Saturday, March 24, 2012, 9:00 a.m.

A 24-hour twin-screen film by Mary Ellen Carroll. Made possible with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Conceptual artist Mary Ellen Carroll’s 24-hour twin-screen movie Federal was made by shooting the north and south facades of the Federal Building in Los Angeles for an entire day in 2003. Designed in 1969 by architect Charles Luckman, the building has been referred to in guidebooks as “the embodiment of bureaucracy,” and fittingly, Carroll navigated through a bureaucratic labyrinth to get permission to film it. Federal, which acknowledges Andy Warhol’s legendary eight-hour film Empire, is a remarkably timely work that explores United States national security in the post-9/11 social and political landscape. The building houses divisions of the State Department, the FBI, and the CIA. Its documentation turns these high-level government agencies from watchers to the watched. This screening is presented in conjunction with Carroll’s exhibition Federal, State, County and City (The Deferment of Impatience and Motor Responses to Being in California with Laura 'Riding' Jackson, Florence Knoll, Kruder and Dorfmeister, José Feliciano and Gertrude Stein) at Third Streaming Gallery, 10 Greene Street, Manhattan. With technical direction by Michale Isabell, EYESPY films.

The screening of Federal will be presented in the Moving Image Theater and the Celeste and Armand Bartos Screening Room. Tickets are free with Museum admission from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 24 (Doors open at 8:45 a.m. Museum galleries will open at 9:30 a.m.). From 7:00 p.m. until 9:00 a.m. the next day, admission is free (Museum galleries will be closed).

There will be a discussion with the artist and the Museum's Chief Curator David Schwartz on Saturday, March 24, at 4:00 p.m.