其他人的夢

Other People’s Dreams

“On Tuesday night, at the Music Box Theatre in Lakeview, a most alarming affair unfolded in front of a near-full house of movie lovers: Local filmmakers, Chicago directors, each of some distinction, discussed the films they just completed, then, one by one, they destroyed those films. They showed the works first. They’re not nuts. But if you were not in that audience on Tuesday night to see those works, unless someone was shooting the big screen with a phone — a fair possibility — you are fresh out of luck. 

Poof. 

Or rather, swoosh, sizzle, crackle, poof. Gone forever. The method of destruction was blowtorch. “Destroy Your Art,” the title given this extreme annual celebration of the impermanence of art and the fickleness of audience memory, was created in 2017 by Rebecca Fons, director of programming at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and Jack Newell, her husband, a filmmaker himself. That first year, the films — shot on SD memory cards, and not pricier, combustive celluloid — were ground up inside a shredder, but for an audience, it proved anticlimactic. They switched to crushing films in a vise, except not every director is strong enough for that. They considered acid and liquid nitrogen. But they wanted to make sure when a film was destroyed, it was gone. 

So, blowtorches. 

As the audience filed in, filmmaker Blair St. George, a Chicago [based] artist and projectionist (who uses “they” pronouns), sat in their seat, wearing a pink bucket hat, looking at peace with what was about to happen. A friend tapped their left shoulder: “How you feeling?” Wright nodded.

…

 Blair St. George made a visual poem about nature and the soul, using an anecdote from their life, repeated by friends in a variety of languages; because they sent specific parts of the anecdote to specific friends, and because each narrator spoke in a different language, only the filmmaker knew the whole story. 

The film burned in long pedals of flame. Newell asked how they felt destroying it. 

“Pretty good,” the filmmaker said. “

By Christopher Borrelli 

Chicago Tribune • Published: Sep 28, 2023 at 5:45 am

“The Strangely Bent” curated by Eugene I-Peng Tang & Marvin Veloso

participating artists:

Sayera Anwar, Hannah Bernhardt, Rob Croll, Zolt Brown-Dunn, Jaeden Hannus, Richard Hancock, Linye Jiang, Hai-Wen Lin, Vera Saldivar de Lira, Sage Lin, Clay Mills, Che Pai, Natia Ser, Chang-Ching ‘Casper” Su, Chelsea Tan, blair st george, Tzuen Wu, Yichang Yang, Yuyang Zhang

五个灵魂的相遇

August ‘24

as seen at the Glennwood Ave Arts Festival in the //sense experimental theater

dreamgate i

as part of “Travelogues” curated by Ruby Que

photos by Justine Bursoni

Two former friends violently collide amid the racially-charged desolation of a declining small town.

Audience Choice Award - Big Shoulders International Student Film & Video Festival

Official Selection - Chellavision

Official Selection - Festival Internacional de Cinema Escolar de Alvorada

Selection - Cannes Short Film Corner

Finalist - Frostbite

“cut is the fictive contours of the disquieted body exiled into unreal spaces, situated at the limit of language. blair st. george’s large-scale scroll celebrates confusion of tongue and altered states of consciousness, searching for unauthorized truths in marginal positions.” - press release, Qingyuan Deng

thevoicesoffriendsleaduthrumysoul (oct ‘23)

digital short film

300 seconds

el submarino (december ‘24 - )

experimental narrative short film

programmed by Rebecca Fons & Jack Newell

destroyyourart.com

“In all my recent and distant travels, I’ve always had the impulse to record my journeys. For future reference, sharing or introspection. The travelogue is a form that holds many contradictions within itself - its inseparable ties to colonialism and expansionism, and current, more democratic uses allowing for space and knowledge sharing.” - Ruby Que

Classmates observe 30+ paintings/drawings and write stories. They reach into themselves with remarkable speed.

“cut yourself”

curated by Yuan Deng, organized by Salina Kuo

破土 (艋舺大道110號1樓 / 110 bangka boulevard) New Bloom

SPRAWL (2017)

experimental narrative

digital short film

819 seconds

goodnight goodnight goodnight (2021 - )

a feature film

“the scottsboro boys”

limited series

dreamgate iii: “ “

dreamgate II: “ “ (may ‘24)