Art
Sebring explores sound-image relationships and non-verbal, deconstructed narrative in her video artworks. The emotive subtext is often the primary subject, flipping traditional plot-driven storytelling.
Selected works follow:
Silo Solos
Silo Solos is a series of solo performances by various artists centered on the two silos on the Elizabeth Goldring-Otto Piene Art Farm in Groton, Massachusetts. In the beginning, the silos offered a safe space to work in isolation during the global pandemic of 2020. The first broadcast was part of a virtual festival on October 9, 2020 by the B3 Festival of the Moving Image, Frankfurt am Main. The richness of the silo environments—one with Otto Piene’s light ballet and the other Paul Matisse’s bell environment—attracted additional artists in subsequent years. The later works were shown on location at the B3 Festival in Germany.
The following images and descriptions are of Ellen Sebring’s video works for the Silo Solo series, created in 2020, 2021, and 2024:
8ight Circles
In “8ight Circles,” the artist performs visually-driven sound actions in the Bell Silo designed by Paul Matisse. Produced for Silo Solos 2020. Camera by Thomas Draudt. Ellen Sebring, Silo Solos part 1, 2020, 7 minutes.
Siloed *2021
“Siloed *2021” takes place in the silo containing Otto Piene’s “Star of David” Light Ballet and features a series of light actions. The artist appears in the silo, as from a spaceship landed under the starry sky, and discovers artifacts of 2021, including pandemic statistics and political violence. Ellen Sebring, Silo Solos part 2, 2021, 10:30 minutes.
Exit /Atmosphere
The third part of Sebring’s silo trilogy moves out from the darkness and isolation of the silos to rediscover the earth as a sphere shrouded in layers of atmosphere, the camera capturing earth, wind and floating up above the clouds as perspective shifts. Performers include Sebring and Elizabeth Hua Olson. Ellen Sebring, Silo Solos part 3, 2024, 8 minutes.
TILT
TILT by Ellen Sebring (video and sound) and Paula Josa-Jones, (choreography), video artwork and performance. (performance photos above: Bethany Versoy)
“What happens when a choreographer pulls the floor out from beneath her graceful, agile, well-trained dancers? What happens when gravity shifts beneath their feet? "TILT," a new collaboration between video artist Ellen Sebring (S.M.VisS 1986) and acclaimed Boston choreographer Paula Josa-Jones, explores that new frontier. The performance combines large-screen video, live dancers, and a gravity-disrupting mechanism called a "levitron" to discover new realms of movement.”
— from “Un-leveling the Playing Field,” MIT News Office
Aviary
Aviary, a collaboration by Ellen Sebring and Beth Galston, took two forms:
Performance version by Ellen Sebring (video and music) and Beth Galston (sculptural environment), with Sarah Skaggs (choreography and dance), MIT Media Lab Cube.
Above photos of Aviary performance: Beth Galston
Broadcast version by Ellen Sebring for WGBH New Television Workshop, PBS.
Aviary was inspired by a pamphlet I picked up with a drawing of a dove and the headline, ‘Thoughts have Wings’. In the video, the birds flying through the aviary represent the movement of threads of thought within a closed system. Two story arcs converge from parallel journeys—over water and under water—that convey a viscous inner life. Thoughts are buffeted within tidal waves of sentient communication, and only some make it to physical manifestation. (Ellen Sebring)
“Dream-like video piece that includes interspersed choreographed scenes of a single female dancer moving about a dark room filled with suspended, swinging, mirrored strips. Among the scenes, all in slow motion, are: a gymnast swinging, winter forest shots, a young woman in and around a swimming pool, a party, burning wood floating down a stream (accompanied by spoken Norwegian), and sailors sleeping in a small boat. Throughout are interspersed scenes of birds at rest and in flight in an aviary. The loose story concerns a young man and his visions (real and dreamt) of the young woman from the pool. It ends with the man meeting the woman in a city scene. Overall, it is a melancholic mood piece that deals with themes of constraint and freedom.”
— New Television Workshop Collection, Episode 513 (1989), Open Vault from WGBH
The Boxer’s Puzzle
a collaboration by Bill Seaman and Ellen Sebring
The Boxer’s Puzzle, performed by Ellen Sebring, image collage by Bill Seaman
Sebring’s performance imagery counterpoints male and female personae while Seaman’s music provides the structure for intercutting the characters she embodies. Created while the two artists were at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, the video was edited by Bill Seaman and Ellen Sebring at the Film/Video section at the Media Lab.
Awarded the Canon Europa Prize, World Wide Video Festival, Den Haag, Holland.
“The Boxer's Puzzle suggests an oblique narrative of desire, combining the visual stylization of a music video with a subtle allusiveness and meticulous attention to detail. Using slow motion images and a hypnotic, percussive soundtrack, the artists create a languid, erotic work. A man shadowboxes, his sparring suggesting inner conflict, while a woman is seen in a series of fashion-photo poses, remaining an enigmatic figure, an icon of elusive desire. Seen in isolation, and juxtaposed through syncopated cross-cutting, the man and woman seem caught in the grip of an unreleasable tension, made palpable by the artists' deft editing.”
— description, Electronic Arts Intermix
Dive
Ellen Sebring (video and music) and Paula Josa-Jones (performer and choreographer), soundtrack composed at The Banff Centre, Canada
“video dance . . . study of a woman's life, in which the viewer "dives" into fragmentary episodes and memories . . . inspired by the collaboration with photographer Pam White, which took place at the artist colony in Palenville, New York.”
— Paula Josa-Jones
Filmography (selected)
2024 Exit /Atmosphere, Silo Solos trilogy part 3, featuring Elizabeth Hua Olson, Piene-Goldring Art Farm, Groton, MA
2021 Siloed *2021, Silo Solos trilogy part 2, featuring the Otto Piene light silo, Piene-Goldring Art Farm, Groton, MA
2020 8ight Circles, Silo Solos trilogy part 1, featuring the Paul Matisse bell silo, Piene-Goldring Art Farm, Groton, MA
2014 Steam, featuring glass aeolipiles designed by Joan Brigham
2009 Into the Woods: horses & dance experiments with choreographer Paula Josa-Jones
2007 Tilt, with choreographer Paula Josa-Jones
2004 Dive, with choreographer Paula Josa-Jones
2002 Ride, documentary
2001 CamKidz, interactive television prototype commissioned by Institute for Civil Society
2001 EyeDance, documentary on Elizabeth Goldring's visual language for the blind
2000 StarNetwork, web series, Producer, (Multimedia Grandprix 2000 distinguished award, Tokyo)
1998 Changing Minds, Todd Siler, Ornette Coleman, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NYC, Video Director
1998 Titian Kiosk, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Producer (Silver Medal, New York Festivals)
1997 Star Festival, interactive documentary, Producer (Best of Show, MacWorld Expo)
1992-1994 Evidence of June, narrative film, Directing Workshop for Women, American Film Institute, LA, Writer/Director
1996 Branch, with choreographer Paula Josa-Jones
1993 Art, Science and Technology, Kunstverein Cologne, WDR-TV, Germany, Co- Director
1989 Aviary, video art, Director, New Television series, PBS; based on Aviary performance collaboration with Beth Galston (sculptural set), and Sarah Skaggs (dance), MIT Media Lab CUBE (1988)
1989 The Hours, 1st Prize, VideoZone Festival
1988 Tableaux Vivants, video art Grand Prize, VideoZone Festival
1986 The Boxer's Puzzle, with Bill Seaman, Canon Europa Prize, World Wide Video Festival, Den Haag, Holland
1986 The Making of Severe Clear, documentary on James Turrell & Dana Reitz, WGBH-TV, PBS, Director
1985 Déesse, video art
1984 Thirst, with Luc Courchesne, for “Elastic Movies” interactive videodisc, MIT