three screen ray

e-flux | BRUCE CONNER: FOREVER AND ALWAYS

The Speed Art Museum presents BRUCE CONNER: FOREVER AND EVER, an exhibition of films and prints by Bruce Conner (1933–2008), an artist known for his innovations in film, assemblage, drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, and collage. Co-curated by Miranda Lash, Curator of Contemporary Art, and Dean Otto, Curator of Film, BRUCE CONNER: FOREVER AND EVER is the Speed’s first exhibition collaboration between its Contemporary Art and Film departments.

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Insider Louisville | The Speed Art Museum welcomes exhibition BRUCE CONNER: FOREVER AND EVER

As 2017 winds down to a close, the Speed Art Museum will send the year out in style with its newest exhibition, BRUCE CONNER: FOREVER AND EVER. The exhibition — co-curated by the Speed’s curators of contemporary art and film, Miranda Lash and Dean Otto, respectively — covers the works of Bruce Conner, the late artist from McPherson, Kansas, who worked in photography, sculpture, printmaking, as well as film, and was known as the “father of the music video.” It marks the first collaboration between the Museum’s contemporary art and film departments.

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MOCAtv | Intro / THREE SCREEN RAY

It's been said that MTV owes Bruce Conner a paycheck. Decades before music videos pervaded popular culture, the experimental filmmaker pioneered techniques of non-narrative montage and high-speed editing by cutting thousands of images to a pop music soundtrack. THREE SCREEN RAY (2006) is a reimagined and expanded version of COSMIC RAY (1961), a literal cinematic slot machine where three reels of images meet and diverge and meet again.

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KQED | Long Play: Bruce Conner and the Singles Collection

Bruce Conner, along with the Legion of Decency, figured out pretty early on that rock 'n' roll and sex were joined at the, well, hip. (It's a youth thing, don't you know.) The San Francisco artist and filmmaker, who died in 2008, was also among the first to pioneer a new way of thinking about images, namely that appropriating footage shot for one purpose -- educational films, cartoons, commercials, propaganda films -- and presenting it in another context offered all sorts of shocking and entertaining possibilities.

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ART IN AMERICA | Video Stars at Art Basel

The 1979 New Wave song "Video Killed the Radio Star" kept running through my head as I made my way around the cavernous maze that is Art Basel 41's intermingled Art Unlimited and Art Statements sections. Unlike last year, when outsize and bombastic sculptures appeared to take Art Unlimited at its name, and minimal, formalist installations seemed to predominate the more discreetly coined Art Statements, this year was a star turn for the filmic medium in every stripe. Experimental works alternately exuberant and poetic (Rosa Barba, Iñaki Bonillas, Bruce Conner,) were shown alongside more slickly high-budget fare (Doug Aitken, SUPERFLEX, Claire Hooper), while less classifiable works—including the ever-absurdist and sadistic fabulations of Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys—popped up with alacrity.

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