Multimedia talent Miranda July brings performance to campus April 5

Cornell Cinema welcomes Miranda July, a video/performing/recording artist whose work is featured in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, on Friday, April 5, at 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre. July will present an evening of her work, including video screenings and performance, some of which will involve interaction with members of the audience. Admission to the event is $5 general/$4 students and seniors.

July is a multimedia performer and video artist based in Portland, Ore. Her videos have screened internationally at such sites as MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). Currently July is touring internationally with "The Swan Tool," a multimedia performance commissioned by the Rottersdamse Schouwburg, the IFFR and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. July's previous multimedia performance, "Love Diamond," has been performed at sites around the country. She has recorded several performance albums and, during breaks from her own work, she has directed a video for the all-girl rock band Sleater Kinney, made her feature film acting debut in Alison Maclean's "Jesus' Son" and provided consultation for Wayne Wang's feature film, "The Center of the World." In 1995 she founded Joanie 4 Jackie (formerly Big Miss Moviola), a movie distribution network for independent women moviemakers.

In addition to live performance, Ithaca audiences will have the opportunity to see July's completed video project "Nest of Tens," currently part of the Whitney program in New York. The 27-minute piece comprises four alternating stories about mundane yet personal methods of control. Children and a developmentally disabled adult operate control panels made out of paper, lists, monsters and their own bodies. The Oregonian has said that "Nest of Tens" is "rich with emotional resonance. This is the quality that has often left July's audiences feeling as though she has seen into their most personal fears and dreams."

Steve Seid, curator at the Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley, has written of her: "There is something stunning about Miranda July. Always at the center of her cryptically playful works, July is like a collecting gravity, a gathering of mesmerizing energy."

To learn more about July's work, visit her web site at www.mirandajuly.com . Her visit is co-sponsored with the Central New York Programmers Group and the Cornell Council for the Arts.