EVE-RAY-FOREVER

1965/2006, three-channel video installation, b&w/silent, 3:42min./4:11min./3:45min. looped

"EVE-RAY-FOREVER is a silent, three-screen expanded version of COSMIC RAY (1961). Originally exhibited as an 8mm Technicolor looped installation at the Rose Art Museum in 1965, it was digitally restored in 2006 by Conner in close collaboration with his editor, Michelle Silva. By combining three channels of footage of slightly different lengths, EVE-RAY-FOREVER generates an ever-changing, chance-based juxtaposition of images that flash on the screen with dizzying speed. The film’s name reflects the tripartite structure of the work, with “Eve” referring to the nude woman who appears on the far left channel, “Ray” to Ray Charles, the inspiration for COSMIC RAY, and “Forever” signifying its looped playback, which allows the work to play and mutate continuously. EVE-RAY-FOREVER provided the foundation for Conner and Silva’s masterful multi-channel digital expansion of COSMIC RAY, THREE SCREEN RAY (2006), which utilizes every film frame used in the original 1965 installation."

– Johanna Gosse, Art Historian

 

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THE BOSTON GLOBE | Bruce Conner’s flickering spirit

“EVE-RAY-FOREVER’’ is a montage of flickering black and white film that’s played on a loop. More accurately, it’s three such films playing side by side.

Although the work, which is dated 1965/2006, has a complicated history, it’s essentially very simple. And it’s diabolically effective. It’s one of those rare cases in art of a bold innovation that prefigures a whole genre (the multiscreen video installation) and, rather than looking like a primitive precursor, actually looks sharper and more sophisticated than most of what came in its wake. (As I fell under its spell, I thought of the novelist Angela Carter’s little aphorism: “I like anything that flickers.’’)