Running from September 2024 to February 2025, Los Angeles Filmforum’s film series Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film will occur during PST ART: Art & Science Collide!. This expansive film series investigates the ways that experimental and scientific films produce and question the visualization of the world. Combining artist films utilizing scientific imagery, science and natural history films, and films of indigenous and traditional knowledge, the series examines how science, nature, and technology films shape our understanding of humans, nature, gender, knowledge, and progress. The multi-venue public screening series presents analog and digital time-based media incorporating diverse scientific and experimental film traditions from across the globe.

Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film is accompanied by an upcoming publication. The publication is an anthology that combines original scholarship with primary sources, including essays pertaining to science studies, science films, and experimental film. Our proposed publication puts the natural and physical sciences, including biology, ecology, astronomy, and technology, in dialogue with cinema studies and the social sciences, such as cultural studies, history, and queer and feminist theory. The series of essays will reveal the roles of cultural specificity and subjectivity in “objective” image-making practices, and will be undergirded by a rigorous examination of deconstruction of objectivity and indexicality.

Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film Team

Project Director and Co-Curator: Jheanelle Brown

Project Supervisor: Adam Hyman

Project Coordinator: Joie Estrella Horwitz

Research and Curatorial Team: Jane de Almeida, Shai Heredia, Lilly Husbands, Zoe Meng Jiang, Daniel Muchina, Wangechi Ngugi, Jennifer Lynn Peterson, Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa, Erin Espelie

Social Media and Additional Support: Alex Gootter

Support

Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film is among more than 60 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART. Returning in September 2024 with its latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, this landmark regional event explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art

Lead support for Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film is provided by the Getty Foundation. Additional lead support is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Significant additional support comes from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.

About Los Angeles Filmforum

Los Angeles Filmforum was formed in 1975, with the mission to promote a greater understanding of film as an art form and the filmmaker as an artist by providing a forum for independently produced, experimental films, which have little opportunity of reaching the general public through normal channels of commercial distribution. It showcases alternative media that aims to inspire, enlighten, and empower, as well as to entertain. By featuring the underrepresented voices and visions of truly independent filmmakers, Filmforum exposes audiences to the full range of artistic expression, cultural perspectives, and critical inquiry.