Pop Sixties
(at the beginning of the American Underground Films)
"16mm film of Claes Oldenburg's 1961 Happening "Fotodeath"" - ubu.com
Linoleum
"Throughout his career, and particularly during the 1960s, Rauschenberg became involved in several collaborative ventures that moved him outside the confines of his studio. Rauschenberg's approach to art as an inclusive form engaging all the senses led naturally to his work in performance. Between 1954 and 1964, he designed sets, costumes, and lighting for both the Merce Cunningham Company and the Paul Taylor Company.
His early stage designs included free-standing Combines such as Minutiae (1954) and The Tower (1957), as well as what he called "live decor," in which human action became "scenery." In the early 1960s Rauschenberg worked closely with the Judson Dance Theater, a collective comprising such dancers and visual artists as Trisha Brown, Robert Morris, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, and Carolee Schneemann. Its primary objective was to liberate movement from all formal conventions.
Between 1963 and 1967, Rauschenberg choreographed and performed in at least eleven documented performance pieces. Eliminating the customary division between performer and scenic element in these works, which ranged from Pelican (1963) to Urban Round (1967), he emphasized the interaction with specially designed costumes and stage props. In his ensemble pieces, such as Spring Training (1965), Map Room II (1965), and Linoleum (1966), disparate actions - some intentionally dancerly, others entirely pedestrian - were performed simultaneously. The pieces were often accompanied by audio collages made from electronically amplified noises, compilations of prerecorded music, and found sounds." - ubu.com
Four
"Yoko Ono (born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese artist, author, and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon (1969-1980). Ono brought feminism to the forefront in her music which prefigured New Wave music and is known for her philanthropic contributions to the arts, peace and AIDS outreach programs." - ubu.com
Vinyl
"Surely you've seen Stanley Kubrick's version of A
Clockwork Orange. But have you seen Andy Warhol's? Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel
of the robust culture of teenage violence in our freakish dystopian future
caught the eye of not just the man who had previously made 2001: A Space
Odyssey, but that of the man who had previously made the eight-hour still shot
Empire as well. Warhol and Kubrick's sensibilities differed, you might say, as
did the means of production to which they had access, and a comparison of their
Clockwork Orange adaptations highlights both. Using three shots in this
70-minute film instead of Empire's one, Warhol creates, in the words of Ed
Howard at Only the Cinema, "a strange and intriguing film which, like most of
Warhol's movies, often toes the line between slow and downright boring, a piece
of "alienating, attitude-based cinema" that "provides no easy pleasures,"
"replacing the conventional narrative drive with a cluttered mise-en-scene of
bodies." For all its cheapness, Warhol's lo-fi cinematic rendition did at least
come first, in 1965 to Kubrick's 1971 — plus, you can watch it free on Youtube
above.
"Vinyl is such a loose adaptation of the source novel that even people who have
seen it should be forgiven for not realising that it is built on Burgess’s
literary scaffold," says the web site of the International Anthony Burgess
Foundation. "The film is presented as a series of images of brutality, beatings,
torture and masochism all performed by a group of men under the gaze of a
glamorous woman. In its preoccupations with pornography and violence, it bears
many of the oblique hallmarks of Warhol’s work, along with a familiar cast of
Factory regulars such as Gerard Malanga, Edie Sedgwick and Ondine. The finished
film is disturbing, contains unsimulated violent acts and is not very
audience-friendly." Either a strong disrecommendation or a strong
recommendation, depending on your proclivities. And if none of that draws you,
maybe the soundtrack including Martha and the Vandellas, The Kinks, The Rolling
Stones, and the The Isley Brothers will. Did Warhol pay to license their songs?
Given that he certainly didn't look into obtaining the rights even to A
Clockwork Orange, something inside me doubts it.
-- Open Culture,
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/andy-warhols-1965-film-vinyl.html" -
ubu.com
