Exhibitions

Exercises in Ineffability 02

22 May – 26 July 2020

Screening and Online Opening Reception Friday, 29 May from 5:00 – 7:00 pm

Marginal Utility is proud to present Exercises in Ineffability 02, a selection of experimental videos and animations that were produced between February and early May 2020 before and during the peak of the Covid 19 crisis in the Philadelphia region. Works in the exhibition present a complex spectrum of emotions that synthesize articulations of anxiety and hope in the face of a vividly unknown future.

 

 

Jill Adler: Train Home

Now more than ever I find myself thinking of home, longing not just for the sense of comfort of being in my family’s Manhattan apartment, but for the process of getting there. The Amtrak ride between New York and Philadelphia is simultaneously an in-between space and a distinct location, a space where my thoughts decompress and recompress, where trains morph into cars and highways into living rooms.

 

 

Andrea Bozym: Max

Working with both found footage and footage I have shot, my project is a portrayal of the inner workings of the mind and how we continuously absorb and process sensory information.

 

 

Ava Haitz: Present Tense

 

 

Grace Humphries: Untitled

 

 

Suji Kanneganti: Untitled

We know how we feel, but how do we look on the inside?

 

 

Natalie Klett: Housecake

Philadelphia. Yellow sponge bricks Swiss meringue buttercream plaster almond roofing strawberries quarantined time to move rent demolition welcome to This Old House.
Staying in the house being the house eating the house consumption and you are where you eat? The saccharine sweetness of western recipes with sugar utilize wealth like ingredients in a cake, they get the bigger piece. Development destroys all that decays anyways.

 

 

Maci Kociszewski: Automaton Red

 

 

Shannon Murphy: Heart Square

The video is about containment, and the cyclical nature of our existence during quarantine. Most of us are probably experiencing turbulent thoughts and emotions at this time, and the accompanying difficulty in sitting still with these emotions. Meditation can aid in this regard, and I found the beads and grid a meditative form to express the passage of time spent in one space.

 

 

Tiffany Nunzio: Daydreaming

 

 

Heather Palmer: Arrival of a Train at Joplin Union Depot

I have always known my grandfather was a rodeo clown. He left home at seventeen to pursue a career in show business and stayed on the road for twenty-three years.

Photographs of his acrobatic stunts lined the walls of my grandparent’s home. Although, it was not until recently that I discovered my grandfather chronicled his own experience
in the rodeo, filming his friends and family on his Kodak camera. My uncle told me therewere film reels hidden somewhere in my family’s attic, but my parents would always
hand me a photo or an old clown costume instead.

After finally finding the reels, I sent them off to be digitalized. This film, The Arrival of a Train at Joplin Union Depot, is a reckoning with lost and found memories. A beginning of our creative collaboration together.

 

 

Matthew Pring: Jesus Saves

Jesus Saves is an experimental film focusing on the psychogeographic center of Philadelphia and ones relationship to the magic of religion.

 

 

Madelynne Reilly: Marble Worlds

 

 

Julia Way Rix: Interface

Interface explores points of contact between the human hand and ecosystem.

 

 

Maura Roncace: PANDEMIC

 

 

Jacob Zelenkofske: pan