Experimental Series – Salt Lake City (EXPS/SLC) was founded by former University of Utah Assistant Professor in Screendance, Kym McDaniel. From 2022-2024, EXPS/SLC held monthly screenings at the Union Theater at the University of Utah, including eleven programs with over 60 films.

The series offered alternative interpretations of screendance, often highlighting conceptual and structural experimentation in lieu of more literal or narrative form. An intention of the series was to bring students, faculty, departments, and community members together via the art of cinema. See archived programs below and on the EXPS/SLC Instagram.

Last Rituals

The final program and finale of EXPS/SLC, Last Rituals, connects a variety of materialities (body, film, fabric) and the ecological world. Voice, text, gesture, and movement are devices to explore ritual, mysticism, decay, and transformation. Filmmakers in the program include Sophia Rose, Sam Williams & Oluwaseun Olayiwola, Claire Maske, Yannick Mosimann, Laura Iancu, Janelle VanderKelen, and Erica Monde.

The program will be available online (see link below) from Monday, July 15 at 12pm to Wednesday, July 17 at 12pm. Thank you to the filmmakers and Will Maguire for making the series possible.

Program Details

Knitted (Video, :30seconds, 2023, USA), dir. Sophia Rose

Stay (Video, 17:20min, 2022, UK), dir. Sam Williams & Oluwaseun Olayiwola

Stay is an experimental, choreographic short exploring grief, migration, queer desire, and the black body.

Boning (16mm – Video, 2:30min, 2024, USA), dir. Claire Maske

Boning combines X-Ray footage with optically printed and hand processed imagery of the body to explore the tension of visibility/invisibility, vulnerability/protection, singularity/universality within our bodies. 

Come out of your shell (16mm, Super 8 – Video, 2:26min, 2024, Switzerland), dir. Yannick Mosimann

The lovingly compiled collection of shells, the life's work of Maria Cândida Consolado Macedo, comes to life in a rhythmic ritual of hand-processed 16mm footage and trancelike sounds of capiz shells.

The Amber Gates (Video, 4min, 2024, Romania), dir. Laura Iancu

The Troite are protective totems placed at crossroads, water sprouts and in places of remembrance. They are the pillars of heaven and the mystical gateways of the Amber Mountains of Romania.

Direction of the Road (Video, 7:42min, 2023, USA), dir. Janelle VanderKelen

As a tree muses on their role in the Order of Things, this being (which humans normally think of as immobile) reveals the speed, agility, and finesse integral to their experience of the world. Adapted from a short story written by Ursula LeGuin, this decidedly inhuman filmic narrative uses the overlapping cyan and scarlet of anaglyph stereoscopic 3D imaging to speculate how a tree (which responds more acutely to light waves in the red and blue portions of the spectrum) might perceive the world visually. Though 3D stereoscopy is used in this film, it is intended to be viewed without 3D glasses.

There's Not Much We Can Do (Video, 19:15min, 2022, UK), dir. Erica Monde

In this personal essay documentary, the director reflects on her journey of getting diagnosed with endometriosis through observing the invasive Japanese Knotweed. While both the disease and the plant grow disruptively through their respective environments, one is treated with urgency while the other is met with inaction. An ecofeminist meditation on the body, biology, care and control, There’s Not Much We Can Do prompts us to question the very things we consider "natural" in the first place. Commissioned by Scottish Documentary Institute and Screen Scotland for Bridging the Gap.