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Stanley

Steven Matheson

1995 00:15:00 United StatesEnglishColorMono4:3

Description

The tale of a fanatical tool collector who recreates the world according to a logic dictated by his cross-wrench. An examination of the abstract technology of sanity, Stanley inverts the documentary portrait—incorporating interviews, found footage, weapons catalogs, and alligator wrestling. An exploration of masculinity and instrumental power as wielded both in the tool shop and in the corridors of the Pentagon, Stanley underscores the larger significance of daily gesture in the production of meaning.

About Steven Matheson

Steven Matheson is a videomaker and installation artist working at the borders of both documentary and fictional narrative forms, exploring the ways that the "everyday" can be re-framed and opened up as terrain for fictional re-invention, aesthetic experimentation and social criticism.  His experimental portrait Stanley has received numerous awards, including a Juror's Choice Award at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival and a Jury Award at the New York Exposition of Short Film and Video.  His piece Apple Grown In Wind Tunnel has received a Golden Gate Award for New Visions in Film and Video at the San Francisco International Film Festival.  His work has exhibited internationally, at such venues as the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the ICA in London, and Amsterdam's World Wide Video Festival. 

He received a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego.  He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota and is on the faculty at Mills College in Oakland, California.