Conner, Shaw, Pettibon, and Wojnarowicz burrow into moments in America’s recent past when the forces of darkness seemed ascendant. Conner’s reflections on the allure of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War, Shaw’s fascination with religious sects that resist the pull of modernity, Pettibon’s exploration of the rubble left by the failure of the 1960s utopian dreams, and Wojnarowicz’s evocation of the AIDS catastrophe of the 1980s all belong to a tradition of anxiety rooted in Apocalyptic thinking. But they also remind us of the ambiguity at the heart of the eschatological narrative.
Read MoreFilmmaker Bruce Conner mines, sifts and salvages through, the spiraling effluvia of our audio-visual junkyards. A razor-eyed fate, he snips and splices; now rejecting, then finding and filing ... but rarely forgetting. His film works are unique constructs composed of familiar imagery recombined into richly provocative puzzles that rhythmically prod the viewer to attempt reconciliations of ambiguity with the obvious and the comic with the horrific, as irony unites anger and concern.
Read MoreGiven the concern for our present and future ecological welfare, it is timely and brilliant Bruce Conner to have selected the birth of the Atomic Age as the subject of his newest film, Crossroads. From material recently declassified by the Defense Department, Conner has constructed a 36-minute work, editing together 27 different takes of the early atomic explosions at Bikini, all un-altered found footage in its original black and white. The film is without dialogue or descriptive factual detail. It consists simply of the visual record of these first bombs' destructive capability.
Read MoreOn June 17, Anthology Film Archives is showing two new Bruce Conner films, Crossroads and Take the 5:10 to Dreamland. Conner is perhaps best known for A Movie and Cosmic Ray, two rapid-fire collage films that got laughs throughout the country during the 1960’s. Take the 5:10 to Dreamland, by contrast, is a very slow collage film, in which diverse images are separated from each other by brief sections of darkness. It is also my favorite Conner film.
Read MoreLike most of Conner’s earlier films – which in include such “underground” classics as “Cosmic Ray,” “A Movie” and “Report” (based on the assassination of John F. Kennedy) — “Crossroads” is a moving “collage” of spliced and edited footage, although in this case of a highly unusual kind: Working with a grant from the American Film Institute, Conner gained access to film depicting the first underwater A-bomb test at Bikini in July, 1946, now housed at the National Archive in Washington. Much of it was declassified for his use.
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