Being Liminal Being

Followed by Q&A with artist Masha Kechaeva, moderated by Elise Schierbeek .

BEING LIMINAL BEING explores the rites of passage and strange reflections that guide us through liminal times, places, and ways of being. As the term “liminality” cyclically emerges from the waiting room of our collective consciousness yet again, the works in this program deal with figures set adrift amid technological sublimes, abandoned economies, and ineffable rituals. BEING LIMINAL BEING features new and recent films from artists Lilli Carré, Masha Kechaeva, Tanner Masseth, Ann Oren, and Andrew Norman Wilson. 

Program order:

Evacuations (2025)
Lilli Carré, USA
HD video, cel-animation, 7 mins

Painted formless figures haunt recent photos of emptied-out public spaces. As cel-animated smear frames, they perform various repetitive acts in these settings, with movements expressing a helpless, frantic energy felt in our current moment.

Portrait 001: Security Guard (2024)
Tanner Masseth, USA,
HD video, 3D animation, 12 mins

A security guard walks his old beat in an abandoned strip mall, contemplating his purpose in guarding the vacant property.

Silvesterchlausen (2025)
Andrew Norman Wilson, USA & Switzerland
HD video, 12 mins

A mysterious New Year tradition in Switzerland’s Appenzell unfolds in ornate costumes and polyphonic yodeling. Nobody knows how or why the ritual began, but it has been performed for at least 500 years.

Passage (2020)
Ann Oren
16mm film transferred to HD video, 13 mins

A foley artist creates sounds for a film starring a dressage horse and dissolves into his own imitation.

Walking in the Time of Uncertainty (2023)
Masha Kechaeva, USA
HD video, 33 mins

A protagonist passes through time and space, surrounded by a series of increasingly dream-like landscapes devoid of people but full of possibility.

About the curators Masha Kechaeva and Elise Schierbeek:

Masha Kechaeva is an interdisciplinary artist whose work weaves myth-making and folklore into an exploration of transitional states — the thresholds societies cross in an era of globalization. 

Elise Schierbeek is a media archivist, film programmer, and writer who advocates for experimental and documentary film. Elise serves as the Collection Manager and Film Restorer of the San Francisco Film Preserve and as a programmer of the Onion City Experimental Film Festival in Chicago.