Aurora Picture Show, recognized as the most innovative microcinema in Texas, presents the fifth annual Media Archeology Festival April 17-19, 2008. Curated by Aurora Artistic Director Andrea Grover and New York musician/curator Nick Hallett, this year’s festival is titled Media Archeology: Live and Televised and features multimedia artists who incorporate audio/visual technology with live performance. Each of the performers uses pre- recorded video and audio to create a mise-en-scène of projected sets, props, and environments- sometimes creating a stage, a sound-scape, or an entire cast.

The festival kicks off with a performance by legendary culture jammers Negativland, returning to Houston for the first time in eight years. Animator and performer Brent Green takes over the second night with live narration and music (by Brent Green, Howe Gelb and Jeremy Gara) to accompany Green’s stop- animation films, and video and performance artists Tara Mateik and Shana Moulton round out the closing night of the festival.

Media Archeology Schedule

8 p.m. Thursday, April 17
It’s All in Your Head FM, Negativland
Herring Hall, Rice University, 6100 Main Street
Tickets $8 in advance and $10 at the door

During this live performance of an imaginary radio show, audience members wear blindfolds as they listen to samples of people discussing the various facets of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and other major religions, and the role of religion in society. The performance is narrated by the fictional radio host, Dr. Oslo Norway (inspired by Garrison Keillor).

Since 1980, the 4-6 members known as Negativland have been creating records, CDs, video, fine art, books, radio and live performance using appropriated sound, image and text. Mixing original materials and original music with things taken from mass culture and the world around them, Negativland re-arranges these found bits and pieces to create new works.

8 p.m. Friday, April 18
A Million Moths Flurrying Around the Front Porch: Brent Green
The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art
2402 Munger
RAIN LOCATION: Aurora Picture Show
Tickets $8 in advance and $10 at the door

Brent Green will perform live narrations to his incredible handmade, animated films, accompanied by improvised soundtracks by Green, Jeremy Gara (Arcade Fire) and Howe Gelb (Giant Sand). It’ll be an hour spent on the verge of collapse: wobbly piano, musical saw, banjo, guitar, drums and cartoons! It’ll change your life. If you like your life the way it is, you should stay home.

Brent Green is a self-taught animator from Pennsylvania who has been exhibited at Sundance, the Getty Museum, Walker Arts Center, Andy Warhol Museum, Wexner Center and festivals across the country. Green had a Hammer Project at the Hammer Museum, “An Evening with Brent Green” at the IFC Center and a one-person gallery show at Bellwether in New York. His work has been written about in the New York Times, Village Voice, Art Forum, ArtNews, the New Yorker and BOMB magazine.

8 p.m. Saturday, April 19
Cynthia’s Moment, Shana Moulton
DiverseWorks Art Space
1117 East Freeway
Tickets $8 in advance and $10 at the door (includes both shows on Saturday)

Shana Moulton will play her character, Cynthia, the fictional protagonist in her Whispering Pines series of videos. Moulton will bring Cynthia and her strange world to life through an innovative use of sets, props, costume and projected video. Combining live-action and projected video, Moulton describes her performance as presenting “a series of home-made and found orthopedic devices, cosmetics and belief systems.” Moulton’s presentation will at different points approximate a personal growth workshop, dance recital, instructional video and fairytale.

Shana Moulton works in video and performance. Moulton studied at the University of California, Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where she received her MFA. Moulton creates evocatively oblique narratives in her video and performance works. Combining an unsettling, wry humor with a low-tech, Pop sensibility, Moulton plays a character whose interactions with the everyday world are both mundane and surreal, in a domestic sphere just slightly askew.

9 p.m. Saturday, April 19
Putting the Balls Away, Tara Mateik
DiverseWorks Art Space
1117 E. Freeway
Tickets $8 in advance and $10 at the door

In ‘Putting the Balls Away,’ Tara Mateik reenacts the legendary ‘Battle of the Sexes,’ Billie Jean King’s 1973 defeat of the former Wimbledon men’s champion, Bobby Riggs. By playing both roles in a video version of the match, and reviving remarks by sports commentators Howard Cosell and Rosie Casals, Mateik recalls the controversy sparked by the most watched televised sporting event of the era. This year also marks the 35th anniversary of the famous tennis match.

Tara Mateik is an artist and educator living in New York City. Through video, installation, and performance he explores issues of gender identity most recently through the subject of professional sports. In addition to his own work he has collaborated with collectives and artists, including Paper Tiger Television video collective, to produce short videos that demystify and democratize the media. Currently he teaches at CUNY Staten Island in the Media Culture Department and runs the Education Department at Art in General.

About the Curators

Curator Andrea Grover is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Aurora Picture Show, a 501(c)(3) non-profit center for film, video and new media housed in a former church building in Houston, Texas She has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BFA from Syracuse University, and was a Core Fellow in residence at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In 2006 she curated the exhibition, “Phantom Captain: Art and Crowdsourcing,” exhibited at apexart, New York, and received praise from both Frieze Magazine and The New York Times. In March 2007, she and the artist Jon Rubin curated “Never Been to Houston” for Lawndale Art Center. Grover was one of 60 international curators invited to select artists for e- Flux’s Video Rental. She recently served as Lead Consultant in Film and Video for Creative Capital Foundation, New York.

Nick Hallett is a musician and curator working in the intersections of sound, moving image, and live performance. His projects encompass performing various genres of new music-from opera to cabaret to pop, composing for film and theater, developing audiovisual installations, DJing, writing, and filmmaking. He originated the band PLANTAINS, which from 2000 until 2003 operated as a live multimedia act, incorporating electronic music and video. In 2005, Nick started Harkness Audiovisual, an initiative devoted to creating innovative contexts for new media. This has resulted in a series of immersive salons, film screenings, and live a/v performances, including multiple presentations with pioneering live cinema artist, Josh White. He will direct a concert version of avant-rock band Oneida’s album, The Wedding, at The Kitchen this June.

Ticket Information: Tickets to each individual show are $8 in advance and $10 at the door. Festival passes are $20. Aurora Picture Show members can purchase all tickets for $8 and passes for $15. Tickets and passes are available online or by contacting Aurora at 713.868.2101.

About Aurora Picture Show: Founded in 1998, the Aurora Picture Show is the only facility of its kind in the Southwest. Art in America has called it “one of the most interesting and unusual new spaces in Houston.” Housed in a 1924 converted church building in the Heights this 100 seat theater is part of the micro-cinema movement that began in the mid-1990’s. Aurora supports non-commercial independent and artist-made film, video and new media artists through fifty programs a year. Aurora’s human scale promotes a meaningful and community-oriented exchange between artists and audiences.

Aurora Picture Show is funded by its stellar membership, Houston Endowment, Inc, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Brown Foundation, Texas Commission on the Arts, The City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, the Nightingale Code Foundation, the Oshman Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts. Aurora Picture Show is a proud member of Fresh Arts Coalition.