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03/23/15

Scenes From Paradise — Filmed on a sheep farm in Ghent, NY August 20-23, 2015

Screen Shot 2015-08-24 at 1.30.32 PMScreen Shot 2015-08-24 at 8.28.54 PMIMG_6506Screen Shot 2015-08-24 at 1.43.39 PMIMG_3644IMG_3642Shot on location in Ghent, New York, August 20-23, 2015 using 3 Sony A7 cameras. A rough cut, uncolored. Two characters, Adam and Eve, naked and unashamed and like time travelers find themselves on a sheep farm in upstate New York. They learn to be human going about it naively, polluting the ground with small hard candy wrappers. They interact with the sheep. They react to objects, phantom limbs, binoculars, headsets, crutches, ipads, they sit and talk. They read from scientific papers. They name the animals and they die. This project is the culmination of a decades long exploration of utopian dreams, touching on the wish for a perfect society and a world without suffering, while knowing the folly of every attaining such perfection, which is perfectly expressed in the paradox of the biblical earthly utopia Eden. With Jessica Weinstein as Eve and Tim Lueke as Adam. Camera operators Jessie English (DOP), Eric Feigenbaum and Ilana Rein. Sound Pete Moses, Production Assistant Fernando Do Campo, Props Alona Weiss, Costumes Ingrid Zhuang, on site in Ghent, New York. With immense gratitude to Dan Devine and Lawre Stone and their flock. Produced, written, and directed by Lenore Malen & The New Society for Universal Harmony.

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03/22/15

June 2015 Approaching Posthumanism and The Post Human

http://www.unige.ch/lettres/angle/posthumanism2015/welcome/
http://scale2015.com

I was invited to speak and present my work at a conference in
Geneva titled “Approaching Posthumanism and The Posthuman” — June 4th, 5th, 6th 2015. Unforgettable talks including a keynote by Carey Wolfe on Extinction where he broadly ranged from poetics to biopolitics, history and the archive. Celan/Wallace Stevens/ James Fenimore Cooper/Deleuze/Derrida — beautifully written and delivered and sobering, all around the work of contemporary artists on the extinct California Condor and the passenger pigeon and including the work of Michael Pestel. Also presenting were Carole Sweeney on Houellebecq and the medievalist  JJ Cohen http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/ on Posthuman Environs: Fnorteth and much more. Screen shot 2015-06-30 at 8.43.12 PM Screen shot 2015-06-30 at 8.43.26 PM Screen shot 2015-06-30 at 8.43.37 PM Screen shot 2015-06-30 at 8.43.53 PM

 

 

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03/22/15

January 2015

Some stills from a three- channel video installation, Scenes from Paradise,  that’s currently in production. We’re planning on 6 scenes altogether, filmed in Central Park, a rooftop in Brooklyn, in the studio, and elsewhere. All were  inspired by a medieval manuscript illumination I discovered on the internet (see posts below) and explore representations of animals and humans as seen through the eyes of a single creature.  Read Boris Groys’s comments in e-flux journal’s issue 45: “Rather, the artwork remains present in the future. And it is precisely this anticipated future presence of art that guarantees its influence on the future, its chance to shape the future… Art shapes the future by its own prolonged presence.” and my response  in a Brooklyn Rail essay  The Unconscious, (also linked below).

P1030289.1Studio View Acq.

 

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The Reason of the StrongestP10303131

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03/22/15

FOODshed: Agriculture and Art in Action Aug 8 — Sept 5 2015

I’m very pleased to be participating in FOODshed: Agriculture and Art in Action  a  excellent show curated by Amy Lipton at  CR10,  a showcase for media and visual art founded by Francine Hunter McGivern in Livingston, NY,  just south of Hudson. With Joan Bankemper/Black Meadow Barn, EcoArtTech/Lelia Nadir & Cary Peppermint, Joy Garnett (The Bee Kingdom) Habitat for Artists Collective (Simon Draper, Aidan Draper, Michael Asbill, Carmen Acuna, Faheen Haider, Jessica Poser, Elyssa Willadsen and Green Up, Natalie Jeremijenko, Peter Nadin/Old Field Farm, Andrea Reynosa, Jenna Spevack, Susan Leibovitz Steinman, Elaine Tin Nyo, Tattfoo Tanh and Linda Weintraub.

Here are some pictures from the installation and the opening:

CR10 1CR10 AMY

 

Cr10 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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01/20/15

Between Animals and Technology Routledge 2015

A very interesting book of essays on the boundaries by which we define the human that features my work in an essay by Jussi Parrika.

Screen shot 2015-03-27 at 8.57.17 PM

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01/19/15

UCLA May 22, 2014

A visit to a Art/Sci UCLA in Spring 2015 — directed by Victoria Vesna

UCLA

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12/29/14

The List: A Special FB Readers Guide

The List: A FB Readers Guide

  1. A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
  2. Barkskins Annie Proulx
  3. Gone With the Wind Reconstruction
  4. A Monster’s Notes Laurie Sheck
  5. Ransom David Malouf
  6. Phantasmagoria Marina Warner
  7. Mark Rothko From the Inside Out Christopher Rothko
  8. The Life and Art of Florine Stettheimer Barbara J. Bloemink
  9. Debt David Graber
  10. The Essays of Hazlitt
  11. The Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn
  12. The Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp by Elena Filipovic
  13. The Hidden Letters of Velta B by Gina Ochsner
  14. Swan Song Robert McCammon
  15. Shantaram Gregory David Roberts
  16. The Righteous Mind_ Why Good people are Divided by Politics and Religion Jonathan Haidt
  17. The Trespassers Tana French
  18. Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda
  19. Barkskins Annie Proulx
  20. How will Capitalism End Wolfgang Streeck
  21. The Goldfinch Donna Tartt
  22. Beyond Shame Patrick Moore
  23. White Trash Nancy Isenberg
  24. My Brilliant friend Elena Ferrante
  25. Sila Chantal Bilodeau
  26. At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails Sarah Bakewell
  27. The Bas Ass Librarians of Timbuktu Joshua Hammer
  28. Indivisible: A practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda Karl Rover
  29. Assassin series Robin Hobb
  30. The Search for Home Marwa al Saubouni
  31. Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces Adam Alter
  32. Float Ann Carson

Devil in the White City Erik Larson

  1. Patti Smith’s

M Train. Just Kids

  1. The Dream of Enlightenment Anthony Gottleib
  2. A history of early modern philosophy from Descartes through the British Empiricists
  3. The Girls and Shakespeare Early History
  4. Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  5. Orea Fran Ross
  6. The Door by Magna Szabo
  7. Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll

41 Shame Salman Rushdie

  1. The Sellout: A Novel by Paul Beatty
  2. You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin Rachael Corbett
  3. At the Exisistentialist Café by Sarah Blakewell
  4. The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

46.A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

  1. Born a Crime Trevor Noah
  2. The Angel of History Rabih Alameddine
  3. Inferno by Eileen Myles
  4. Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia Samuel R. Delaney
  5. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte

52.The Bronte Cabinet Deborah Lutz

  1. Burning The Days: Recollection James Salter
  2. An Unnecessary Woman Rabih Alameddine
  3. The Hakawati Rahib Alameddine
  4. KoolAids Rabih Alameddine
  5. Hope in the Dark Rebecca Solnit
  6. A Woman Looking at Men Siri Hustvedt
  7. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
  8. The Hare with Amber Eyes Edmund De Waal
  9. Perdido Street Station China Mieville
  10. Forever Pete Hamill
  11. Brown Girl Dreaming Jacqueline Woodson
  12. The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson
  13. We Gon Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegration Jeff Chang

66 I’m very into you/So good Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark

 

 

 

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12/10/14

Production Stills — Dec 7th 2014 Umpire Rock, Central Park, NYC

XX Screen shot 2015-03-20 at 9.58.36 PM XX Screen shot 2015-03-20 at 10.03.16 PM XXScreen shot 2015-03-20 at 10.08.00 PM XScreen shot 2015-03-20 at 10.08.20 PM

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11/26/14

November 2014

In the studio preparing for a shoot and live performance, a scene from Paradise,  filmed on Umpire Rock in Central Park scheduled for Sat. Dec 6th 2014— rain date Dec. 7.

Paradise Rock

All are welcome from 9-3. Here with co-director Jessica Weinstein, actor Davina Cohen, and Rujuta Rao.

In the Studio

In the Studio

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Spring/Summer 2014

An update of some recent videos, publications and lectures — These are video stills from my ongoing project Paradise with actors Catherine LaSota, Kathryn Alexander, Michael Caines, Nick Schrifin, Laura von Holt and others, who appear as mourning ravens on a Brooklyn rooftop, as St. Theresa (LaSota), drawing from the Thompson/ Stein production of Four Saints in Three Acts, and as the horse character  (Alexander) in the video Reversal.

The media artist Victoria Vesna invited me to screen this new work at the UCLA Art/Sci Center and Digital Arts Research Network http://artsci.ucla.edu/?q=about ( May 2014), a program that she directs as Professor in the UCLA Dept of Design/Media Arts.   I also had the pleasure of conducting a workshop for her students who were an extremely interesting mix of science, media and fine arts majors.

UCLA Design Media Arts California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI)

UCLA Design Media Arts
California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In June I was invited to show selections from these same video projects and deliver a paper at the conference “Welcome to the Anthropocene: From Global Challenge to Planetary Stewardship.” The  annual  conference of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) it was held in New York from June 11-14 2014 at Pace University. Catalogue (PDF) is attached here AESS Catalogue and clink on the link for Conference Details.

The Anthropocene I Christopher R. Cox, The Human/Nature Divide and the Problem of the Anthropocene
 Bertrand G. Guillaume, Thinking the Anthropocene Today: A View from the Philosophy of Technology
Dr Andreas Kotsakis, The Anthropocene and International Environmental Law: A Challenge from European Non-Centred Ecological Thought
 Lenore Malen, I Am the Animal (invited artist)



My obsession with a 15th century manuscript illumination (see posts below) lies at the heart of my essay “The Unconscious” which was included in the critic’s page of the June issue of  The Brooklyn Rail,  The critic’s page titled Wellsprings Reconsidered featured a long overdue reassessment of the role of the unconscious in art making and was curated by  artist and writer Ann McCoy.
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