Fillip

Anthrozoology: Cats & Dogs
September 17th, 2022

8:00 p.m.

Moberly Arts & Cultural Centre Field House
7646 Prince Albert St
Vancouver, BC

RSVP here

Fillip is pleased to announce the second screening in Anthrozoology, an ongoing film series exploring the ways humans bear witness to the natural world, and, in particular, the behaviour of animals.

Join us Saturday, September 17 at 8 p.m. at Moberly Arts & Cultural Centre Field House, Vancouver, for a free outdoor screening of film and video works by Margaret Dragu & Kate Craig, Lily Jue Sheng & Antonia Kuo, Étienne-Jules Marey, Frances Stark, Shaan Syed, Joyce Wieland, and William Wegman. Co-presented in partnership with Echo Park Film Centre North.

Anthrozoology: Cats & Dogs continues our investigation into documentary, narrative, and formalist film, presenting a program of shorts that include film, digital video, hand-drawn animation, and collage. These works meditate on the domestic lives and bodily experiences of animals—human and non-human—with a particular focus on interactions with the animals often considered to be our closest friends. Initially developed out of our ongoing E.S.P. screening series, the first Anthrozoology screening was programmed in 2021 by guest curator April Thompson.

Entrance to this screening is free but an RSVP is requested. Vegetarian snacks will be served before the screening at dusk.

Thanks to Western Front; Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York; Vtape; and Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre.

Program:

Films chronophotographiques
Étienne-Jules Marey, ca. 1894

Cat Food
Joyce Wieland, 1967, 13:30

Dog Duet
William Wegman, 1975, 2:39

Tails
William Wegman, 1973–74, 0:44

Cat Videos
Frances Stark, 1999–2002

Two Dogs
Shaan Syed, 2003, 2:24

Seeing Double
Lily Jue Sheng & Antonia Kuo, 2013, 2:45

Breath
Margaret Dragu & Kate Craig, 1985, 15:10

About the Artists

Kate Craig (1947–2002) was a pioneering Canadian video and performance artist. She was a founding member of Western Front, Vancouver, where she initiated the artists-in-residence program and developed the new media program, supporting the video and performance works of many artists while producing her own body of work. She is known for her performances, including those as her alter-ego “Lady Brute,” and for her video works. Since 1975, her work has been presented at venues throughout North America, Europe and Asia, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Paris Biennale.

Margaret Dragu is a Vancouver-based dancer and artist and working in video, installation, publication, and performance art. Spanning relational, durational, interventionist, and community-based practices, she has shown in Canada, USA, and Europe. Dragu was the recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts in 2012, Éminence Grise for 7a*11d Performance Art Festival in 2012, and, in 2000, was featured as the first artist in the FADO Performance Art publication series, Canadian Performance Art Legends. Margaret is celebrating her 50th year as a working artist. Her favourite art-making material is still the body, despite—or because of—her bionic status as a grateful owner of two recent hip replacements.

Antonia Kuo is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, film, sculpture, drawing, painting and printmaking. Kuo was awarded the Robert and Stephanie Olmsted Award as a MacDowell Colony Fellow, as well as fellowships at Mass MoCA, The Banff Centre, Center for Photography at Woodstock, The Vermont Studio Center, and Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto. She has exhibited and performed internationally at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, CHART Gallery, Eyebeam, Microscope Gallery, Pioneer Works, and the Knockdown Center in New York; the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; and the Condo and West Bund Art Fairs in Shanghai, among others. Kuo’s work is in private collections and the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) and Centre Pompidou (Paris).

Étienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904) was a French scientist, physiologist and chronophotographer. His work was significant in the development of cardiology, physical instrumentation, aviation, cinematography, and the science of laboratory photography. He is widely considered to be a pioneer of photography and an influential pioneer of the history of cinema. His 1894 short film Falling Cat is believed to be the first motion picture to show a live cat.

Lily Jue Sheng is an artist/filmmaker whose work concentrates on moving image and collage forms. Recent screenings include the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Beijing International Short Film Festival, RIDM Montréal International Documentary Festival, and Winnipeg Underground Festival. Their recent exhibitions, performances, and online works include the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts (San Fransisco), Doc 008: Interlude Docs, Open Air Screening Series at Mono No Aware (Brooklyn), and Five Movements at The Poetry Project (New York). They received a Jerome Foundation Artist Fellowship and residencies at the Anderson Center and NARS Foundation.

Frances Stark is a Los Angeles–based interdisciplinary artist whose work centers on the use and meaning of language, and the translation of this process into the creative act. Her exhibitions include the 2017 and 2008 Whitney Biennials, the 54th Venice Biennale, the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), and many others. Stark’s work is held in the collections of museums internationally including the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Tate London, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), and others.

Shaan Syed lives and works in London, UK. Primarily concerned with painting, Syed periodically expands his practice to include video, sculpture, and outdoor postering projects. Syed has won numerous awards and prizes for his work including the Goldsmiths College Warden’s Purchase Prize (2006) and The Celeste Art Prize (Student Section 2005). He has been shortlisted on several occasions for the RBC New Canadian Painting Prize and was shortlisted for The Sovereign European Art Prize in 2007. He was also shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2004. Syed has participated in artist residencies internationally and his work was included in the 2nd International Biennale of Contemporary Art Prague (2005), and in exhibitions at Mercer Union (Toronto), Bloomberg Space (London, UK), S1 Artspace (Sheffield, UK), Elementa (Dubai), DomoBaal (London, UK) and La Salle de Bains (Lyon).

William Wegman is an artist based in New York and Maine, whose work includes photography, video, painting, and drawing. In the 1970s, Wegman’s Weimaraner Man Ray became a central figure in Wegman’s photographs and videotapes, well-known in the art world and beyond. Wegman’s collaborations with his dogs continued with Fay Ray in 1986, and later, her puppies and subsequent generations. Wegman’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Walker Art Centre (Minneapolis), Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), and in When Attitudes Become Form at Bern Kunsthalle (1969), among many others. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Whitney Museum, the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Centre Pompidou, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC).

Joyce Wieland (1930–1998) was a Canadian experimental filmmaker and mixed media artist. Wieland found success as a painter when she began her career in Toronto in the 1950s. In 1962, Wieland moved to New York City and expanded her career as an artist by including new materials and mixed media work. During that time, she also rose to prominence as an experimental filmmaker. Her work has been exhibited widely, includling at the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa) and the Museum of Modern Art (New York). In 1982, Wieland received the honour of an Officer of the Order of Canada and in 1987, she was awarded the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Visual Arts Award. She was also a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.