San Francisco Film Society and Kinotek present: Take Off: Kota Ezawa, Kenneth Goldsmith December 12, 2012

The San Francisco Film Society presents its final KinoTek program of the year, Take Off: Kota Ezawa, Kenneth Goldsmith, featuring new work by genre-bending visual artist Kota Ezawa and unconventional poet Kenneth Goldsmith, Wednesday December 12 at 7:00 pm at Kadist Art Foundation, 3295 20th Street (at Folsom). Admission is free.

Concluding a two-year series of presentations featuring nontraditional, cross-platform and emergent media, the San Francisco Film Society’s final KinoTek program brings together the engaging genius of a pair of kindred artists working across different disciplines. At this unique exhibition, visual artist Kota Ezawa will unveil his latest project Take Off, a watercolor-based rotoscope-style animation based on footage taken from a C-SPAN news broadcast. The television feed presents George W. Bush leaving the White House in a Marine One helicopter and fading into the distance of a Washington skyline, the surreal scene translated into vibrant color through Ezawa’s animation process. In addition to his latest work, Ezawa will also present a few of his rarely-seen videos.

In response to this new piece and Ezawa’s overall body of work, poet (and UbuWeb founder and curator) Kenneth Goldsmith will read from his forthcoming book Seven American Deaths and Disasters, which is comprised of a series of writings that are essentially transcriptions of communications proximal to terrible events in American history. Goldsmith’s magnetic performative readings are insightful looks into our shared culture and are not to be missed.

In all, this is a terrific ending to a series of KinoTek programming that has aimed to expand the perceived field of cinema. Ezawa’s and Goldsmith’s works likewise question some trademarks and assumed foundations of Art, perhaps especially the overvalued notions of “originality” and “creativity.” Goldsmith first came across Ezawa when he was in residence at Stanford University where Ezawa was an MFA student. While there, Goldsmith saw Ezawa’s profound short The Simpson Verdict (2002), a transcription of the delivery of the verdict in the OJ Simpson trial as it happened on television in 1995 into animation. Goldsmith had already been experimenting with transcriptions of found material as poetry, such as his work Fidget, a transcription of every movement Goldsmith made during a thirteen hour period on June 16, 1997. Goldsmith has subsequently archived Ezawa’s work on UbuWeb. This will be their first time Goldsmith and Ezawa are presented in a joint program.

More information can be found here: http://sffs.org/Exhibition/KinoTek/take-off-kota-ezawa-kenneth-goldsmith.aspx

Official Website: http://sffs.org/Exhibition/KinoTek/take-off-kota-ezawa-kenneth-goldsmith.aspx