March 19, 2026 | 7 pm | at SIFF Film Center (167 Republican St), Seattle (free for TAM members)
A screening of Generations (2020, 67 min) by Seattle artist Lynne Siefert followed by a post-film Q&A with TAM curator Ellen Ito.
Composed of scenes of coal power plants and their surrounding environments, Generations was filmed throughout the United States between 2017 to 2019. The film consists of twelve static single-shot tableaus depicting people doing everyday activities while living in the shadow of massive power-generating stations.
Taking inspiration from George Inness’s 1856 painting, “The Lackawanna Valley”, which illustrates a scene at the beginning of the American industrial revolution (made possible by the invention of coal powered steam engines), the coal power plants in Generations stand as remnants of a fading era of industrialization and as markers of the Anthropocene.
A synthesis of observational and constructed scenes, in precise durations of 5 minutes and totaling one hour, the structure and medium of Generations alludes to clockwork and industrial time while a series of present human moments unfold in ‘real time’. Landscapes featuring man-made environments alongside unaltered natural bodies of water and land, evoke a geological time scale and the long-lasting impact coal extraction and energy generation will have on the future.
Siefert’s previous film, ARK, is included in HAUNTED, currently exhibited at TAM through June 7th.
Generations is co-presented by Mount Analogue • Art + Cinema and Seattle Documentary Association.
Elements: Material and Process in the Moving Image is a six-part film series, presenting twenty-five works from contemporary artists, and conceived in dialogue with the exhibition HAUNTED.
Curated by David Dinnell and Jay Kuehner
Focusing on matter that spans both natural and artificial realms – and its transformation through manual, mechanical, and organic processes – the works in this series undertake an accounting of the lived world. Taken in context with the TAM exhibition HAUNTED, these selected works collectively consider how the experiential is framed through empirical and intuitive means, with moving images acting as witness, catalyst, surrogate, and archive.
Manifest in extractive and generative forms, destructive and productive acts, durable to ephemeral ends, the processual – as cinematic event – reveals latent histories in granular form but of ever-increasing consequence. Featuring 25 works that scale from deeply personal to broadly historical, from geologic to anthropogenic; fusing the merely observational to the sheerly operational image.