Unruly Alliances: A film program curated by Amanda Nudelman and Rosa Tyhurst.

The program includes four daytime screenings, a listening party, and group discussion. See below for full times and full details.

Opening party & listening session: Saturday, November 9, 6-8pm

Assembled into thematic groupings, the selection of films form a series of generative bonds that foster, at times, an unpredictable kinship. Structured as four sessions over the weekend of November 9th and 10th, Unruly Alliances explores a divergent set of visual, conceptual, and technical approaches to the medium from the last ten years. Many of the works have never before been shown in California and for some this will serve as their American premiere.

The selected films feature settings that journey from Disneyland Paris and the Colombian Amazon, to an apocalyptic North Berkeley and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House in Los Angeles. Cultural, intellectual, and psychological references are as varied and dynamic as the disparate physical places: baseball and emo music from the early millennium sit alongside Vietnamese mythology and the 80s television soap opera Dynasty. Together, the works build towards an incisive critique through humorous observation, and earnest engagement with the conversations and conflict that embody our contemporary moment. In one session, works by Yetunde Olagbaju, Patrick Staff, and Connie Zheng consider contamination in different circumstances: the fraught relationship between racism and cultural imagery, physical illness, and ecological devastation. And in another session, works by Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Nina Wakeford, mine myths, archives, and personal histories to develop tender narratives on significant issues. Other participating artists include Morehshin Allahyari, Franco Ariaudo, Melanie Bonajo, Lili Huston-Herterich, Laura Huertas Millán, Jacopo Miliani, Nkiruka Oparah, Pilvi Takala, Clarissa Tossin, and Guan Xiao.

Curator Bios

Amanda Nudelman (b. 1987, Arizona) is a curator and writer based in San Francisco. She graduated from the Curatorial Practice MA Program at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2017, and has staged exhibitions and projects at the Wattis Institute (San Francisco), swissnex (San Francisco), and KADIST (San Francisco). She is currently the Assistant Curator for Video and North America Programs & Exhibitions Manager at KADIST, and previously worked for UNTITLED, Art (San Francisco / Miami).

 Rosa Tyhurst (b. 1989, Carmarthen) is a curator based in the North of California and in the South of the U.K. She graduated from the Curatorial Practice MA Program at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2018. Her curatorial projects have been staged at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin), the Wattis Institute (San Francisco), Cloaca (San Francisco), DREI (Cologne), and Limoncello (London) and she has written for multiple publications including Carla and Art Practical. She is currently an Assistant Curator at Spike Island (Bristol).