The first in a two-part series prepared for UnionDocs juxtaposing select contemporary video pieces (Seoungho Cho, Dillon Dewaters) with structurally-oriented 16mm and 8mm.
The films will serve (in part) as a commentary on (and permutations of) Lars Van Trier’s recent film, with the films shown tonight releasing an idea about the relation between trauma, informe, and the anamorphic. The anamorphic as a phenomenon of distortion (as an extension of a recent show at 16Beaver about psychedelic/expressionistic anamorphosis) and the use of luminosity, suspended spaces, and formless color are seen through the lens of structural depictions of space-time, where formally rigorous editing schemes convey an idea about the collapse of trauma, gesture, and desire into the singularity of nature.
Works to be shown tonight include Takashi Ito’s moebial Spacy (1981), Standish Lawder’s Corridor (1970), Cho’s mimetic meditation on teeming pond life Show Your Tongue (2005), and Lawrence Weiner’s structural/conceptual art-porn A Bit of Matter and a Little Bit More (1976), shot in what appears to be night vision and staged in New York at The Kitchen by Weiner.
Readings for the series will include Roberto Harari’s How James Joyce Made His Name (on Joyce, the Late Lacan, and the idea of singularity), Brian Aldiss’ Joycean psychedelic epic Barefoot in the Head, Elfriede Jelinek, and Cady Noland, On the Metalanguage of Evil. Photocopies of texts will be made available at the screening.
Brian McCarthy is a curator and videomaker living and working in Brooklyn. He has worked for Anthology Film Archives, the Filmmaker’s Coop, and EAI. He currently programs a series of experimental film and video on the politics of abstraction for the 16Beaver Group in the financial district.
This series is presented with 16Beaver, and coincides with an ongoing series there curated by Brian McCarthy.
Takashi Ito Spacy10 minutes, 16mm transfer
Kurt Kren Asyl (asylum) 9 minutes, 16mm
Leslie Thornton Jennifer Where Are You? 10 minutes, 16 mm
Lawrence Weiner A Bit of Matter and a Little Bit More 23 minutes, video
David Baker A Secret Location 5 minutes, video
Seoungho Cho Show Your Tongue 6 minutes, video
Dillon Dewaters Road 10 minutes, video
Frans Zwartjes Living 15 minutes, 16mm transfer
Storm de Hirsch Divinations 6 minutes, 16mm
Standish Lawder Corridor 23 minutes, 16mm
Chick Strand Waterfall 3 minutes, 16mm
Peter Kubelka Arnulf Rainer 6 minutes, 16mm
Dani Leventhal 54,36,18 16 minutes, video
Night II (coming up in February):
Ernie Ehr Serene Velocity 23 minutes, 16 mm
Greg Sharits Transfer 18 minutes, 8mm
John Lennon, Yoko Ono Erection 23 minutes, 16mm
Martin Arnold Passage a L’acte 12 minutes, 16mm
Pipilotti Rist Pickelporno 12 minutes, video (playing during discussion)
Seoungho Cho Salt Creek 16 minutes, video
Shalom Gorewitz I Want You 8 minutes, video
Takahiko Iimura Ai! Love 10 minutes, 16mm
