DU professor wins Babelgum art prize for antiwar video

Video artist and University of Denver professor Chris Coleman won the Babelgum Metropolis Grand Prize for a five-and-a-half minute work exploring warring nationalisms and individual alienation. Coleman was awarded $20,000 and is en route to New York, where his film will run on the (really) big screen in Times Square Thursday night. The film, called “The Magnitude of the Continental Divides,” is part iMax, part Banksy and part Monty Python. It’s disorienting, provocative and… entertaining.

The Magnitude of the Continental Divides
The Magnitude of the Continental Divides

“My work takes the form of interactive digital and real-space experiences, animations, sculptures, and whatever else will best express my ideas,” Coleman writes at his website, digitalcoleman.

“The current overriding theme of my work deals with humankind’s obsessive-compulsive need for control over chaos… My interest lies in the consequences of this behavior and the associated systems [we put in place to effect control].”

The Magnitude of the Continental Divides from Chris Coleman on Vimeo.

Coleman teaches in the Digital Media Studies department at DU. His work has appeared in shows across the U.S., at the VIPER Basel Festival in Switzerland as well as in Singapore, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Germany, France, China, the UK and Latvia.

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