This artwork is a video that uses clips from fantasy science fiction movies to juxtapose movements of the body that relate to ideas of balance and unbalance. In this work, there are two stacked but separated video images made of an edited compilation of 3 movies – Fantastic Voyage (1966), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1977), and Logan’s Run (1977).

The characters in these chosen movies are on their own self-discovering journeys, portrayed in the original films through the filter of science-fiction fantasy, where ideas of time and place are open to the imagination. Here, I have taken these journeys of self-discovery and edited them down to fragments that highlight the importance of physical experience on this journey.

The edited clips have been chosen for one of two reasons. There are moments in which the characters have lost their balance, are falling, or are jumping, as well as moments in which the characters are moving/turning their head. This movement, in either case, relates to the ability of the body to balance through self-location- the understanding of the body’s placement in relationship to its surroundings. During a loss of balance in a fall or jump, the body temporarily loses its location, but when we move our head back and forth, or up and down, we use that same part of the brain the finds our balance in order to keep our physical bearings.

Through the stacking of these two separate movements, the juxtaposition of body languages creates a fragmented dialogue between the different films and bodies on screen. While the bodies above are falling, floating, or swinging, the lower subjects are focused on looking, finding, and searching. The fast pace of the cuts denies cohesive narrative, but the juxtaposition of these clips allows for physical relationships between the screens and characters to make reference to one another, and create spatial relationships that place the videos in and out of ever-changing contexts.

Science Fiction is a genre that uses an alternate reality through imagined time and space relationships, and here I am interested in providing an opportunity for these imagined relationships and experiences to express the displacing experience of being unbalanced.

The audio for Lost and Found comes from the instrumental or dialogue-free sound effect audio from the 3 movies. These tracks are then laid into the video based on the speed or movement in the corresponding video clips. Taking the audio from the movies helps to capture the kooky and often over-dramatic tones of this genre, and allows the non-narrative of the video clips to have an equally disjointed auditory trajectory.

For a continuation of this project, I would be interested in further investigation of the relationships between the screens. By tightening the editing, adjusting the order of the clips, and a more deliberate control over the looping, I think that there would be more contextual and relational incitement and therefore a more consistent effectiveness of the conveyed message.

In terms of installation, I would most like to see this project with each of the screens on its own 40” flat-screen wall-mounted digital television, in the stacked arrangement. I think that the physical separation of the images through the separate TVs and their reference back to their home-entertainment source would be a playful and powerful way for a viewer to experience this work. The brightness of the televisions would also cast that familiar light onto the faces of the viewer, adding to the experience of those watching the viewers.

However, as I write this, I could also imagine these images as full-wall projections, so that the image fills the room and envelops the viewer in a way that makes them a participant in this balance-challenging video experience.

Truly contemporary art is not easily categorized.
The Modernist divisions of art(ist)s are OUTMODED.
These categories can be made to become almost infinitely malleable.
Therefore, the terms provided by Modernist divisions are equally OUTMODED.
Contemporary Artists are mediators of information- communicators through an experiential language.
Art reconnects us with the value of human experience as extraordinary and not to be overlooked.
It engages the wonder, investigation, and creative expression that keeps humans moving forward.

My art speaks to the corporeal experience of being, making, and learning in order to counter a culture that distracts the individual from the intimacy of the personal experience of the everyday body.

“Perception is not simply a question of vision, but involves the whole body.”
– Merleau-Ponty

I make experiential drawings
that combine an investigation of reality, with an investigation of the aesthetic.
These artworks express an incessant materiality,
a process that asks the materials to provide the direction,
a process of obsessive production in a language of lines-
a language that expresses movement, direction, space and time across all mediums.
This work exists between the divisions provided by art history’s terms.
I will not be tied down to one material.
I will not be tied down to one way of thinking.
I will not be tied down to one way of making.
I will not be tied down to one way of being.
I am calling for an Expanded Field for all artists.
It is time to DESEGREGATE.
Constantly in flux, I can only be defined by the acknowledgement that I am many things at once.
I am a Painter
I am a Sculptor
I am a Printmaker
I am a Designer
I am a Video Artist
I am a Performer
I am a Photographer
I am a Teacher
I am a Student
I am a Participant
I am an Investigator
I am a Researcher
I am a Writer
I am an Editor
I am a Builder
I am a Maker
I am a Collector
I am a Thinker
I am a Voice
In Contemporary terms,
I am a TRANSDISCIPLINARY ARTIST.

© 2010 Leah Schreiber

© 2010 Leah Schreiber

To find out more about the program, you can go to: www.milwaukeerecreation.net/srec/

Le Roman du Lievre: Marginalia in Milwaukee!!

This special screening event is a derivative of an ever evolving project by
Alaskan artist Jimmy Riordan. Last September, with the help of New York
curator Leslie Rosa Stumpf, Riordan organized an exhibition at
MTS Gallery in Anchorage which included work from 56 national and
international artists. This summer Riordan and Stumpf are traveling
across the country, meeting up with many of the artists involved in
the exhibition for a series of exhibition-related projects that will
draw tighter connections between various artistic practices.

As a contributing artist to the Le Roman du Lievre project,
I am organizing a special screening of a new french
film (not scheduled to release to the public in the U.S. until the end
of June!). Catherine Breillat’s La Barbe Bleu is a contemporary
interpretation of the popular French folktale, which has a significant
conceptual and narrative relationship to Francis Jammes’ 1903 novel
Le Roman de Lievre, the textual inspiration for Riordan’s entire project.

Riordan will also be doing
a DIY lithography demo at the event!

When: June 12, 2010
8:30pm DIY lithography demo
9:30pm screening of Catherine Breillat’s La Barbe Bleu (2010)

with special introduction by film studies
professor, Tami M. Williams

Where: The Green Gallery (West)
631 East Center Street 3B
Milwaukee, WI

The project has a great website too:
www.leromandulievre.com

For more information about this event, and to RSVP, you can email me directly:
leah@leahschreiber.com

Return to Me…
On the 17th of May a van full of artwork will leave Anchorage and begin heading east. Around the 12th of June it will arrive in New York. Between these two dates, it will zigzag across Canada and the US, meeting up with all of the artists that participated in Marginalia (or at least those that are on this continent).

Marginalia is an exhibition, soon to open in Anchorage, Alaska. This group show features works from multiple international artists, and considers the individual responses to a French tale, Le Roman Du Lievre. I have two pieces in this exhibition: one video of a particular storm that occurred in June, that happened to cause great damage to my art studio while I was filming the storm from my home, and one enlarged print image of a hunter cleaning a hare by unexpected means.

In my work, I often consider the ways we gain knowledge about our selves, whether through subjective experience, or cultural influences. One of the things that I found most interesting in the Le Roman Du Lievre is the issue of threat. There are repeated moments of comfort and fear, safety and threat, all presented from the point of view of the hare. I wanted to consider how these moments perceived by the hare affected the way he understood his position.

In the story, the hare takes comfort in a storm, a common literary marker of looming danger. I also found it interesting that the author repeatedly uses a quote from another book, Bluebeard, in which a woman fears her ugly husband, and finds through her curiosity that he has murdered his former wives. The quote, “Sister, do you not see anything coming?” seems almost comical in its foreshadowing, and speaks to the narrative of the unknown.

My recent work is invested in the information imparted by scientific diagrams, and our reliance on these images as facts about our selves. In my research for this project, I was drawn to books containing ‘useful’ information about hares, including anatomical drawings and especially the how-to diagrams in game hunting books. The image in One Quick Motion refers back to the significant moment in the story where the hare concedes his life for the benefits of death in Hare Heaven. For our hare, the threat of missing out on Eternal Life persuades him to give up his earthly life and accept that death will bring true happiness. This process distorted photograph shows a field hunter completing a ‘knifeless cleaning method’, a more physical technique for bodily transformation.

To learn more, go to http://leromandulievre.com/home.html

Exhibition Dates: April 9- 24, 2010

Opening Reception: April 9, 5-7pm

Gallery Talk: April 13, 4-6pm

Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11-4pm

Peck School of the Arts, Inova/Art Center

2400 E. Kenwood Blvd., 2nd floor

414.229.5070

Rotatory, the latest exhibition of works by Leah Schreiber, includes a gallery-length suspended sculpture and interactive kinetic paintings inspired by an image of the hairs of the inner ear essential for balance. Incorporating new technologies with both traditional painting and found sculptural material, Rotatory presents a physical and fantastical reinterpretation of medical imagery. The exhibition, to be held at the INOVA Gallery at The Peck School of Arts, is for the completion of her MFA degree at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

“By engaging viewers on a physical level through movement of line, the mechanical and interactive movement of materials, and invented scale shifts, these works encourage a reconnection to the physical experience of our bodies as a source of self-knowledge”.

Join Us in Sheboygan

Opening Reception:

Saturday, April 10 from 5 to 8 PM

Join us at the Green Room following the reception.

About “Indian Green”

“Indian Green” is a regional group exhibition featuring 2D and 3D works by artists living and working in Green Bay, Sheboygan, and Milwaukee. Participating artists are: Melissa Dorn Richards (Milwaukee), Dale Knaak (Sheboygan), Tiffany Knopow (Milwaukee), Dara Larson (Milwaukee), Leah Schreiber (Milwaukee), Dave Watkins (Milwaukee), Christine Style (Green Bay), Ariana Huggett (Milwaukee), Renee Staeck (Milwaukee), Chris Niver (Milwaukee), Shayna Illingworth (Sheboygan), Kendall Polster (Milwaukee), Eriks Johnson (Milwaukee), Rory Burke (Milwaukee), and Erica Becker (Green Bay).

Now is the time to be creative,  proactive, and to take initiative to create a platform for networking, support and collaboration among artists, says Frank Juarez. Through the collaborative efforts of Juarez, Steve Bossler and Zack Pattison, co-owners of Greenseed Studios, this exhibition will not only introduce a diverse body of work by 15 artists ranging from paintings to needlework, jewelry to mixed media, and sculpture to printmaking, but also represent personal exploration of materials, media and ideas in a contemporary practice.

To view artists’ work, artist statements, and artist websites visit frankjuarez.wordpress.com.

Please note: the work on this blog may or may not be on exhibit, but representational to what will be on exhibit.

Contact Information:

Frank Juarez

(920) 559-7181

juarezpaintings@gmail.com

Location:

Greenseed Studios

1011 Indiana Avenue

Sheboygan, WI  53081

www.greenseedstudios.com

(920) 287-7640

Dates of Exhibition:

April 3 – 23, 2010