“A woman suspects that someone has clandestinely been filming her life and that her friends and acquaintances are seeing the movies in secret screenings.” Local Ads from Faraway Places was reverse engineered from a description of Secret Cinema by Paul Bartel without having seen the original film.

Press

"Kera MacKenzie and Andrew Mausert-Mooney’s Local Ads from Faraway Places is about vision and perception as much as it is about familiarity. The scrolling pace also propels a dialogue about how we see and what we notice. If noticing can be thought of as a place, then that is where Local Ads from Faraway Places transpires; within the territory of heightened awareness.

The first scene to scroll through our field of vision shows flowers positioned behind window shades. With alluring visual trickery, the blinds silhouette and then reveal the flowers, but the impact of light and depth onto the image makes it more difficult to comprehend.

The video continues to play with flatness and depth with the introduction of different planes, across which mice scurry, oranges roll, and Meg Ryan’s hair grows longer as she peels fruit. The repetitions and coincidences that propel Local Ads from Faraway Places allow us into the space where we process information and translate visual symbols using a back stock of knowledge that ties it all together. The fast and appealing clash of coincidences is what makes Local Ads from Faraway Places exciting to watch.

As the music comes to a crescendo and the video draws to a close, we are propelled into another room with blinds, similar to those in the first scene. On the television, movie credits scroll for a film starring Meg Ryan and a cozy bearded man snoozes in the corner. It is clear that the room is familiar to the artist—as familiar as light through blinds in the afternoon or a Meg Ryan movie. It is this familiarity that allows us to be transported through the act of noticing and dissect the mundane through modes of visual storytelling." — Allie Shyer, Video Video Zine, June 2016

"Kera MacKenzie / Andrew Mausert-Mooney, Local Ads from Faraway Places" by Simone Dompeyre for the 21st Rencontres Traverse Vidéo Catalogue (in French, pp. 43-44), 2018

Video Stills

Credits

Image/Sound/Edit: Kera MacKenzie & Andrew Mausert-Mooney

Starring: John Mooney & Meg Ryan

Screening History

2022
Lunch Poems, Nightingale Cinema, Chicago IL

2019
In the Body's Tow: short works by Kera MacKenzie & Andrew Mausert-Mooney, La lumière collective, Montréal QC

In the Body's Tow: short works by Kera MacKenzie & Andrew Mausert-Mooney, Cellular Cinema at the Bryant Lake Bowl Theater, Minneapolis MN

2018
Late Night, Screen Share Video Gallery at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago, Chicago IL

In the Body’s Tow: short works by Kera MacKenzie and Andrew Mausert-Mooney, Microlights, Milwaukee WI

L'expérimental est déjà commencé?, Traverse Vidéo, Musée des Abattoirs, Toulouse, France

2017
Assembled Environs, aDifferent Festival, Milwaukee WI

2016
Past Lives, UnionDocs, Brooklyn NY

Lucciche (shimmering): A Video Art Symposium, Ponte di Ferro, Carrara, Italy

Video! Video!: Breaking the Fifth Wall, Online (videovideozine.com) and The Dojo, Chicago IL

The Being of Seeing, UNEXPOSED Microcinema, Durham NC

2015
Edinburgh Artists' Moving Image Festival (EAMIF), Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh UK

RIPE LEEKS: dismantling hollywood, Filmfront, Chicago IL

Altered States, Coastal Currents Arts Festival at the Electro Studios Project Space, West St Leonards UK

2014
Accompanied by Image, High Concept Laboratories, Chicago IL

Reworking Reality, Episode 653 of Artgrease, Squeaky Wheel and Hallwalls, Buffalo NY

WACH, College Art Association Conference, Chicago IL

Reverse Shot: Rehydrating the Randolph Street Gallery's Experimental Film Coalition, Extinct Entities Festival at Links Hall, Chicago IL

Reverse Shot Program Notes