Phrenology | Melanie Crean | 2008 | 11:30 min.
  Phrenology investigates the relationship between memory, writing and the perception of space, though writings created by incarcerated women at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. The camera floats through different environments that serve as visual analogies to the writing, sequenced chronologically as they might appear in the life of the writer, accompanied by an experimental sound track composed by Paul Geluso (paulgeluso.com). Visual effects by Enrique Maitland (enrichmedium.com) further underscore the elusive nature of memory that forms the ephemeral basis of the women’s identity. Phrenology was a Victorian pseudo-science of the brain, that claimed to map one’s personality according to the topography of their skull. If the psyche could be charted physically, then its alteration after a period of emotional stress could also be seen as the erosion of a physical landscape.

Melanie Crean is an artist and teacher based in Brooklyn, NY. She is an Assistant Professor of Media Design at Parsons the New School for Design in New York City, teaching production and theory based classes in experimental time based work, mobile media and gaming. As the former Director of Production at Eyebeam <eyebeam.org>, she founded and managed a cooperative studio that supported the creation of socially based media, working with new forms of moving image, sound, public art and open source software. She has received fellowships and commissions from Art in General, the Bronx Arts Council, Harvestworks, NYFA, NYSCA, Rhizome and Creative Time.

Plot Point | Nicholas Provost | 2007 | 18:00 min.
  The crowded streets of New York City turn into fictive, cinematographic scenery. Provost is playing with our collective memory, its cinematic codes and narrative languages - questioning the boundaries between a staged, suggested reality and authentic fiction. Although filmed with a hidden camera, Plot Point presents a highly dramatic construction with overly sophisticated images and a subtle but tangible urge in the soundtrack. The meticulousness with which Provost shoots and edits the images and sounds make Plot Point the perfect trailer for dramatized experience in our daily life, an ordinary walk on the street will never be the same again.

The work of Nicolas Provost walks the fine line between dualities, balancing fiction and fine arts, the grotesque and the moving, the beautiful and the cruel. His phantasmagorias provoke both recognition and alienation and succeed in pulling audience expectations into an unraveling game of mystery and abstraction. In some videos, filmic memory is stimulated through the use of short fragments from classic films by Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Alain Resnais or Russ Meyers, but Provost is as likely to utilize obscure B-films, contemporary cinema or thematic platitudes. Time and form are manipulated, cinematographic and narrative language is analyzed, accents are shifted and new stories are told. The extraordinary is elucidated in order to reveal the global. In addition to the use of film and visual language, sound is a constant factor in Provost's body of work, as a rhythmical spine or an emotional guideline.

Kempinski | Neil Beloufa | 2007 | 13:58 min.
  "Welcome to Kempinski", the people of this mystical and animist place introduce it to us. "Today we have a space station. We will launch space ships and a few satellites soon that will allow us to have much more informations about the other stations and other stars." This science-fiction documentary has no script and its scenario is caused by a specific game rule. Interviewed people imagine the future and speak about it in the present tense. The attractive aspect of the video leads to exotic stereotypes and a wrong fictitious reading of this true anticipation documentary. Kempinski is also a hotel company. The editing is melodic and hypnotic.

Algerian and French Beloufa studied at the École des Beaux Arts de Paris, at the Art Décoratifs de Paris, at Cooper Union in New York and at CalArts in Valencia. Beloufa’s work has been exhibited and screened including ITCA 2008 - Prague International Triennial of Contemporary Art, Prague; 12th Biennial of Moving image, Geneva; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; White Box, New York; The Soap Factory, Minneapolis, NCCA - National center of contemporary Arts, Moscow; and was awarded “Arte Prize for an European shortfilm” at 54th Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage.

Fanny Allié | The Disappearance of the Cleaning Lady | 2007 | 2:30 min.
  My artwork revolves around the notion of Identity or loss of Identity and how we present ourselves to the world. The people I film are assigned to play a role or to follow a specific instruction in order to take a distance with their own self (their everyday “self”). In my last project called “The disappearance of the cleaning lady” (2008 - 2.32 min), I asked four cleaning ladies who have been working together for many years, to create a story about the possible and sudden disappearance of one of them. They therefore fill their role with their own feelings.

Fanny Allié was born in 1981 in the South of France (Montpellier). She obtained a Master’s degree in Visual Arts in 2005 from the National Superior School of Photography in Arles, France where she studied photography and video. She was a selected artist for the program, Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) at the Bronx Museum of the Arts during 2006-07. Fanny has exhibited in Belgium, Germany, Spain and in the US. She has also participated in art residencies in Berlin (2005) and Brussels (2008). She is currently enrolled in the BCAT/BRIC Rotunda Gallery Video Residency in Brooklyn.

Transcendent Power and the Mirrored Rhombus Prism (v2) | Andrew Wilson | 2008 | 4:18 min.
  "There is a mirror, amid the commodity form is also this mirror, but since all of a sudden it no longer plays its role, since it does not reflect back the expected image, those who are looking for themselves can no longer find themselves in it. Men no longer recognise in it the social character of their own labour. It is as if they were becoming ghosts in their turn." -Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx.

Andrew Wilson was born in New Jersey and has since then lived in Massachusetts, New York, Sydney Australia, North Carolina, and currently resides in San Francisco.  Transcendent Power and the Mirrored Rhombus Prism is his fifth video completed since graduating from Syracuse University in 2006. He is currently working for filmmakers Sam Green (Rainbow Man/John 3:16, Weather Underground) and Craig Baldwin (Tribulation 99, Mock Up On Mu), and has recently worked with the labor union Unite Here!, filmmaker Micha Peled, and on the video production team at Google.

10 Simple Steps to your own Virtual Sweatshop | Stephanie Rothenberg / Jeff Crouse / Annie Ok | 2008 | 8:15 min.
 

This short explores the growing intersection between labor, emerging virtual economies, and real-life commodities through the creation of a designer jean sweatshop in the metaverse Second Life.

Stephanie Rothenberg uses performance, video, and net-based media to create provocative interactions that question relationships between individuals and socially constructed identities, lifestyles and public spaces. She has performed and exhibited at festivals including Sundance Film Festival, ISEA, Conflux and Zer01 San Jose. Jeff Crouse, Senior Fellow at Eyebeam, is an artist and programmer mixing technology and comedy to make fun and critical projects. Exhibtions include Sundance Film Festival, Futuresonic in Manchester, DC FilmFest and Come Out and Play Festival in Amsterdam. Annie Ok is a multimedia artist based in NYC. She was a long-time senior artist of RUN Collection that has exhibited at Alleged Gallery, Andrea Rosen Gallery, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, Creative Time's The Anchorage, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Purple Institute, and Pitti Imagine. She's directed videos for MTV and Iron Man, and is a metaverse consultant to MTV, Picture Production Company, etc.

Taian Lu | Mathieu Borysevicz| 2008 | 12:00 min.
  Mathieu and Yan living on Taian Lu in Shanghai.

Mathieu Borysevicz, artist, critic, curator and filmmaker, splits his time between NYC and Shanghai. His photography and film work has been shown internationally at venues such as The Tribeca Film Festival, ICA London, the Bauhaus, Duolun Museum Shanghai, the Bronx Museum, Artists Space NY, Center for Contemporary Culture, Barcelona and the Israeli Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv. His writings have appeared in ART FORUM, Art in America, ART Asia Pacific, WORLD ART, Yishu Journal and tema celeste. He is currently ART FORUM’s correspondent in Shanghai. He has also curated and consulted for numerous venues in the US, Europe and China.