Poetic Justice Cluster and Visiting Artists Lectures (VALS) present part 1, Spring 2024 Art Alumni Film Festival

RIPRAP

A screening and conversation with David Kelley about his ongoing work on the documentary poetry of Muriel Rukeyser

Respondent: Coleman Collins, Assistant Professor of Art, UCI

Tues, Apr 30, 2024

6–8 p.m. PDT

Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) Colloquium Room, 3rd Floor University of California, Irvine

For more information or questions, please contact Prof. Simon Leung at leungss@uci.edu. 

Spring 2024 Art Alumni Film Festival welcomes back three distinguished graduates of the M.F.A. Art program at the forefront of experimental art and filmmaking. On three successive Tuesday evenings, David Kelley* (April 30), Maura Brewer (May 7), and Alison O’Daniel (May 14), return to UC Irvine to present and discuss their recent work in film and video. Each of the three artists/filmmakers have made significant contributions to contemporary art discourse through rigorous formal innovations within the filmic medium, while compellingly reframing urgent societal issues. These films range from Kelley’s poetic grappling with racial-environmental (in)justice via the poetry of Muriel Rukeyser; to Brewer’s comic analyses of financial speculation at the intersection of money laundering, art and real estate; to O’Daniel’s genre-defying feature debut, "The Tuba Thieves", which beautifully reimagines the commons through sonic collectivity. 

David Kelley's The Book of the Dead is an experimental documentary focusing on the Gauley Tunnel tragedy, a protracted industrial accident in the early 1930s in West Virginia. 2,000 primarily Black migrant workers dug a tunnel through solid silica that left many of them dead from silicosis, a lung disease caused by breathing silica dust. Kelley's film is an adaptation of a screenplay written by Muriel Rukeyser, and along with some of her poetry and related congressional hearings, utilizes actors, theatrical sets, and 3D generated backgrounds to produce a multisensory experience of Rukeyser's work.

*funding for David Kelley’s visit kindly provided by Poetic Justice Cluster

About the Artist

David Kelley

David Kelley is an artist working with photography, video, and installation. His recent projects draw attention to the effects of global capitalism, resource extraction, and shifting physical and political landscapes. Influenced by a range of visual traditions, Kelley draws upon elements of experimental documentary, ethnography, performance, and avant-garde cinema. By working at the intersection of these strategies, he encourages an understanding of his subjects that is simultaneously direct and speculative.

His work has been shown in galleries and museums nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Fotofest Biennial, Houston. Other exhibitions include Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles, The Bank in Shanghai, the de Cordova Biennial in Boston, BAK in Utrecht, MAAP space in Australia, and the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok.

Kelley received a Master of Fine Art from the University of California, Irvine, and was a 2010-11 resident at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. He is currently based in Los Angeles, California, and is a PhD Candidate in the Media Arts + Practice Program in the University or Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. He is also an Associate Professor of the Practice of Fine Arts in the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California.