Walczak will be speaking about the film - Until the Light Takes Us (2009) - its subject is one that many might be familiar with - Norwegian Black Metal. Perhaps in this confluence of knowing something and knowing nothing, the few clips that will be screened during the talk will suffice to get things rolling. For the sake of discussion, this is one few films I can think of that I’d call “of this time,” both in the way it was made, and in its permeability to many other things apart from the oral history of a particular subculture. The fact of having the painter Bjarne Melgaard in the film lands us in the arena of contemporary art, which is a fine pretext to blow everything open to the subject of post-internet media and communication, and the striking differences of the past 15 years in the value and circulation of information. By a series of connections I will also bring the subject of fashion along for the ride, and as well attempt a brief revival of Marshall Mcluhan’s notion of “media, hot and cold.”

Antek Walczak was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1968 and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received a BFA at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. His work has been shown at Cinematexas in Austin, the Pompidou Center, Fri-Art in Fribourg, Switzerland and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. He is a core member of Bernadette Corporation since 1994. He has written for magazines/zines like Purple, Pacemaker, Pazmaker, Parkett, May Magazine, Afterall, Zehar, and Made in USA.