Mosaik im Vertrauen/Recreation /A Movie/Schwechater/Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps /The Cut-Ups
During the mid-to-late 1950s, young artists in Europe and the USA separately began to think of filmmaking as a fully autonomous art practice. They examined the material core of the medium while mocking the media industry at large.
Peter Kubelka turned his original, quasi-neorealist story idea on its head (including, for instance, newsreel footage of a car race – and crash – in Le Mans). Robert Breer, a young American painter in Paris, also fell in love with collisions – in his case, a barrage of images from consumer culture paired with a neo-dadaist text by Noël Burch. For Breer, this marked a dynamic step: “Painting was fossilized action, whereas film was real action; real kinesis. … Film was change.” In 1958, at the height of the Beat era, San Francisco artist Bruce Conner brought his assemblage technique into the film medium. So he made A Movie, constructed solely from stock footage. Kubelka also renounced the camera (along with the agency that commissioned him to shoot a commercial for ‘Schwechater beer’). The businessmen happily watched as their actors were taken in by the camera only to be spat out much later from the editing table as pure flashes of colour and rhythm. The following year, Guy Debord shot his “notes on the birth of situationism”. The first subtitle reads, “Paris 1952”, but his attack is directed at the Nouvelle Vague of 1959. Paris is also the place where William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Anthony Balch begin their collaboration in 1959/60. The Cut-Ups echoes both the cries of The Naked Lunch and those of Debord: “The cinema, too, must be destroyed.”
Mosaik im Vertrauen
Peter Kubelka, 1955, 35 mm, b/w, with colour sequences
Recreation
Robert Breer, 1956, 16 mm, colour
A Movie
Bruce Conner, 1958, 16 mm, b/w, no dialogues
Schwechater
Peter Kubelka, 1958, 35 mm, colour, no dialogues
Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps
Guy Debord, 1959, 35 mm, b/w, English St
The Cut-Ups
William Burroughs/Anthony Balch/Brion Gysin, 1961-66, 16 mm, b/w
Peter Kubelka turned his original, quasi-neorealist story idea on its head (including, for instance, newsreel footage of a car race – and crash – in Le Mans). Robert Breer, a young American painter in Paris, also fell in love with collisions – in his case, a barrage of images from consumer culture paired with a neo-dadaist text by Noël Burch. For Breer, this marked a dynamic step: “Painting was fossilized action, whereas film was real action; real kinesis. … Film was change.” In 1958, at the height of the Beat era, San Francisco artist Bruce Conner brought his assemblage technique into the film medium. So he made A Movie, constructed solely from stock footage. Kubelka also renounced the camera (along with the agency that commissioned him to shoot a commercial for ‘Schwechater beer’). The businessmen happily watched as their actors were taken in by the camera only to be spat out much later from the editing table as pure flashes of colour and rhythm. The following year, Guy Debord shot his “notes on the birth of situationism”. The first subtitle reads, “Paris 1952”, but his attack is directed at the Nouvelle Vague of 1959. Paris is also the place where William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Anthony Balch begin their collaboration in 1959/60. The Cut-Ups echoes both the cries of The Naked Lunch and those of Debord: “The cinema, too, must be destroyed.”
Mosaik im Vertrauen
Peter Kubelka, 1955, 35 mm, b/w, with colour sequences
Recreation
Robert Breer, 1956, 16 mm, colour
A Movie
Bruce Conner, 1958, 16 mm, b/w, no dialogues
Schwechater
Peter Kubelka, 1958, 35 mm, colour, no dialogues
Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps
Guy Debord, 1959, 35 mm, b/w, English St
The Cut-Ups
William Burroughs/Anthony Balch/Brion Gysin, 1961-66, 16 mm, b/w
