On November 1 at 4:00 PM, Jam Factory Art Center will host screenings of Moyra Davey’s films Forks & Spoons and Hemlock Forest.
The event is part of the public program “The Chalk Circle”, a public programme of the exhibition “The Stammering Circle”, curated by Marta Kuzma, artistic director and chief curator of Faktura 10.
RegistrationMoyra Davey is an artist, writer, and filmmaker based in New York. Since the mid-2000s, the moving image has become central to her practice, with essay films that blend personal narrative, voice-over, and reflections on literature and philosophy. Her acclaimed video Les Goddesses (2011), and its follow-up Hemlock Forest (2014), explore themes of motherhood, memory, and historical biography through the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughters. Davey’s films often draw on her own writing, as well as on the work of authors such as Walter Benjamin, Jean Genet, and Virginia Woolf. She is the author of several books, including Long Life Cool White (2008), Burn the Diaries (2014), and Index Cards (2020). Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Tate Liverpool, Kunsthalle Basel, and the Whitney Biennial, and is held in the collections of major institutions such as MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hemlock Forest (2016) begins as Davey searches for a definitive filmic subject while
reflecting on the value of a life lived versus a life recorded. At the same time, she
examines her own artistic strategies alongside the work of the influential Belgian
filmmaker Chantal Akerman. During the making of Hemlock Forest, Akerman took her
own life. The filmmaker’s unexpected death soon engulfed Davey’s awareness,
prompting a broader exploration of Akerman’s and her own biographies, amidst more
universal themes of compulsion, artistic production, life and its passing.
Moyra Davey’s latest film, Forks & Spoons (2024), studies the work of five photographers: Francesca Woodman, Carla Williams, Alix Cléo Roubaud, Justine Kurland, and Shala Miller. In her characteristic, essayistic style, Davey weaves together footage of herself pacing between moss-covered tree trunks to a voiceover narration that contextualizes the work of each artist within their respective biographies. Each of her chosen image-makers was or remains attuned to a particular pitch of self-capture: a feminized portraiture of long exposures, blurred movement, acute desire, and, most especially, the itch and frenzy of moving between the public and the private.
When: November 1, 4:00 PM
Where: Lviv, 124 Bohdana Khmelnytskoho St., “Auditorium” hall
Admission: Free with registration
Language: English with Ukrainian/English subtitles
The Stammering Circle is a project of Faktura 10, a core initiative of RIBBON International, curated by Marta Kuzma, Chief Curator and Artistic Director of Faktura 10. The foundational sites of The Stammering Circle exhibition are the Jam Factory Art Center, Dim42 LPE “Lviv Radio”, and the Machine Hall of Lviv Polytechnic National University.