07.20.08
Posted in Cinema, Artniss, Cinema History, Experimental Film, 16mm Film at 5:15 pm by Spencer
The ground-breaking and highly influential avant-garde filmmaker, sculptor, painter, photographer, and collagist Bruce Conner died at his home in San Francisco on July 7, 2008, after a prolonged illness. He was 74, and is survived by Jean Conner, his wife of more than 50 years, and his son, Robert.
One of the last of the genuine Beat artists, Conner was born in 1933 in McPherson, Kansas, relocating to Wichita with his family when he was four. At the age of 8 he had an out-of-body experience, which led to a life-long interest in mysticism. As he matured, Conner became a painter and assemblage artist, hanging around with other local artists like Michael McClure (another Beat figure), who became a lifelong friend. By 1956, Conner’s work was being exhibited in New York City; in 1957 he moved to San Francisco, where he would remain for the rest of his life.
While a lauded and highly influential sculptor and visual artist, Conner is probably most widely known for his equally esteemed experimental films, most of which were compiled from “found footage” — taken from educational films, B-movies, government documentaries, ephemeral films such as newsreels and old commercials, and even in some instances soft-core porn. Conner’s films were made on 16mm until the mid-’90s, when video became more viable for independent artists.
Conner’s first film, A Movie (1958), was chosen by the Library of Congress in 1996 for preservation in the National Film Registry, reserved by law for works that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” That and many of his other films are regarded as classics of avant garde cinema: Cosmic Ray (1962), Ten Second Film (1965), Report (1967), Crossroads (1976), Mongoloid (1978), Mea Culpa (1981), America is Waiting (1982), and Television Assassination (1995) among them.
In his landmark history of experimental film, Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde 1943-1978, scholar P. Adams Sitney wrote:
…Conner is not naive in his vision of doom. Everything he shows us has the primary actuality of the newsreel or the secondary reality of the images of violence we encounter in popular entertainment. …Conner deliberately and carefully orchestrated the twists and changes of pace within his film[s]. He is a master of the ambivalent attitude; it is the strength of his art and the style of his life. …Conner’s films aspire to an apocalyptic vision by engendering in the viewer a state of extreme ambivalence.
(Side note: Canyon Cinema, the major avant-garde film distributer, used to offer a number of Conner’s 16mm films for rent. But judging by a visit to their web site just now, these have been pulled from circulation. Hopefully this is only a temporary situation, perhaps pending estate probate and/or further preservation efforts.)
Conner was always into adventurous music. He was instrumental in creating the legendary light shows for San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom during the psychedelic era, and a decade later he became a regularly-contributing photographer for Search & Destroy, the seminal punk magazine. (It’s said that he wore knee pads to help protect himself from knocks and bruises while shooting during shows.)
It is not surprising then that Conner was among the first experimental filmmakers to use the music of contemporary artists — Terry Riley, Devo, David Byrne, and Brian Eno among them. Mea Culpa and America is Waiting were set to music created by David Byrne and Brian Eno for their 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Both the album and Conner’s films were extremely influential in the ’80s — the LP inspired a whole generation of audio collage and sample-based music, and the films were an undeniable aesthetic source for the MTV music video. Ironically, Conner didn’t make another film for 13 years.
Writing in 2006 about their collaboration, David Byrne reflected:
In the course of recording this album Brian and I crossed paths with artist and filmmaker Bruce Connor, who lives in San Francisco. Bruce’s’ legendary “experimental” films are well known for their pioneering use of found footage, so it was natural that we approach him regarding the possibility of working together — which was more like suggesting he use some of the Bush of Ghosts tracks in a film or two, due to the similarities of our working methods. …His work was sampling before that word existed, as was this record. The films gain an additional level of depth due to the fact that you can often guess what the footage was originally used for, and so you see it as an artifact and as something entirely new, both at the same time.
In 1999, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis assembled a major exhibition, 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story Part II, which gathered 150 of Conner’s works in all media spanning 40 years. The exhibition toured to four cities in the United States through 2001. A hardbound catalog was also published.
At this writing, Bruce Conner: Mabuhay Gardens, a collection of 53 of his photographs of the late-’70s and early-’80s punk scene, is on view at the Berkeley Art Museum through August 3, 2008. Meanwhile, several of Conners’ watercolors are being shown at the Nordic Watercolor Museum (Nordiska Akvarellmuseet) in Skärhamn, Sweden as part of the Pacific Light: California Watercolor Refracted 1907-2007 exhibition, through September 7, 2008.
Conner’s film work has been important and influential to me personally, and I am saddened to learn of his passing. My heartfelt condolences and very best wishes go out to his family, friends, and colleagues.
Bruce Conner Filmography
- A Movie (1958)
- Cosmic Ray (1962)
- Vivian (1963)
- Ten Second Film (1965)
- A Class Picture of the CCAC Film Class of ‘65 Actually Taught by Bruce Conner in the Tradition of Lumière (1965)
- Easter Island Raga (1966)
- Breakaway (1966)
- Report (1967)
- The White Rose (1967)
- Looking for Mushrooms (1967)
- Antonia Christina Basilotta (1968)
- Permian Strata (1969)
- Marilyn Times Five (1973)
- Crossroads (1976)
- Valse Triste (1977)
- Take the 5:10 to Dreamland (1977)
- Mongoloid (1978)
- Mea Culpa (1981)
- America Is Waiting (1982)
- Television Assassination (1995)
- Looking for Mushrooms (long version, 1996)
- LUKE (1967-2006)
- EVE-RAY-FOREVER (three screen DVD projection) (2006)
- His Eye Is On the Sparrow (2007)
- Easter Morning (2008)
Related Links
- Bruce Conner CV (via Gallery Paule Anglim)
- San Francisco Chronicle obituary, by Kenneth Baker
- “Appreciation: Humor was Bruce Conner’s art” by Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle (July 11, 2008)
- “In Memoriam: Bruce Conner (1933-2008),” Berkeley Art Museum
- Los Angeles Times obituary, by Mary Rourke; plus a fine photo gallery
- New York Times obituary, by Ken Johnson
- “An Appraisal: An Artist of the Cutting-Room Floor” by Manohla Dargis, New York Times (July 12, 2008)
- Washington Post obituary
- “Interview with Bruce Conner Conducted by Paul Cummings in New York, New York, April 16, 1973,” Archives of American Art Oral History Interviews, Smithsonian Institution
- Selected works by Bruce Conner (via Gallery Paule Anglim)
- Bruce Conner tapestries (via Magnolia Editions) — limited edition large-scale tapestry reproductions of original collages, drawings, and photographic works.
- “Bruce Conner in the Cultural Breach” by Kristine McKenna, Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1990
- “Bruce Conner with John Yau” (interview), The Brooklyn Rail (Nov. 2004)
- Photos of Bruce Conner by Larry Keenan, ca. 1965
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01.01.08
Posted in Whatever, Natural Wonders, Artniss at 6:49 pm by Spencer
Genuine, un-Photoshop-ed photograph of the Dec. 31, 2007 sunset as taken somewhere in the Bay Area by my olde friende, Jen. May 2008 prove the old adage true: “Red sky at night, a sailor’s delight.” Blessings, peace, and smoothest sailings to all.
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12.09.07
Posted in Cinema, Events, Artniss, Experimental Film at 10:02 pm by Spencer
Coming up this weekend (Fri. Dec. 14 - Sun. Dec. 16), the Northwest Film Forum is hosting A Clockwork Reduction Live, an ambitious new conceptual multimedia project by Seattle School, the same folks that organized the amazing MOTEL event back in September. The full scoop — including the all-star cast — is below, and meanwhile you can get advance tickets via BrownPaperTickets.com.
A CLOCKWORK REDUCTION LIVE
A Conceptual Project By Seattle School
Northwest Film Forum
1515 12th Ave. (on Capitol Hill, between Pike and Pine)
Fri. Dec. 14 & Sat. Dec. 15 @ 8 PM - the main event
Sun. Dec. 16 @ 8 PM - screening of the finished work
FEATURING:
Virginia Bogert - Tootie Pie
Sue Corcoran - She’s a Dog
Daniel Gildark - Cthulhu
Kris Kristensen - Inheritance
Christian Palmer - Forcefields
Lynn Shelton - We Go Way Back
WITH:
Rob Millis - Climax Golden Twins
Jacob Stone - Punch Drunk Productions
Kris Moon - Fourthcity
AND:
Aaron Allshouse, JD Barton, Kyle Bliss, Danielle Gibeson, Dustin Kemp, Abby Klein, Caitlin Ngo, and more …
Six years before Stanley Kubrick’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, Andy Warhol adapted the Anthony Burgess novel for his classic, black and white Factory film, VINYL. [You can rent the original at Scarecrow, albeit only on PAL.] In homage to Warhol, Seattle School will transform the entire Northwest Film Forum building for a unique Factory-style recreation of the film. This grand, live happening restages the film in parts, with simultaneous live performance, filming, and screening in our two cinemas and lobby.
Northwest filmmakers Lynn Shelton, Daniel Gildark, Virginia Bogert, Sue Corcoran, Christian Palmer and Kris Kristensen will direct models cum actors in cinema 1. Their footage will be projected live in cinema 2, where the audience intervenes in the creative process and composers (including Rob Millis of Climax Golden Twins) perform an improvised score. In the lobby, VJs (including Jacob Stone of Opticlash and Kris Moon from the Decibel Festival) will merge and edit the video and audio feeds from both cinemas in real time, creating a live finished film projected onto a translucent screen.
The audience can move around freely between rooms throughout the evening, witnessing the different stages of the event’s unique filmmaking process. The event ends when the final new interpretation of VINYL is complete. In keeping with Seattle School tradition, everyone is invited to stay after for fresh waffles (and yes, there will be Cool Whip.)
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06.28.07
Posted in Whatever, Artniss, Funny Shit at 6:37 pm by Spencer
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05.10.07
Posted in Cinema, Events, Animation, Artniss, Experimental Film, Seattle Stuff at 9:18 pm by Spencer
Mugu Brainpan is a huge fan of animator Bruce Bickford, and you should be, too.
This Saturday, Seattle-ites will be treated to a rare, uh, treat when the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery down in Georgetown hosts a special screening of four recent short films by Mr. Bickford, including “the public debut of a recently completed untitled line animation.” If you’ve checked out the extras on the Monster Road DVD (Scarecrow has it for rent), then you know that Bruce’s line animation is even more mind-blowing than his clay stop motion…and that’s really saying something. It’s one of the only times I gave my TV a standing ovation.
As an added bonus, Seattle cartoonist Jim Woodring will host the evening, and the reclusive Mr. Bickford himself will be in attendance.
By way of teasers, here’s the current YouTube offerings of Bruce Bickford’s work.
Following is the full press release from the Fantagraphics blog. (Sorry the reference link takes so bloody long to load. For some reason you can’t link to an individual post but only the whole bloody month.)
Fantagraphics Bookstore Presents “The Idiosyncratic Cincema of Bruce Bickford” on Saturday, May 12
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is pleased to host a screening of animated shorts by Seattle-based artist Bruce Bickford on Saturday, May 12 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. This event, hosted by Bickford’s associate Jim Woodring, gives the public a rare opportunity to view new and recent works by the highly acclaimed, yet reclusive, filmmaker. Fantagraphics Bookstore is located at 1201 S. Vale St. at Airport Way S. in Seattle’s Georgetown arts community. The screening is free to the public of all ages.
Bruce Bickford’s obsessive clay and line animations are at once seductive and grotesque. The son of a Boeing engineer, Bickford began working in film as an adolescent, drawing on childhood insecurities and dreams to create a stunning body of work of singular vision. His work gained international prominence when featured in Frank Zappa’s 1979 concert documentary Baby Snakes. Bickford’s contribution served as a dynamic visualization of Zappa’s approach to composition-as-metamorphosis. Bickford is the subject of the award-winning feature length 2005 documentary Monster Road, which will be available on DVD at the event. He continues to create subversive films in seclusion in his south Seattle studio.
The program on May 12 will feature four short films, including the public debut of a recently completed untitled line animation, in addition to other recent works. Seattle cartoonist Jim Woodring will serve as host. Woodring’s art, currently on view at Fantagraphics Bookstore, shares Bickford’s meticulous and visionary approach to the creative process. The screening will be followed by comments from Bickford and a question and answer period with the audience…
Listing Information:
The Idiosyncratic Cinema of Bruce Bickford
Saturday, May 12, 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
1201 S. Vale St. (at Airport Way S.) Seattle
Admission Free. All Ages.
206.658.0110 www.fantagraphics.com
Hours: Daily 11:30 - 8:00 PM (Sundays until 5:00 PM)
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03.12.07
Posted in Music, What I'm Reading, Avant Experiwhosis, Artniss, History, Books at 9:57 pm by Spencer
As I only just posted about, Chicago’s Whitewalls Press published in the spring of 2006 a thin but essential volume entitled The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra’s Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets, compiled by John Corbett.
Following below is the amazing back-story, courtesy of the Chicago Reader and as written a year ago by Peter Margasak, in advance of what may well have been once-in-a-lifetime series of gallery exhibits, symposia, talks, concerts, and special events — alas all ended in mid-January this year. I just can’t believe I missed these events — this is what I get for not paying closer attention to my former hometown. I would have gladly flown there just to see this stuff (no offense intended to my friends there..though they certainly would understand). Dag blaggit.
Anyway, this article covers territory not addressed in Corbett’s introduction to the book, and provides proof positive that at least sometimes, the master finds the student — sometimes even from beyond the grave. Visit the title link below for some rare photographs. Also, see the end of this post for a link to purchase the exhibition catalog directly from the University of Chicago Press (among other delights).
Finally, note that Corbett expresses a desire to tour the exhibit. Seattle residents should begin pestering the Experience Music Project immediately and incessantly (see also EMP’s contact page) to pester-in-turn the good Mr. Corbett and convince him to bring it here!
Ra Materials
Hundreds of artifacts from Sun Ra’s Chicago years nearly wound up at the dump.
By Peter Margasak
Chicago Reader, September 29, 2006
ONE AUGUST DAY six years ago, John Corbett got a mass e-mail containing some disturbing news: a collection of artifacts related to the charismatic, radical jazz musician Sun Ra was in danger of landing on the trash heap.
A professional salvager — someone who gets paid to liquidate the contents of houses that are about to be sold or demolished — had uncovered the materials on the job and shown them to a friend who liked “spacey stuff. She immediately recognized that it was some stuff that had to do with Sun Ra,” Corbett says, and began e-mailing around to see if anyone might want to buy it.
Corbett, a music critic, co-owner of the Wicker Park gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey, and a teacher at the School of the Art Institute, is a Sun Ra fanatic, but he nearly deleted the e-mail after he read it — he figured that somebody else would save the stash if it wasn’t already gone. But instead he decided to meet with the sender, a former teacher at the School of the Art Institute who Corbett says wishes to remain anonymous. She told him the Sun Ra archive was still there.
The house being cleared out, it turned out, had belonged to Alton Abraham, Sun Ra’s business manager. Abraham had died a year earlier and the house was being sold by his ex-wife, Catherine Baymon. “By the time we got down there it was just three days before the house changed hands,” says Corbett. Baymon had already sorted through the materials and set aside some items she wished to keep. She’d also already disposed of some items that Corbett now thinks may have had historical value. “A lot of great stuff got thrown away before we were there,” he says. “And while we were there a whole wardrobe’s worth of clothes, which probably included a lot of the early costumes, was thrown away.”
But what remained was a treasure trove of Sun Ra ephemera: album art, recordings, writings, ledgers, and scraps of paper like ticket stubs and gig flyers. It’s this material that forms the bulk of an astonishing exhibit that opens Sunday [Oct. 1, 2006] at the Hyde Park Art Center, “Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68.”
It wasn’t until Sun Ra and his band, the Arkestra, moved from Chicago to New York in 1961 that the world took notice of the bandleader, pianist, and philosopher. “Pathways” sheds new light on his lesser-known early years. Sun Ra, who died in 1993, spent years crafting an outsize persona, proclaiming himself an Afro-futurist visionary from Saturn who believed that, because planet earth was doomed, “space is the place.” His music was a singular mix of big-band arrangements influenced by Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and Tad Dameron, free-jazz improvisation, hard-bop rhythms, experiments with electronic keyboards, and African and Latin grooves; his live shows were vaudevillian affairs featuring dancers, fire-eaters, and colorful costumes. But though he was a very active performer in Chicago during the late 50s, he was also an obscure one, playing mainly for small black audiences.
Corbett bought the lot from the salvager (he declines to say how much he paid), and for the past six years he and his wife, Terri Kapsalis, along with a crew of volunteers and advisers, have painstakingly sorted through his purchase, which filled two 10-by-12-foot storage spaces. “You had little eureka moments that were mind-boggling,” Corbett says. “I had the great joy of looking through a box and finding a manila envelope that said ‘one of everything,’ and it contained a huge collection of original manuscripts for Sun Ra’s broadsheets and leaflets that he made in the 50s.” Hundreds of hours of audiotape — including studio masters, readings, rehearsals, and interviews — are now housed in the Creative Audio Archive at the Andersonville nonprofit Experimental Sound Studio. They’re being transferred to digital formats and annotated; once that process is completed, says Corbett, the tapes will be available to scholars and a full list of their contents will be placed online.
Some of that material has already made its way to the public. Corbett has issued two CDs of previously unreleased music, 2002’s Music From Tomorrow’s World and 2003’s Spaceship Lullaby, on his Unheard Music Series label. And in August [2006] local publisher WhiteWalls released The Wisdom of Sun Ra, a fascinating collection of his broadsheets, which combined black nationalist philosophy, biblical allusions, and elaborate — if fantastical and absurd — etymological theories. (”Negroes belong to the race of Mu,” he wrote in one broadsheet. “Another way to spell Mu is moo. Moo means low. That’s the cow’s word. Negroes are Mr. Moo.”)
From the moment he discovered the material, Corbett wanted to keep it together as a singular archive of Sun Ra’s Chicago years, and he hopes eventually to find an institutional home for it. “It only articulates a story if it’s together,” he says. “Little bits and pieces of it are collectorfetish ephemera, but when it’s all together you start to see this interesting phenomenon . . . which is the way that Ra sort of fit into a southside Afro-futurist community of thinkers, designers, and musicians who were all pondering the future, independent businesses, and separatism.”
Corbett first learned about the existence of Sun Ra’s Chicago writings when he interviewed Abraham in 1993 for his ‘94 book, Extended Play [Duke Univ. Press]. But until he came across this material, there was little documentation of Sun Ra’s life in the 50s in the public realm — the sole example of his writings from this period was a broadsheet he gave to John Coltrane. “[The archive] sheds some light and fills in a lot of details,” says Yale professor John Szwed, author of the definitive Sun Ra biography, 1997’s Space Is the Place. “It puts him in the middle of what was being discussed in the parks those days, where there was a real tradition of political and theological discussion.”
The show at the Hyde Park Art Center, which was curated by Corbett, Kapsalis, and WhiteWalls editor Anthony Elms, has multiple parts. “Pathways to Unknown Worlds” features more than 60 pieces of art on the walls and numerous display cases containing Sun Ra-related arcana, such as notebooks and homemade instruments; two multimedia rooms will present a pair of Sun Ra documentaries, a slide show of photos, and two hours of his music, most of it previously unreleased. Elms and Northwestern University art history professor Huey Copeland have organized a second exhibit that opens October 15 [2006], “Interstellar Low Ways,” which collects work by artists influenced by Sun Ra, including legendary Parliament-Funkadelic album artist Pedro Bell, composer Charlemagne Palestine, local cartoonist Plastic Crimewave, and members of the Destroy All Monsters art and music collective. Both exhibits run through January 14, 2007.
In addition, Corbett has organized a two-day symposium on November 11 and 12 [2006] called “Traveling the Spaceways,” where Szwed and other Sun Ra scholars will join artists and art historians to discuss his work. Actress Cheryl Lynn Bruce will read from his writings, and various musicians, including Nicole Mitchell, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Thurston Moore, and Ken Vandermark, will play music by and inspired by Sun Ra. Lastly, on December 3 the Chicago Cultural Center will host a discussion and performance featuring original members of the Arkestra and other associates.
Though nothing has been finalized, Corbett says he plans to tour “Pathways to Unknown Worlds” around the country and Europe as he begins to search for a permanent home for the archive. But for now he’s giddy about finally revealing what he’s been processing for six years. “Finding this stuff was like a lightning bolt hitting me,” he says. “It’s just about the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. It’s been a thrill, and I wanted to share it with as many people as I could.”
Related Links:
- Exhibition catalog: Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn and Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68. Anthony Elms, John Corbett, and Terri Kapsalis, editors. Contributions by Glenn Ligon, Adam Abraham and Camille Norment. Distributed for WhiteWalls. 128 p., 100 color plates. 6-1/2 x 9-1/2. $25.
- Review of the exhibition catalog from Jazz Times by Scott Verrastro, Mar. 8, 2007.
- “Ra Rah-Rah” by Sarah Dahnke (New City, Oct. 17, 2006) — review of the exhibit, “Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68.”
- Chicago Reader: Post No Bills blog posts related to Sun Ra.
- Sun Ra interviewed by John Sinclair, 1966. Reprinted in Blastitude #13 (Aug. 2002); originally published in The Detroit Warren/Forest Sun.
- Sun Ra: The Immeasurable Equation. The Collected Poetry and Prose. (Hartmut Geerken, ed. Waitawhile [Germany], 2005, 544 pages.)
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02.25.07
Posted in What I'm Reading, Artniss, Science, Books at 2:16 pm by Spencer
My buddy Eric Leonardson hipped me to these two wonderful posts at the breathtakingly great BibliOdyssey blog, which include a number of images of art by the great 17th century hermetic artist, scholar and scientist, Robert Fludd.
I’ve been a great fan of Fludd’s art since I first came across one of his most famous pieces, “The Mystery of the Human Head,” in a Dover edition of Grillot de Givry’s Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy (originally Le Musée des sorciers, mages et alchemists, 1929). So much so that in the decades since I’ve used that particular piece for fliers, posters, and even as a company logo. And while perhaps I’ve not been looking in the right places, reproductions of Fludd’s work seem to be rare indeed.
Fortunately for me (and for you), the BibliOdyssey post includes a link to greyscale reproductions of Fludd’s entire magnum opus, Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minores Metaphysica, Physica Atque Technica Historia, available for download as numerous zip files or a single mammoth 238mb PDF. These were scanned by Bill Heidrick from micofilm in the Bancroft collection at UC Berkeley, which “may be the only complete modern version available.”
Large cropped “color” repros (albeit edited) of De Naturae Simia, one of the books comprising the Utriusque Cosmi Majoris…, are available online from the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah — albeit wrapped in iframes. Uncropped (but much smaller) photo repros of the same work are also online via the ECHO Project of the Max Planck Society in Berlin. That site offers some Ajax-y browsing tools of marginal utility, but my understanding is that online collection is unedited.
The BibliOdyssey posts also offer links to numerous worthwhile articles about Fludd and his work, as well as items of related interest.
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06.01.06
Posted in Artniss, Science at 10:26 pm by Spencer
Ice Lens Photography by Matthew Wheeler
Matthew Wheeler took his first picture through an ice lens in response to a challenge by Scientific American and CBC calling on listeners to light a fire with a lens made entirely of ice.
Too easy by far - Matthew took it one step farther and started photographing the natural beauty of his surroundings through the ice lenses he made.
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