Tony Conrad, 1983. Photo by Joe Gibbons.Tony Conrad, who passed away on April 9 aged 76, was a vital figure in the fields of both filmmaking and music. His work in each is often characterized by its visceral power, its clear-eyed critique of Western art traditions, its interest in social questions and relations of control, its technical virtuosity and wit.Conrad was an indisputable innovator. His film works, beginning with The Flicker (1966) and continuing through, the Yellow Movies (1973), Film Feedback (1974), the ‘cooked film’ and ‘pickled film’ series, and many others, pushing the medium to its inner and outer limits: exploring the potential of long durations, stroboscopic effects, the physical properties of celluloid, the relation of filmmaker to spectator, the relation of film to other arts and to history. Conrad also created a vast number of video works, reflecting the same incisive energy. Too seldom referred to in contemporary writing about experimental film,...
- 4/19/2016
- by Yusef Sayed
- MUBI
The crows knew it from Day One: Berlin 2011 would be a—slightly—happier experience. Normally, when night began to fall, the crows descended upon the frost-bleak trees around Potsdamer Platz and cawcawed for hours, filling the silence of bad cinema, crushed hopes and now-for-real lost illusions with their woe-cum sorrowful sounding songs. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. The trees were black for birds. Every evening, starting around 5pm or 6pm, reliably—you could set your watch to them (if you take things easy, that is...). Yet, this time around, the crows were nowhere to be seen. Maybe it's true what a friend of TO1..., comrade Möller suggested: It looks as if the crows were trying to make Berlin their permanent home, become true city slickers, which necessitates certain changes of behavior; rings scientifically solid. Still, we couldn't shake off the feeling that they somehow sensed a thing or two,...
- 8/2/2011
- MUBI
To follow up on the ongoing presentation of Films by Peter Tscherkassy, Mubi and Index are teaming up once again to open up another showcase of experimental cinema, this one focusing on Lisl Ponger (site). "A visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker, Ponger is equally at home at Documenta (she participated in 2002) and at film festivals," wrote Brigitte Huck for Artforum in 2007. "Acting (often in the same work) as director, set designer, performer, and archivist, she investigates the interfaces between art and science, between sociology, art history, and political activism, moving obliquely through these disciplines to create compositions of explosive power and precise observation."
In Passages (1996), Ponger "creates an imaginary map of the 20th century on which the stories of emigration are engraved like well-worn tracks of occidental memory," writes Christa Blümlinger. More from Bert Rebhandl in frieze. In Déjà Vu (1999), Ponger examines the notion of the "expelled and transformed 'foreigner.
In Passages (1996), Ponger "creates an imaginary map of the 20th century on which the stories of emigration are engraved like well-worn tracks of occidental memory," writes Christa Blümlinger. More from Bert Rebhandl in frieze. In Déjà Vu (1999), Ponger examines the notion of the "expelled and transformed 'foreigner.
- 4/19/2011
- MUBI
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