The cover image for this issue of Artkrush is Girls at the Pool, a production still from Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation's 2006 film The Rape of the Sabine Women. Sussman and company loosely retell the titular Roman myth, first penned by Livy and Plutarch and later visualized by Peter Paul Rubens and Jacques-Louis David. The Rape premiered in 2006 at the 47th Thessaloniki International Film Festival and screened at New York's IFC Center the following year. From February to April of 2007, Creative Time's The 59th Minute aired a one-minute version of The Rape at the last minute of every hour on Panasonic's Times Square Astrovision screen.

Born in London in 1961, Sussman grew up following her professor father throughout Europe, Asia, and the US. Her education was equally itinerant; she attended universities in Turkey, New Zealand, and the US before settling down in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Originally a solo installation artist and sculptor, Sussman turned to film and gathered a team of performers, choreographers, designers, and musicians to form the Rufus Corporation. The artist is represented by Roebling Hall in New York and Union Gallery in London, and she has exhibited in museums, galleries, and biennials globally.

Sussman garners worldwide recognition with films exploring everyday life under extraordinary circumstances. Turning viewers into voyeurs, 2004's 89 Seconds at Alcázar explores the unpainted moments of Diego Velázquez's 1656 masterpiece Las Meninas. Conjecturing that Velázquez captured a fleeting, 89-second moment in time, Sussman imagines King Philip IV's family shuffling, ruffling, and nudging up to the critical instant. The sensuous short made Sussman and her group the darlings of the 2004 Whitney Biennial. The Rape exhibits a similarly lush aesthetic, featuring alternating studies of sublime domesticity and slow-motion violence. Sussman disorients with a surreal narrative and startles with choruses of coughing and bouzoukis. A self-described filmmaker, Sussman makes digital work as entertaining as it is meditative and art-historical. (LM)