Laura Kraning’s moving image work navigates liminal spaces at the intersection of nature and machine and have been described as a form of “esoteric archeology,” delving into an experience of the subconscious of a landscape. In her most recent films, she deconstructs the material textures of landscape at 12 frames per second, mining the slips between stillness and motion.

de-composition (2023)
A textural macro collage of a rust belt landscape- scratched, splattered, dripping, cracking, and bursting to the surface. Photographed and meticulously edited over one year in Buffalo, NY, the reverberant tones of the New York Central rail line provide the rhythmic pulse to a rapid cascade of multi-hued material decay and metallic de-composition.

Port Noir (2014)
Within the vast machine landscape of Terminal Island, the textural strata of a 100-year-old boat shop provides a glimpse into Los Angeles Harbor’s disappearing past. Dwarfed by massive container terminals, the cumulative scenic details of the last working boatyard, often recast as an underworld backdrop for fictional crime dramas, evoke imaginary departures and a hidden world at sea.

Landforms (2024)
Landforms unearths the physical remains of past and future geological strata. The forms, of ancient fossils and broken plastic, mesh and intertwine into a meditation on deep time and a reflection on extinction. 

Meridian Plain (2016)
Meridian Plain maps an enigmatic distant landscape excavated from hundreds of thousands of archival still images, forecasting visions of a possible future, transmitted from a mechanical eye.

Fracture (2020)
Fracture mines the slips between stillness and motion, as cracks and fissures of bark and stone are spliced and layered, frame by frame, intersecting slices of time.  Gathered and assembled over two years, the scarred surfaces of tree limbs and stratified rock collide with slabs of marble and clusters of moss, crystallizing into a flickering mirage of radiating branches and splintered veins of iridescence.

Las Breas (2019)
Co-Directed with Blue Kraning
A portrait of three tar pits in California – located within the city, the valley, and the sea, LAS BREAS investigates the spaces between archiving the pre-historic and the contemporary industrial landscape. Of the earth, yet primordial and impenetrable, the bubbling remains of ancient organisms seep to the surface, speaking of past extinction and human exploitation of the earth’s limited resources.

ESP (2024)
A brutalist monument to the Empire State as manifested by a malfunctioning inkjet printer. Chroma and luminance are made audible as architectural and printed lines converge and dissolve into pattern and noise. Photographed in the Capitol City, Albany, N.Y.

Kraning’s work has screened widely at international film festivals and venues, such as MoMA’s Doc Fortnight, the New York Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Visions du Réel, National Gallery of Art, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, REDCAT Theater, and Los Angeles Filmforum, among others. She is a recipient of the Princess Grace Foundation John H. Johnson Film Award, Jury Awards at the 2010, 2015 and 2016 Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Film House Award at the 2016 Athens International Film and Video Festival, the Jury Award for Short Film at the 2018 Rencontres Internationales Sciences et Cinémas, a 2019 NYSCA/Wave Farm Media Arts Grant, and a 2023 New York State Council for the Arts Support for Artists Grant. Laura currently resides in New York, where she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Study at University of Buffalo.

Please visit revolutionsperminutefest.org for more information.

Revolutions per Minute Festival (RPM Fest) is dedicated to short-form poetic, personal, experimental film, essay film, animation, documentary, video and audiovisual performance, and is co-hosted by Art and Art History Department and Cinema Studies at UMass-Boston, Brattle Theatre in Cambridge & Harvard FAS CAMLab.

Brattle Passes Not Accepted