Artist talk
KEVIN JEROME EVERSON

With the Available Light Screening Collective, the Embassy of the United States of America and Black History Month Ottawa, SAW Video presents Virginia-based filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson at Club SAW for an artist talk about his work on Saturday, February 20th from 2pm-4pm at Club SAW, 67 Nicholas St. Admission is free.

Title of talk: Materials, Process, Procedure and Subject

Kevin Jerome Everson will present excerpts from relevant short films and features and photographic images and discuss his longtime dedication to the primacy of the subject, culled from early training in 70's sculptural art discipline and practice.

With a sense of place and historical research, his films, over 70 short-form works and four feature length films, combine scripted and documentary elements with rich elements of formalism. The subject matter is the gestures or tasks caused by certain conditions in the lives of working class African Americans and other people of African descent. The conditions are usually physical, social-economic circumstances or weather. Instead of standard realism Everson favors a strategy that abstracts everyday actions and statements into theatrical gestures, in which archival footage is re-edited or re-staged, real people perform fictional scenarios based on their own lives and historical observations intermesh with contemporary narratives. The films suggest the relentlessness of everyday life–along with its beauty–but also present oblique metaphors for art-making.

More about Kevin Jerome Everson

Ten of Everson’s films will be screened by Available Light the night before at Club SAW on Friday February 19th at 7:30. A short Q&A session and a public reception hosted by the U.S. embassy will follow the screening.

The films of KEVIN JEROME EVERSON Friday, February 19th, 7:30pm Club SAW, 67 Nicholas St Free admission Public Reception presented by the U.S. Embassy follows	An artist talk with KEVIN JEROME EVERSON Saturday, February 20th, 2pm-4pm Club SAW, 67 Nicholas St Free admission

 

Friday night’s event by Available Light was programmed by DIM Cinema (Vancouver):

Company Line | 2009, 30min
A film about one of the first predominately Black neighbourhoods in Mansfield, Ohio.

Fifeville | 2005, 15min
This film focuses on the details, gestures, and material life of the citizens of Fifeville as they communicate their experience of their neighbourhood’s changing landscape.

Something Else | 2007, 2min
A film about found footage as subject matter; it features Miss Black Roanoke, Virginia 1971 expressing her thoughts about the upcoming Miss Black Virginia 1971 Pageant.

Ring | 2008, 1:30min
An attempt to exhibit the ‘sweet science’ in an elegant way.

Undefeated | 2008, 1:30min
About mobility and immobility, or just trying to stay warm.

Telethon | 2009, 5min
Two talented acts wait to perform in Sammy Davis Jr.’s ill-fated 1973 telethon for highway safety.

Keys to the Cities | 2008, 1:45min
Two mayors honour ‘The Candy Man’ in two different ways.

The Reverend E. Randall T. Osborn, First Cousin | 2007, 3min
A film about the art of the cut away.

Playing Dead | 2008, 1:30min
A film about playing dead to stay alive.

According to. | 2007, 8:30min
A short film about several versions of tragic events in southern rural Black America told through a rich source of found footage and scripted film.

For more information on this screening, please visit Available Light’s Facebook page or contact them at availablelightcollective@gmail.com.

Kevin Jerome Everson’s prolific body of film work engages with, and responds to, the history and culture of working class Black Americans and people of African descent. His short gestural films challenge simplistic expectations of ethnographic documentary, poetic narrative, or theatrical drama. He stitches archival footage, scripted sequences, verité documents, and abstract aural and visual minutiae into textured portraits of people, places, economics, and ephemera.

Kevin Jerome Everson (b.1965) is a filmmaker, originally from Mansfield, Ohio, now living and working in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A. Everson’s three feature films and over 50 short films and videos have been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Redcat in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Whitechapel Gallery in London, and many other venues worldwide. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two NEH Fellowships, two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships, and an American Academy Rome Prize.

Read more from Kevin Jerome Everson’s website.

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