Messages Messages by Steven Arnold

NOON Projects and Del Vaz Projects are honored to present an intimate screening of Steven Arnold's 1968 short film Messages, Messages—created in collaboration with Michael Wiese when the artist was a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the film is a surreal, psyche-driven work that premiered at the Palace Theater in San Francisco, afterwhich Arnold was invited to host a recurring avant-garde film series there, which he called the "Nocturnal Dream Shows." 

For this one-night program, the film will be shown through Yuval Pudik’s Kaiserpanorama—a cardboard reconstruction of the 19th-century stereoscopic viewing cabinet and precursor to cinema. Pudik’s exhibition reactivates communal, lens-based spectatorship and includes public programs—such as this screening—centered on a custom-built apparatus and social space.

This event also anticipates Del Vaz Projects’ forthcoming exhibition Steven Arnold: Sex & Spirit, opening in February 2026.