***CANCELLED**** JENNIFER BOLES: Making Images into Rivers: The Reversal as Archive and Cinema
UIC Art History Colloquium
March 6, 2020
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
The Reversal is an experimental documentary and installation composed of thousands of archival images taken by the city of Chicago to document the reversal of its namesake river and what would be an endless construction and reconstruction of the city’s hydraulic infrastructure. While the images were mostly instrumental, used to protect the city from hundreds of lawsuits in the wake of the reversal, they were composed with large format cameras using the tropes of landscape photography. Evoking an endless passage through disrupted space and time, the film reveals the dark entrails of urban history and speaks allegorically to the continuity of ingrained and unstable ways of seeing, knowing, working, and organizing nature. The talk will discuss the history of the river, the photographic archive, and the ideas and strategies informing the film and the sound design, while provoking questions about the future of film in our resource-driven image economy.
Jennifer Boles PhD/MFA is a nonfiction filmmaker and historian. She is currently an instructor of Film Studies in the Latin American and Latino Studies Program and the Program Coordinator of the UIC/IUPLR Mellon Fellows Program.
Date posted
Jan 23, 2020
Date updated
Mar 5, 2020