Melika Bass

Sigur Rós have given a dozen film makers the same modest budget and asked them to create whatever comes into their head when they listen to songs from the band's album Valtari. The idea is to bypass the usual artistic approval process and allow people utmost creative freedom. These 16 films are the result. Sad, funny, beautiful and, occasionally, plain bewildering, they represent just some of the available emotional responses to this most contemplative album.

High school athlete Cyd Loughlin lives alone with her depressive father in South Carolina, perpetually longing to get away from it all. When her aunt, famous novelist Miranda Ruth, agrees to host her for a few weeks during the summer, Cyd jumps at the opportunity. While there, she falls for a girl in the neighborhood, even as she and her aunt gently challenge each other in the realms of sex and spirit.

A slow-burning prairie grotesque. On the grounds of a rural sanitarium, three young women search for wellness, as a cult leader seeks to control their bodies through labor and daily rituals.

A fractured, makeshift family ekes out a meditative existence, their lives mysteriously intertwined through ritual and habit. Part musical, part melodrama. An enigmatic tale of eternal return, a decayed slice of Midwestern Gothic.

In the American suburbs, two women mysteriously and sensuously entwine in this slow-burning, saucy, abstracted fable on the longing and laboring female body.

A mysterious, misfit family readies a feast for a group of visiting outlanders. As they shuffle through ritualistic preparations, shadows reveal each creature- one menacing, one wounded, and one worn, stewards of an old tradition.

Sigur Rós have given a dozen film makers the same modest budget and asked them to create whatever comes into their head when they listen to songs from the band's album Valtari. The idea is to bypass the usual artistic approval process and allow people utmost creative freedom. These 16 films are the result. Sad, funny, beautiful and, occasionally, plain bewildering, they represent just some of the available emotional responses to this most contemplative album.

A slow-burning prairie grotesque. On the grounds of a rural sanitarium, three young women search for wellness, as a cult leader seeks to control their bodies through labor and daily rituals.

A slow-burning prairie grotesque. On the grounds of a rural sanitarium, three young women search for wellness, as a cult leader seeks to control their bodies through labor and daily rituals.

A fractured, makeshift family ekes out a meditative existence, their lives mysteriously intertwined through ritual and habit. Part musical, part melodrama. An enigmatic tale of eternal return, a decayed slice of Midwestern Gothic.

A fractured, makeshift family ekes out a meditative existence, their lives mysteriously intertwined through ritual and habit. Part musical, part melodrama. An enigmatic tale of eternal return, a decayed slice of Midwestern Gothic.

In the American suburbs, two women mysteriously and sensuously entwine in this slow-burning, saucy, abstracted fable on the longing and laboring female body.

A mysterious, misfit family readies a feast for a group of visiting outlanders. As they shuffle through ritualistic preparations, shadows reveal each creature- one menacing, one wounded, and one worn, stewards of an old tradition.

A mysterious, misfit family readies a feast for a group of visiting outlanders. As they shuffle through ritualistic preparations, shadows reveal each creature- one menacing, one wounded, and one worn, stewards of an old tradition.

A mysterious, misfit family readies a feast for a group of visiting outlanders. As they shuffle through ritualistic preparations, shadows reveal each creature- one menacing, one wounded, and one worn, stewards of an old tradition.

Bass takes over the upstairs Kanter-McCormick Gallery at the Art Center, expanding the territory of her gothic world in a new work The Latest Sun is Sinking Fast, an immersive, multi-channel installation incorporating 16mm film/video, sound, architecture, and featuring performances by Sarah Stambaugh, Bryan Saner, and Matthew Goulish. The solo exhibition features a spatial narrative installation that delves, through movement, texture, sound, and gesture, into the psychology of a recurring figure in Bass' previous films; while also introducing two new characters, blending the past into the present. Bass has designed the installation by altering the gallery, leading the viewer through a evocative memory of place, embedding us in a timeless society of lost souls in a haunted landscape. -Allison Peters Quinn, Exhibition Director, Hyde Park Art Center

Ladies in waiting in a house of mirrors.

An earthen fairy tale. A feast for the living.

A commissioned documentary chronicling an American dance company's collaboration with a Cuban dance company to create a site-specific performance for the Festival de la Cultura Iberoamericana.

Waking nightmare, dreamless sleep.

Commissioned by the Chicago Film Archives, utilizing solely films from their collection.