Portfolio
Oona Taper, 2024
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I create short experimental animations, 16mm films that mix live action and animation, and video installations. I am invested in the materiality of moving images and creating tactile and embodied experiences for the viewer.
I have included a reel of animation from both personal and professional work from 2016- the present. I have also listed a sample of recent work.
Samples of my student work can be seen here.
Animation Reel
Animated short films
This Train is Invisible until it Crashes,
2023, 4:30
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An animation inspired by train delay messages and their poetic potential. An examination of all the things that can go wrong: on the train, in the urban environment, and in our lives. All drawings done while riding the Chicago metro system.
Exhibitions and screenings:
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Athens International Film and Video
Festival, Athens, Ohio
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2023 SAIC Graduate Thesis Show,
SAIC Galleries, Chicago
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Draw Showing, No Nation, Chicago
Six channel installation
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Streetside Cinema: Winston-Salem,
North Carolina
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A Place to Rest; Syncopated
2019, 3:10
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‘A Place to Rest; Syncopated’ is a visceral abstract portrait, a story of a life told through the eyes of a single room, and a love affair between person and space, image and sound.
Experimental looping animation with an original soundtrack created while on artist residency at Mise-en_Place Bushwick.
Screenings:
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Independent Film Festival Ypsilanti:
Ypsilanti, Michigan
Squat Betty Avant Garde Film Night:
London
Kinolikbez: Saint-Petersburg
Rush Process at The Institute of
Contemporary Art: Philadelphia
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NOFLASH Video Show: New Brunswick
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16mm film
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
2022, 8:04
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One woman is plagued by vultures. She struggles to rid her home of them while confronting her own ideas about nature, empathy, and human animal communication.
Screenings:
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Beijing International Short Film
Festival: Beijing
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Antimatter [Media Art]: Victoria
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Onion City Experimental Film Festival:
Chicago
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Open Air Media Festival: Iowa City, Iowa
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//sense, Gene Siskel Film Center: Chicago
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The Sound of Sinking Ships
2021, 3:56
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Clarity and obfuscation, entropy and order- explored through movement, music, video and film. The Sound of Sinking Ships is a dance improvisation documented in film, video, and animation. This video highlights movement itself as the figure flows through mediums, styles and levels of obfuscation and abstraction- including video, degraded 16mm and 8mm film and hand drawn animation.
Screenings:
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Interface Video Festival:
Zagreb, Croatia
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Non-syntax Experimental Image Festival,
Calm and Punk Gallery: Tokyo
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GRRL HAUS // Let's have a party!,
Brattle Theater, Boston
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Context.film: Moscow
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IMAJITARI International Dance
Film Festival: Jakarta, Indonesia
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Streetside Cinema: a/perture cinema:
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
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Video installation
NASA Flight STS-40
2023
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Flight STS-40 is a poetic exploration of a historical scientific experiment. In 1991 NASA sent 2,000 infant jellyfish into outer space.
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Five panels of hand died chiffon hanging so they freely spin in the space, interplaying with three video projections.
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Exhibition
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2023- Graduate Exhibitions, SAIC Galleries, Chicago
Indirect Sunlight
2022
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We have set up a false distinction between manmade and natural; in reality we have never seen a "nature" un-effected by human action.
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Indirect Sunlight is an installation comprised of two projections of representations of nature, plants growing in conservatory and loosely sketched animations of flowers. As viewers pass through the space their shadows interrupt one video to reveal the other, their form and movement becoming a part of the image.
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​Exhibition
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2022- Unstable Space, NO NATION, Chicago