Stanya Kahn

Landscapes that burn and flood, shift and collapse in an unstable world. Human figures stare at cellphones while floating down the river and falling from the sky. An abstract exploration of the known that becomes unknown, in which animated paintings manifest the uncertainty that surrounds us.

Two teenagers traverse a post-apocalyptic California in this tale of an inherited wasteland, unprepared resilience and compassion, which points to the beginnings of a new future.

Water drops from the sky, but the mood changes quickly in this brightly coloured animation, created from paintings. A cycle of death and regeneration ensues, to convey the artist’s solidarity with this planet and its people. An escape to freedom prompts some optimism during these strange times.

Stanya Kahn’s Stand in the Stream is a fast-paced digital film about life, death, and the inextricability of the personal from the political. Made over six years and shot on multiple camera formats, it captures candid moments in online chat rooms, in the home, in the wild, and in the streets, following the arc of a mother’s deterioration and death amidst shifting political and digital landscapes. From the birth of a child to the onset of dementia, from Tahrir Square to Standing Rock and Trump’s inauguration, Stand in the Stream is a pulsing and urgent contemporary ode and a call to action.

Don’t Go Back to Sleep is a an experimental narrative film, a haunted tragi-comedy that functions as much as a symbolic meditation on citizen resilience as a metaphor for the violence of the state and the First World’s rapacious impact on the earth, driving the planet itself towards impending death. Shot in Kansas City, Missouri, in newly built homes left uninhabited and unfinished in the economic crash, Don’t Go Back to Sleep follows roving groups of frontline emergency workers adrift in nearly empty, end-times urban and suburban landscapes. Squatting empty suburban developments and luxury high-rises, depressed with the aura of so many displaced by the U.S. housing market catastrophe, nurses and doctors establish make-shift treatment centers within the architectural mundane: fixtures and countertops, carpet pads and exposed wiring, fireplaces and crown molding. As they perform haphazard triage, mostly on each other, we realize they may be the only survivors against a dangerous State.

In this animated line drawing, two birds express complaints and frustrations about their daily lives. Balancing between mundane chores and the hostile environment around them, they dream of better times and places. In a crafty symbolism, the weight of Western capitalism threatens to collapse on their heads.

Ominous moving objects create tension while a ‘happy’ song plays. Stanya Kahn’s morbid, humorous collaboration with painter Llyn Foulkes, whose unique three-dimensional approach serves as an inspiration, features the artist blindfolded, covered with blood and dust, and an original song written and performed by Foulkes.

Feral tribes are the only inhabitants left in a decimated Los Angeles, sustaining themselves on the debris of an annihilated culture.

Feral tribes are the only inhabitants left in a decimated Los Angeles, sustaining themselves on the debris of an annihilated culture.

At first glance, Masters of None could be the home video of a family of neon-pink hooded figures, passing the time with charades, television, and Jiffy Pop on the stove. As in All Together Now, Masters has no dialogue or clear narrative arc, and while the domestic activities seem everyday, they are infused with suggestions of violence and danger.

A woman with a viking helmet, bloody nose, and large wheel of cheese rambles across Los Angeles, followed by a cameraman hoping to catch some action.

A woman with a viking helmet, bloody nose, and large wheel of cheese rambles across Los Angeles, followed by a cameraman hoping to catch some action.

Under a cloudless Los Angeles sky, Kahn—dressed in incongruous heels and a summery dress—runs an electric weed whacker through a hill of overgrown grass.

Under a cloudless Los Angeles sky, Kahn—dressed in incongruous heels and a summery dress—runs an electric weed whacker through a hill of overgrown grass.

Lost on their way to a desert rock concert, two loners remember the good times.

Winner is a fictional interview gone awry, featuring a reticent sweepstakes winner who doggedly avoids receiving her prize and manages to morph an ad spot into a mini documentary about her art work.

By Hook or by Crook chronicles the tale of two unlikely friends who commit petty crimes as they search for a path to understanding themselves and the outside world. Silas Howard plays Shy (a transgender man), who leaves his small town after the death of his father, and heads to the big city to live a life of crime. Along the way, he encounters Valentine, a quirky adoptee, in search of his birth mother. An immediate kinship is sparked between these men and they become partners in crime. Suffering money troubles, emotional problems, and physical confrontations, the duo face their issues head on and learn to trust each other and support each other in pursuit of their goals.

SD video, stereo sound by Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn 2008

SD video, stereo sound by Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn 2008