Maia Cybelle Carpenter

Maïa Cybelle Carpenter is an experimental filmmaker and curator living in San Francisco.

A series of programs on the production of space inspired by architectural theory, urban planning, landscape architecture and their intersections with experimental film and video.
Well-suited to screen institutional environments where critical theories of space are part of the discourse.

Average Running Time: 80 Minutes
Selected screenings: San Francisco Cinematheque at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and California College of the Arts

	Framing Spatial Experiences - What if film is not necessarily a simulacrum of reality but a way of perceiving the space we inhabit? Our lives are spent on the split-level between the forms of architecture and movements of city planning: the inside of the city versus the outside of the city. This is a curatorial experiment in reading the abstracted texts of urban spatial dynamics, exploring the notion that architecture equals the art of the frame and that the art of the frame equals film. Featured artists: Ito Takashi, Gordon Matta-Clark, Tirtza Even, Matthias Müller, Sarah Morris, Julio Soto, Ian Toews, Jesper Fabricius and others.
	Landscapes of Potential -"[P]hotographs remind us that landscape is not an act of fate but of human choice, and seem to ask, 'What would you like this landscape to become, bearing in mind what it was and what it is?'" (Philippe Arbaïzar) The works in this program focus on re-presenting the 'natural' landscape as a site of information exchanges. By framing the landscape and its horizon line, the image begins to function as site of potentials - a virtual space inhabiting pasts, presents and futures. Featured artists: David Rimmer, Oskar Fischinger, Jeanne Liotta, Olivo Barbieri, Steven Topping, Thomas Comerford, Kurt Kren, Deirdre Logue, Megan Michalak and others.
	Ken Kobland: Frames of Reference - Buildings and Grounds / The Angst Archive (2004), continues Kobland's long concern with using framed landscapes and urban spaces as building blocks for the contemplation of the human condition. This award-winning piece explores placeless-ness by juxtaposing both appropriated and original images and sounds. What emerges from these contrasts is a language of loss, of "[t]ransience, consciousness and desire. Between the landscapes and the thoughts, there is, more often than not, a distance, disbelief or irony." With Vestibule (in three episodes) and Frame (1977-8).
	Slow Spaces: Klaus W. Eisenlohr - The works in this program reveal Klaus W. Eisenlohr's concern with the spatial practice of filmmaking and the body in architectural and urban environments. The Sky Above Alexanderplatz (1996) and Local Time + 2 1/2 (1999) are explorations of the urban environment strongly related to the artist's photographic work on architecture. These earlier films anticipate themes in his most recent project realized during his residence of two years in Chicago. Slow Space - The Interviews (2001) investigates the intellectual debate over the value of public space in the postmodern city with interviews of Deborah Stratman and Thomas Comerford, amongst other artists.
	still/here: Two films of the city - Christopher Harris's award-winning, eloquent still/here (2000) examines suppressed histories. it documents urban loss and alienation in St. Louis through lingering shots of empty lots, abandoned houses and gutted businesses. These images are accompanied by reflective thoughts from interviews and a haunting score performed by Chicago jazz bassist, Tatsu Aoki. Paired with the beautifully meditative New York Portrait: Chapter Two (1980-81) by Peter Hutton. Together, these films inspire thoughts of the ephemeral city by alternately building it up and taking it apart.