Deborah Stratman

Deborah Stratman

Nacimiento : 1967-01-01, Washington, USA

Historia

Deborah Stratman is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker interested in landscapes and systems. Her films, rather than telling stories, pose a series of problems – and through their at times ambiguous nature, allow for a complicated reading of the questions being asked. Much of her work points to the relationships between physical environments and the very human struggles for power and control that are played out on the land. Most recently, they have questioned elemental historical narratives about faith, freedom, sonic subterfuge, expansionism and the paranormal. Stratman works in multiple mediums, including sculpture, photography, drawing and audio. She has exhibited internationally at venues including the Whitney Biennial, MoMA NY, the Pompidou, Hammer Museum, Witte de With, Walker Art Center, Yerba Buena Center, and has done site-specific projects with the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Temporary Services, Mercer Union (Toronto), Blaffer Gallery (Houston), Klondike Institute of Art & Culture (Yukon) and Ballroom Gallery (Marfa). Stratman’s films have been featured at numerous international festivals including Sundance, the Viennale, Full Frame, Ann Arbor, Oberhausen and Rotterdam. She is the recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, a Creative Capital award, and she currently teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Perfil

Deborah Stratman

Películas

Last Things
Editor
Evolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks. A humid take on minerals, where sci-fi meets sci-fact. The geo-biosphere is a place of evolutionary possibility, where humans disappear but life endures.
Last Things
Director of Photography
Evolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks. A humid take on minerals, where sci-fi meets sci-fact. The geo-biosphere is a place of evolutionary possibility, where humans disappear but life endures.
Last Things
Producer
Evolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks. A humid take on minerals, where sci-fi meets sci-fact. The geo-biosphere is a place of evolutionary possibility, where humans disappear but life endures.
Last Things
Writer
Evolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks. A humid take on minerals, where sci-fi meets sci-fact. The geo-biosphere is a place of evolutionary possibility, where humans disappear but life endures.
Last Things
Director
Evolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks. A humid take on minerals, where sci-fi meets sci-fact. The geo-biosphere is a place of evolutionary possibility, where humans disappear but life endures.
Deborah Stratman to Nancy Holt: For the Time Being
Music
A video letter to Nancy Holt, made in homage to a shared interest in terminal lakes, framed views, monuments and time. Filmed on and around the Great Salt Lake, Mono Lake and Meteor Crater.
Deborah Stratman to Nancy Holt: For the Time Being
Editor
A video letter to Nancy Holt, made in homage to a shared interest in terminal lakes, framed views, monuments and time. Filmed on and around the Great Salt Lake, Mono Lake and Meteor Crater.
Deborah Stratman to Nancy Holt: For the Time Being
Cinematography
A video letter to Nancy Holt, made in homage to a shared interest in terminal lakes, framed views, monuments and time. Filmed on and around the Great Salt Lake, Mono Lake and Meteor Crater.
Deborah Stratman to Nancy Holt: For the Time Being
Director
A video letter to Nancy Holt, made in homage to a shared interest in terminal lakes, framed views, monuments and time. Filmed on and around the Great Salt Lake, Mono Lake and Meteor Crater.
Laika
Director
Some forms we can only know by their shadow. In homage to the spirits of space test dogs, or any being we use in the name of progress.
Vever (For Barbara)
Sound
Deborah Stratman brings past perspectives into the contemporary moment in a montage of unfinished film footage from artist Barbara Hammer with evocative sound, texts, and teachings from artist Maya Deren. Vever poetically draws connects between three generations of women filmmakers who separately, and now together, have taken on unknown challenges, and opened themselves up to reinterpretation in their filmmaking practices.
Vever (For Barbara)
Producer
Deborah Stratman brings past perspectives into the contemporary moment in a montage of unfinished film footage from artist Barbara Hammer with evocative sound, texts, and teachings from artist Maya Deren. Vever poetically draws connects between three generations of women filmmakers who separately, and now together, have taken on unknown challenges, and opened themselves up to reinterpretation in their filmmaking practices.
Vever (For Barbara)
Editor
Deborah Stratman brings past perspectives into the contemporary moment in a montage of unfinished film footage from artist Barbara Hammer with evocative sound, texts, and teachings from artist Maya Deren. Vever poetically draws connects between three generations of women filmmakers who separately, and now together, have taken on unknown challenges, and opened themselves up to reinterpretation in their filmmaking practices.
Vever (For Barbara)
Director
Deborah Stratman brings past perspectives into the contemporary moment in a montage of unfinished film footage from artist Barbara Hammer with evocative sound, texts, and teachings from artist Maya Deren. Vever poetically draws connects between three generations of women filmmakers who separately, and now together, have taken on unknown challenges, and opened themselves up to reinterpretation in their filmmaking practices.
Optimism
Director of Photography
The urge to relieve a winter valley of permanent shadow and find gold in alluvial gravel is part of a long history of desire and extraction in the far Canadian north. Cancan dancers, curlers, smelters, former city officials, and a curious cliff-side mirrored disc congregate to form a town portrait. Shot on location in Dawson City, Yukon Territory.
Optimism
Writer
The urge to relieve a winter valley of permanent shadow and find gold in alluvial gravel is part of a long history of desire and extraction in the far Canadian north. Cancan dancers, curlers, smelters, former city officials, and a curious cliff-side mirrored disc congregate to form a town portrait. Shot on location in Dawson City, Yukon Territory.
Optimism
Sound Designer
The urge to relieve a winter valley of permanent shadow and find gold in alluvial gravel is part of a long history of desire and extraction in the far Canadian north. Cancan dancers, curlers, smelters, former city officials, and a curious cliff-side mirrored disc congregate to form a town portrait. Shot on location in Dawson City, Yukon Territory.
Optimism
Editor
The urge to relieve a winter valley of permanent shadow and find gold in alluvial gravel is part of a long history of desire and extraction in the far Canadian north. Cancan dancers, curlers, smelters, former city officials, and a curious cliff-side mirrored disc congregate to form a town portrait. Shot on location in Dawson City, Yukon Territory.
Optimism
Camera Operator
The urge to relieve a winter valley of permanent shadow and find gold in alluvial gravel is part of a long history of desire and extraction in the far Canadian north. Cancan dancers, curlers, smelters, former city officials, and a curious cliff-side mirrored disc congregate to form a town portrait. Shot on location in Dawson City, Yukon Territory.
Optimism
Sound Recordist
The urge to relieve a winter valley of permanent shadow and find gold in alluvial gravel is part of a long history of desire and extraction in the far Canadian north. Cancan dancers, curlers, smelters, former city officials, and a curious cliff-side mirrored disc congregate to form a town portrait. Shot on location in Dawson City, Yukon Territory.
Optimism
Director
The urge to relieve a winter valley of permanent shadow and find gold in alluvial gravel is part of a long history of desire and extraction in the far Canadian north. Cancan dancers, curlers, smelters, former city officials, and a curious cliff-side mirrored disc congregate to form a town portrait. Shot on location in Dawson City, Yukon Territory.
Xenoi
Director
Presencias extrañas comienzan a habitar la isla griega de Syros. Formas geométricas de origen enigmático que quizás revelen la pura esencia de la condición humana. De la playa al teatro de la localidad, este fascinante juego de representación supone la conquista definitiva de lo paranormal sobre esa movediza e incierta dimensión a la que llamamos realidad.
The Illinois Parables
Sound Designer
From dreamy aerial opening shots, we are sent on an expedition through the storied land of our fifth most populous state, Illinois, often called a miniature version of America. Deborah Stratman’s experimental documentary explores how physical landscapes and human politics can each re-interpret historical events. Eleven parables relay histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism, and resistance. Who gets to write history—physical monuments, official news accounts, or personal spoken-word memories?
The Illinois Parables
Editor
From dreamy aerial opening shots, we are sent on an expedition through the storied land of our fifth most populous state, Illinois, often called a miniature version of America. Deborah Stratman’s experimental documentary explores how physical landscapes and human politics can each re-interpret historical events. Eleven parables relay histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism, and resistance. Who gets to write history—physical monuments, official news accounts, or personal spoken-word memories?
The Illinois Parables
Cinematography
From dreamy aerial opening shots, we are sent on an expedition through the storied land of our fifth most populous state, Illinois, often called a miniature version of America. Deborah Stratman’s experimental documentary explores how physical landscapes and human politics can each re-interpret historical events. Eleven parables relay histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism, and resistance. Who gets to write history—physical monuments, official news accounts, or personal spoken-word memories?
The Illinois Parables
Producer
From dreamy aerial opening shots, we are sent on an expedition through the storied land of our fifth most populous state, Illinois, often called a miniature version of America. Deborah Stratman’s experimental documentary explores how physical landscapes and human politics can each re-interpret historical events. Eleven parables relay histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism, and resistance. Who gets to write history—physical monuments, official news accounts, or personal spoken-word memories?
The Illinois Parables
Screenplay
From dreamy aerial opening shots, we are sent on an expedition through the storied land of our fifth most populous state, Illinois, often called a miniature version of America. Deborah Stratman’s experimental documentary explores how physical landscapes and human politics can each re-interpret historical events. Eleven parables relay histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism, and resistance. Who gets to write history—physical monuments, official news accounts, or personal spoken-word memories?
The Illinois Parables
Director
From dreamy aerial opening shots, we are sent on an expedition through the storied land of our fifth most populous state, Illinois, often called a miniature version of America. Deborah Stratman’s experimental documentary explores how physical landscapes and human politics can each re-interpret historical events. Eleven parables relay histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism, and resistance. Who gets to write history—physical monuments, official news accounts, or personal spoken-word memories?
Second Sighted
Editor
Obscure signs portend a looming, indecipherable slump. An oracular decoding of the landscape.
Second Sighted
Director
Obscure signs portend a looming, indecipherable slump. An oracular decoding of the landscape.
Hacked Circuit
Sound Designer
A single-shot portrait of the Foley process, revealing multiple layers of fabrication and imposition, which is dedicated to Walter Murch and "Ed Snowden."
Hacked Circuit
Writer
A single-shot portrait of the Foley process, revealing multiple layers of fabrication and imposition, which is dedicated to Walter Murch and "Ed Snowden."
Hacked Circuit
Director
A single-shot portrait of the Foley process, revealing multiple layers of fabrication and imposition, which is dedicated to Walter Murch and "Ed Snowden."
Immortal, Suspended
Sound Designer
The idea of suspension is evoked on shifting registers – as levitation, cessation, preservation, and suspense – and located in sites whose identities slip as we track through a space within a space.
Immortal, Suspended
Editor
The idea of suspension is evoked on shifting registers – as levitation, cessation, preservation, and suspense – and located in sites whose identities slip as we track through a space within a space.
Immortal, Suspended
Director of Photography
The idea of suspension is evoked on shifting registers – as levitation, cessation, preservation, and suspense – and located in sites whose identities slip as we track through a space within a space.
Immortal, Suspended
Director
The idea of suspension is evoked on shifting registers – as levitation, cessation, preservation, and suspense – and located in sites whose identities slip as we track through a space within a space.
Musical Insects
Director
Film time takes on book time. An homage to a Bette J. Davis' illustrated text, itself an homage to the small music makers of the insect world.
Village, Silenced
Director
A re-working of Humphrey Jennings' seminal 36-minute 1943 docudrama "The Silent Village," wherein Welsh coal miners from the village of Cwmgiedd collectively re-enact the Nazi invasion and annihilation of the resisting Czech mining village of Lidice. Focus in this iteration is on sound as a mode of social control and the larger historical implications of repetition. An homage to Jennings’ lucid address of labor solidarity, power and commemoration.
These Blazeing Starrs!
Director
Since comets have been recorded, they’ve augured disaster: catastrophe, messiahs, upheaval and end times. A short film about these meteoric ice-cored fireballs and their historic ties to divination that combines imagery of 15th-18th century European broadsides with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory footage. …These Blazeing Starrs! juxtaposes a modern empirical desire to probe and measure against older methods, when star gazers were translators, explicating the sky more intuitively for predictions of human folly. Comets are now understood as time capsules harboring elemental information about the formation of our solar system. Today we smash rockets into them to read spectral signatures. In a sense, they remain oracles - it’s just the manner of divining which has changed.
The Name is not the Thing named
Sound Designer
In support of experiences that are essentially common, but to which language does not easily adhere, the video passes through places that are both themselves, and stand-ins for others. The title is taken from Aleister Crowley’s 1918 translation of the "Tao Te Ching."
The Name is not the Thing named
Editor
In support of experiences that are essentially common, but to which language does not easily adhere, the video passes through places that are both themselves, and stand-ins for others. The title is taken from Aleister Crowley’s 1918 translation of the "Tao Te Ching."
The Name is not the Thing named
Director of Photography
In support of experiences that are essentially common, but to which language does not easily adhere, the video passes through places that are both themselves, and stand-ins for others. The title is taken from Aleister Crowley’s 1918 translation of the "Tao Te Ching."
The Name is not the Thing named
Director
In support of experiences that are essentially common, but to which language does not easily adhere, the video passes through places that are both themselves, and stand-ins for others. The title is taken from Aleister Crowley’s 1918 translation of the "Tao Te Ching."
FF
Director
A flicker film made with images taken in Malawi. FF was in response to an assignment given by artists Melissa Dubbin and Aaron Davidson who created the soundtrack to which they invited artists to make a “Future Film”.
Shrimp Chicken Fish
Sound Designer
An homage to Chicago’s East 95th Street Bridge, Calumet Fisheries and to a couple of the city’s infamous cinematic brothers.
Shrimp Chicken Fish
Editor
An homage to Chicago’s East 95th Street Bridge, Calumet Fisheries and to a couple of the city’s infamous cinematic brothers.
Shrimp Chicken Fish
Director of Photography
An homage to Chicago’s East 95th Street Bridge, Calumet Fisheries and to a couple of the city’s infamous cinematic brothers.
Shrimp Chicken Fish
Director
An homage to Chicago’s East 95th Street Bridge, Calumet Fisheries and to a couple of the city’s infamous cinematic brothers.
Ray's Birds
Writer
Ray Lowden keeps seventy-two large birds of prey, five deer and some wallabies at his place in Northumberland, England. He has had ten days off in twelve years and loves what he does. The film is a little homage to his variously coy, imperious, curious, stubborn and comic raptor menagerie.
Ray's Birds
Director of Photography
Ray Lowden keeps seventy-two large birds of prey, five deer and some wallabies at his place in Northumberland, England. He has had ten days off in twelve years and loves what he does. The film is a little homage to his variously coy, imperious, curious, stubborn and comic raptor menagerie.
Ray's Birds
Sound Editor
Ray Lowden keeps seventy-two large birds of prey, five deer and some wallabies at his place in Northumberland, England. He has had ten days off in twelve years and loves what he does. The film is a little homage to his variously coy, imperious, curious, stubborn and comic raptor menagerie.
Ray's Birds
Editor
Ray Lowden keeps seventy-two large birds of prey, five deer and some wallabies at his place in Northumberland, England. He has had ten days off in twelve years and loves what he does. The film is a little homage to his variously coy, imperious, curious, stubborn and comic raptor menagerie.
Ray's Birds
Producer
Ray Lowden keeps seventy-two large birds of prey, five deer and some wallabies at his place in Northumberland, England. He has had ten days off in twelve years and loves what he does. The film is a little homage to his variously coy, imperious, curious, stubborn and comic raptor menagerie.
Ray's Birds
Director
Ray Lowden keeps seventy-two large birds of prey, five deer and some wallabies at his place in Northumberland, England. He has had ten days off in twelve years and loves what he does. The film is a little homage to his variously coy, imperious, curious, stubborn and comic raptor menagerie.
Kuyenda N'kubvina (Walking Is Dancing)
Director
Relatively little export, cultural or otherwise, reaches the west from southeastern Africa. Spurred by curiosity about how knowledge of place spreads, Kuyenda N’kubvina looks at how thought and culture propagate in Malawi. Weaving our way through video halls, book stores, radio stations and dance floors, in cities and small villages, we meet Malawians who traffic in rhythm and ideas. The video was instigated by the filmmaker’s ignorance about the people and culture of this region, and accompanies her as she seeks out individuals and infrastructures that channel and articulate Malawian identity.
O'er the Land
Screenplay
A meditation on freedom and technological approaches to manifest destiny.
O'er the Land
Director
A meditation on freedom and technological approaches to manifest destiny.
The Magician's House
Director
Both a letter to a cancer stricken, alchemist-filmmaker friend, and a quiet tribute to the vanishing art of celluloid, "The Magician's House" is full of ghosts. Including that of Athanasius Kircher, inventor of the Magic Lantern or "Sorcerer’s Lamp". The music, La lutte des Mages (The Struggle of the Magicians), was composed by Armenian mystic Georges Gurdjieff and Thomas De Hartmann. Gurdjieff thought of man as a kind of "transmitting station of forces." To him, most people move around in a state of waking sleep, so he sought to provide aural conditions that would induce awareness.
It Will Die Out in the Mind
Director
A short inquisition of science by the paranormal. On-screen texts are lifted from Tarkovsky's film "Stalker" in which something more expansive and less explicable than logic or technology is offered as the conceptual pillar of the human spirit. The title is taken from a passage in Dostoyevsky's "The Possessed" about time after the Apocalpyse: "Kirillov: When the whole of man has achieved happiness, there won't be any time, because it won't be needed. It's perfectly true. Stavrogin: Where will they put it then? Kirillov: They won't put it anywhere. Time isn't a thing, it's an idea. It will die out in the mind."
How Among the Frozen Words She Found Some Odd Ones
Director
Inspired by a chapter in Francois Rabelais' 1653 epic novel "Gargantua & Pantagruel" wherein Pantagruel finds that the explosions, cries and other sounds generated from a battle that had occurred the year before have been frozen into discernable shapes - and that the sounds could be released upon the breaking or melting of the frozen forms.
Kings of the Sky
Director
Adil Hoxur, descended from a line of Dawaz tightrope artists, performs nightly with his troupe in China’s Taklamakan desert, among the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim people seeking religious and political autonomy. Shot over four months, this experimental documentary takes shape as a travelogue, ethnographic visual poem, and advocacy video for the preservation of a traditional art form. - MoMA
Los Angeles Plays Itself
Director of Photography
From its distinctive neighborhoods to its architectural homes, Los Angeles has been the backdrop to countless movies. In this dazzling work, Andersen takes viewers on a whirlwind tour through the metropolis' real and cinematic history, investigating the myriad stories and legends that have come to define it, and meticulously, judiciously revealing the real city that lives beneath.
In Order Not to Be Here
Sound Designer
A night flight through hysteria and police surveillance in suburban America.
In Order Not to Be Here
Editor
A night flight through hysteria and police surveillance in suburban America.
In Order Not to Be Here
Director of Photography
A night flight through hysteria and police surveillance in suburban America.
In Order Not to Be Here
Director
A night flight through hysteria and police surveillance in suburban America.
Untied
Director
A small portrait of the volatility of intimacy and of breaking free from abusive cycles: made in response to a year of collapsing relationships and violent accidents that left me broken, dislocated and stuck in my apartment.
The BLVD
Editor
An experimental documentary about the street drag racing scene on Chicago’s Near West Side. This is a rambling, textured film about obsession. It is about the mythos of speed for its own sake, and it is about waiting. While waiting, The BLVD exposes community, inner-city landscapes and nomadic experiences of place. The film treats storytelling as a living medium for determining history. And it commands respect for those who transform cars, or anything else, through passion.
The BLVD
Cinematography
An experimental documentary about the street drag racing scene on Chicago’s Near West Side. This is a rambling, textured film about obsession. It is about the mythos of speed for its own sake, and it is about waiting. While waiting, The BLVD exposes community, inner-city landscapes and nomadic experiences of place. The film treats storytelling as a living medium for determining history. And it commands respect for those who transform cars, or anything else, through passion.
The BLVD
Writer
An experimental documentary about the street drag racing scene on Chicago’s Near West Side. This is a rambling, textured film about obsession. It is about the mythos of speed for its own sake, and it is about waiting. While waiting, The BLVD exposes community, inner-city landscapes and nomadic experiences of place. The film treats storytelling as a living medium for determining history. And it commands respect for those who transform cars, or anything else, through passion.
The BLVD
Director
An experimental documentary about the street drag racing scene on Chicago’s Near West Side. This is a rambling, textured film about obsession. It is about the mythos of speed for its own sake, and it is about waiting. While waiting, The BLVD exposes community, inner-city landscapes and nomadic experiences of place. The film treats storytelling as a living medium for determining history. And it commands respect for those who transform cars, or anything else, through passion.
From Hetty to Nancy
Director
Images of the austere Icelandic landscape form the backdrop for readings from a series of letters written at the turn of the 20th century. Majestic waterfalls, open plains, a ship loaded with protesting sheep, a boat in icy waters, snow capped peaks, and icy roadways are punctuated with Hetty’s ironic stories of quotidian events with her female companions. Her accounts are juxtaposed against historic texts about the Icelandic people overcoming the cataclysmic forces of nature. - MoMA
Susurrati
Director
Susuratti is an installation by Deborah Stratman and Rob Ray. Susuratti is part of Experimental Sound Studio's Florasonic series in the fern room at the Lincoln Park Conservatory in Chicago, IL.
Energy Country
Director
En este fulgurante y revelador viaje por el sur de Texas, Deborah Stratman evidencia los síntomas más virulentos del corazón de Estados Unidos.
On the Various Nature of Things
Director
El film sirve como manual básico de la obra de Stratman, mezclando la curiosidad científica amateur con un reconocimiento muy amplio de los espectáculos artificiales que complementan la belleza oscura del mundo natural. Sin duda Stratman es eso que el físico Michael Faraday, protagonista de la cinta, llama «algunas mentes inquisitivas que buscan descubrir lo que es maravilloso en este mundo.»