Statement Profile GlogauAIR Project CV Summary

Statement

Abigail Severance makes films and other images about nostalgia and flawed history. Drawn to vernacular, liminal space and the queerness of in-betweenness, she uses film as a form of visceral thinking. Her work often begins with walking, which like cinema relies on duration, rhythm, sequence. She uses modest filmmaking tools (Bolex, compact 4k camera, sound recorder) to engage a critical poetics around embodiment through repetition, fluctuation, and interruption.

Curious how hybrid or entropic spaces offer models for uncertain futures, Severance’s recent work investigates questions of post-pandemic fragility. Can entropy be sublime? Can fragility feed imagination? The queer futurity of Jose Muñoz is important here, specifically his challenge to activate queerness not merely as sexual identity but as dialectical position and aesthetic action: “Queerness is the thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.”

Profile

GlogauAIR Project

My new work emerges from an interest in bodies and landscapes as archives or maps that can be re-articulated through cinema. I’ve been making images of “brackish” liminal places: industrial perimeters, spaces between cultivated and wild, northern places with fragile light, cities in flux. I’m developing a new practice of drawing on paper with projected moving images. The work is necessarily quick and ephemeral.

I suspect we are now time-migrants, delicate survivors of the intertwined viruses of capital, Covid, and climate. In this delicate post-pandemic time, how might we resist returning to business as usual in relation to both land and body? What models of futurity are offered by the subaltern, including indigenous, queer, and/or colonized resistance strategies? Could we think of landscapes and bodies as transformative sites of imagination, devotion, or collaboration?

CV Summary

Abigail Severance makes films and other images about nostalgia, material history, and the queer mind. Her work has screened at the Broad Museum, MOCA/LA, Sundance, REDCAT, Studio Museum of Harlem, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Wexner Center for the Arts, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Curta Cinema Rio, Women in the Director’s Chair, London LBGT Festival, MIX, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, among other sites. Her essay film ACADIA, about nationalist nostalgia and queer origin stories, is currently in post. She has received a Fulbright, a Film Independent fellowship, and a CalArts Research & Practice Grant for WE THE DEVOTED, a near-future narrative about borders and labor, made collectively with its ensemble cast. She has been faculty at the CalArts School of Film/Video since 2009 and served as Dean 2019-2024.

R E S I D E N C I E S , F E L L O W S H I P S + A W A R D S

2024 Glogauair Residency, Berlin

2023 Flaherty Film Seminar: Queer World Mending

2022 Flaherty Film Seminar: Continents of Drifting Clouds

2020 Fulbright (awarded), Univ. College Cork, The Edge of the Flat Earth (canceled; COVID)

2018 Research + Practice Grant, CalArts, We The Devoted

2015 Faculty Development Grant, CalArts, Acadia

2014 Creative Capital: On Our Radar

2010 Artist-in-Residence, Stonelake Farm, Humboldt, California

2009 FIND Fellowship, Screenwriting + Directing Labs, The Summer We Drowned

2004 Spotlight Award for Directing, Saint Henry

2002 Wasserman Fellowship, Come Nightfall

2002 Carl David Fellowship for LBGT Filmmakers

2000 Best Gay/Lesbian Film, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Pump

1999 Director’s Citation Award, Black Maria Film + Video Festival, Pump

W O R K S A M P L E S ( m o v i n g i m a g e )

Hotel La Casona (in progress): https://vimeo.com/abigailseverance/casona

Acadia (in progress): https://vimeo.com/abigailseverance/acadia-cabin

Kinesthesia Series (2014): https://vimeo.com/99784911

Evidence (2014): https://vimeo.com/112421948

S C R E E N I N G S + E X H I B I T I O N S ( s e l e c t )

2021 Pump Ann Arbor Film Festival, New Queer Cinema retrospective

2018 Evidence The Broad, Los Angeles (in En Cuatro Patas/On All Fours)

2017 But How We Long ATA, San Francisco // Last Projects, LA

2015 Kinesthesia Series REDCAT, LA, Transforming Spaces: New Work from L.A. Filmmakers //

Outsider Arts Festival, Austin // Antimatter, British Columbia

2014 Evidence Commissioned by VisualAIDS for 25^th Anniversary of A DAY WITHOUT ART. Studio

(w. Julie Tolentino) Museum of Harlem // New Museum, NY // MOCA LA // Dallas Museum of Art //

Andy Warhol Museum // Brooklyn Museum // Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston + over 50 more

2013 Kinesthesia Series Feral Studios, Joshua Tree

Jenny Mi Amor Houston Queer Film Festival // Boston LBGT Film Festival

2012 Kinesthesia Series Proteus Gowanus, New York in Negro Marfil/Ivory Black

Jenny Mi Amor Curta Cinema, Rio // Mezipatra, Prague // Melbourne Queer Film Festival //

Frameline, San Francisco // Outfest, LA // Austin Gay + Lesbian Festival // Image

+ Nation, Montreal

2011 Hard Times The Ruckus // Music Fog

Jenny Mi Amor Antimatter, BC

Eye Witness Performance s p a c e, London // Feral Studio, Joshua Tree

2009 Eye Witness Phyllis Stein Gallery, LA

2004 Saint Henry Los Angeles Film Festival // Nat’l Museum of Women in the Arts // American

Cinematheque, LA // Directors Guild of America // Palm Springs Intl Shorts Festival // Women in the Director’s Chair, Chicago–National Tour // Frameline // London Lesbian + Gay Film Festival // Budapest Lesbian + Gay Film Festival // New Festival, NY // Outfest // Image + Nation

2003 Come Nightfall Sundance Film Festival // Los Angeles Film Festival // Ann Arbor // Women in

the Director’s Chair // Frameline // London Lesbian + Gay Festival // Outfest

2002 Siren Sundance // Ann Arbor // New Festival // Outfest // Image + Nation // Berlin Lesbian Film Festival // MIX, New York + Sao Paolo // Women in the Director’s

Wake Wexner Center for the Arts // HBO // Sundance Channel // Ann Arbor // Pesaro Film Festival, Italy // European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck, Germany // San Francisco Cinematheque // Nashville Film Festival

Come Nightfall Austin Lesbian + Gay Film Festival // MIX, New York + Sao Paolo

2001 Bone Wish Los Angeles Film Festival // Ann Arbor // Sao Paolo Shorts // New Festival // Outfest // Austin Lesbian + Gay Festival // Berlin Lesbian Film Festival

Siren Frameline // Dublin Lesbian + Gay Festival

Pump Tokyo Intl Lesbian + Gay Film Festival

2000 Pump Ann Arbor Film Festival (best queer short) // Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Bay Area Now 2 // BFI UK Tour–26 cities // Los Angeles Film Festival // Hamptons Intl Film Festival // Black Maria Film Festival (director’s citation) // Chicago Intl

Lesbian + Gay Film Festival (best short) // Verzaubert Tour, Germany–5 cities //

Sensory Perceptions, Portland (best short) // New Festival, NY // Image + Nation // Berlin Lesbian Film Festival // London Lesbian + Gay Film Festival

1999 Pump Frameline // Cork Intl Film Festival // Film Arts Festival // Outfest

P R E S E N T A T I O N S + A R T I S T T A L K S

2019 The Horrible Image: Aesthetic Strategies for Representing Misery + Violence , AFI Directing Workshop, LA

2018 Generative Dysphorias in the Homeward-Bound Essay Film , Visible Evidence XXVI, USC

2018 Manifesto: Radical Hope (keynote) & The Horrible Image: Ethics + Aesthetics of Representing the Abject,

Creative Research Conference, Ibero American Association, Mexico City

2018 CalArts: Pioneering Radical Arts Education , 22^ndFestival de Cine de Lima, Perú

2016 Visually Speaking: Non-Fiction Poetics, Panel with Lourdes Portillo, Bassma Al-sharif, presented by of

The Flaherty Seminar (moderator) , IDA International Documentary Conference, LA

2014 Improvisation & Experimentation in Teaching Narrative Cinema Forms Chapman University

2011 The L.A. Rebellion (seminar) , CalArts, UCLA Film & TV Archive + Getty’s Pacific Standard Time 1945-1985

2007 Aesthetics of Digital Narratives, University of Southern California

T E A C H I N G / A C A D E M I C E X P E R I E N C E

2019-2024 Dean, CalArts School of Film/Video, Valencia, California

2009-present Faculty, Film Directing Program, CalArts School of Film/Video (sabbatical 2024-2025)

2005-2009Special Faculty, Program in Film and Video, CalArts School of Film/Video

2006 Lecturer, Visual Arts Department, University of California, San Diego

E D U C A T I O N

MFA UCLA — School of Theater, Film + Digital Media

BA Hampshire College — Cultural Studies, Latin American focus

Abigail Severance

United States

Former artists

Tamar Segev

Natasha Katedralis

Scarlett Morrow

Kate McElroy

Elise Beaucousin

Ben Glas

Akiko Kuniyoshi

Molly Must

Lloyd Tabing

Elisa Pardo Puch

Pádraic Barrett

Roxy Richens

Gabriel Ribeiro

Maria Ferrer

Tin Nguyen

James Perley

Susie Fu

Hyoyoun Lee

Suyi Xu

Beatriz Lorenzo Iñigo