The Garden of Earthly Delights: Recent Films by Ben Russell

“What do we do now, now that we’re happy?”—Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Renowned artist-filmmaker Ben Russell returns to the Wex to present a recent trilogy of films, including a just-finished live performance film that’s an “epilogue” to the series. Taking its title from Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych in which the pleasures of Eden are surreally conflated with the torments of Hell, this program of (mostly) nonfiction works examines the ecstatic limits of finding utopia in the present. Moving from a postcolonial vision of Melanesian cargo cults and a documentary portrait of Atlantis to a world populated by dream-healers and Christian animists, each of these films takes a visceral, embodied, and ethnographic approach toward its subject—which is also us. (approx. 100 mins., HD video)

Cosponsored by The Center for Ongoing Research & Projects, where Russell has an exhibition opening on September 12.

Tonight’s program:
Let Us Persevere in What We Have Resolved Before We Forget (2013, 20 mins.)
Atlantis (2014, 24 mins.)
Greetings to the Ancestors (2015, 29 mins.)
The Marvels We Now Enjoy (2015, 20–30 mins., live audio/video performance)