Soft Network

Soft Network/AFELL and Noble Gas Media @noblegasmedia present “Artist Legacy Work on Film” at @anthologyfilmarchives from May 29 through June 2. Across seven programs, the series showcases fourteen films that bring visibility to the complex relationships and circumstances through which an artists’ work is cared for, understood, and accessed after their passing. Tickets & complete schedule at link in bio, or visit anthologyfilmarchives.org. AFELL members receive a discounted member ticket price! Still in slide one is from Bruce Conner’s “The White Rose” (1967), courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery @paulacoopergallery & @msilva_avlism featuring AFELL member @jaydefeofoundation

On May 30 7:30pm “Artist Legacy Work on Film” presents its short film program, with Toute la memoire du monde (1956) An Amplification Through Many Minds (2019) and Your Giorgio (2018). Visit the link in our bio or @anthologyfilmarchives for tickets and a complete schedule of events. Toute la memoire du monde (1956, 21 min) / This recently restored early short by French New Wave director Alain Resnais, pays homage to the National Library of France. For centuries, the library has served as a repository for all the country’s publications, and more: Maps, prints, comic books, priceless manuscripts, gems, and medals all form part of the collection. At the intersection of artistic and informative, All the World’s Memory is a unique look at the effort to catalogue as much knowledge as possible in one of the world’s great libraries. An Amplification Through Many Minds (2019, 36 min) / In 2018 Tanya Lukin Linklater began visiting the Alaska Commercial Collection at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California Berkeley. These visits included spending time with Sugpiaq parkas (made of cormorant and gut), Sugpiaq sewing bags from Kodiak, Alaska, and Unangan baskets from the Aleutian Chain. An amplification through many minds is video structured in three parts: documenting Tanya Lukin Linklater’s time with belongings at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology’s on-site and off-site collections storage; a process of embodied inquiry at SFMOMA featuring three dancers responding to the life of ancestral belongings in museum collections; and a return to the collections storage to enliven the place with dance. Your Giorgio (2018, 12 min) / Your Giorgio is based on the love letters of the late queer photographer George Platt Lynes. Filmed on location at Yale University, it depicts a sexualized experience of the archive, in which the researcher’s subjects come alive as amorous ghosts. Stills courtesy of Icarus Films @icarusfilms_ , Tanya Lukin Linklater @afognak_suk and Matthew Leifheit @mattelife

Program 2 of “Artist Legacy Work on Film” brings The White Rose (1967) and Flying Lessons (2024) to Anthology Film Archive on May 30, at 5pm. Visit the link in our bio or @anthologyfilmarchives for tickets and a complete schedule of events. The White Rose (1967, 7 min) / A work born of Bruce Conner’s profound friendship with artist Jay DeFeo (1929–1989), The White Rose captures the deposition and removal of DeFeo’s eponymous painting from her first-floor San Francisco apartment in 1965, a monumental work that she began in the late 1950s and worked on obsessively for eight years, eventually layering over two thousand pounds of paint onto the canvas. The intimate black and white film captures the fabled painting’s last moments in the apartment’s bay window recess, a space covered in chunks of paint as though an extension of the work, which Conner likened to a site-specific environment and “a temple”. Sutured by Conner’s sharp, rhythmic editing and set to music from Miles Davis’s album Sketches of Spain, The White Rose is a tender document of artistic friendship, and an affectionate record of a key moment in Beat Generation art history. @paulacoopergallery @msilva_avlism @jaydefeofoundation Flying Lessons (2024, 84 min) / At a community meeting held to address their gentrifying landlord’s aggressive treatment of longtime tenants, filmmaker Elizabeth Nichols meets Philly Abe, an older punk artist who swiftly becomes the younger woman’s muse, attentive neighbor, and friend. While tracking Philly’s activism and struggles in the face of harassment, Nichols surfaces her life story through extraordinarily candid conversations as well as a gloriously SD video archive of concert footage and decades of DIY downtown New York films by the likes of Todd Verow and Mike Kuchar in which the fabulously brash Abe starred. The magnetic pull between artist and filmmaker yields something beguiling and precious, celebrating the fiery Philly even as she and the world she fought to protect are being actively extinguished. @flyinglessonsdoc #phillyabe Stills courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery and creative team of Flying Lessons

The “Artist Legacy Work on Film” series launches with its first program on May 29 at 7pm, featuring two films: Woman in the Sky (2025) and Problemista (2024). The program will be followed by a short Q&A. Visit the link in our bio for tickets and a complete schedule of events. Woman in the Sky (2025, 16 min) / Woman in the Sky tells the extraordinary story of Magda Salvesen, who met Abstract Expressionist Jon Schueler in Scotland in 1970. A few months after their introduction, he wrote a will leaving her his entire body of work. Since Schueler’s death in 1992, Salvesen has secured his legacy and ensured its preservation, with his paintings included in over 70 world renowned collections. Reflecting on three decades as Schueler’s partner, and even more as the unlikely guardian of his artistic output, Salvesen offers an intimate portrait of both a widow and art historian fiercely committed to her late husband’s creative memory. What emerges is an epic love story writ small across hundreds of canvases and thousands of pieces of archival grade paper. Problemista (2024, 104 min) / Alejandro (Julio Torres) is an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador, struggling to bring his unusual ideas to life in New York City. As time on his work visa runs out, a job assisting an erratic art-world outcast (Tilda Swinton) becomes his only hope to stay in the country and realize his dream. From writer/director Julio Torres comes a surreal adventure through the equally treacherous worlds of New York City and the U.S. Immigration system. Stills courtesy of Noble Gas Media and A24

🔔 For AFELL Members 🔔 5/22, 1PM ET 🔔 🔗 🔗 Link to register in bio 🔗🔗 Not a member? Join us! Softnetwork.art/afell-home @valeriejmaynardfoundation @afrocharities @antoniodavidlyons @savannahinpublic

Opening Wednesday @ortuzargallery ! Sheyla Baykal and Susan Brockman are both included in a wonderful group exhibition curated by @andrewdurb1n featuring nine of Peter Hujar’s friends. See you there! How Beautiful This Living Thing Is April 22 – May 30, 2026 Opening Reception | Wednesday, April 22, 6-8pm Ortuzar will also hold its opening reception for “How Beautiful This Living Thing Is,” a group exhibition gathering works by nine of Hujar’s friends; Sheyla Baykal, Susan Brockman, Ray Johnson, Greer Lankton, Joseph Raffael, Gary Schneider, Paul Thek, Ann Wilson, and David Wojnarowicz. The title, taken from one of Thek’s letters to Hujar, explores several impressionistic themes shared across Peter’s work and the work of those included here. Life, death, urbanity, collage, collaboration, shared intimacy. What associates them was their friendship with Hujar, which flows under the surface of the paper, more a feeling than a coherent aesthetic program. Images: Sheyla Baykal Angel Jack and Hibiscus, Angels of Light performance, 1972 Scan from 35mm color slide Courtesy Penny Arcade, Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez and Soft Network Susan Brockman Depot, 1974 16mm film scanned to 4K digital resolution 11 min., black and white, sound Copyright Estate of Susan Brockman Courtesy Soft Network #sheylabaykal #susanbrockman

Congratulations to Penny Arcade on her Guggenheim Fellowship for Drama & Performance Art! We have been working with Penny on the Sheyla Baykal Archive-in-Residence for the last year and a half. She is an extraordinary and generous woman, and we are so grateful for her talents as an artist and her role as a longtime steward of her most vulnerable peers and ancestors. Image: Penny in “Longing Lasts Longer” Credit: Albie Mitchell @penny_arcade_forever @stevezehentner

Thank you Mikiko Ino for hosting the Soft Network Donor Circle and friends for a tour of Kikuo Saito’s former studio! In addition to managing Saito’s estate, Ino runs the nonprofit Kino Saito in Verplanck, NY. @kinosaito From /bio Kikuo Saito (1939–2016) was a Japanese American abstract painter with ties to the Color Field tradition. Born in Tokyo, he came to New York City in 1966, where he worked as an assistant for such eminent painters as Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, and Larry Poons. Saito’s work infuses richly saturated colorscapes with delicately drawn lines. Saito was the creator of sui generis theatre and dance events, working under Ellen Stewart at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company and collaborating with innovative and influential directors and choreographers Robert Wilson, Peter Brook, Jerome Robbins and Eva Maier. #kikuosaito

Incredibly meaningful conversation as part of Locating Downtown riding the waves of art, humor, love, and grief with David Hirsh and Penny Arcade, guided by Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez and Agosto Machado in spirit. Concluding with Chris Tanner’s beautiful stories of Steve Lott. And Sheyla Baykal portraits throughout. Keep an eye out for more programming from Visual AIDS around the incredible David Hirsh Tapes Collection. @visual_aids @faleslibrary @whitneymuseum @megansheuer @olivia.mc @nichoolas @rstloup @penny_arcade_forever @christannerart

Please join us for an evening with Soft Network friends and supporters at the studio of Kikuo Saito (1936-2016) in SoHo, where the artist lived and worked. Hosted by Mikiko Ino, Saito’s widow and the founder of Kino Saito, the event will include a tour of the space and presentation of some of Saito’s work, followed by drinks and dinner in the studio. To attend this event please join our Donor Circle using the link in bio. Donor Circle members receive invitations to four Archive Tour events per year and an AFELL membership. All donations support AFELL and our Archive-in-Residence. @kinosaito #kikuosaitostudio

Thank you/Bedankt to Christoph Rausch, Claartje Rasterhoff & team for organizing last week’s annual MAACH/MERIAN conference “On Leaving: Contemporary Artists’ Estates & Legacies” at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Chelsea Spengemann, Executive Director and Co-Founder, Soft Network and Rachel Middleman, Professor of Art History, California State University, Chico, Executor, Estate of Anita Steckel presented a paper “Soft Networks: A Case-Study in Creative and Collaborative Legacy Work.” We look forward to the wide range of presentations hopefully being published in the future. The travel to this conference was supported by The Jenni Crain Foundation, an initiative dedicated to preserving the legacy of the esteemed artist and curator. @jennilcrain Some highlights from the conference: 1. Q&A included incredible co-panelists Ruth del Fresno-Guillem, Marika Kuźmicz, Renée van de Vall, Chelsea and Rachel with Claartje Rasterhoff as moderator. 2.-4. Solana Chehtman, Joan Mitchell Foundation, presenting on the benefits of sharing legacy stewardship work and naming Soft Network and AFELL as examples of organizations currently working in this direction 5. Richard Johns on the Turner bequest 6. James Boaden on Derek Jarman’s Blue 7. Luca Ackerman on photography conservation 8. Kathleen Vermeir and Ronny Heiremans from Jubilee on EAVATEA 9. Learning about Agency in Brussels 10. Valentina Curandi on art/death companions 11. Slide from Marika Kuźmicz speaking about her work with women artists from Central & Eastern Europe at Museum Susch 12. Rachel, Solana, Ruth and Chelsea on the final day in Maastricht #maach #merian @prof.middleman @ruthdelfresnotestimoniart @marika_on_tour @solanachehtman @joanmitchellfdn @boadenjames @nyphotoconservation @muzeumsusch @maastrichtuniversity

R.I.P. Agosto Machado. We had the privilege of working with Agosto over the last couple of years and his contributions to the Sheyla Baykal Archive were numerous. His humanity and sparkle will be deeply missed. #agostomachado