In-Between Days: Works on View (March 19-April 19 2021)

<p>Shot in the Sharjah desert,&nbsp;The Digger&nbsp;follows the everyday life of Sultan Zeib Khan, the Pakistani caretaker who has been guarding the ruins of a Neolithic necropolis for twenty years. A witness to the nation&rsquo;s founding mythologies, Sultan preserves archeological ruins, keeping them from falling into ruin. In the midst of these empty graves that echo the vastness of the desert, the absence of corpses is more unsettling than their presence.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Blue-skinned astronauts, that could come from our distant past, face off against post-apocalyptic tribal group from far off into our future, in a parable about violence, resistance and quantum theory.</p>

<p>In 1900,&nbsp;<em>The New York Times</em>&nbsp;reported that six &ldquo;tramps&rdquo; formed an acrobatic pyramid, cut a hole in the ceiling, and escaped from the Middlesex County Jail in New Jersey. Working with trained and untrained actors, this body of work considers the precarious and resistant figure of the acrobat.</p>

<p>The Black Cave (La Cueva Negra) explores the Paso del Indio, an indigenous burial ground in&nbsp;<a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m05r7t">Puerto Rico</a>&nbsp;that was discovered during the construction of a highway, and eventually paved over. Drawing on interviews with local residents and with archaeologists involved in the excavation, Beatriz Santiago Mu&ntilde;oz&rsquo;s&nbsp;<a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m07z4p">video</a>&nbsp;offers a reflection on the origins and meanings of the site, which becomes in the process an allegory for the island&rsquo;s convoluted history. The camera tracks two teenage boys wandering through the area, their freedom of movement and sense of curiosity symbolizing the romantic but ultimately misguided desire to find and preserve paradise.</p>

<p>In conjunction with&nbsp;<em>Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim</em>, collection artist Lucy Raven has conceived a new live work that explores the key role of the museum&rsquo;s founders in the formulation and propagation of nonobjective film in the early 20th century. Presented in the museum&rsquo;s Lower Level theater, Subterrestrial Cinema carries audiences on a journey into a truly underground cinema, weaving animations and materials from the Guggenheim&rsquo;s archives together with new text, films, and sound. Spiraling outward from the museum&rsquo;s origins, it creates an alternate prehistory of cinema, linking science fiction, effects technology, and the legacies of abstract film.</p>

<p>Pyramid Schemes is a collaborative project that draws&nbsp;inspiration from the work of Victor Hugo, Apollinaire and Jorge Luis Borges, the project invites forty-eight contemporary artists and writers to submit 100-word texts that explore architectures of their own creation.&nbsp;</p>

<p><em>Breakdown</em>&nbsp;(2011), a video collaboration between artists Simone Leigh and Liz Magic Laser with opera singer Alicia Hall Moran, explores the history of psychological &ldquo;breakdowns&rdquo; on stage and screen. Bearing witness to Moran&rsquo;s operatic, tense repetition of mundane phrases &ndash; her voice and movements jerking and teetering as if on a razor&rsquo;s edge &ndash; the film provides a rare, sanctioned glimpse of a black female in emotional crisis over the familiar pressures of everyday life. The viewer&rsquo;s resulting discomfort is also an opportunity for empathy, and a reframing of the social discourse around black women and hysteria in popular culture.</p>

<p>In a world where teleportation has replaced planes, a wacky crocodile named Fiona tells of life on the CAPS: an island-turned-refugee-camp for illegal immigrants caught mid-teleportation. Themes of displacement, biotechnology and privacy are evoked through the augmented reality of a raucous birthday party in the Moroccan quarter of the CAPS. Mixing the languages of reality TV, advertising, documentary and high-end commercial aesthetics, Bennani explores the potential of storytelling through magical realism and humour.</p>

<p>Told through recollections of youth, learning, lore, and departure, this is an imagined myth for the Xąwįska, or the Indian Pipe Plant -&nbsp;used by the Ho-Chunk to revive those who have fainted.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.jesperjust.com/programme.html" target="_blank"><strong>Jesper Just&rsquo;s</strong></a>&nbsp;videos invite audiences into sumptuous worlds full of intrigue and suspense. These emotionally charged pieces contain all of the tropes of high production cinematic works &ndash; meticulous and lavish set design, dramatic lighting, and sweeping musical scores and sound effects &ndash; but refuse to adhere to any linear narrative conventions.</p>