WEEK FIVE: FLUXUS 1--The Essential Questions of LIfe

Presently immersing ourselves in learning about Fluxus: events, scores, films, sound, performance, poetry, texts, acts, happenings, ephemera, life !
An excellent introduction to key Fluxus concepts can be found in this text FLUXUS: The Essential Questions of Life produced by NYU's Grey Art Gallery from a recent exhibition , 2011.

We watched Jonas Mekas' film Zefiro Torna, or , scenes from the life of George Maciunas (1992).
 If you like you can revisit it on youtube.

And re-created Alison Knowles Nivea Cream Piece, and Nam Jun Paik's Zen for Film.

For your listening pleasure here are excerpts from Tellus cassette magazine Fluxus edition

+reading: selections form Allan Kaprow's Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life

WEEK FOUR: PAUL SHARITS

This week we investigated the works --films, installations, sketches, scores and influences--of artist Paul Sharits and recreated a 2-projector version of his film installation Shutter Interface (1975).  The piece is actually meant of 4 projectors as you can see below in his sketch for same, and was just recently mounted at the Greene Naftali Gallery in New York.

Known as a structural filmmaker, Sharits also did some early works within the Fluxus Group ,combining film and text with his trademark biofeedback flicker techniques, such as his 5 second witty toilet paper event film Unrolling Event (1965), and his locational film  Epileptic Seizure Comparison (1976) , described here by Sharits himself:   "Seizure Comparison is an attempt to orchestrate sound and light rhythms in an intimate and proportional space, an ongoing location wherein non-epileptic persons may begin to experience, under 'controlled conditions'É the majestic potentials of convulsive seizure."

read: interview with Paul Sharits, Film Culture 65-66 (1978), 

excerpts   HERE  and   HERE

I almost forgot! Hollis Frampton's   1968 "A Lecture",  performed by yrs truly. 

pdf available here

WEEK THREE: THE BODY, COLOR

This weeks student presentations were on the artists Carolee Schneeman and Barbara Rubin and in the experiential discourse they explored in their artworks on the body, sexuality and gender. 
Amber engaged our class with a re-enactment of Rubin's quiz on sexuality performed with Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground at a psychiatric conference in New York, 1966. 

We were preparing to restage Rubin's double projection performance for two 16mm films, colored gels and radio, Christmas on Earth (1963)   called "the ultimate study on the celebratory and erotic nature of free love", made when she was only 17 yrs old. The title of her work, formerly called "Cocks and Cunts" is taken from Arthur Rimbauds poem  Morning from his book of poems A Season in Hell (1873).

We practiced working in the studio with our materials and machines,  and  spent some time looking at Bauhaus artist Josef Albers work Homage to the Square, a study begun in 1949 of 100's of paintings systematically exploring chromatic relationships. Then we attempted to communicate with each other via colored gels performed live through the auspices of Rubin's outrageous film.

reading: Barbara Rubin: The Vanished Prodigy, from Art in America

resource: on Josef Albers Color Theory, courtesy brown.edu


We also delved ever so  briefly into the life and works of the enormously significant and influential  artist Jack Smith, scratching merely the surface of his oeuvre for general context of art-making process, materials, and the exotic  fantasy of life embodied within and without. 
We watched excerpts from Mary Jordans documentary Jack Smith and The Destruction of Atlantis.


OUR CLASS PERFORMING CHRISTMAS ON EARTH:

WEEK TWO: Counterculture and LIGHTSHOWS

exploding plastic inevitable

USCO

joshua light show work station

This week we researched different practitioners of 60's projected liquid lightshows before doing our own:

 Single Wing Turquoise Bird

The Brotherhood of Light 

The Joshua Light Show

USCO

and of course Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable, with The Velvet Underground and Nico--

watch Ronald Namath's  film  HERE on Ubuweb

We also watched M.Henry Jone at work restaging Harry Smith's expanded Heaven and Earth Magic at Anthology Film Archives a few years back 

M Henry Jones preparing for Harry Smith performance

Ultimately we created our very own in-class live improvised light show utilizing  overhead prjectors, slide projectors, 16mm projectors, various prism and mirrors, gels and oil, alcohol and dyes, and alternated soundtracks between Terry Riley's compositions  PoppyNOGood and In C.  Play while you look at the blog!