Fluid Cinema: Water as Moving Image Media in Contemporary Art

Fluid Cinema: Water as Moving Image Media in Contemporary Art
Friday, February 13, 6:00pm – 7:30pm
Michelson Theater, 721 Broadway, 6th floor

From pools of water created by artists like Nancy Holt and Mary Miss in the 1970s to Rebecca Belmore’s 2005 projection on water entitled Fountain, this talk charts an artistic lineage in which water operates as a medium for the creation of moving images. Artistic engagement with real water has generated new types of environmental images and new models of ecological relation, embodying an important alternative to journalistic modes of moving image representation in environmentalist contexts. The fluid “cinematic” works of this talk expand and reframe expectations about what art can or should do amidst environmental crises.

This is an in-person event, open to the public. Prior registration is required. Non-NYU attendees will receive emailed instructions for building access and may be asked to present a government-issued photo ID upon arrival. NYU attendees must present their NYU ID.

About the speaker

Jessica Bardsley is an artist and scholar working across film, writing, and studio art. She is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Film-Video. Her films have screened around the world at venues like Sundance, CPH:DOX, and on the Criterion Channel. Jessica Bardsley's research and writing have been supported by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. She is Assistant Professor of Experimental Film and Media in the department of Undergraduate Film & TV in NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.