In The Open | Kim Anno
Born in Los Angeles, Kim Anno is a painter, photographer, and filmmaker whose work is exhibited, and screened internationally, including solo exhibitions and screenings at the Goethe Institute, Johannesburg, Asian Art Museum, SF, 14th Annual New Media Festival, Seoul, Marcia Wood Gallery, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, SF, Kala Art Institute, Durban Municipal Gallery, South Africa. Flux Projects, Atlanta, Sky Dive Gallery, Houston, Seeline Gallery in Los Angeles, Sue Scott Gallery, NY Site Santa Fe Biennale, the Varnosi Museum, Hungary, Abron Arts Center, NY, DC Dusseldorf International Expo, Pulse, Miami, the Berkeley Art Museum, Hyde Collection, Oakland Museum. Anno is a recipient of the Gerbode Foundation Award for SFMOMA, and Honolulu Academy of Art and the Fleishhaker Fellowship, Zellerbach Foundation, Open Circle Foundation, Berkeley Film Foundation, for Water City, Berkeley, which premiered December 2013. She is directing the film: 90 Miles From Paradise. She is also making a documentary, in Cuba: ¡Quba! Premiering in 2018. Skimi2@comcast.net
Men and Women in Water Cities is a series of photographs, taken in Northern and Southern California from the first short experimental film in the series that Kim Anno directed and produced in 2011. The film was made by collaborating with non- actors and local people who would become effected by sea level rise in Climate change. Highlighting the challenge to culture and intellectual life, Anno asked participants to select books and read them aloud, participate in dance and ritual movement, and recite iconic environmental texts in watery situations while dressed in business attire. The culminating photo is a plastic ball imitating the iconic photo of earth from outer space. The business outfits recall Roberto Longo’s Men in Cities paintings in which he was depicting the anxiety of the 1980’s in America. Anno draws a parallel to this same anxiety over this global dilemma.
Water Town is a short gallery video of a longer work: Water City, Berkeley. This film was made by collaborating with Berkeley High School students in Berkeley, California. The cast went out a half mile into the Alameda Bay with rubber dinghys and played a game of Post Nation State Capture the Flag. Cheerleaders from Concord rewrote their own cheers to film’s concept of Water City Berkeley. The young people are adapting to their new watery world by continuing their beloved cultural activities such as cheerleading and sports. This was a bonafide competition to capture the black flag. In this video the people are running around the Crew oars as if it was a maypole dance. This film is the third film in the series of Men and Women in Water cities , directed and produced by Kim Anno as a social practice art film in 2012.
Allie+London is a short film sequence excerpted from the first film in the Men and Women in Water Cities series, directed by Kim Anno in 2011. Allie is writhing in the river in her business suit while reciting the text of The Great Southwest, a Time/Life Book celebrating the environment and people of the Southwest United States. Ally Maser edits the sentences as she reads the text with the water running over her book. The film was made by collaborating with non- actors and local people who would become effected by sea level rise in Climate change. Highlighting the challenge to culture and intellectual life, Anno asked participants to select books and read them aloud, participate in dance and ritual movement, and recite iconic environmental texts in watery situations while dressed in business attire.
