Ombre Dal Lupercale
Ombre dal Lupercale (Shadows from the Realm of Wolves) was a nightlong series of site-specific works lasting from dusk until dawn. On June 21, 2006, Midsummer’s Eve, a fusion of river, sound, and light drew the public to the Tiber River. A frieze of 12 majestic She-Wolves etched from the patina of time stood guard on the high embankment walls, marking the site. Seven artist-composer collaborations transformed the space with ambient sound-image installations.
The summer solstice of 2006 was celebrated by a number of artists and composers for this site specific installation that ran from dusk til dawn between the Ponte and Ponte Mazzini. Each artist took turns at interpreting the myth of Romulous and Remus.
Design and Direction: Maureen Selwood
Animation: Maria Vasilkovsky
Music: Alvin Curran
Project Director: Kirstin Jones
Artists: Kiki Smith, Kristin Jones, Francesca Fini, Roberto Catani, Maureen Selwood, Andrea Biagioni and Gabriele Manecchi, Daniel K. Brown and Erika Kruger
Composers: Walter Branchi, Alvin Curran, David Monacchi, Nico Muhly, Roberto Laneri, and Eugenio Giordani
Drawing Lessons
Duration: 6:00
A woman finds a tape cassette at a yard sale. It comes with a drawing exercise, the upside down drawing lesson from, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. The exercise becomes an obsession yet keeps the woman’s insomnia at bay. Her night visitors, animals of the night, allow her to reconnect with nature. The voice over by Mark Strand adds to her attachment to the tape. Its humorous quality informs her not to take it too seriously but that is not possible.
Director
Maureen Selwood
Music
Tanya Haden
Voice Over
Mark Strand
Sound Design
Jesse Gilbert
Resistance
“Stone is employed worldwide to keep memory captive.”
– Joseph Brodsky
Resistance is a performance with film scenes from Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria. The movement of the live performance contrasts with the slowness of the gestures of Giulietta Masini being in thrall to the spectacle of religious procession.
Video Projection with Performance
Live Performer: K.C. Wiley
Cinematography: Danita MacDonald
Costume Design: Pat Olesko
Performance at the American Academy in Rome 2003
As The Veil Lifts
A woman experiences the suffering of her parents due to some unnamed event perhaps a war. The animation is based on an instinctive line about how a woman’s body carries a narrative. The veils suggests the many veils a woman puts on in her lifetime. In addition the transparent veils reflect the many levels an animator works with while studying movement.
The song accompanying the film is from Songs from the Quechua (a collection of folk poetry from Peru and Bolivia)
Il Messaggio
Ho ciesto ad una farfalle,
(la farfalle, quelle farfalle)
di trovare mio madre,
di cercare mio padre.
E tornata la farfalle,
(la farfalle; quella farfalle)
dicendo sta piagendo tua madre,
sta soffrendo tuo padre.
Sono andata e ho,
Quardato in me stessa,
Edera vero il messagio.
(della farfalle, quella farfalle)
La mio madre stave piagendo,
Il mio padre stave soffrendo.
The Butterfly Messenger
Translated by Mark Strand
I asked a butterfly,
I sent a dragonfly,
To go out to see my mother,
To go out to see my father.
The butterfly came back,
The dragonfly came back,
Saying, your mother is crying,
Saying, your father is suffering.
I went myself,
I took myself there,
And it was true my mother was crying,
And it was true my father was suffering.
Translation: Mark Strand
Performance: Michaela Gentili
Performances:
American Academy in Rome June 2003
Villa Massimo July 2003
300 Exposition du Frac Picardie, France
All the Places I Have Ever Lived
A noir tour with film clips
Using the language of film noir. All The Places I Have Ever Lived traces the westward migration of upward mobility in Los Angeles through the post-war years and explore the social and political climate that informed it. The chartered tour departs from the Schindler House and includes on-site discussions and film excerpts. Selwood explores an understanding of L.A. as a subjective landscape whose geography is expressed by shifting sets of motives and values.
Sites include:
The Hollywood Athletic Club, Bullocks Wilshire, the Bradbury Building, and Bunker Hill
July 21, 2001
MAK Center for Art and Architecture
Mistaken Identity
Duration: 28:15
All night, I walk the city, watching the people go by.
I try to sing a little ditty, but all that comes out is a sigh.
The street looks very frightening, the rain begins and then comes lightning.
It seems love’s gone to pot, I’d rather have the blues than what I’ve got…
Mistaken Identity revisits the forgotten characters and deserted landscapes of Robert Aldrich’s classic film noir, Kiss Me Deadly, (1955), Broken steps, the ocean pier at night, and the expressways are just some of the scenes rephotographed and then drawn over to produce a commentary on the artifice of cinema and memory. The film takes a feminist perspective on the role of the detective’s “moll” who as a temptress shows us film noir’s need to portray women in polarized roles of temptress versus victim. Women are sexually liberated and not struck down for it yet how this story fits into a contemporary setting in Los Angeles today is another question.
Directed by
Maureen Selwood
Voiceover
Marissa Chibas
Camera
Nancy Jean Tucker
Hail Mary
Duration: 3:25
A woman’s voice obsessively uses numbers to tell us something while handling a set of rosary beads. This allows her to keep her memories alive and to give meaning to the traces left by her life. The prayer, Hail Mary, is seen with new insights into its power. Numbers play a role in her recitation and desire for control against the things that are happening to her. The detritus from her life animates her inner life.
Written and Directed by
Maureen Selwood
Voice over
Marni Castor
Sound Design
Fausto Caceres
Flying Circus: An Imagined Memoir
Duration: 11:07
Inspired by the 1917 ballet, Parade, by Satie, Cocteau and Picasso, the film takes a childhood memory of loss and uses metaphoric allusions to create a different outcome. A sketchbook opens up to reveal a circus tent and a rich world of events allowing for a poetic interpretation of a memory now richly animated and masked by beauty, danger and desire.
Directed by
Maureen Selwood
Music by
Miroslav Tadic
Sound Design
Fausto Caceres
Pearls
Duration: 0:50
An animation exploring metamorphosis accompanied with music by Meredith Monk.
With minimal tools and the limitation of a single image of a woman’s head a set of pearls activates a woman’s inner drive expressing freedom of movement. Animation suggests quickly a series of possible choices. The decision is ultimately hers.
A Film by
Maureen Selwood
Music by
Meredith Monk
The Rug
Duration: 10:36
“One of the most exquisite stories ever written, by anyone…”
Ellis Ni Dhuibhne, The Irish Times
The Rug is an adaptation of the short story by the Irish writer, Edna O’Brien, with voice over by the legendary Irish actress Anna Manahan. It is a story of loss told through the daughter looking back on her mother’s life in rural Ireland who receives a package one day from the postman. The look and feel of it come from paintings by the Fauvists who created orgies of color to project a mood yet not being true to the natural world. The composer, Michael Riesman, took inspiration from the folk tales of Stravinsky. Its skillful development of narrative evokes the character of a woman and a way of life.
A Film by
Maureen Selwood
The Rug
by Edna O’Brien
Voiceover
Anna Manahan
Composer
Michael Riesman