March 3, 2022
Gene Siskel Film Center
"An Evening with Meriem Bennani: CAPS Trilogy"
Join artist Meriem Bennani for a screening of her works Party on the CAPS (2018), Guided Tour of a Spill (2021), and 2 Lizards (2020) followed by a Q&A with the audience.
In her genre-bending and often absurdly funny videos, Rabat-born, New York–based artist Meriem Bennani fuses the languages of reality television, social media, and 3D animation to explore such weighty topics as biopolitics, virtuality, and globalism. In conjunction with the exhibition of her latest film Life on the CAPS at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Bennani presents a selection of related works. Party on the CAPS (2018) and Guided Tour of a Spill (2021) introduce viewers to a speculative future where teleportation has replaced air travel and a small island in the Atlantic is a creolized megacity populated by detained migrants. 2 Lizards (2020), her collaboration with filmmaker Orian Barki, chronicles the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as it unfolded in real time. Originally released bi-weekly on Instagram, the series captures the surreality of lockdown and the growing social fissures exacerbated by systemic inequities and racism.
Presented in partnership with the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, in conjunction with the exhibition Life on the CAPS, on view February 26 to April 17, and SAIC’s Conversations at the Edge