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Shot 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.

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.

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).

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:

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.

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

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

33. Patti Smith’s

M Train. Just Kids

34. The Dream of Enlightenment Anthony Gottleib
35. A history of early modern philosophy from Descartes through the British Empiricists
36. The Girls and Shakespeare Early History
37. Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
38. Orea Fran Ross
39. The Door by Magna Szabo
40. Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll

41 Shame Salman Rushdie

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

46.A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

46. Born a Crime Trevor Noah
47. The Angel of History Rabih Alameddine
48. Inferno by Eileen Myles
49. Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia Samuel R. Delaney
50. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte

52.The Bronte Cabinet Deborah Lutz

53. Burning The Days: Recollection James Salter
54. An Unnecessary Woman Rabih Alameddine
55. The Hakawati Rahib Alameddine
56. KoolAids Rabih Alameddine
57. Hope in the Dark Rebecca Solnit
58. A Woman Looking at Men Siri Hustvedt
59. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
60. The Hare with Amber Eyes Edmund De Waal
61. Perdido Street Station China Mieville
62. Forever Pete Hamill
63. Brown Girl Dreaming Jacqueline Woodson
64. The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson
65. We Gon Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegration Jeff Chang

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

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.

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

In the Studio