VSW Salon Fall 2022 October 27: In Dialogue with Bill Brand
6-7 pm – Open Studio with VSW Resident artist Ahndraya Parlato
7-9pm in the VSW microcinema
Suggested: $10
Inspired by the expanded cinema and avant garde film movements of the 1960’s, Bill Brand began his career as an experimental filmmaker, working with 16mm film, projection performance and sound installation. His early films addressed a broad range of approaches, from formal abstraction to structural inquiry, with a consistent sense of humor and a touch of playfulness. Bill’s practice has continued to evolve to include video, painting, drawing, and a public art installation that is viewable through the windows of a moving subway train in NYC.
This screening will feature Bill’s experimental films along with selections he has made from the VSW Film collection, creating a unique dialogue between the artist and the archive. This screening will be followed by a conversation between Bill and VSW curator Tara Nelson.
For information on the Film Preservation Master Class with Bill Brand on October 26th, click here.
Program:
The Nose (1963) by Claire Parker and Alexandre Alexeieff, 16mm. Animated pinboard drawings re-create Nikolai Gogol’s short story about a vain government official who loses his now and finds it again in a barber’s loaf of bread.
Organic Afghan (1969) by Bill Brand, 16mm. A claymation and abstract object animation consisting of organic shapes and crocheted afghan squares synchronized to an original guitar duet by classmates Ray Goldstein and Nick Katzman. This is Bill Brand’s first 16mm film completed in 1969 while a student at Antioch College.
Begone Dull Care (1949) by Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart, 16mm. Abstract images using handmade film techniques set to jazz music.
It Dawn Down (1974) by Bill Brand, 16mm. An ordinary take-up reel spins to make colorful and delicate patterns even though the film is black and white.
Roulement Rourie Aubage (1978) by Rose Lowder, 16mm. Roulement, rouerie, aubage takes two paddle wheels on the Sorgue for its subject. Structured in the camera without any editing, the film makes use of a series of cross-references that are set up between two operating mechanisms : a selection of elements belonging to the rotating wheels and a certain number of visual features accentuated by the filming procedures chosen to record the frames.
Split Decision (1979) by Bill Brand., 16mm. This film is a scrambled narrative that illustrates, in soap opera fashion, life of artists in Lower Manhattan and at the same time dramatizes questions about the nature of filmic representation. Split decision is a boxing term used when the judges divide their votes in finding a winner.
Still at Work (1975) by Bill Brand, 16mm. A self-portrait of the artist in his places of work: the studio in Lower Manhattan and Sarah Lawrence College, the school where he taught. The film animates a still photograph through a grid of random dots.
Light Licks: Amen (2018) by Saul Levine, 16mm. Light Licks are a series of films began in 1999. The films are made frame by frame, often by flooding the camera with enough light to spill beyond the gate into the frame left unexposed.
Interior Outpost (2003) by Bill Brand, Digital Video. Here, my body is explicitly a screen on which I project my father’s photographs of the family to articulate my position of difference within the family experience of illness and death.
August Garden (2019) by Bill Brand, Digital Video.
99 Minutes
The VSW Salon is programmed by Tara Merenda Nelson, taranelson@vsw.org
The VSW Salon is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts and by the ArtWorks program of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Still from Split Decision by Bill Brand