George Kuchar in Pittsburgh /  by melinda shopsin

Ephemera created by Orgone Cinema for their visit from George in the 1990s....

Ephemera created by Orgone Cinema for their visit from George in the 1990s....

Carnegie Museum of Art
Pittsburgh, PA
Thursday, February 5th @ 6:30 PM

Join Andrew Lampert, editor of The George Kuchar Reader, for a reading from Kuchar’s notebooks and a screening of his rarely-seen 16mm films Eclipse of the Sun Virgin (1967, 15 min.), Power of the Press (1977, 16 min.), Forever and Always (1978, 20 min.), and Yolanda (1981, 22 min.).

Over the course of his 50 year career, from his teenage years in the Bronx until his untimely death in 2011, George Kuchar created an incomparable body of nearly 350 films and videos. Teeming with ribald humor and unswerving illogic, and with a refined sense of the absurd and a “no budget, no problem” attitude, his ceaseless output veered from outlandish spoofs on schlocky Hollywood melodramas to intimate documents of his everyday life.
 

GUIDED BY VOICES: 6 FILM RESTORATIONS /  by melinda shopsin

Cinémathèque Française
Thursday, January 29, 2015
9:30 pm

I'm in Paris to introduce a program of recent restorations and digitizations by Anthology Film Archives as part of the s esteemed Toute la mémoire du monde festival.

GUIDED BY VOICES (2000) by Stom Sogo.

GUIDED BY VOICES (2000) by Stom Sogo.

Bedtime Story de Esther Shatavsky
Etats-Unis/1981/6’/35mm

Surface Tension de Hollis Frampton
Etats-Unis/1968/10’/16mm

An Algorithm de Bette Gordon
Etats-Unis/1977/10’/16mm

Harmful or Fateful if Swallowed de Manuel De Landa
Etats-Unis/1982/12’/Numérique

Color Sound Frames de Paul Sharits
Etats-Unis/1974/22’/16mm

Guided by Voice (original version) de Stom Sogo
Etats-Unis/2000/10’/Numérique


Don’t Lose the Manual at the Visual Art Center University of Texas at Austin /  by melinda shopsin


An exhibit of new photographs and videos
Visual Art Center, University of Texas at Austin
September 19 - December 6, 2014

In DON'T LOSE THE MANUAL, Andrew Lampert explores a personal dimension of technology and technological change. As an artist who is also an archivist specializing in moving-image media, Lampert works with both analog and digital technologies every day, confronting issues of preservation, storage, and the presumed historical relevance (or irrelevance) of various media and objects. The photographs and videos in DON'T LOSE THE MANUAL reflect Lampert’s archival interests, but do so by addressing the preponderance of technology in contemporary life. With candor and humor, the works reveal the artist’s ambivalence about adapting to a world seemingly run by gadgets and social media, yet also illustrate his fascination with the incremental life changes wrought by constant technological change.

Several groupings of images present technologies, or situations involving technologies, that Lampert experiences on a regular basis, including a photographic catalog of every device that he used on a particular day. The exhibition also includes a number of videos in which Lampert asks individuals about the role of technology in their lives. These encounters indicate differing comfort levels with old as well as new technologies, but they also suggest the impossibility of privileging the old over the new, since for better or worse, most things eventually break or succumb to disuse. Presented through a somewhat bewildered lens of personal experience, the themes of DON'T LOSE THE MANUAL are broad and immensely relatable.

Curated by Robin Williams, 2013–2014 VAC Curatorial Fellow

 

Andrew Lampert & Chris Corsano at Aurora Picture Show in Houston, Texas /  by melinda shopsin

DON'T LOSE THE MANUAL
Filmmaker Andrew Lampert and Musician Chris Corsano in attendance
Monday, December 8, 7:00PM (Members Only Reception, 6PM)
Aurora Members Free (with RSVP), Non-members $10

DON’T LOSE THE MANUAL is a merrily convoluted evening of moving image and music performance involving broken gear and wildly unpredictable results. Chris Corsano’s galvanizing percussion kicks filmmaker Andrew Lampert into action mode as the improvisatory duo explore the limited options and perhaps harrowing consequences of playing with what you’ve been dealt. Less psychedelic and more psychological, this haphazard duo deconstructs expanded cinema performance with high tension and hilarity.

This performance occurs in tandem with Lampert’s photo and video exhibition DON’T LOSE THE MANUAL on display at the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas at Austin (September 19 through December 6, 2014).  This performance is co-sponsored by the Visual Arts Center in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin.

Behind the Screens Receptions With Andrew Lampert and Chris Corsano
Monday, December 8, 6:00PM
Free for Aurora Members with RSVP

Aurora Picture Show members are invited to a pre-screening reception with light bites and cocktails, plus an opportunity to chat with Filmmaker Andrew Lampert and Musician Chris Corsano.  

Focus Group Presents: Andrew Lampert & Chris Corsano In Performance /  by melinda shopsin

Andrew Lampert & Chris Corsano: Live
Friday, December 5th, 7:00 PM
Visual Art Center at the University of Texas at Austin

Join the eclectic duo of artist Andrew Lampert and musician Chris Corsano for a merrily convoluted evening of moving image and music performance involving broken gear and wildly unpredictable results. Chris Corsano's galvanizing percussion kicks filmmaker Andrew Lampert into action mode as the improvisatory duo explore the limited options and perhaps harrowing consequences of playing with what you've been dealt. Less psychedelic and more psychological, this haphazard duo deconstructs expanded cinema performance with high tension and hilarity.

Presented by Focus Group in conjunction with the exhibition ANDREW LAMPERT: DON'T LOSE THE MANUAL, on view September 19 - December 6.

Many thanks to Rachel Stuckey for her documentation efforts of the event described above.

A 21st Century Originale panel discussion /  by melinda shopsin

November 08, 2014
1:00-3:00pm
Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
5 East 3rd Street
New York, NY 10003
Free admission

The New York premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen's music-theater work ORIGINALE in 1964 caused quite a stir. Under the direction of Allan Kaprow, a veritable who's-who of the avant-garde appeared together in the German composer's response to the Happening, while a splinter group of downtown artists staged a picket against "ruling class art," generating nearly as much attention. The Goethe-Institut revisits the conversation sparked by this moment in time, on the 50th anniversary of the New York premiere of ORIGINALE, in conjunction with a new performance at The Kitchen, co-produced by Goethe-Institut and staged as part of the Darmstadt: Essential Repertoire series.

Our panel will consider some of the following questions: What does it mean to both perform and protest Stockhausen's ORIGINALE fifty years after its premiere? How might a new reading attempt to inscribe the piece with the issues of diversity and institutional critique demanded by the 1964 picket? What relationship do contemporary artists have with newer ideas of "ruling class art," and does an ORIGINALE performance and demonstration help identify these? How did the artists participating in the 1964 performances navigate the protests, and what kind of values can we assign to their behavior? In what way does technology play a role in ORIGINALE and how does the piece update itself? Special attention will be paid to an annotated version of the ORIGINALE score, with production notes from the New York premiere in 1964.

Panelists:
Andrew Lampert, artist and filmmaker, Anthology Film Archives
Sophie Landres, art historian, Stony Brook University
Alexandro Segade, participating artist, member of My Barbarian and Courtesy the Artist
Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.)

SF Cinematheque Screening & Book Launch For THE GEORGE KUCHAR READER /  by melinda shopsin

Saturday, October 18, 2014 — 7:30 pm
@ YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS
701 Mission Street (at Third St)
San Francisco, CA 94103

A CRIMINAL ACCOUNT OF PLEASURE: THE GEORGE KUCHAR READER
Editor Andrew Lampert In Person
presented in association with Cinema Arts at The Exploratorium
[$10 general / $6 members]

Purchase THE GEORGE KUCHAR READER now through our online store, or at the screening!

Bay Area treasure George Kuchar—sorely missed since his untimely death in 2011—is celebrated worldwide for his wild and wooly lo-budget melodramas and voluminous meandering video diaries. To know George was to love George, and to be ever warped by his inspiring irreverence and sardonic wit. Tonight we celebrate Primary Information’s publication of THE GEORGE KUCHAR READER, an expansive 340-page compendium of the legendary raconteur’s writings, ramblings, recommendation letters, scripts, UFO visitation narratives and more. The book’s editor (and Anthology Film Archives’ Curator of Collections) Andrew Lampert appears in person to read excerpts and discuss this legend. The program will include a screening of Kuchar’s 16mm CORRUPTION OF THE DAMNED and video THE EXILED FILES OF EDDIE GREY.

Conversations at the Edge: Andrew Lampert: Tables Turned /  by melinda shopsin

CONVERSATIONS AT THE EDGE:
ANDREW LAMPERT: TABLES TURNED
@ Gene Siskel Film Center/School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Thursday, October 9, 2014 at 6:30 PM

Artist, archivist, and curator Andrew Lampert is known for his live media performances and hilarious short films and videos, many of which cheekily turn “cinema” on its head. Lampert uses improvisation, unusual projector placement, and sets of game-like instructions to explore (and exploit) the dynamic relationships between projector, projectionist, audience, and screen. For CATE, Lampert creates a site-specific performance and shows a series of shorts, including EL ADIOS LARGOS (2013), an inspired reconstruction of Robert Altman’s 1973 feature THE LONG GOODBYE from imperfect source material. Various formats. (Amy Beste)

Andrew Lampert will be present for audience discussion.

MURDER MYSTERY @ Microscope Gallery /  by melinda shopsin

Monday, September 29
7:30 PM

Microscope Gallery is pleased to present SLIDE EXECUTIONS a program of live slide performance works by Andrew Lampert, Kenneth Curwood and Alexia Welch as the fourth of five events happening in conjunction with our current exhibition SLIDE SLIDE SLIDE.
 
Each of the artists, who work regularly with the transparent slide, take a different approach in pieces involving a death in some sense, both the literal and figurative. Lampert’s MURDER MYSTERY most closely references the traditional slide show using a storyline – told through an almost complete carousel of slides – of 1950s art world figures, texts, abstractions and Mafioso. Welch’s REMEMBERING, THREE WAYS consists of a carousel of handmade blood-painted slides among other images that over time begin to “sweat” in the heat as the color drains. Curwood’s untitled single slide projection is a stunningly beautiful and complete obliteration of the image as it is bleached before the audience’s eyes.

Program:
Approximately 60 minutes
 
REMEMBERING, THREE WAYS by Alexia Welch, 80 slide carousel projection, 2014, approx. 30 minutes
Colors are drained from the images and then reinserted from memory. A dream is recalled twice.
 
MURDER MYSTERY by Andrew Lampert, slide show projection w/ accompanying sound, 2010, 20 minutes
A carousel of slides mixing text with images and abstractions with a story involving people in the art world of the 1950s (Cage, Cunningham, Raushenberg, Johns, De Antonio) and a real life Mafioso. Sound alternates between works by Bud Powell and Morton Feldman.
 
UNTITLED by Kenneth Zoran Curwood, single slide projection w/ bleach, 2014, approx. 11 minutes

Unessential Cinema: GREATEST SOMETHINGS OR OTHERS /  by melinda shopsin

Unessential Cinema 10th Anniversary!
July 30 2014 at 7:30PM
Anthology Film Archives
32 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10003

Has it really been 10 years since the debut of UNESSENTIAL CINEMA? How’d that happen? UNESSENTIAL CINEMA is a regular series dedicated to unleashing the most undocumented, unseen, and unknown films and videos in our vast and confusing collection. Over the past decade we have presented more head-scratching, brain-breaking reels then we can even remember. Each program has featured an overarching theme or particular gimmick, and every show has left us wondering: Why do we have this stuff? Tonight we reflect on a decade of archival discoveries by bringing together some of our all-time favorite finds for a one-time only ‘experience.’ Be prepared to celebrate with double projections, live commentary, audience participation and, quite possibly, cake.

Expect some of these classics:
DISSECTION OF A RAT
HEAD/TAIL
IN THE PANTS OF THE UNIVERSE
FOUR ROSES (Whiskey)
THE ACT OF PUKING WITH ONE’S OWN MOUTH
and many more…

BOMB #128 Launch Party /  by melinda shopsin

Monday, June 16, 7:30 PM
Launch Party: BOMB Issue #128!
Featuring contributors Donald Breckenridge, Michael Coffey, Corina Copp, Steve Dalachinsky, Vincent Katz, Andrew Lampert, and others TBA
Reception to follow

BOMB Magazine, headquartered around the corner from Greenlight in Brooklyn, has been publishing conversations between artists of all disciplines since 1981. Issue #128 is BOMB's most stately issue yet, featuring literature, art, and critical work by Katherine Bradford, Vincent Katz, Sara Jaffe, Corina Copp, and Donald Breckenridge; conversations between Tania Bruguera and Paul O'Neill, John Ashbery and Adam Fitzgerald, and Charlemagne Palestine and Steve Dalachinsky; along with margaritas, sunburns, and accelerated romances. Imagine them all gathered in a park before a storm, covered in dirt from the baseball diamond, stuffed with BBQ, sticky with sweat, in conversation, and you’ll have a sense of tonight’s blowout issue launch event at Greenlight. Help launch the summer 2014 issue of BOMB!

Event date: Monday, June 16, 2014 - 7:30pm
Event address: 686 Fulton Street 11217 Brooklyn NY

 

Talk on Yuji Agemetsu /  by melinda shopsin

A Talk as Part of Agematsu…
Saturday, May 31, 5pm

On Saturday afternoon, Andrew Lampert will give a tour of his friend Yuji Agematsu’s exhibition. I’m not sure what exactly he will talk about, but I imagine he’ll drift into the subject of collecting and archives, as Andrew is an archivist and Curator of Collections at Anthology Film Archives in New York City. There, he organized performances with Agematsu in 2004 and 2013.

THE GEORGE KUCHAR READERbook launch at Yale Union /  by melinda shopsin

A Reading and Screening as Part of KUCHAR…
Friday, May 30, 2014 at 8pm

On Friday night, Andrew Lampert will screen scarce footage of George Kuchar working on the set, serve hot dogs, and read from THE GEORGE KUCHAR READER that he’s been editing these past few years. The book, which Scott Ponik designed, gives us a criminal amount of pleasure and is a serious resource for self-effacement, artistic intelligence (very different from schoolboy intelligence), tales of UFO encounters, and how to write student recommendation letters:

With Title TK at the Stone /  by melinda shopsin

Andrew Lampert with opening act Title TK
Sunday, April 13 @ 10:00 PM
The Stone
New York City, corner of Ave. A and 2nd St.

Title TK (Cory Arcangel, Howie Chen, Alan Licht) are the openers and perhaps headliners for this concert event at The Stone. The hook: Title TK does not know if I am actually coming to do my part of the show, and therefore are in the dark as to how long their set should last. Yikes.