Automat 2021
Some of the most rewarding and memorable experiences at Antimatter are artist talks, Q&As and informal social events with local and visiting filmmakers. As the situation in 2021 precluded most participants attending the festival to engage with peers and audiences, Automat presented a self-serve option.
We coerced the following artists into making short videos that somehow “talk” about themselves and their work, whether by actually talking or otherwise. The results are as amazing as we’d hoped—spontaneous, revealing, witty and poetic insights into their lives and practices.
Nathan Adler
Nathan Adler is an artist, writer, editor and filmmaker. He the author of Wrist and Ghost Lake (Kegedonce Press) and co-editor of Bawaajigan ~ Stories of Power (Exile Editions). Adler has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, is a first-place winner of the Aboriginal Writing Challenge and a recipient of a Hnatyshyn Reveal award for Literature. He is Jewish and Anishinaabe, and a member of Lac Des Mille Lacs First Nation.
Nathan’s film Gaawiin Gego screened in the 2021 festival.
Jessica Auer
Jessica Auer is a Canadian photographer, filmmaker and educator who lives and works from a decommissioned fish factory in Seydisfjördur, Iceland. Her work is concerned with the study of landscapes as cultural sites. Through a research-based practice, she examines social, political and aesthetic attitudes to places, whether historical sites, tourist destinations or uncharted territories. Auer received her MFA from Concordia University in Montreal, where she has since held the position of Assistant Professor and continues to teach part-time. Her work has been presented in museums, galleries and festivals worldwide. While in Iceland, Jessica runs Ströndin Studio, a photographic research facility and educational institution in Seydisfjördur.
Jessica’s film Shore Power screened in the 2021 festival.
Adán De La Garza
Originally from Tucson, Arizona, Adán De La Garza holds a BFA in Photography from the University of Arizona and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has participated in exhibitions at AS220, The New School, The Future Gallery, The Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art, Casa Maauad, Microscope Gallery and festivals such as The Paseo, PAF Festival of Film Animation, Currents International New Media Festival, WNDX Festival of Moving Image and Denver Noise Fest in addition to The Biennial of the Americas. De La Garza is currently based in Denver, Colorado.
Adán’s film Protest Etiquette screened in the 2021 festival.
Benjamin Edelberg
Benjamin Edelberg is a Chicago-born, Toronto-based visual artist and filmmaker. His work has been shown nationally and internationally at film festivals, micro cinemas and galleries such as Antimatter [media art], Inside Out LGBT Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Onion City Film Festival and BFI Flare.
Ben’s film Chorus Two screened in the 2021 festival.
Christopher Gorski
Christopher Gorski is a US-born, German-based artist, filmmaker and musician as well as the director of Analogfilmwerke, e.V., an artist-run, member-based film laboratory and organization dedicated to the practice of filmmaking on film.
Chris’s film Constant Agitation screened in the 2021 festival.
Erin Semine Kökdil
Erin Semine Kökdil is a storyteller interested in building solidarity and inciting social change through film. Her work has screened at IDFA, Hot Docs, Camden International Film Festival, AFIDocs, San Francisco International Film Festival and Palm Springs International ShortFest, among others. Her work has been supported by SFFILM and Points North Institute and featured on KQED and in The New Yorker. Prior to becoming a filmmaker, she worked extensively with non-profits and community-led initiatives in the US and Guatemala. She holds a BA in Latin American Studies and Spanish from Smith College and an MFA in Documentary Film and Video from Stanford University.
Erin’s film Since you arrived, my heart stopped belonging to me screened in the 2021 festival.
Sammy Lamb
Sammy Lamb is a Los Angeles-based, experimental, non-fiction filmmaker working in the mediums of animation and live action. Lamb’s animations convey the emotional world, sensory memories, the ephemeral and the unseen. She blends her textural multimedia animations with live-action landscapes to ground the work in a documentary reality. Lamb utilizes these mediums in tandem to create rich and multilayered portraits of her subjects.
Sammy’s film Donnie Rose screened in the 2021 festival.
Caroline Rumley
Caroline Rumley is an American filmmaker from the South who combines solo-shot film, found and archival footage, text and sound to illuminate a personal or public experience. Her films have screened internationally at varied venues, from Melbourne’s Biennial of Video Art to the New Orleans Film Festival to Berlin’s Zebra Poetry Film Fest to Sundance.
Caroline’s film Dixie screened in the 2021 festival.
Jennet Thomas
Jennet Thomas is based in London, UK. She makes films, performances and installations exploring connections between the everyday, fantasy and ideology. Her work can look like experimental film, children’s drama or performance art—it’s a call for complexity that collides genres, experimenting with collective constructions of meaning. Her work has been shown internationally at festivals such as EMAF, IFF Rotterdam, New York Underground and museums including Tate Britain and MOMA New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: IT ONCE HAD A FACE NOW IT WANTS ONE AGAIN at Xero Klein and Coma, London, Deluge Contemporary Art, Victoria and Mattflix, London; Animal Condensed>>Animal Expanded #2, Tintype, London; Unspeakable Freedom>>Tastes Like Chicken, Block 336, London; The Unspeakable Freedom Device, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Utah, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool and Matt’s Gallery, London.
Jennet’s film Not Yet Out of the Wood screened in the 2021 festival.
Yan Wai Yin
Yan Wai Yin graduated from School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong in 2016. She lives and works in Hong Kong. On behalf of the Floating Projects Collective, Yan initiated Elemental Dynamite in 2019, a series of thematic screenings and technical-oriented experiments that pose critical questions on the expandability of animation as a practice and a medium. Yan’s works often depict a bystander’s perspective versus personal experience. By drifting between her own observations and the temporal, emotional distance between different literary texts, she juxtaposes sentences with her own narratives, striving to retrieve quotidian fragments idling within spatial ruptures and daily objects. Yan primarily works with moving images and installation. Her work has been exhibited in various venues, including H Queen’s, Hong Kong City Hall and Shanghai Power Station of Art.
Winnie’s film Localized Blindness screened in the 2021 festival.