Critical Thresholds: Works by Leslie Thornton
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This special screening of works by distinguished media artist Leslie Thornton is followed by a conversation between Thornton and media historian Alice Lovejoy. The program continues the pair’s ongoing dialogue about the entwined histories of film and atomic weapons, arguably the twentieth century’s quintessential technologies. These technologies converge in the work of Thornton, a child of the Cold War, whose father and grandfather worked on the atomic bomb deployed in Hiroshima. Thornton’s works featured in this program, ranging from her early film Peggy and Fred in Kansas to her most recent project If You Give Me My Name, explore the limits of language and perception within scientific discourse, the impact of technology and media, and the sustainability of life on Earth.
If you have questions about accessibility at the Walker or would like to request an accommodation, please contact Visitor Services at access@walkerart.org or 612-375-7564 at least two weeks before the event.
Leslie Thornton creates vigorously experimental film and video. All her work delves into the mystery and ongoing investigations into the production, creation and distribution of meaning through and within media. From a young age Thornton was engaged in avant-garde cinema due to weekly screenings of experimental film at a Unitarian church in Schenectady, NY that she regularly went to as a teenager in the 1960’s. This unlikely event helped guide Thornton’s aesthetic. While studying at the State University of New York in Buffalo, she worked with filmmakers such as Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Stan Brakhage and Peter Kubelka. Thornton has received the Maya Deren Award, the first Alpert Award in the Arts for media, two Rockefeller Fellowships, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Jerome Foundation, and Art Matters. Thornton is Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.
Alice Lovejoy is a media scholar and critic whose work traces the histories that tie the moving image to unexpected industries, institutions, and cultures. She is author of Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War (2025), which was named one of Science News’ ten favorite books of 2025, and of the award-winning Army Film and the Avant Garde: Cinema and Experiment in the Czechoslovak Military (2015); her writing has also appeared in venues such as The Nation, Reverse Shot, and Film Comment, where she is a former editor. Lovejoy is Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature and Moving Image, Media, and Sound at the University of Minnesota, and Director of the Center for Austrian Studies.
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