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S. Topiary Landberg (aka Samuael Topiary)

PhD, March 2020
Mellon Curatorial Fellow, Oakland Museum
Lecturer
Documentary, landscape, urban studies, environmental activism.
Research Interests: 

Documentary film, landscape studies, essay film, environmental activism, urban geography, interactive documentary, collaborative and collective media activism, media ecology, documentary performance, improvisation in media-making, montage theory, collective subjectivity.

https://www.topiary.land/

 

Advisor: 
Selected Publications: 

Valencia/The Movie(s): A New Collectivity,” co-written with Liz Clarke, Camera Obscura, 2016 Volume 31, No. 3 93: 165-175.

The Ethical Implications of Zeros, Circles and Loops,” Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture, Vol. 23: Special Issue: Loop Media, Nov. 2016.

Symposium Review: Poetics & Politics: Documentary Research Symposium, May 15–17, 2015, UC Santa Cruz, CA,” Journal of Media Practice, 17/1, 2016, 117-118.

“Star,” Sister Spit: Writings, Rants & Reminiscence from the Road, ed. Michelle Tea, City Lights Books, San Francisco, CA, 2012, pp. 19-20.

“Gum and Tea,” The Journal of Short Film, Volume 10, Winter, 2008. 

“Now,” co-editor & contributor, Movement Research Journal #23, New York, NY, 2001.

“Virtual Female,” SF Camerawork Journal, Fall/Winter 1995, Volume 22, No. 2, 1995, pp 30-32.

Education and Training: 
MFA (Film/Video), Milton Avery School of the Arts, Bard College
BA, English & Art, Wesleyan University, cum laude
Biography: 
Topiary’s work crosses genres of documentary, experimental media, performance and essay film. Her work has been presented in film festivals, theaters, art galleries and museums through the US and internationally. She is currently the 2018-2020 Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Oakland Museum and a member of the Creative Cities Working Group at Stanford University. Topiary has received grants and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, the Experimental Television Center, Radar’s Writer’s Lab, and Mount Tremper Arts. She taught film editing at the School for Visual Arts in New York City as well as video production and post-production at CUNY’s College of Staten Island, Pratt Institute and the Media Studies program at New School University in New York before moving back to California to begin her PhD.
Teaching Interests: 

Documentary film studies, documentary media production, landscape and film geography, film editing, montage theory, media ecology, environmental documentary, experimental film, multimedia performance, media improvisation, found-footage and archival filmmaking, social and environmental justice media activism, collaborative mediamaking.

Project: 
Exit Zero: An Atlas of One City Block Through Time