Janene HIggins
video
single channel works, installations, and theater------------------------------------------------[HOME]
Over Water
A bridge. Video and watercolor paint. Color, 11 minutes.
Premiered at the Issue Project Room 2019 Gala, Brooklyn NY
Live score performed by Rena Anakwe and Elliott Sharp
View the performance here
"Over Water: Transitive States" for the Venice Biennale
CityX Venice, Architecture Pavillion
Filiseti Mekidesi
An opera
A visceral meditation on the universal movement and flow of all life, in the search for a safe and neutral place. Rather than a linear narrative, the opera uses musical and poetic means to reflect moments in cosmic and human history.
Libretto, music and direction by Elliott Sharp
with text by Tracie Morris and Edwin Torres
Featuring Ensemble Musikfabrik and Voxnova Italia
Projection design by Janene Higgins
Premiere: 2018 Ruhrtriennale, Bochum, Germany
View excerpts of the premiere here
Walter
color, 2017, 3 minutes
Music composed and performed by Cassis B. Staudt
Breathe in and out, forward and backward in time.
A memory and a meditation on accordion.
In memory of Walter Kuehr, Mainsqueeze.
Premiered at Screen Compositions 2017, Experimental Intermedia, NYC
Port Bou
An opera by Elliott Sharp
on Walter Benjamin's final evening.
Libretto, music, and direction by Elliott Sharp
Starring bass/baritone Nicholas Isherwood
pianist Jenny Lin
accordionist William Schimmel
Projection Design by Janene Higgins
Presented at:
Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, October 2014
Konzerthaus Berlin, April 2015
Review in The New York Times
Binibon
A work of music/theater
May 6-9th, 2009, at The Kitchen, NYC
Concept and music by Elliott Sharp
Written by Jack Womack
Developed with and directed by Tea Alagic
A Beth Morrison Projects Production
Projection Design by Janene Higgins
Time Out New York sez...
Through My Fingers
single channel, color, 2006, 7 minutes
Music by Christian Marclay
What slipped...
The flicker of thought that slips away the second it grasps you.
Inspired by the poem "Ombra" (Shadow) by Giuseppe Ungaretti.
Video and watercolor paint. The audio and video were performed
and recorded in a live mix by Higgins and Marclay.
PREMIERE:
2006 New York Video Festival
Tunnel Vision 2 versions
single channel, color/BW
A momentary reverie between the stations.
Music by Elliott Sharp
SELECTED SCREENINGS:
Long Version (2006, 4 minutes):
2008 Visual Sounds Festival, Cologne, Germany
White Box Gallery's VideoBox, for November '07, NYC
2007 Neutral Ground New Music Series, Regina, Saskatchewan
The 2007 Boston Visual Music Marathon
VBrooklyn 2006
Screen Compositions 2006, Experimental Intermedia, NYC
Short Version (2003, 50 seconds):
MAD '03 Festival, Madrid, Spain, in the program "Microspaces".
2004 New York Video Festival, in the program "Synaesthesiologists".
2004 Virginia Film Festival
Suspension
two-channel video installation w/sound, 2004
Sound design by Elliott Sharp
Fleeting stillness;
The contrast of the instant and the extended duration, suspended in time.
"Suspension of disbelief" in the cinematic experience,
and the metropolitan air of continuous mystery, calamity, and suspense.
PRESENTED AT:
Chelsea Art Museum, New York City, 2004
New York Press sez...
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Right After They Pet Me
single channel, color, 2002, 2 minutes
As the torch singer laments the fact that she's a great lay,
the video thumbs its nose at the idea that girls aren't supposed to want it.
Music: "I'm Good for Nothing but Love" by Martin/Ballard;
sung by the fabulous Ruth Etting
Women: Jessica Apple, Shannon O'Kelley, Michele Serchuk
SELECTED SCREENINGS:
2006 MIX: the NY Lesbian & Gay Experimental Film Festival
2006 Victoria Erotica Film & Arts Festival, Victoria, BC
Peepshow 28, San Francisco 2002
Right After They Pet Me was originally part of the NO LIVE GIRLS project
We Hate You Little Boy
single channel, BW, 1998, 4 minutes
Latent emotions result in a vague, nameless fear,
depicted in stark black-and-white and a relentless text.
Text and sound by John Duncan
Actors: Sean Craig, Laura Ellis, Fernwood Mitchell
The text was originally part of an installation by Duncan
entitled "THE BLACK ROOM" at The American Hotel, Los Angeles.
SELECTED SCREENINGS:
d>art 2000, Sydney, Australia
Media City, Windsor, Ontario
Boston Underground Film Festival
Antimatter Festival, Victoria, BC
Festival de Video y Artes Electrónicas Vid@rte, México City
Impakt Festival, Holland
London's Exploding Cinema
New York Underground Film Festival
Chicago Underground Film Festival
Rough and Ruined Film Festival, Vancouver, BC
Microcinefest, Baltimore
EXHIBITIONS:
Facing Fear, San Francisco Art Commission Gallery
Vivisection, Location One, NYC
Broadcast on
Offline, Guttervision(LA) and Reality Burns(DC).
AWARD: The diploma "Video Medeja", at the Third International Video Summit,
Novi Sad, Serbia, December 1998.
"Like propaganda this video manages to muster hatred; either that or penis envy."
-TESSA HUGHES-FREELAND, PAPER MAGAZINE
"Cuts to the quick about parental fears, child abuse, and every adult's lost childhood."
-MICHELLE HANDELMAN, FILMMAKER MAGAZINE
"So mean it's funny."
-SARAH JACOBSON, PUNK PLANET
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Hairless
single channel, color, 1996, 3:45 minutes
Abstract adventures in hair removal, glimpsed through a window.
Voyeur and view are intermingled, inside out.
A recurring spectre, a close shave...
plucked, for a moment, from a hairless afternoon.
Music by Zeena Parkins
Actors: Michele Serchuk, Shaula, Shannon O'Kelley
SELECTED SCREENINGS:
Tampere Film Festival
Bangkok Experimental Film Festival
Transat Video, Normandy, France
Experimenta Festival, Buenos Aires
Valentine's Sex Massacre Show, The Knitting Factory, NYC
Charlotte Film & Video Festival
MIX Festival, NYC
Barcelona Festival of Independent Video
Hamburg International Short Film Festival
Art Institute of Chicago
RISD
VideOpticon, Georgia Tech
Presented as digital media:
New York International Video & New Media Festival
THAW '97 at University of Iowa
New York Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
Broadcast on Offline, Free Speech TV, & In Short.
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Prey
video installation, color/BW, 1997
Someone is chasing me... With a real or imagined threat, chemicals are released causing the body respond to an imminent danger. The heart races, blood is pumped away from the extremities to your chest, you may start to sweat, feel lightheaded, have trouble catching your breath, as your body prepares itself to run. This vestigial response is still present in our hard-wiring, left over from a time when humans lived in a more hostile environment, the prey of other carnivores. Or some guy with a spear.
The music was created by Elliott Sharp on analog synthesizers using modulated ultra-low frequencies that pulse and vibrate aggressively. It appears on Sharp's CD of music composed for film, entitled "Figure Ground", on the Tzadik label.
PRESENTED AT: 1997 ARTS EXCHANGE/Cascade Lounge, NYC.
Also presented as a work-in-progress at The Clocktower Gallery.
Does a Place Forget You've Been There?
video installation, color/BW, 1998
Synchronized multiple projections depict a journey of urban desolation.
Music by the band WHITEOUT. The title is from a poem by Sam Turner.
PRESENTED AT:
RECONNAISSANCE.1 Tokyo-New York Teleconference, June 1998, NYC
All videos were shot, processed, and edited by JH,
with the exception of "Prey", which includes found footage.
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