UNWEAVING unwound
a short art film by Allen Killian-Moore
About the film:
Unweaving Unwound, a film by neurodivergent multidisciplinary artist Allen Killian-Moore, was shot on Super 8mm film, HD Video, Instant Film, MiniDV, and Regular 8mm. The film is an avant-garde visual document of the creation and installation of Unweaving, a public sculpture project by artist Tia Keobounpheng. Through Tia's voice-over narration, recorded by Killian-Moore on a grizzled old analog cassette deck, she details the conception of her project and its relation to ancestral trauma. Tia recounts the narrative of her Finnish family's emigration from Duluth Minnesota to Karelia, Russia in order to work for Stalin with hopes of establishing a worker's utopia, and their subsequent return to America, fleeing Stalin's brutal regime. Utilizing a split-screen aesthetic and a cinema vérité approach in its formation, Unweaving Unwound explores construction and deconstruction as symbols of artistic endeavor, which in turn signify our collective human experience.
Allen Killian-Moore is a neurodivergent, multidisciplinary artist: Moving Image, Photography, Writing, Curation, Performance, Visual Art, Social Justice, Veganism, Teetotaling. Allen’s work explores coexistence in many forms—individual and collective, social and political, life and death. His moving image work work has screened at a wide variety of venues in both solo and group exhibitions, including Fill In The Blank Gallery in Chicago, Joseph Nease Gallery, Hennepin Theater Trust, and the Duluth Art Institute. He’s also had work featured in the annual Chautauqua Art Lab in St. Louis, and his 16mm film, The Essence, screened nationally on the viewer curated Current TV. Allen’s writing, essays, and poetry have been published and distributed by Microcosm Publishing, Boneshaker Almanac, Aqueous, and Whole Beast Rag, among others. His pocket recipe guide to vegan Scottish cooking, Well Tidy Scran, was released by Portland based Microcosm in 2020. Finally, Allen is the founder and curator of the Saltless Sea Cinema, an ongoing micro-cinema program screening film and video art.
Allen was able to make this film thanks to a portion of the grant that funded the entire Duluth installation of the UNWEAVING project:
Tia Keobounpheng is a fiscal year 2020 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.