Art
Video Artwork
Sebring explores sound-image relationships and non-verbal, deconstructed narrative in her video artworks. The emotive subtext is often the primary subject, flipping traditional plot-driven storytelling.
8ight Circles
8ight Circles, video by Ellen Sebring, for Silo Solos 2020, a collaborative series of solo performances addressing isolation during the global pandemic in the two silos at the Otto Piene-Elizabeth Goldring Art Farm in Groton, Massachusetts. Camera by Tom Draudt. Photos by Heather McCune. Premiered October 9, 2020 for B3 Biennial Frankfurt:
Tilt
Ellen Sebring (video and sound) and Paula Josa-Jones, (choreography), video artwork and performance. Performance photos: Bethany Versoy
“What happens when a choreographer pulls the floor out from beneath her graceful, agile, well-trained dancers? What happens when gravity shifts beneath their feet? "TILT," a new collaboration between video artist Ellen Sebring (S.M.VisS 1986) and acclaimed Boston choreographer Paula Josa-Jones, explores that new frontier. The performance combines large-screen video, live dancers, and a gravity-disrupting mechanism called a "levitron" to discover new realms of movement.”
— from “Un-leveling the Playing Field,” MIT News Office
Tilt (excerpt) by Ellen Sebring (video) and Paula Josa-Jones (choreographer). Alissa Cardone (dancer)
Aviary
Performance version by Ellen Sebring (video and music) and Beth Galston (sculptural environment), with Sarah Skaggs (choreography and dance), MIT Media Lab Cube. Photos: Beth Galston
Broadcast version by Ellen Sebring for WGBH New Television Workshop
“Dream-like video piece that includes interspersed choreographed scenes of a single female dancer moving about a dark room filled with suspended, swinging, mirrored strips. Among the scenes, all in slow motion, are: a gymnast swinging, winter forest shots, a young woman in and around a swimming pool, a party, burning wood floating down a stream (accompanied by spoken Norwegian), and sailors sleeping in a small boat. Throughout are interspersed scenes of birds at rest and in flight in an aviary. The loose story concerns a young man and his visions (real and dreamt) of the young woman from the pool. It ends with the man meeting the woman in a city scene. Overall, it is a melancholic mood piece that deals with themes of constraint and freedom.”
— New Television Workshop Collection, Episode 513 (1989), Open Vault from WGBH
For me, Aviary was inspired by a pamphlet I picked up with a drawing of a dove and the words, “Thoughts have Wings.” The birds flying through the aviary represent the dense, moving threads of thought within a closed system. Aviary depicts two story arcs drawn together. Parallel journeys across water and under water convey the viscosity of inner life. Thoughts are buffeted within a tidal wave of sentient communication, and some make it to physical manifestation.
— Ellen Sebring
Aviary, Ellen Sebring (video and music); Nadja Kutz (performer)
The Boxer’s Puzzle
The Boxer’s Puzzle
Bill Seaman and Ellen Sebring
Sebring’s performance imagery counterpoints the energetic tensions between male and female personae while Seaman’s music provides the structure for intercutting the characters she embodies. Created while the two artists were at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, the six-minute videotape was co-edited by Bill Seaman and Ellen Sebring.
Awarded the Canon Europa Prize, World Wide Video Festival, Den Haag, Holland
Above: images from the video put together by Bill Seaman
“The Boxer's Puzzle suggests an oblique narrative of desire, combining the visual stylization of a music video with a subtle allusiveness and meticulous attention to detail. Using slow motion images and a hypnotic, percussive soundtrack, the artists create a languid, erotic work. A man shadowboxes, his sparring suggesting inner conflict, while a woman is seen in a series of fashion-photo poses, remaining an enigmatic figure, an icon of elusive desire. Seen in isolation, and juxtaposed through syncopated cross-cutting, the man and woman seem caught in the grip of an unreleasable tension, made palpable by the artists' deft editing.”
— description, Electronic Arts Intermix
DIVE
Dive
Ellen Sebring (video and music) and Paula Josa-Jones (performer and choreographer), soundtrack composed at The Banff Centre, Canada
“video dance . . . study of a woman's life, in which the viewer "dives" into fragmentary episodes and memories . . . inspired by the collaboration with photographer Pam White, which took place at the artist colony in Palenville, New York.”
— Paula Josa-Jones
Filmography (selected)
2020 8ight Circles, performance video in the Paul Matisse bell silo, Goldring-Piene Art Farm, Groton
2014 Steam, a study of steam power and music featuring glass aeolipiles designed by Joan Brigham
2009 Into the Woods: horses & dance experiments with choreographer Paula Josa-Jones
2007 Tilt, with choreographer Paula Josa-Jones
2004 Dive, with choreographer Paula Josa-Jones
2002 Ride, documentary
2001 CamKidz, interactive television prototype commissioned by Institute for Civil Society
2001 EyeDance, documentary on Elizabeth Goldring's visual language for the blind
2000 StarNetwork, web series, Producer, (Multimedia Grandprix 2000 distinguished award, Tokyo)
1998 Changing Minds, Todd Siler, Ornette Coleman, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NYC, Video Director
1998 Titian Kiosk, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Producer (Silver Medal, New York Festivals)
1997 Star Festival, interactive documentary, Producer (Best of Show, MacWorld Expo)
1992-1994 Evidence of June, narrative film, Directing Workshop for Women, American Film Institute, LA, Writer/Director
1996 Branch, with choreographer Paula Josa-Jones
1993 Art, Science and Technology, Kunstverein Cologne, WDR-TV, Germany, Co- Director
1989 Aviary, video art, Director, New Television series, PBS; based on Aviary performance collaboration with Beth Galston (sculptural environment), and Sarah Skaggs (dance), MIT Media Lab CUBE (1988)
1989 The Hours, 1st Prize, VideoZone Festival
1988 Tableaux Vivants, video art Grand Prize, VideoZone Festival
1986 The Boxer's Puzzle, with Bill Seaman, Canon Europa Prize, World Wide Video Festival, Den Haag, Holland
1986 The Making of Severe Clear, documentary on James Turrell & Dana Reitz, WGBH-TV, PBS, Director
1985 Déesse, video art
1984 Thirst, with Luc Courchesne, for “Elastic Movies” interactive videodisc, MIT
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Image top: Aviary performance, Beth Galston (sculptural environment), Ellen Sebring (video and music), Sarah Skaggs (choreography), MIT Media Lab “Cube,” 1988, photo by Beth Galston