MOBY DICK /  by melinda shopsin

I was invited to the Whitney Museum of American Art on November 14, 2015 to participate in MOBY DICK: A MARATHON READING. The entire Herman Melville novel was read over the course of two days in the space of Frank Stella's retrospective exhibition.


THE SCREAM HOUSE: NEW COMPOSITIONS 2015 at Issue Project Room /  by melinda shopsin

ISSUE PROJECT ROOM presents:
Andrew Lampert: The Scream House, Compositions 2015
Monday, October 19, 2015
8:00pm
$15 General, $12 Members / Students, $0 All-Access Members

Andrew Lampert presents a collection of new and recent pieces from his deep back catalog of films, videos, and performances. A rover between mediums who favors formal structures and humorous ruptures, Lampert’s slippery live shows disrupt expectations of concept and execution, intention and results. This evening is built around a number of new instruction-based performances, combining elements of predetermined structure, and improvisation. Among the works presented is a new entry in Lampert's unruly Projector Destruction series, a piece involving a telephone, a new video, and— to give fair warning— a piece requiring audience participation.

Photo by Greg Pierce.

Photo by Greg Pierce.

PRELUDE IN ANGER at Peephole Cinema/UnionDocs /  by melinda shopsin

Peephole Cinema presents
SPACETIME SINGULARITIES
guest curated by Elle Burchill and Andrea Monti (Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn)

Opening reception/BBQ on Friday, July 24th, 7:30 PM 
@ UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art
322 Union Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211

SPACETIME SINGULARITIES is a program of new moving image works made for the occasion of Peephole Cinema by Bradley Eros, Sarah Halpern and Andrew Lampert. The works, hand shot by each artist in the darkness – of a cave, a nightclub and on the streets of NYC in the wee morning hours – collapse sensations and sounds into a single focus viewing experience in which stalactites appear as sonograms, Kenneth Anger conducts a ceremony on the theremin, and liquid nitrogen tanks become ticking time bombs in the city’s rain-slicked streets. – EB & AM

Peephole Cinema is a “miniature cinema” collective with satellite projects in three cities: San Francisco, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles. In each city, silent film shorts are screened 24/7 through a dime-sized peephole installed in a public location that can be visited anytime day or night. 

 

PRELUDE IN ANGERSuper 8mm transferred to digital, color, silent, 1 minute 50 seconds.

PRELUDE IN ANGER
Super 8mm transferred to digital, color, silent, 1 minute 50 seconds.

ALL MAGIC SANDS/CHAPPAQUA at Spectacle Theater, Brooklyn /  by melinda shopsin

The intrepid programmers at Spectacle have chosen to unleash the full brunt of my feature length double epic ALL MAGIC SANDS/CHAPPAQUA on the public as part of their commendable tribute to the singular Ornette Coleman. The only other public screening that I'm aware of occurred at the International Rotterdam Film Festival in 2013 to an unprepared and irritable audience. Will the local crowd be better equipped to handle the collision of free jazz with endless outtakes from an unfinished film starring children, a donkey and a some sort of Jesus guy stuck on an island? There will be three chances to find out!

SATURDAY, JULY 18 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JULY 20 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 22 – 7:30 PM – FILMMAKER IN ATTENDANCE!

Spectacle is located at 124 South 3rd Street, Brooklyn, New York, between Bedford Avenue and Berry Street.

JAZZY FOR JOE at BAM CINEMAFEST /  by melinda shopsin

JAZZY FOR JOE
by Owen Kline and Andrew Lampert
2014, 14 minutes, video.

A twilight tale of a talk show host seeking a successor
and the little girl who comes a-knockin' at his door....

Starring Joe Franklin, and introducing Zazie Nam June.

Premieres at BAM CINEMAFEST on Wednesday, June 24 st 9:45 p.m.

Poster art by Drew Freidman

Poster art by Drew Freidman

2015 CAA Conference Screening and Roundtable /  by melinda shopsin

Thursday, Feb. 12
New York Hilton Midtown, Gibson Room
4pm-5:30pm

A screening and roundtable/Q&A session
@ the 2015 CAA annual conference
with myself, Kalup Linzy, C. Spencer Yeh, Paul Slocum and Dara Birnbaum. Organized by Jenny Marketo, Rachael Rakes and Rebecca Cleman

TASTE TEST (2011) is included in the program titled Mobile Strategies Replace Finished Recipes, or in the Words of Gilles Deleuze, “Amid Things but in the Center of Nothing”

 

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.