BIFF OFFSCREEN: Slap! the Gondola

Thursday, October 10 - Friday, November 15 @ Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center

Extended Run!

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Slap! the Gondola, 16mm to digital video, 2009, 15 minute (presented as a loop), color | stereo

A musical with music, musicians, muses and fishes... On a giant ferry, two mermaids (Tony Conrad and Genesis P-Orridge) play violin to attract the fish from the sea, when suddenly a giant fish with 30 dancers in its stomach lands on board.

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About the Artist:

Marie Losier Marie Losier is a filmmaker and curator who’s worked in New York City for 23 years and has shown her films and videos at museums, galleries, biennials and festivals. Losier studied literature at the University of Nanterre (France, BA, 1995) and Fine Arts at Hunter College, City University of New York (MFA, 2003). She has made a number of film portraits on avant-garde directors, musicians and composers, such as the Kuchar brothers, Guy Maddin, Richard Foreman, Tony Conrad, Genesis P-Orridge, Alan Vega, Peter Hristoff, Peaches and Felix Kubin. Whimsical, poetic, dreamlike and unconventional, her films explore the life and work of these artists.

Losier’s films are shown at prestigious venues such as The Cannes Film Festival, Le Jeu de Paume, The Berlinale, Rotterdam Film Festival, IDFA , The Tate Modern, MoMA, Le Palais de Tokyo, Le Centre Georges Pompidou and La Cinémathèque Francaise. She was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial (Whitney Museum, N.Y.C). She had a retrospective of her films at MoMA - Museum of Modern Art in 2018 in NYC, and a retrospective at Le Jeu De Paume - the Museum of Contemporary Art in Paris in 2019.

Losier’s first feature film was a portrait of pioneering musician-artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV) and their partner Lady Jaye. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2011, winning the Caligary and the Teddy Awards. She also won the Grand Prize at Indielisboa, the Prix Louis Marcorelles and the Prix des Bibliothèques at Cinéma du Réel; the film was released in France, Canada, Mexico, Germany and in the USA.

In 2013/14 Losier was awarded the prestigious DAAD Residency Award in Berlin and the Guggenheim Award to work on her new feature film Cassandro The Exotico!, a portrait of the celebrated Mexican wrestler Saul Almendariz. Cassandro The Exotico! produced by Tamara Films, premiered at The Cannes Film Festival in May of 2018 (ACID CANNES). It was released in France in 2018 and in 2019 in the US (Metrograph NYC).

Losier had a mid-career retrospective at MoMA in New York City and all of her films were acquired for the museum’s archives in November of 2018. She presented a mid career retrospective for the Museum Le Jeu de Paume, Paris in November 2019 and for the Cinematheque of Athens (November 2019); She had an exhibition, in collaboration with Pauline Curnier Jardin, for the Fondation Ricard for May 2019, a solo exhibition for Anne Barrault’s contemporary art gallery in Paris. Recent solo shows also include the Film Gallery in Paris (2021), The Solar Gallery in Vila Do Conde in Portugal (2022), and the FIAF Galery of Phnom Penh/Cambodge (2024). She is preparing a new exhibition at Le Creux de L’Enfer in Thiers for later in October 2024, and at the Contemporary Museum/Transpalette in Bourges for 2025.

Her newest film portrait PEACHES GOES BANANAS, premiere at the MOSTRA in Venice (2024).

For the past eight years Losier has been teaching film at the MFA cinema students at LA HEAD in Geneva, Switzerland (Haute École d’Art et de Design à Genève) where she teaches 16mm filmmaking and Foley Art.

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Still from Slap! the Gondola courtesy of the artist.