Print + Project Like a Mushroom
An Exhibition by Anna Scime
on view April 21- June 3, 2023
Opening Reception Friday, April 21, 5 – 8 p.m.
Artist talk 6 p.m.
This show is made possible by the New York State Council of the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
WNY Book Arts Center is pleased to present Print + Project an exhibition featuring work created by artist Anna Scime.
Print + Project Like a Mushroom features a 16mm film loop and spore print films displayed in their pre-projection print form. Shaggy manes, meadow mushrooms and more were locally sourced to produce these films.
Edible mushrooms are grown and harvested to create 16mm sound films and derivative materials – collectively known as the Spore Print Film Series (ongoing series 2010 – Present). This series is a study of organic, modern and contemporary technologies that explore cycles of creation, destruction and archival permanence.
Mushroom spores (their reproductive unit) are placed on film (a reproductive unit) to produce an audiovisual loop. As the projector loops the film, playing its deteriorating images and sounds, the film is digitally recorded and then archived.
Like fingerprints, no two spore prints are exactly alike. Along with color, smell and other physical markers, they are used as a testing mechanism for field identification. Hundreds of individual mushroom spore prints make up each film (and billions of spores comprise each print) – each with their own unique shape and coloring.
During projection kinetic forces disperse the spores – accentuating and de-saturating the films’ colors and sounds. These colors, shapes and sounds are only palpable, like the spores themselves, when experienced en masse.
Each of the films in the series features different audiovisual movements provided by different mushroom species, including: bellas, shaggy manes, lion’s manes, chanterelles, oyster mushrooms, and more – producing prints ranging from intense Rorschachs made of melted black ink, to delicate white, brown, blue, gray, pink and yellow arrangements that shadow the shapes of the gills that they rain down from. As the films are projected, a maelstrom of slowly-shifting-shapes is produced where form is in constant flux. These films present media and matter as vibrant and spontaneous. The films are looped until they are nearly erased.
Spore Print Films have been exhibited at The Agway (Buffalo), Burchfield Penney Art Center (Buffalo), Center for the Arts (Buffalo), Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center (New York City), Feverish World Symposium (Fall 2018-2068, Burlington), FLORA ars+natura (Bogotá), Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (Buffalo), Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music Festival (Kuala Lumpur), Mono No Aware VIII (Brooklyn), Silent Barn | Title Point (Brooklyn), UNIFOR – Fundação Edson Queiroz Universidade de Fortaleza (Fortaleza) and more.
Anna Scime is an internationally exhibited media artist, whose solo and group screenings and exhibitions include: Burchfield Penney Art Center (Buffalo); Berlin International Directors Lounge (Berlin),;Centro Cultural Borges (Buenos Aires); FLORA ars+natura (Bogotá); Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music Festival (Kuala Lumpur); PS1 MoMA (NYC); and more. Her documentary work has been broadcast nationally and published throughout the web on Free Speech TV, PhillyCAM, and ArtGrease. She has received awards for her work including fellowships from ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes and The New York State Council of the Arts (NYSCA), The Center for the Moving Image, The Liberace Foundation, The Mark Diamond Research Fund, and The Robert and Carol Morris Fund for Artistic Expression and Performing Arts. She studied journalism at Northeastern, and graduated summa cum laude with bachelor’s Degrees in English and Art from University at Buffalo, where she also received an MFA from the Department of Media Study, and taught courses in media production and analysis. She is Lumiflux Media’s Executive Director, and was also Squeaky Wheel’s Interim Executive Director from late 2015 through 2016, and continues to contribute to the cultural ecosystem in Buffalo through her work with community arts nonprofits, like the Buffalo International Film Festival, where she has curated the Offscreen series of art, music, and performance since 2017 and has served as Executive Director since 2020.
She most often creates moving-image-based work at the intersection of art, technology, storytelling, and science to explore concepts like the Anthropocene, eco-histories, and the archive. She’s interested in making work that experiments with and explores ecological systems, structures, and exchanges. For the last decade, her main focus has been investigating the ways in which human beings interact with other living beings on this planet by studying the effects of and reactions to ecological crises like accelerated climate change; rates of biodiversity loss/extinction; habitat loss, freshwater use and pollution; geological, evolutionary and ecological time. She is interested in unpacking and critiquing anthropocentrism and flattening the hierarchy of the species.
Exhibitions supported by:
