A guest curatorial project for Night Lights Denver appearing on the Daniels and Fisher Tower October 1-31, 2024.
Please scroll further to read more about the project and the artists' works.
Image: still from Transmutations; Kevin Hoth, "Hothroids re-animated" as projected onto the Daniels & Fisher Tower in Denver, CO
Curatorial Statement
"Transmutations" is a year-long collaborative project inspired by the Surrealist parlor game Exquisite Corpse. Eight artists each created a 95-second segment, having seen only the final 20 seconds of the preceding artist’s work. The project followed a single guiding principle: each piece had to begin with an analog photographic or film process before being transmuted into digital form for projection onto Denver’s iconic Daniels & Fisher Tower. The title speaks to the alchemical transformation of tangible, photo-chemical materials—silver halides, acetates, nitrates, pigments, and iron salts—into intangible streams of digital code.
Each participating artist was selected for their experimental approach to analog photographic processes and moving image work, ensuring that when these disparate segments are pieced together, they form a cohesive yet unpredictable whole.
The artists in order of appearance are Jason Biehner, Ahmed Salvador, Sapphire Goss, Kevin Hoth, Leah Diament, Markus Puskar featuring Katie Wiegman, Sharifa Lafon, and myself.
Artist Statements
Jason Biehner - Riverrun
I have been exploring the region between the glaciers of Mt. Rainier and the waters of the Salish Sea for some time with the idea of creating a film featuring the rivers of the area. The idea has swerved from completely photographically representational to purely abstract animation, and I have played with it in a few different ways. When this project presented itself, it was an opportunity to explore not only the content but the very form in which it was presented. This project gave me the chance to play different forms of motion picture media and animation off of each other in an attempt to capture the core of my idea in a brief frame. I hope you enjoy!
Ahmed Salvador- from 'Lie Awake Dirge'
My version of chemigrams are created by spraying then guiding traditional darkroom chemicals onto the surface of unexposed photographic film (Kodachrome, orthochromatic, or ordinary b&w panchromatic). At times I use a stencil or a physical resist to create patterns. The chemicals crystallize, blacken, and warp: all reacting with the photo emulsion. The films are presented as strips or in sections. It is a perverse treatment of the material since there is no lens or camera involved. It is not a reproduction, it is not 'writing with light', but enlightening what is latent; written with accidents.
Sapphire Goss - Luminous Signals
Blending from the previous clip: earthy, topographical, and solid, we emerge into ethereal cloudscapes. Suggestions of shimmering light horizons and celestial bodies dance, refracted through otherworldly atmospheres, oscillating between grainy artifacts and light apparitions. It pulls back into constellations; glistening points of light that could be a starscape - or debris falling to the bottom of the ocean. Made from a mixture of cameraless animations and expired analogue film developed in ECN2 & caffenol (coffee + Vitamin C + soda crystals), shooting the full moon and the sea through various vintage and homemade prisms and filters.
Formats: 16mm colour, 8mm black & white, 35mm cameraless animations.
Kevin Hoth - Hothroids re-animated
After taking in the lovely constellation-like pricks of light and the ethereal textures in Sapphire's work, I manipulated and reconfigured some of my instant film collages to echo and build upon her work. I then moved into more graphic forms to enhance the scale of my pieces blending them into and accentuating the architecture of the tower. My original pieces were cut, burned, ink-injected, and taped together. Themes in this work are the cycles of beauty and decay, scarification as sculpture, as well as the transgressive joy of destroying fixed images.
Leah Diament - Cooties
My work is a playful exploration of connection, nostalgia, and childhood wonder. In this particular animation, I focus on the cootie catcher—a simple, nostalgic game that evokes the innocence and excitement of childhood. This piece was created using the cyanotype process, an alternative photographic technique that brings a sense of history and craftsmanship to the work.
I began making these cootie catchers and inviting people to fill out fortunes at social gatherings, which transformed the act of playing into an interactive, shared experience. Through this, I found a joyful way to not only engage others, but also reconnect with my own sense of playfulness. This process of creation, coupled with the light-hearted interactions that follow, allows me to tap into a sense of childlike wonder that I strive to maintain within my art practice.
For me, the cootie catcher is more than just a game—it’s a medium that invites others into my creative space. It serves as a bridge between personal expression and communal interaction, allowing us to step outside the everyday and remember the joy of curiosity and imagination. By incorporating these childlike elements, I aim to remind both myself and my audience of the importance of maintaining that sense of play and excitement in art and in life.
I began making these cootie catchers and inviting people to fill out fortunes at social gatherings, which transformed the act of playing into an interactive, shared experience. Through this, I found a joyful way to not only engage others, but also reconnect with my own sense of playfulness. This process of creation, coupled with the light-hearted interactions that follow, allows me to tap into a sense of childlike wonder that I strive to maintain within my art practice.
For me, the cootie catcher is more than just a game—it’s a medium that invites others into my creative space. It serves as a bridge between personal expression and communal interaction, allowing us to step outside the everyday and remember the joy of curiosity and imagination. By incorporating these childlike elements, I aim to remind both myself and my audience of the importance of maintaining that sense of play and excitement in art and in life.
Markus Puskar featuring Katie Weigmen - Llorona
This 8mm film was an attempt to create a narrative arc without dialogue, additional characters, or sound. We used one prop, a rocking chair, to tether our character to the physical world while the rest of the setting was infinite and impenetrable. We invoked the myth of La Llorona to create a sense of eternity for our characters longing for the real, as she trudges across the endless landscape seeking rest and personal salvation - a way to stop the wandering she is fated to carry out.
Sharifa Lafon - 8.2023 - 6.2024, west yard, box store topsoil.
This film is a record of interaction between soil samples in my yard and 16mm films that I have buried. Each location has unique characteristics relating to soil modification due to weather and animal related damage, which varies emulsion degradation.
Shana Cruz-Thompson - From the Desert to the Sea
I recorded this Super 8 footage while on a recent visit to my home state of California. I have always been in awe of the vastly juxtaposed landscapes of California and two are featured here - the beach and the desert. Inspired by colors in Sharifa Lafon's segment preceding me, I experimented with inverting and enhancing the colors in my footage to reflect the dream-like melancholy that I feel as an outsider in my home state since moving to Colorado two decades ago.
