Join us at e-flux Screening Room for Growing Sideways, a program that features STOP by Jeff Preiss and We Imitate; We Break Up by Ericka Beckman. The screening highlights the fitful rhythms of maturation and the profoundly emotional ways the minor—its youthful energy—is a catalyst for social transformation—from thoughtful interlocutor to code disruptor. Growing Sideways will be introduced with a reflection by STOP collaborator Isaac Preiss, and it will conclude with a question and answer session attended by both filmmakers and the guest curator, Piper Marshall.
Click here for the eflux website to register for the program.
STOP (2012, 120 min) offers a lens onto fifteen years (1995-2012) of Jeff Preiss’s life. While shot from Preiss’ adult point of view, it is Isaac, Preiss’ son, who holds focus. We watch as Isaac emerges from toddler to child to teenager and witness the process of Isaac’s gender self-determination. Slices of time, spliced together, offer an oblique view of Isaac’s growth– the day that Isaac changes his name and the moments after his recovery from top surgery. With STOP, Jeff and Isaac Preiss attune viewers to the cadence of growing up.
We Imitate; We Break Up (1978, 26 min) features a pair of enlarged geometric legs named Mario, who set motions that the Imitator, played by Beckman, is compelled to repeat. While cuts divide the characters, the shared gestures join them—the sequences discharge in herky-jerky succession to a quickly-paced lullaby. The jocular output of the Imitator soon outpaces the model. Beckman’s film demonstrates how child-like energy alters the universal measure.
The program Growing Sideways is made in conjunction with the exhibition Growing Sideways: Performing Childhood curated by Piper Marshall on view at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University through September 15.
Jeff Preiss
Jeff Preiss has been widely active since the 1980s as a filmmaker, cinematographer, curator and visual artist. Through the 80s and 90s he was co-director of the East Village venue Films Charas and a board member of The Collective For Living Cinema. His films from this time were restored and preserved in 2014 by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. His films have been screened internationally. Highlights include: the Rem Koolhaas commissioned 33 SEQUENCES SPANNING 4 TRIPS TO THE DUTCH EMBASSY IN BERLIN (for the OMA retrospective CONTENT), the 2012 experimental feature STOP (50th NY Film Festival selection), 2014’s feature film Low Down (Sundance award for cinematography and Karlovy Vary, Best Actress), the 2019 MoMA premiere of 14 Standard 8mm Reels, as well as collaborative works made with artists including Joan Jonas, Andrea Fraser, and Anthony McCall. Recent solo exhibitions include: More Than I Looked For (2020), Stedelijk Museum, and ORCHARD Documents (2023), Celmentin Seedorf, Köln.
Ericka Beckman
Ericka Beckman has been an acclaimed filmmaker since being named the Village Voice Vanguard artist of 1979. Energetic pacing, simple, special effects, and chanted, percussive soundtracks distinguish the artist’s films. Beckman has been the subject of monographic exhibitions Super-8 Trilogy (DATE), Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany; Game Mechanics (DATE) Le Secession, Vienna, Austria; and Double Reverse (DATE) LIST Gallery MIT, Cambridge. Her films are held within the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Anthology Film Archives; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Centre Pompidou, Paris France; and the British Film Institute, London.
Piper Marshall is the curator of Growing Sideways: Performing Childhood, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History and Archaeology, and an educator. A former Mellon-Marron Research Consortium Fellow at MoMA, Marshall worked on the exhibitions Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning and Signals: How Video Transformed the World. Marshall has worked as an independent curator and previously as curator at the Swiss Institute/Contemporary Art New York.
Isaac Preiss is a PhD student in the Department of Film & Media at UC Berkeley. Informed by work in queer and transgender studies, his work focuses on visual media experimentations that challenge conventions around personal accounts, testimonies, and narrative.
