January, 2024
We have now announced our show! In the Sun’s Absence will kick off this winter into spring with Squeaky Wheel here in Buffalo, NY, in the path of totality.
November, 2023
Very pleased to announce that I have received, along with Phoebe A. Cohen, paleontologist, geobiologist and photographer, a significant grant through the Simons Foundation to create a collaborative artwork for the 2024 eclipse. Buffalo, NY is in the path of totality and Squeaky Wheel is facilitating the project. We are so excited to be working together and will share more news soon!
August, 2023
Coming up for air after nearly a year of busy days and weeks. Most recently I had the pleasure of sharing my work with the new(ish) art-science collaborative space, The Soil Factory. Do give their site a look, as they are an important welcome to the Ithaca, NY area.
This year’s Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE)’s conference, held in Portland, Oregon, was a revelation and a treat. I was pleased to present research on the the Salt of the Earth Labor College, based in Tucson, Arizona, and think through the many complications of the commons alongside so many sharp minds.
This spring I had the great fortune of co-teaching with West Side Studios through Squeaky Wheel here in Buffalo, NY. Those kids are alright! Also this spring I was lucky to spend time with the good folks who assemble makers to talk craft and ideas through the … Like Clockwork podcast.
Last November, I joined Philip Cartelli and Holly Jean Buck for a lively conversation following a work-in-progress presentation of my 35mm slide show performance, Auto Fill at the Landfill (and more!), at the new Union Docs space in Ridgewood. You can find more information and a trailer here.
Last fall was indeed busy! Leading up to Union Docs, I spent time at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts on a short but productive residency, dotted with visits to Southern Gauge, VCU, Temple, BICA, and other venues to meet a stellar array of fellow makers and share my work. I feel lucky to have had a break from the PhD program at Buffalo to hop around the country and meet friends old and new.
September, 2022
So very much to catch up on! I was honored to facilitate the discussion following Lynne Sach’s Swerve at the Camden International Film Festival as part of the beautifully curated Evening Lights shorts program.
It was a true pleasure to screen Ancient Sunshine alongside two films from the inimitable James Benning in a show programmed by Joanna Raczynska at the National Gallery of Art in dialogue with the Robert Adams photography exhibit, American Silence.
Ancient Sunshine makes its U.S. West Coast premiere at this year’s Tacoma Film Festival in a program tantalizingly titled Nature is a Language.
August 2022
Fillmmaker and curator Kalpana Subramanian programmed my film 7.24.14 for the screening connected to A Light Footprint in the Cosmos event held in Vancouver this past June. A great honor to be included! And the film’s world premiere after years of sitting in my archive (external drive)!
June 2022
Greetings from Genoa, Italy, where a number of us have gathered for the Radical Film Network un-conference. Amazing to be here with our gracious hosts for long days, and happy to be crashing with the good people of the Laboratorio Sociale Occupato Autogestito Burrida.
Stay tuned for news on an upcoming (X)-trACTION event in Berlin in July. In the meantime, check out our writing here, hosted by non copyriot dot com.
February 2022
So wonderful for Ancient Sunshine to show up on Leo Goldsmith’s Best Shorts of 2021 for Senses of Cinema. What a great honor! If you are in the Central New York area, come by Cornell Cinema on March 7 to see the film in the next iteration of the (X)-trACTION project!
January 2022
If you find yourself near Bisbee, Arizona, please join us (Cathy Lee Crane, Nicole Antebi, Erin Wilkerson and Laurie McKenna) for an evening of films at the Central School Project. The title of the screening is (X)-trACTION and includes video interstices from the Bisbee community. Come on down!
December 2021
Very excited to be a part of this year’s Visible Evidence. Ancient Sunshine plays free as part of the conference; I’ll be presenting on the film and connected themes and ideas as part of a panel. Also, look out for a bit of a surprise appearance in the ‘abolition media’ workshop!
November 2021
To my friends in and/or near Malta, consider checking out Ancient Sunshine as part of Kinemastik in a few weeks!
October 2021
Thanks to the Buffalo International Film Festival, and thanks to the jurors for awarding Ancient Sunshine with the Best Short Documentary award. What a treat!
You can see the film as part of Glimmerglass Film Days in early November. Thank you Peggy Parsons for reaching out to me and programming it. Virtual link here.
August 2021
Catching up a bit. This summer has been a great re-entry, however cautious, to the world! This year’s edition of the Flaherty Film Seminar, curated by the inimitable Janaína Oliveira, was like no other: more accessible and more international than any other Seminar in our organization’s history. I continue to be surprised, humbled, and moved by this unique assembly of cinema-seekers and brilliant minds.
What a pleasure it was to attend the Colby Summer Institute in the Environmental Humanities. I love small gatherings like this. The team did an incredible job sequencing the week. Big ups, Mainers!
It was such an honor to be a part of the Mimesis Documentary Festival in Boulder, Colorado, and to participate in a free range panel conversation on extraction. Kudos to the team for organizing such a great festival.
Coming up in September, Ancient Sunshine will be a part of the Camden International Film Festival. What a tremendous line-up! See you on the Internet, friends.
May 2021
Very pleased to announce that my film Ancient Sunshine will have its world premiere with the Sheffield Doc Fest in the UK. It is nominated for an award and will play in the Rebellions program. Thank you, Sheffield!
March 2021
Very excited to work with this year’s Big Muddy Film Festival to jury a great selection of films! Watch for our juror shows and awards ceremony. Big Muddy has been holding space for experimentation, righteous causes, media interventions, and the documentary arts for over 40 years in Carbondale, Illinois. I have enormous respect for their legacy and the current team, and so this is a great honor.
February 2021
I’ll post more soon, but heads up! Like quite “literally” heads up! Making Strange opens at the Burchfield Penney museum on February 12. The curators have selected two works for the show: Yoga Goat Nom Nom, which will be projected (big goat heads on the wall), and the world premiere of Goodbye, World!, a collaborative piece I’ve been working on for months with media artist Jason E Geistweidt. As a teaser: this is a real-time data sculpture which includes polar bear heads.
January 2021
If you find yourself in New York’s Hudson Valley, swing by the Incident Report storefront sign to check out this week’s scroll, the translated goat communiqué conveyed in Yoga Goat Nom Nom.
November 2020
My short film, If Attica Is Still Blue, is playing as part of the Filmmakers Coop “In Solidarity” through their dedicated Vimeo page. If Attica Is Still Blue places poetic code inside a desktop operation about images and liberation on the anniversary of the Attica uprising. Thanks to Jason E. Geistweidt for the coding assist. It’s great to see a mix of experimental and straight work in a protest film program.
October 2020
I’m enormously humbled and honored to be included in Richard Porton’s expanded Film and The Anarchist Imagination. He brings key insights to my film #RUSHES and discusses it in an international context. Filmmaker and author Astra Taylor writes of the new edition:
"So many mainstream movies are ultimately propaganda: propaganda for consumerism, violence, outdated gender relations, and the capitalist system. This book reminds us that films can also be rebellious, aiming not to reinforce but undermine the status quo. In this updated version of his original classic, Richard Porton traces the evolution of anarchist ideas and their influence on cinematic form and content, exploring a wide range of expressive work designed to provoke, inspire, and confound. A welcome and compelling celebration of a subversive and still-evolving genre.”
You can watch Yoga Goat Nom Nom at the Tacoma Film Festival this coming November. Information on viewing windows as well as a filmmaker panel discussion forthcoming. The lineup looks great and I’m so proud to be screening with so many fine friends and makers.
Laura Marks has been leading the charge on raising critical questions about the carbon footprint of streaming. Please visit Media + Environment’s dossier. You can click through to find my writing on these issues, including a link to a power point performance/intervention I put together for this past year’s reconstituted SCMS events on energy and media.
August 2020
Caspar Stracke and Keith Sanborn have assembled a collection of texts and artist pieces as The Current Thing. I’m pleased to be in such good company and have contribute a short piece of writing about this Spring’s May Day action, #CapitalismIsThePandemic.
June 2020
In May, I assembled an ad-hoc group of comrades to hire an airplane. The airplane flew a banner up and down the Hudson River alongside New York City and crisscrossed the bay. Thank you to every single person who crowd-funded the action, who helped spread the word, who documented the day, and who supported us along the way. The banner read #CapitalismIsThePandemic.
February 2020
If you’re in the Carbondale, Illinois area, please be sure to check out Yoga Goat Nom Nom at the Big Muddy Film Festival on Saturday, February 29th! It closes the festival along with some other great-looking films.
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January 2020
With Alex Inglizian at the deck, I completed a sound mix for Ancient Sunshine at the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago. I’m thrilled with the results and hope to share the film with you soon.
In December, I finished a prototype for a physical media object titled Goodbye, World! I intend to refine it in the next few months. As it stands now, the parameters it draws upon are a bit broad, but none the less it gets the idea across: the polar bear’s eyes become more intensely red the more a CPU in a nearby laptop heats up.
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November 2019
If you are in the Tri-state area (or not…), you can check out my short, Hush, Bush Cricket, as part of THEN, WHAT IF?, curated by Gene Gort and Ken Steen with NewMediaNewMusicNewEngland. Five Points Gallery in Connecticut is hosing the physical iteration, and the online version - set up beautifully to randomize sound/image combinations - can be found here.
Thanks to Emily Drummer, filmmaker and programmer, for brining me to Colgate University to share Onondagas vs NY State (1971), a collaboration between the Onondaga Nation and the Ithaca Video Project, and speak about Upstate NY’s media ecology. In addition, I’ll share a rough-cut of a project I’ve been working on for some years.
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October 2019
On Wednesday, October 23, the amazing and legendary Buffalo media arts space Squeaky Wheel will host a program of films from We Tell: Fifty Years of Participatory Community Media. Co-curated by Louis Massiah and Patty Zimmerman, We Tell is an important project, culling and reactivating activist and collectivist work from the well-known (Paper Tiger, Newsreel) to the one-off and provisional (Outta Your Backpack Media). I’m very proud to have worked as a Research Assistant on We Tell and will facilitate the post-screening Q&A with Patty. Please join us.
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August 2019
Greetings from the beautiful Mt Lebabon Residency in NY, across the street from the Shaker Museum, and down the road from the Abode Farm. On the way here, I gave an artist talk at the New York State Summer School of the Arts in Alfred. As summer comes to a close, I’m excited to keep reconnecting with the wonderful media ecology of Upstate, seeing old comrades, and making new ones.
I’ve begun sending out a new video, YOGA GOAT NOM NOM. Preview here.
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June 2019
A new adventure ahead: this coming August, I will begin my study for a PhD with the Department of Media Study, The University at Buffalo in New York. It’s a practice-based PhD with a great community of artists and scholars.
This week the 65th Flaherty Seminar begins. Shai Heredia has programmed a fantastic week around the theme of Action. This will be my 17th time attending.
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May 2019
What a productive last few months! It was a pleasure to work the with Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival crew as a Marketing Consultant. This is a great festival and you should check it out! And what great luck and joy and good work to join Cathy Lee Crane at the US/Mexico border as a Field Sound Recordist and Data Manager for the in-development project, Drawing the Line. Thank you Virginia Tech and Lexington Film League for the recent shows! I appreciate your thoughtful audiences.
This month, I’m digging in at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts as a fully-funded fellow to continue working on Ancient Sunshine. Thank you, VCCA!
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February 2019
Please join me at Cornell Cinema on February 20 for a show of my films. It’ll be great to return to Ithaca and the amazing Willard Straight Hall theatre.
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January 2019
If you’re in Kansas City next week, please come by the Stray Cat Film Center to check out my show with Trevor Adams and Momo Real Momo Falso. Information here.
A group of young students visited us at Elsewhere to conduct interviews. We loved those kids!
Very pleased to be a resident at Elsewhere in Paonia, Colorado for the month, where I’ll be getting back to work on Ancient Sunshine.
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December 2018
Join me on December 7 for a Headroom show I’ve curated titled Catching Z’s at The End of Language, with films by Yin-Ju Chen and James T. Hong, Orr Menirom, Stephanie Barber, Basma Alsharif, Peggy Ahwesh, Mary Helena Clark, Brian Frye and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz. The show explores ghosts, perception, and fragmented grammar to expand the limits of our collective political imagination. As always, Headroom events are FREE!
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July 2018
I am still overwhelmed by the experience of participating as a fellow in ImageTextIthaca's workshop program. And the 64th Flaherty Seminar was fantastic.
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January 2018
Excited to return to the Millay Colony for a one-week Winter Shaker artist residency!
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November 2017
Very pleased to announce that I will be a Fellow for the 2018 Image Text Ithaca session.
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October 2017
Thanks to Anna Brantwood for the impromptu inclusion of The Post-It Manifesto in the Silent Signals section of the Buffalo International Film Festival!
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August 2017
A new GIF, co-made with Stephen Voyce, is up on NOW! A Journal of Urgent Praxis in response to the KKK/Neo-Nazi/ultraright attacks and murder of Heather Heyer.
Poet and filmmaker Nick Twemlow curated Copy & Past as part of the Marfa Poetry Festival.
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July 2017
Nick Muellner and Catherine Taylor invited me to present work as part of the Image Text Ithaca low-residency MFA program. We also discussed the assigned readings, which included a revelation for me, Gertrude Stein's Composition as Explanation.
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June 2017
From June 16 to the 23rd, I'll be at the 63rd Flaherty Seminar, programmed by Nuno Lisboa, Director of Doc's Kingdom International Seminar on Documentary Film in Portugal. I'm thrilled to return to my role as the Fellows Coordinator.
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May 2017
Microlights Cinema in Milwaukee hosted me for a solo show. Thanks, Jesse McLean and Ben Balcom!
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April 2017
After 3 years of directing the Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival, I've passed the baton to University of Iowa MFA student, Emily Drummer, and moved into an advisory role. This year's line-up and jurors are fantastic.
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March 2017
Shale Raga, Cellular Cinema, Minneapolis, as programmed by filmmaker and artist Caitlin Horsmon.
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January 2017
I'm very grateful to be returning to the Millay Colony on a Winter Shaker Residency for a quiet, snowy week of work.
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December 2016
Contributed a GIF to NOW! Journal's rapid response to the election of 45.
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November 2016
Join me in discussion with filmmaker Nicolás Pereda in conversation following the screening of WOMEN'S WORK at Anthology Film Archives, as part of the Flaherty NYC series, Wild Sounds, as programmed by Chris Stults and Genevieve Yue.
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October 2016
Presentation on twohundredfiftysixcolors as part of the Structural Documentary Symposium held at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Shale Raga, Antimatter Film Festival
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August 2016
Presentation on post-Occupy poetics at Visible Evidence in Bozeman, MT.
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June 2016
While I wasn't on staff at the Flaherty this year, I did put in some work, moderating the post-screening conversation of Luis Ospina's notorious Vampires of Poverty (Agarrando Pueblo) and Luke Fowler's To the Editor of Amateur Photographer, as part of the 62nd annual gathering, programmed by David Pendleton around the theme of PLAY.
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March 2016
Off to the Millay Colony for a late-season Winter Shaker Residency!
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February 2016
Thanks to Paige Sarlin and Ekrem Serdar for coordinating my visit to Buffalo. Squeaky Wheel hosted me for a solo show and I gave a Plasma Visiting Artist talk to students at SUNY in the Department of Media Study.
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February 2016
Thrilled that THE END has been selected as part of the Vancouver Art Gallery's MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture.
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November 2015
Presentation of #RUSHES as part of The Third Work Sound/Image/Interaction symposium at CUNY Hunter.
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June 2015
So honored to be accepted to a three-week residency at the Millay Colony!
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April 2015
Commissioned to write “New Technology to Make Data Self-Destruct: The Video Songbook of Jesse McLean” for Experimental Response Center.
Anthropologist and film animator Bob Ascher will be honored at Cornell University for his many years of devoted teaching and influence on the field of visual anthropology. I took a class with him as an undergraduate and produced a short video about a neo-nazi in Upstate NY that will never see the light of day, but I am honored to be invited to share some thoughts and recollections with many people whom I respect.
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March 2015
Here's an interview I did with Jim Jarmusch and his SQÜRL bandmate Carter Logan for Little Village in advance of their visit to Iowa City as part of the Mission Creek Festival.
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February 2015
Thanks Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles for inviting me out for a solo show!
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April 2014
Presented #RUSHES at the inaugural Process: In Media Res conference at Harvard University.
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June 2014
Thrilled, as always, to be back at the Flaherty, and again in my capacity as Fellows Coordinator, this time for TURNING THE INSIDE OUT, programmed by Gabriela Monroy and Caspar Stracke. I'm also kicking in as a post-screening moderator for films by Duncan Campbell, Johan Grimonprez, Cao Guimarães, and Jesse McLean.
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2013-14
I worked with Sarah Kanouse, Adam Burke, and Charlie Williams to curate the video component of the year-long art and activism series, Exuberant Politics. Guest programmers included Pablo de Ocampo and visiting artists included Josh MacPhee and Laurie Jo Reynolds.
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2014
#RUSHES, Meanwhile… on Time and Streets, Galician Center for the Image Arts, Spain, programmed by Josetxo Cerdán
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December 2013
It's so great to be able to visit one of my favorite venues, UnionDocs in Brooklyn, to present my work!
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June 2013
Another memorable Flaherty, History is What's Happening, programmed by Pablo de Ocampo, again serving as the Fellows Coordinator, and contributing in the capacity as a discussion moderator with Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc and Kodwo Eshun of The Otolith Group.
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February 2013
Thanks to Jennifer Wild and the Film Studies Center and The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at the University of Chicago for bringing me in with program of videos I curated, Our Bodies Your Selves, including works by Dara Greenwald/Bettina Escauriza, Tara Mateik, Clarisse Hahn and Duncan Campbell.
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May 2013
The Communards of Wall Street, a review of Zoe Beloff’s Days of the Commune, Brooklyn Rail
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March 2013
Thanks to the Nightingale Cinema in Chicago for hosting me to present my work.
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2013
#RUSHES premieres at the Cinemateca Nacional, Mexico City
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June 2012
Very pleased to announce I am joining the Flaherty staff this year as the Fellows Coordinator for Josetxo Cerdán's OPEN WOUNDS! In addition, I will help facilitate a post-screening conversation with Su Friedrich, Laila Pakalnina Ben Rivers, and Ben Russell.
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March 2012
Moderated a post-screening conversation with Shelly Silver, Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby as part of the Flaherty NYC series, The Lives of Animals, programmed by Kathy High and Jim Supanick.
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2012
ACID REIGN at Secrets: Plug Projects, Kansas City.
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2011
Co-editor with director Kathy High of Death Down Under, a nonfiction essay video about biocapital, gender, science, green burial and pig decomposition.
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November 2011
Rebekah Rutkoff's insightful review of Under Foot & Overstory is out in Jacket2. "Livingston is an essayist, but his eyes are set firmly on the poetic mobility of language shards — he’s a collector and reassembler of samples from multiple and contradictory sources of mind-in-nature and he asks us to read them all."
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November 2011
Review, Travis Wilkerson’s An Injury to One, Brooklyn Rail
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July 2011
Migrating Forms festival wrap-up, co-authored with Colin Beckett, Migrating Forms, Brooklyn Rail
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March 2011
Under Foot & Overstory played as part of Psychogeographies: Four Films about Place and Time, as part of the Flaherty NYC series at Anthology Film Archives in New York, programmed by Penny Lane.
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February 2011
My second and final residency at the late, great Experimental Television Center.
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2010
New York State Council of the Arts Individual Artist Program Fellow, 2010.