Lead Faculty: Gregory Zinman
This project is an outdoor monthly screening series of moving-image art on the façade of 725 Ponce. Screenings include a survey of contemporary Black video art; a historical selection of international dance films, films on global urbanism and public spaces; works made with GAN, AI and quantum computing methods; and a live projection-performance that makes use of the site’s state-of-the-art laser projector, projection mapping, and wireless personal audio via visitors’ smartphones.
News Release
OFFTHEWALL@725PONCE TO ILLUMINATE ATLANTA'S BELTLINE TRAIL WITH FILM AND VIDEO ART
Largest movie screen in the Southeast provides unique cinematic experience, showcasing acclaimed artists and filmmakers
ATLANTA, July 31, 2023 – Cousins Properties, in partnership with North & Line, announces the launch of OffTheWall @ 725Ponce, a dynamic new showcase for film and video art by acclaimed artists and filmmakers from Atlanta and around the world.
Featuring the largest movie screen in the Southeast, Off TheWall @ 725 Ponce will illuminate the Eastside Beltline Trail with images projected on to the façade of the eight-story building. The program will debut on August 18th with shimmering digital loops by Alyson Denny, a New York photographer and filmmaker, and Let Light Perpetual (2023), a film by Atlanta’s Micah and Whitney Stansell, known for their large-scale public projection pieces. A different work by Denny will precede each screening of Let Light Perpetual.
“In the last decade, Atlanta has become the epicenter of commercial film and television production in the United States,” said project curator Gregory Zinman, an associate professor at Emory University. “We now have the opportunity to make the city a center for the art of the moving image as well.”
The inaugural program of OffTheWall@725Ponce will run on Friday and Saturday nights beginning August 18 and will conclude September 2. The programs will run from 9-10pm and are free and open to the public.
The initial slate of programming will run through the end of the year and will include a survey of contemporary Black video art, family-friendly feature films, and live audio-visual performances.
For more information about the project, please follow @offthewall725 on Instagram and on Twitter at @OffTheWall725.
Artist and Curator Biographies
Artist and Curator Biographies
Blurb / Gallery Set
Alyson Denny
Alyson Denny manipulates light to create abstract still photographs and moving images. She started working with light in the theater, primarily at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge MA. Following a long-time interest in abstract art, she began to explore the possibilities of photographing light to make abstract photographs. She has since shown her photographs regularly. They have been reviewed by The New York Times and The New Yorker, and are in numerous collections. Since 2008, Denny has been a performing member of the Joshua Light Show, deemed the “the most psychedelic light show of all time” by Rolling Stone magazine. In between psychedelic light improvisations she has been developing her moving image work. She has been commissioned to create video installations for two private residences, and one of her moving images is on permanent display in the lobby of Radian, a residential tower in Boston. Denny studied physics and filmmaking at Harvard. She currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, where she developed a course on experimental lighting for photography and video.
Micah and Whitney Stansell
Micah and Whitney Stansell’s body of work ranges from fibers, sculpture, painting and drawing to single and multi-channel film and video works, and large public art installations. The work often explores ideas of family history, narrative traditions, and binary relationships that pull from contemporary issues that are influenced and informed by environment and location. The Stansells’ work has been reviewed in numerous publications including Art in America, Moviemaker Magazine, FiberARTS Magazine, and the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. Exhibiting in galleries, museums, contemporary art centers, and film festivals, the Stansells’ work has been experienced in cities around the world including Beijing, Vienna, New York, and Atlanta. Recent honors include a Forward Arts Prize, Special Jury Prize at the Atlanta Film Festival, Artadia Award, MOCA Working Artist Project Award, Herradura Art Prize, NMWA 2020 Artist to Watch, and a Student Academy Award Nomination for their graduate thesis film. Their work can be found in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Cornell University, and SCAD-Atlanta, Lacoste France, and Hong Kong.
Gregory Zinman
Gregory Zinman is an associate professor in the Department of Film and Media at Emory University. His writing on film and media has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, among other publications. He has also programmed film and media art at the Film-makers’ Co-op, the Museum of the Moving Image, the Berkely Museum of Art, Asia Society New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and several venues in Atlanta. He recently served as a technical consultant for Ad Astra (James Gray, 20th Century Fox, 2019), and is currently an archival producer for Universe in a Grain of Sand, Mark Levinson’s documentary about the future of art and computing for IBM. He is the author of Making Images Move: Handmade Cinema and the Other Arts (University of California Press, 2020) and co-editor, with John Hanhardt and Edith Decker-Phillips, of We Are in Open Circuits: Writings by Nam June Paik (The MIT Press, 2019).