Rice Art Gallery, Media Center among participants in Fotofest 2004

Rice
Art Gallery, Media Center among participants in Fotofest
2004

To provoke new
public awareness about the state of water in the world and
projections for the future, FotoFest 2004 will explore this
most important and least understood resource during its
10th biennial March 12-April 12.

Photo by Paul Hester / Rice University Art Gallery

“Heather Ackroyd + Dan Harvey,” the current exhibit at the Rice Art Gallery, will be on display through April 4 as part of Fotofest 2004.

The oldest continuous
international photographic arts event of its kind, FotoFest
will feature:

• exhibitions
and installations at museums, commercial art galleries and
alternative spaces across Houston

• a new
film and video series paralleling the scope of the exhibitions
and installations at Rice University Media Center, among
other venues

• the Global
Forum on Water, a public forum at Rice University bringing
together science, technology, public policy, urban design,
ethics, philosophy and art to provoke new ways of looking
at the relationship of human society and water.

Rice University
Art Gallery is among the more than 120 partipants in FotoFest
with its current installation, “Heather Ackroyd + Dan
Harvey,” a work in which the artists projected a black-and-white
photographic negative onto grass to create an image reflected
in shades of yellow and green.

As part of the
film and video series, Rice University Media Center will
be showing the recently restored “L’Atlante”
(1934) and “Taris” (1931), a classic film and
an experimental short by lengendary French filmmaker Jean
Vigo, at 8 p.m. March 4-7.

Vigo’s last
masterpiece, “L’Atlante” was originally censored
for its antibourgeoisie subtext. The plot follows a newly
wedded and disillusioned couple coping with the onset of
jealousy and solitude. It is often praised as one of the
greatest films of all time. “Taris” is an experimental
documentary about French swimming champion Jean Taris. The
comical, formally daring short begins like a typical nonfiction
film but ends in a meditation on water, weightlessness and
transcendence.

The Global Forum
on Water, April 1-4, is uniting leading U.S. and international
scientists, policymakers, activists and creative thinkers
to discuss the state of water in the world. The forum is
free and open to the public; however, registration is required.

The forum is
co-sponsored by FotoFest and Rice University’s Environmental
and Energy Systems Institute, Shell Center for Sustainability
and Center for the Study of Environment and Society. To
register or for information, visit <www.fotofest.org/ff2004/forum.asp>.

For a schedule
of all FotoFest events or more information, visit <www.fotofest.org>.