The Illinois Parables
FilmScene — Friday, Apr. 22 at 7 p.m.
Chicago-based visual artist Deborah Stratman will be screening her film The Illinois Parables at 7 p.m. at FilmScene Downtown. There will be Q&A following the film. Admission is free to the public, though space is limited.
Through video and sculpture, with sound and image, Stratman’s art rises from the old American struggle between the human organism and her landscape. Stratman has installed aeolian harps in the Mojave and dug into the ontology of sinkholes, she’s attempted to levitate the Pentagon. Her installations invite participation, asking her viewers to listen, like snakes with their bodies, to sonic rumblings, or crawl into papier-mache mannequins of dead horses in a Marfa Texas, while the the polka rhythms of Mexican narcocorrido ballads play. Her films carry with them this spirit of inquiry and communion.
In her experimental documentary The Illinois Parables, issues of faith and technology, the struggles between Illinois communities and Illinois landscapes are rendered through a series of eleven vignettes.
Stratman is an Associate Professor in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships. Her work has appeared at the MOMA in New York City, Centre Pompidou in Paris, as well as at the Whitney Biennial and the Sundance Film Festival.
