Immanence in the Pixel: Traditional Cultural Origins of Math and Technology
An evening of film video and web screenings curated by Laura U. Marks
Presented Saturday, May 11th at 8 pm

For the Birds
Keith Sanborn, United States, 2000, video, 8:00

"Part three of a cycle of digital video works I'm beginning to call - 'after Bataille: 'theory of religion, theory of ecstasy.' " The other two parts are Mirror and The Zapruder Footages. This tape is inspired by the 11th century Sufi mystical text The Conference of the Birds. It is a text which explores transparency and opacity, multiplicity and unity, narrative and insight, the mundane and the ecstatic. For the Birds demonstrates how the palpable is implicit in the impalpable, the actual in the virtual. As the image gradually unfolds from apparent nothingness, the sound track offers a raucous accompaniment to meditation.

Keith Sanborn - Biography

Keith Sanborn is an experimental filmmaker, videomaker, translator of Situationist films, and on-the-ground philosopher. His numerous works include Semi-private sub-Hegelian Panty Fantasy (with sound) (2001), Mirror (2000), The Zapruder Footage: An Investigation of Consensual Hallucination (1999), Imaginary Laughter (1995), The Deadman (with Peggy Ahwesh) (1989), and the Kapital! cycle from the late 1970s to mid 1980s. He is currently working on extended film project, The Gift, exploring architecture and expenditure. He teaches at CUNY, the College of Staten Island.

mrzero@panix.com