Looking at Music

I co-organized this screening series with Associate Curator Barbara London in conjunction with her exhibition Looking at Music. This is the first part of several upcoming screenings during the Fall at MoMA. During September and November the Arthur Russell documentary directed by Matt Wolf and a documentary about the Black Mountain College of Art will be screened, among others.

MoMA, August 18–December 31, 2008

Music was at the forefront of interdisciplinary experimentation in the 1960s, when the mixing of media really took off, and musicians led the way in developing new working methods. This screening series, presented in conjunction with a series of early media and related drawings, prints, and photographs in the Media Gallery, examines the radical role of music in the early development of media art, and includes documentary and experimental films, and music videos.

9 Evenings: Theater and Engineering
Growing interest in the new technologies generated by the rapid developments of the early 1960s led several artists to collaborate with Billy Klüver and his fellow engineers at Bell Laboratories. In late 1965 Klüver and Robert Rauschenberg formed Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a project that provided artists, dancers, and composers with access to new technology and presented the resulting works to a wider audience. Ten invited artists—John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Öyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor, and Robert Whitman—worked for ten months in collaboration with thirty Bell Laboratories engineers and scientists to develop custom technical equipment. The new equipment was then featured in a series of performances presented in October 1966 at New York City's 69th Regiment Armory. This program presents two of the live events, which were faithfully reconstructed through original documentary film and sound materials. Reconstructions of the remaining seven performances will be shown in subsequent months.
Variations VII. 1969. USA. Directed by John Cage. 41 min.
Bandoneon! 1969. USA. Directed by David Tudor. 41.
Monday, August 18, 2008, 6:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, 8:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2

Wavelength. 1967. USA. Directed by Michael Snow. Snow's groundbreaking structural film consists of a single, forty-five-minute-long tracking shot through the length of a room, accompanied by slowly-increasing sine tones. As the camera moves forward, one registers the passing of several nights and days. (When carefully studied, the movement is revealed to be individual passages edited together.) The frame ultimately closes upon the far side of the room, where a photograph on the wall shows the unsettled surface of the sea. 45 min.
Crossroads. 1976. USA. Directed by Bruce Conner. Music by Patrick Gleeson, Terry Riley. Shown in slow motion from twenty-seven different angles and accompanied by Riley's electric organ score, a 1945 atomic-bomb explosion at Bikini Atoll attains a haunting beauty. 36 min.
Monday, August 18, 2008, 8:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2

Scorpio Rising. 1963. USA. Directed by Kenneth Anger. A precursor of the music video, this short documentary-style feature contains no dialogue, and rapidly intercuts images against a score of slyly selected pop tunes. Decried as too explicit upon its release, Scorpio Rising looks into the homoerotic world of bikers, focusing on leather-wearing bad boy Scorpio (Bruce Byron). A controversial hit on the underground circuit, the film went on to influence a generation of popular filmmakers. 30 min.
Flaming Creatures. 1963. USA. Directed by Jack Smith. Sound by Tony Conrad. Described by the artist as "a comedy set in a haunted music studio," this carnal, polysexual explosion of the filmic terrain caused an uproar upon its release. The film is lauded by many as the most radical and influential film experiment to emerge from the 1960s. Distributed by Canyon Cinema. 43 min.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, 6:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2

Art and Music in Popular Culture
Dominatrix, "The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight". 1984. USA. Directed and produced by Beth B. Choreographed by Barbara Allen. Streetwise Records. One of the great electronic dance numbers of the 1980s. Approx. 4 min.
The Cars, "Hello Again". 1984. USA. Directed by Andy Warhol, Don Munro. Produced by Vincent Fremont for Andy Warhol Studio. Elektra Records. Warhol also appears in this music video as a bartender. 5 min.
Toni Basil, "Over My Head". 1984. USA. Directed, choreographed, and produced by Toni Basil. Chrysalis Records. 4 min.
Laurie Anderson, "Sharkey's Day". 1984. USA. Directed and produced by Laurie Anderson. Warner Brothers Records. Video and music produced by multimedia artist Anderson, with art direction by Perry Hoberman and video photography by Dean Winkler. Approx. 5 min.
Sonic Youth, "Tunic (Song for Karen)". 1990. USA. Directed by Tony Oursler. The song and its video, directed by artist Tony Oursler, are about singer Karen Carpenter and her anorexia. Approx. 7 min.
NJS. 2001–02. USA. Directed by Seth Price. NJS Map uses animated diagrams to lay out the historical development of one period in pop music, the short-lived but influential genre known as "New Jack Swing." Approx. 3 min.
Ugly Yelp. 2000. USA. Directed by Olaf Breuning. Excitable youths are filmed acting out sequences from various horror movies on a jittery hand-held camera; as a Death death Metal metal soundtrack urges them on. 5 min.
A Little Thought. 2000. USA. Directed by Rodney Graham. 4 min.
File Under Sacred Music. 2003. USA. Directed by Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard. File Under Sacred Music is a "remake" of an infamous video documenting a 1978 performance by The Cramps for the patients at California's Napa Mental Institute. 5 min.
Hip Hop Guangzhou. 2003. China. Directed by Cao Fei. Workers are lured away from their daily chores and activities by the captivating rhythms of American-style hip hop. 3 min.
You Are My Sister. 2005. USA. Directed by Charles Atlas. Atlas's video interpretation of a song by Antony and the Johnsons. Approx. 4 min.
Oh No, Hey, It Had No Feelings, Beat and Perv. 1999. USA. Directed by Aida Ruilova. The artist creates short video loops out of discrete sounds—a breath, the screeching sound of a vinyl record being scratched, a muttered phrase. 7 min.
Apple GarageBand Auto Tune Demonstration. 2007. USA. Directed by Cory Arcangel. Arcangel renders Jimmy Hendrix's infamous Woodstock performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" unrecognizable using Apple's off-the-shelf pitch-correction software. 3 min. Program Approx. 59 min.
Thursday, August 21, 2008, 6:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2

Semina by Wallace Berman. Aleph by Berman is screening at MoMA as part of Looking a Music.

Eight Short Films
Aleph. 1958–76. USA. Directed by Wallace Berman. Berman uses Hebrew letters to frame a hypnotic, rapid-fire montage that captures the go-go energy of the 1960s. Aleph includes stills of collages (created using a Verifax machine, a precursor to the photocopier) depicting a handheld radio that seems to broadcast signs, symbols, and diverse mass-media images. Infinitely shuffled, these images allow the viewer to construct his or her own set of interpretations. The transistor radio, the most ubiquitous portable form of mass communication in the 1960s, exemplifies the democratic potential of electronic culture and serves as a metaphor for Jewish mysticism. Distributed by Canyon Cinema. 10 min.
Scotch Tape. 1959–62. USA. Directed by Jack Smith. 16mm Kodachrome footage shot on the rubble-strewn site of the future Lincoln Center. The title arises from a piece of scotch tape that had become wedged in the camera gate. Distributed by Canyon Cinema. 3 min.
Stockhausen's Originale Doubletakes. 1964–94. USA. Directed by Peter Moore. The film documents the U.S. premiere of Originale, a happening by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, at the second annual Avant Garde Festival of New York. Performers included Nam June Paik, Charlotte Moorman, Jackson Mac Low, and Allen Ginsberg, among others. Distributed by EAI. 30 min.
Digital Experiment at Bell Labs. 1966. USA. Directed by Nam June Paik. Paik created this starkly minimal experiment in digital imaging using Bell Labs' pioneering research facilities; in the film, numbers and shifting dots appear on a black background. Distributed by EAI. 4 min.
Straight and Narrow. 1970. USA. Directed by Beverly and Tony Conrad. A stroboscopic film of unusual intensity by the makers of the classic strobe film, The Flicker. Although it is printed on black and white film, the hypnotic pacing of the images will cause most viewers to experience a programmed gamut of hallucinatory color effects. Through the intermediary of rhythm, the maximal impact is drawn from the simplest of images: straight horizontal and vertical lines. Distributed by LUX, London. 10 min.
Violin Power. 1970–78. USA. Directed by Steina. The artist is first seen in footage from the early 1970s, playing the violin and singing along to The Beatles' "Let It Be." As succeeding segments trace a chronological progression, Steina experiments with layers of imagery and time. Connected to various imaging devices, the violin becomes an image-generating tool, creating abstract visual transpositions of sound and vibration. This unconventional self-portrait is a study of the relationship between music and electronic image. 10 min.
Migration. 1976. USA. Directed by Bill Viola. Viola describes this film as "a slow, continuous journey through changes in scale, punctuated by the sounding of a gong." 7 min.
Winter Wind. 2004. USA. Directed by Andrew Deustch. An electro-acoustic sound composition. 7 min. Program 81 min.
Thursday, August 21, 2008, 8:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2