In Sara Magenheimer’s videos, language grows perplexed, defamiliarized, inquisitive of its own devices. it questions its containers—voice, page, image, body—and pushes at their limits. It oscillates between confinement and largesse, between awe and paranoia. It tests out the communicative possibilities of signification and coherence against the pleasures of misinterpretation and vagary. from her earliest video included here, One Vast focus (2011) to her most recent, Safe (2020), Magenheimer de-centers our senses, and unseats our expectations. most importantly, she re-envisions the relay by which ideas become communicable to ourselves and to others, in all their narrative whimsy, alogical arrangements, and convincing scaffolding. From the socially-distanced current moment, Magenheimer’s work, assembled here, pierces through the echo-chamber.

This program is organized with Wendy’s Subway, a nonprofit arts and literary organization in Brooklyn, NY, which published Magenheimer’s first full-length book, Beige Pursuit in September 2019. Beige Pursuit is the second title in the document series, an interdisciplinary publishing initiative which highlights the work of time-based artists in printed form.