Critical Thresholds: Works by Leslie Thornton

Leslie Thornton brings a program of her film and video work to Walker Cinema on Thursday, November 19, at 7 PM. The screening is followed by a conversation between Thornton and media historian Alice Lovejoy, who has spent her career tracing the histories that tie the moving image to unexpected industries and cultures.

Thornton's work tests the limits of language and perception within scientific discourse, the impact of technology and media, and the sustainability of life on Earth. She's a child of the Cold War—her father and grandfather both worked on the atomic bomb deployed in Hiroshima—and she makes vigorously experimental film and video. As a teenager in the 1960s, she was drawn to avant-garde cinema by weekly screenings at a Unitarian church in Schenectady, New York. While studying at the State University of New York in Buffalo, she worked with filmmakers like Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Stan Brakhage, and Peter Kubelka.

She's now a Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University and has received the Maya Deren Award, the first Alpert Award in the Arts for media, two Rockefeller Fellowships, and numerous grants. The conversation after the screening continues her ongoing dialogue with Lovejoy, so the two of them will be talking through the work together rather than just taking a few questions.

Tickets are $15, or $12 for Walker members, seniors, and students. The screening starts at 7 PM at Walker Cinema, inside the Walker Art Center at 725 Vineland Pl in Minneapolis.