorship fellow.

Kami Chisholm is a queer, disabled, activist filmmaker and arts curator whose work focuses on dismantling white supremacy, ending settler colonialism, and the quest for justice for those commonly denied access to the means to live and thrive. Chisholm has been making films for more than 20 years, since beginning her BA in Film Production and English from Loyola Marymount University. She also holds a PhD in History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA in Film Production from York University. Her most recently completed documentary, Pride Denied (released in 2016 and distributed by Media Education Foundation and Vtape), explores topics such as homonationalism and pinkwashing in the context of the 2014 World Pride festival in Toronto.

LOMAA is an emerging, enthusiastic and devoted non-profit artist-run collective that fosters collaboration, investigation and innovation by tapping into the talent and serving the needs of media artists in the London region.

LOMAA would like to thank Ontario Arts Council for their support of this program, as well as the London Arts Council for their continued support.