Video artist Anri Sala will discuss his recent work-shot in locales ranging from Albania to Germany to Senegal-with media theorist Kaja Silverman. One focus of their conversation will be the important role that installation design plays in his work, and the series of decisions media artists must make when screening video works in galleries and museums, as opposed to theaters. They will also discuss the important role that sound plays in Sala's work.

Anri Sala is an award-winning video artist who was born in Albania in 1974 and now lives in Berlin. His work, which has been called “beautiful, haunting, and absurd in equal measure,” has been exhibited at galleries and museums throughout the United States and internationally. The first major American museum survey of his work opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami in 2008.

Kaja Silverman is the Class of 1940 Professor of Rhetoric and Film at UC Berkeley, and the author of seven books, including The Subject of Semiotics (1983), The Threshold of the Visible World (1995), and World Spectators (2000). Forthcoming this year is Flesh of My Flesh. She has written extensively on photography and time-based art over the past eight years.

This program is being presented by the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.