A Conversation with John Zorn /  by melinda shopsin

John Zorn in Henry Hills' MONEY (1985)

John Zorn in Henry Hills' MONEY (1985)

Sunday, September 23, 2013 @ 5 PM
Anthology Film Archives, NYC

A conversation on the art of scoring films and survival with John Zorn as part of his city-wide 60th birthday celebration.

EXPANDED CINEMA AT ROULETTE /  by melinda shopsin

EXPANDED CINEMA: ESP Lab // Bradley Eros, Kenny Zoran Curwood & Rachael Guma “Narcolepsy Cinema” // Andrew Lampert // Fern Silva // Jessie Stead

Friday, August 2, 2013 @ 8:00 pm
Roulette
Brooklyn, NY

Roulette presents an evening of multi-screen and mixed-media performances featuring NARCOLEPSY CINEMA, a new work for expanded celluloid, foley, and vinyl by multimedia trio Bradley Eros, Kenny Zoran Curwood and Rachael Guma; ESP Lab with Scott Kiernan and Victoria Keddie; and short films by Andrew Lampert, Fern Silva, and Jessie Stead.


DOUBLE TROUBLE at MONO NO AWARE /  by melinda shopsin

July 31, 2013 @ 7 PM
Mono No Aware @ CPR (Center For Performance Research)
Brooklyn, NY

Andrew Lampert and Fern Silva are DOUBLE TROUBLE, and together they have in store an evening of double projections and multi-format mayhem. Eschewing logic, they promise to bring far too much material and present it in multitudes of overlapping layers. They do this because they don't know what else to do with themselves. Expect an evening of films made alone and a big mess that they will make together.

Double Trouble (Andrew Lampert and Fern Silva) at Mono No Aware, July 31, 2013

Double Trouble (Andrew Lampert and Fern Silva) at Mono No Aware, July 31, 2013


KEYNOTE SPEECH AT Bastard Film Encounter /  by melinda shopsin

An excerpt from my opening remarks.

I presented the Keynote Speech and Invocation at the first Bastard Film Encounter, held in Raleigh, NC. A gathering of archivists, artists, aficionados and fellow travelers, the Encounter proved to be a  galvanizing weekend of conversations and discoveries in the area of forogtten terrain, disposed entertainment and lost context.

 

I also presented my first PROJECTOR PARADISE performance.

PROJECTOR PARADISE #1 @ Bastard Film Encounter, 2013

PROJECTOR PARADISE #1 @ Bastard Film Encounter, 2013

PROJECTOR PARADISE #1 @ Bastard Film Encounter, 2013

PROJECTOR PARADISE #1 @ Bastard Film Encounter, 2013

Unessential Goes Viennese /  by melinda shopsin

In April 2013, I visited Vienna to introduce a number of shows presented by the Austrian Film Museum in their series THE CLIMATE OF NEW YORK: A TRIBUTE TO ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES. Among the programs was a greatest hits, show-and-tell evening that featured a good many Unessential Cinema favorites.

“TTHE BEST (?) OF UNESSENTIAL CINEMA
(OR THE BESTEST OF UNESSENTIAL CINEMA)
Die riesigen Keller und Hinterhöfe des AFA bilden den Ausgangspunkt dieser panoramatischen Fahrt in die Eingeweide des Kinos. Unessential Cinema, eine lose Anthology-Reihe, bezieht sich auf jene zahllosen Filmkopien und Negative, die über die Jahre aus stillgelegten Laboren, Containern und dem Besitz von Witwen und Weirdos zusammenkamen. Beim Wiener Screening bringt Anthology-Kurator Andrew Lampert eine Auswahl solch verwaister Filme zur Aufführung – eine Demonstration all dessen, was Archive nie und nimmer bewahren können, werden oder wollen. Zu erleben sind u.a. Doppelprojektionen und unvollendete Werke, Lichttöne und unerklärliche Filmstreifen, Kameratests und unfassbare Krimis, Stopps, Starts, Einführungen, Erklärungen, begründete Vermutungen, Dialoge, Kommentare, Kritiken, Analysen, Hypothesen, logische Schlussfolgerungen, chirurgische Schnitte, Rätsel, Home­-movies, Gänsehaut, Gelächter, Liebe, Intrigen, Bikinis und Hockey.

Moderation Andrew Lampert”



Jonas Mekas Panel International House, Philadelphia /  by melinda shopsin

April 20, 2013
International House, Philadelphia

I was a panelist alongside Amy Taubin, Ed Halter and Jackie Raynal on the subject of Jonas Mekas, who was in attendance for this conversational event celebrating his life and work in and around cinema. Organized by Herb Shellenburger.

Jackie Raynal shows off her speech.

Jackie Raynal shows off her speech.

CONCRETE ESCORT At Guggenheim Museum /  by melinda shopsin

March 22, 2013
Guggenheim Museum
New York

New York based Japanese performance artist Ei Arakawa invites painters, sculptors, dancers, filmmakers, and archivists to form a temporal group addressing Gutai today. Resulting in a performative exhibition tour where the audience will be escorted and repositioned, emphasis will be on the power dynamic within Gutai, women and men; singularity and plurality; performance and painting. Tasked to communicate the diversity of Gutai activities, each tour will journey along a different route. Participants include Ei Arakawa, Simone Forti, Jutta Koether, Andrew Lampert, and Caitlin MacBride.

The Seanceat Columbia University /  by melinda shopsin

THE SÉANCE
Thursday, January 24, 7pm
Columbia University, New York City
Faculty House (enter on Amsterdam Ave and W 116th St)

Roundtable discussion on the history and scope of the cinematic event with Ed Halter and Thomas Beard (Light Industry), Andrew Lampert (Anthology Film Archives), and Chrissie Iles (Whitney Museum). Co-presented by the Film Studies Program, Department of Art History and Archaeology and Columbia Seminars.

HOME & MORE At CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM, St. Louis /  by melinda shopsin

arch.jpg

August 9, 2012 @ 7:00
Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis

CAM is pleased to present an evening of live film projector performances by Andrew Lampert that will include his works HOME (2010), ETKA & MASHA: TEENAGERS OF THE OLD WORLD (2011), and THE GOOD LIFE (2012).

As a filmmaker, programmer, and archivist at Anthology Film Archives, Andrew Lampert explores cinematic relationships by experimenting with their constituent elements, such as sound, live action, and film. Known for his projector performances, Lampert often plays a highly participatory role in his projects, acting as projectionist, cinematographer, and even musician by generating live instrumentation to accompany a screening. His performances often reference the multiple realms and perspectives found within the theatrical experience, drawing upon the intricacies of cinematic time and viewer time. The result is work that exists in two spaces – one within the frame of the screen or film, and the other which contains the viewing audience; the artist refers to this effect as “contracted cinema,” or the reverse of expanded cinema. For Lampert, cinema is not simply celluloid, but the integrative experience of the here-and-now, the audience, and the projected world of the film itself.

 

 

 

CONSTIPATION Premiere at SF Cinematheque /  by melinda shopsin

 February 4, 2012
@ Artists' Television Access
San Francisco, CA

Andrew Lampert's CONSTIPATION (Contracted Cinema) (Cinema Expanded [again!])

presented in association with Oddball Films

Far from the fussiness of his downtown day job—preserving avant-garde classics at Anthology Film Archives—the cinema of Andrew Lampert sprawls with contingency and unscripted accident. Truly placed in the present tense, Lampert’s film/performance hybrids—equal parts stand-up shtick and conceptual conundra—hold the social space between projector and screen to be truly where the action is. Whether making short films or live productions, his work playfully engages structure, storytelling and portraiture to address the contemporary condition of cinema spectatorship in its waning days. Tonight features the premiere of a single-projector expanded cinema performance titled CONSTIPATION, the latest work in his ongoing CONTRACTED CINEMA series. He writes: “CONSTIPATION is a film for filmmakers. A Super-8 love letter/break-up note for Kodachrome fetishists. An entertainment for the public-at-large.” Also expect a few recent works including TASTE TEST, and undoubtedly many surprises. (Steve Polta)

 Spoiler Alert: This trailer contains no footage from CONSTIPATION

LAMP/LAMB AT ODDBALL FILMS /  by melinda shopsin

February 2, 2012
Oddball Films
18th St. and Capp St.
San Francisco, CA


It had to happen....Andrew Lampert meets/vs Jeff Lambert at Oddball Films in San Francisco. An evening of short films, strange footage, unknowable images selected for your viewing pleasure. Once in a lifetime? You bet. Learn more here: HERE



POPE/LAMP Goes Oslo /  by melinda shopsin

October 27, 2011
ANX
Oslo, Norway

POPE/LAMP is Andrew Lampert and Greg Pope, This will be a sonic and visual feast (possibly) incorporating 16mm, Super8, video and 35mm slide projections with sound effects, field recordings and the spoken word. A Multi-projection live installation with cracked narratives, fractured concepts and atomised foundations. Text and image contradict themselves to a standstill in this semi-improvised piece and out of this seemingly irredeemable wreckage a burning flame starts to flicker at the end of the tunnel ….

 

COLLABORATION AS A MEANS OF CONTROL /  by melinda shopsin

August 23, 2011
Aurora Picture Show
Houston, TX

New York City-based artist Andrew Lampert regularly creates multi-projector live cinema performances and offbeat short films with his friends and musical collaborators. Each project is most certainly the result of shared efforts and creative input, yet the end results are attributed to him. For this video salon titled COLLABORATION AS A MEANS OF CONTROL Lampert will explore the grey area of ownership with a fun, funny and funky selection of new and recent films guaranteed to beg the question: Hey, whose in charge here anyway?

This is what it look like when I spoke at Aurora Picture Show

This is what it look like when I spoke at Aurora Picture Show

ANDREW LAMPERT PRESENTS: ANDY LAMPERT /  by melinda shopsin

May 31, 2011 @6:30 pm
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)
535 West 22nd Street, 5th floor
New York, NY 10011

Please join EAI for a special evening with artist and filmmaker Andrew Lampert, including a screening with performative elements and a conversation between Lampert and musician/writer Alan Licht.

Andrew Lampert Presents: Andy Lampert is part of EAI's ongoing 40th anniversary programming. Celebrating video's rich history across the last four decades and its vitality today, EAI now looks to the future with a series of projects featuring young artists whose works are redefining the use of the moving image in contemporary art

Andrew Lampert is at the forefront of a new generation of artists engaging with film, video and performance, revisiting and extending the dialogue around an expanded cinema. Pursuing the alchemy between artist, art, and audience in a public space, Lampert explores the contingency of film as a medium, introducing unscripted and chance elements. Reveling in cinema as a performative environment, Lampert reclaims this space from a mass media culture to emphasize its potential for immediacy and accident—and to make each of his screenings and performances a one-of-a-kind event.

Lampert's media works defy strict categorization as films or videos. At EAI, Lampert will project Super-8 films and also present works on video. Taking on the role of projectionist, he will orchestrate the screening, providing introductions and commentary with performative elements. The event will include the first New York screening of a video from Lampert's new diary series, shot (often surreptitiously) with the artist's cell-phone-sized pocket video camera; short films described by Lampert as "the death of Kodachrome," and two works that look at adolescence, one in a fictionalized, filmic past (ETKA AND MASHA: TEENAGERS OF THE OLD WORLD, 2010, 12:29 min) and the other in today's video-saturated reality (MADELINE VICTORIOUS, 2010, 6:26 min). These projects are unified in their emphasis on the frame around the edges of narrative—the genres and clichés in which he cloaks on-screen action, the happy accidents during production, and the unexpected events during a screening that shape the audience's response and foreground human activity in the cinematic context.

Lampert explores the cinematic experience as content, experimenting with the physical spaces between projector, projectionist, audience and screen—and with the experiences made possible through their convergence. The cinema becomes a site of abstract and magical production in his performances, videos and films, as Lampert investigates the gap between an artwork's private intent and its public reception.

Following the screening, Lampert will join Alan Licht and EAI's Rebecca Cleman in conversation. Licht, an acclaimed musician, writer and curator, is a frequent collaborator of Lampert's. Over the last five years, they have staged a number of live performances together under the name Lamp/Licht. The program will conclude with a Q&A session.