Chantal Akerman’s layered aesthetics, has formal, dramatic and performative implications. Ivone Margulies discussed the implications of the filmmaker’s use of extended duration, seriality and the hyperreal focus on mundane gestures. One of the effects of such extended scrutiny on simple actions is a constant oscillation between literal and figurative registers. Margulies will discuss Akerman’s art's distinctive take on performance art, structural film as well as the existential and phenomenological questions raised when watching nothing happening.

Ivone Margulies teaches film at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the author of Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday.