Associate Professor Kris Paulsen will be in conversation with artist Joan Jonas at Metrograph, 7 Ludlow Street, in New York City, on Saturday, October 5. The program is part of Flaherty NYC's "Surface Knowledge" series.

Flaherty NYC's "Surface Knowledge" series investigates the screen as a site of telepresence, a conduit which connects the artist/performer with the viewer/perceiver. Conceived as a cross-generational conversation, this program of shorts shows how video artists such as Joan Jonas, Pipilotti Rist, Sondra Perry and others have sought to explore the existential effects of the mediated image, where selves are transformed into seductive mediums, online avatars, and SMS traders. These games of representation open up uncanny and sometimes hazardous environments, where depth of identity must interface with layers of layers of surface. Predictive of the instant communication modes that now define our lives, these films tread gingerly into out-of-body experiences of self in which one is neither “here” nor “there."