Best of Bearded Child Screening

the UTSA downtown campus held a screening of the "Best of" of the Bearded Child Film Festival Friday Feb. 20, 2009. The screening was presented by Dan Anderson, the Film Festival's director, as well as film artist. The screening consisted of a variety of different short films which dealt with different experimental formats. The films in the screening were played back to back with only a simple introduction in between each film. The Bearded Child Film Festival hails from northern Minnesota and also puts on musical performance.

DIY & the Avant Guard pannel discussion.

the DIY & the Avant-Garde disscussion panel opened its doors up on Thursday Feb 19th to anyone wanting to hear about the start up process and opinions on the future in art of 5 distinctly accomplished artists. The artists on the panel included Michele Monseau, UTSA alumni and director of her own artspace, Jason Kahn, a record label director, Dan Anderson, whom started his own film festival, and Chris Cogburn, Musician and Director of his own sound inspired Festival. The event dealt with a varied array of casual questioning moderated by Justin Boyd, an artist based in San Antonio and professor under the new media dept. at UTSA. The panel then spoke about the trials and tribulation of starting up their careers in varied genres of art by themselves from the ground up. The discussion then ended with a question and answer forum from the audience.

"self."

Developed with the idea of creating a self portraiture in mind, "Self." is an attempt to encourage inquisition through the study of specific subject matter and their relationships within a language characteristic of the artists. This leaves the piece to cultivate a strong sense of alienation among the audience as the video progresses, provoking the audience into questioning everything about the piece.

The topics dealt with in the piece are intended to encompass the artist's own viewpoints of culture and technology and how they play with in his own life, but are not meant to limit the audience into further analysis. As culture and technology become more and more intertwined due to emergence of the information age, the idea of self, and everything that makes a connection with it, becomes something left to redefine, but will we make the decision, or will technology beat us to it?