Director
James Richards’ Qualities of Life: Living in the Radiant Cold is a descent into a maelstrom of images and objects—from glitched medical optics, photos from the archive of Horst Ademeit, who documented the impact of radiation on his body, to Richards’ own collection of erotic objects, drug paraphernalia, and other ephemera that swim in a dark techno-pharmacological miasma.
Director
The starting point was a video tape of projection footage made by the artist Gretchen Bender, who turned clinical images of infections, deformities, and morbid injuries into an abject flicker film. Reinke and Richards expanded Bender’s medical gaze into a broader perspective, combining new sequences and animations, interweaving them to produce a film with a rich soundtrack of audio and spoken word.
Director
A film tribute, portrait and investigation of the set designer, photographer and actor Albrecht Becker. Staying with Becker’s self-portraits, artists Steve Reinke and James Richards pair public and private images in ways that challenge and re-signify one another.
Director
This video materializes an intense phase of exchange between the artists who belong to two distinct generations and contexts. Thornton, a media artist who herself was influenced by Paul Sharits, Yvonne Rainer, and Joan Jonas often deploys projections complicated by ample sound-image interactions. Likewise, musical composition is key to Richard’s practice. Both artists’ work is motivated by their understanding of cinema and video as original languages and forms of thinking.
Director of Photography
Jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams was a genius ahead of her time. From child prodigy to "Boogie-Woogie Queen" to groundbreaking composer to mentoring some of the greatest musicians of all time, she never ceased to astound those who heard her play. But for a Black woman in the early 1900s, life as a star did not come easy.
Director
A collage of appropriated footage with an electronic soundtrack by James Richards and Vocal Juice
Director
Raking Light takes its name from an examination method used in art conservation, where strong light is shone directly across the surface of a painting to highlight irregularities. The 2014 Turner Prize-nominated artist James Richards’ video is a looping, fizzing and sensually apocalyptic study of the elements. His dexterous sound composition adds an extra veneer to evocative but fleeting images, making our senses as malleable as putty.
Director
This work is comprised of rhythmic assemblings of sounds and images extracted from various sources, including the internet and DVDs, as well as diaristic material gathered by the artist and his friends. Various light distortions created with a small portable video camera add further texture to the work.
Director
A portrait of distraction, with sampled monologue from online video essay about the Roland 303 synthesizer read over collaged images on the studio desk. Intercut by the back of a porn DVD and the MGM logo.
