TORONTO, March 24, 2010 -- Where is the Medium?, the 2010 Joan and Martin Goldfarb Summer Institute in York University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, kicks off April 6 with a day-long celebration of the work of trailblazing dance and film artist Yvonne Rainer. The Yvonne Rainer Immersion features free screenings of some of Rainer’s seminal works and culminates in a public conversation with the artist at the Nat Taylor Cinema on York’s Keele campus.

Rainer is recognized internationally as one of the most innovative and influential choreographers and filmmakers of her generation. In 1962, she co-founded the Judson Dance Theater and began creating groundbreaking choreographic works, focusing on the body performing quotidian tasks, games and repetitions, that revolutionized modern dance. Her early experiments in dance and film led to a series of seven experimental features that have been celebrated worldwide as essential works of feminist avant-garde cinema.

Rainer’s varied and inventive practice as a filmmaker, choreographer and writer continues today, with several books, new film and dance works, and collaborations with such notable artists as Mikhail Baryshnikov. Her long list of accolades includes multiple Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships and the MacArthur Foundation 'genius' award.

The Yvonne Rainer Immersion program presents five of Rainer’s films:

• 9:15am  Film about a woman who... (1974, 105 min.), Rainer's landmark experimental feminist re-invention of narrative form.  

• 11:15am  Journeys from Berlin, 1971 (1980, 125 min.), Rainer’s legendary meditation on terrorism, gender and psychoanalysis and the voice.

• 1:30pm  Murder and Murder (1996, 113 min.), a wry and inventive hybrid fiction about a 63-year-old woman embarking on her first lesbian relationship.

• 3:30pm  After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (2000, 31 min), a dance/text film about the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, featuring movement set to the words of  the composer Arnold Schoenberg, architect Adolf Loos and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Trio A (1978, 10 min.), a silent record of Rainer’s famous 'minimal' solo.

Following the screenings, at 4:30pm, Yvonne Rainer will engage in a public conversation about her life and work. Joining her on stage for the discussion will be independent choreographer and York dance professor Holly Small and filmmakers/scholars Brenda Longfellow (York University) and Kay Armatage (University of Toronto). Performance scholar Barbara Sellers-Young, dean of York’s Faculty of Fine Arts, will introduce the conversation.

About the 2010 Joan and Martin Goldfarb Summer Institute

The proliferation of digital media and a continuing movement toward the dissolution of the art object call into question the continuing validity and significance of “medium specificity”. At a time when artists increasingly engage the moving image via a range of technologies spanning cinema, web, television, museum and gallery, the 2010 Joan and Martin Goldfarb Summer Institute asks: ‘Where is the Medium?’ Invited speakers offer a series of events exploring the boundaries and intersections between the disciplines of the visual arts, art history, and film.

The Summer Institute offers York University graduate students and the wider community the opportunity to engage with prominent international artists, curators, critics and theorists through seminars, workshops, courses and public lectures. In addition to Yvonne Rainer, guests of the Institute this year include media arts scholar Christine Ross (May 5), art historian and theorist Thierry de Duve (May 6) and film theorist Mary Ann Doane (June 7-10).

The Summer Institute is named in recognition of Joan and Martin Goldfarb, longstanding supporters of York’s Faculty of Fine Arts, whose generous gift has made this annual residency program possible.

Where is the Medium? The 2010 Joan and Martin Goldfarb Summer Institute

Yvonne Rainer Immersion: A Celebration of Rainer’s Extraordinary Five Decades in Dance and Film

Where: Nat Taylor Cinema, N102 Ross Building, York University, 4700 Keele St. |  Map

Admission: Free

Information: 416.736.2100 ext. 22174
www.yorku.ca/finearts/summerinstitute

Media Contact:

Amy Stewart, Communications, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University

Tel. 416.650.8469  |  amy.stewart@yorku.ca