In the years before Ronald Reagan took office, Manhattan was in ruins. But true art has never come from comfort, and it was precisely those dire circumstances that inspired artists like Jim Jarmusch, Lizzy Borden, and Amos Poe to produce some of their best works. Taking their cues from punk rock...
With research that spans the work of philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Martin Heidegger to modern mythologies in which time reversal plays a crucial role — such as failed time machines, speed of light travel, and occult practices involving speech — Stracke combines science and philosophy in an...
A short survey of the small-gauge narrative film, beginning with the Kuchars' Sylvia's Promise (1962). Primarily focused on East Coast artists, the work of Eric Mitchell, Manuel DeLanda and Ericka Beckman is highlighted.
"The very first footage I shot in NYC, back in 1975. This version was put together in 1981 when I blew up the original super 8 to 16mmm. All the special effects (wipes of different types) are hand drawn with black ink directly on the super 8 original. The resulting A and B rolls were then...
Once thought lost, but recently found and restored by Anthology Film Archives, artist/philosopher Manuel De Landa’s Super 8 Ism Ism captures his truly inspired collage mutations of New York City subway ads during the mid-to-late 70s. Slicing and dicing the perfect faces of models into deviant...
The editing strategies parallel the personal relationships depicted, and a mismatched cut is literally only the other side of a mismatched couple. Rarely have sound, image and the spatio-temporal coordinates of narrative illusion been buffeted about so vigorously.
From the 1970s urban interventions on billboards, Ism Ism (1970), to his recent digital manipulation of digital footage, Manuel DeLanda keeps testing the rough edges of perception.
Using multiple layers of the same shot and animating masks on each produces a wide variety of effects that fracture and distort the shot. These were used here for NYC buildings, to create a dissonant urban symphony. The music is classical piano pieces played backwards.
My take on New York City crowds. Some effects involve tracking individual faces and a lot of masking work, others use multiple slices of the same shot, offset a few frames, to stretch all moving figures in strange ways.
