15: Another Movie by Morgan Fisher

1 April, 2018 - 13:30
Sphinx cinema

The films by Los Angeles artist and filmmaker Morgan Fisher (Courtisane Artist in Focus 2010) are largely about film itself, whether in its material form and technical procedures or as an institution, such as the tropes of films made in the commercial film industry. Since the late 1990s Fisher has been active mainly as a visual artist, producing paintings and other works, many of which, like his films, bring into view unexamined assumptions about their medium. His later films Standard Gauge (1984) and ( ) (2003) are examples of found footage, made of fragments of existing films. We’d been waiting since 2003 for ‘another movie’ by Morgan Fisher. Here it is.

 

In the presence of Morgan Fisher.

 

Morgan Fisher will give a lecture on his visual work on THU 29 March 20h00.
KASKLEZING KASK / School of Arts - Anatomisch Auditorium (Cirque)
In collaboration with KASKlezingen and KASK media arts department.

A Movie

Bruce Conner
,
US
,
1958
,
16mm
,
b&w
,
12'

Inspired by the surrealist poetry of zapping, the aesthetics of film trailers and the use of archive material in the Marx Brothers comedy Duck Soup, Conner spent many years working in what he would call a “universal film”, the world reflected in a compendium of symbolic images from newsreel, fiction films, educational material and softcore porno.

Standard Gauge

Morgan Fisher
,
US
,
1984
,
16mm
,
colour
,
35'

An autobiographical account of Fisher’s experiences as an editor in the commercial film industry during the early 1970s. Filming a succession of divergent film scraps rejected at the editing stage, Fisher comments on the origin and meaning of each image, thus exploring the mechanisms and conditions of film production, in both its materialistic and institutional aspects.

Another Movie

Morgan Fisher
,
US
,
HD
,
b&w
,
22'

“As its title tells us, Another Movie has a relation to Bruce Conner’s 1958 film A Movie. Both films use Respighi’s Pines of Rome, but they use it in different ways to different ends. Conner used only parts of the music, and the scenes he put to it are radically different from those Respighi said his music depicts. In contrast, Another Movie presents Respighi’s music for what it is, but in a way that is deliberately divided. After the titles and an introductory note, we read Respighi’s descriptions of the scenes the four movements depict, then we hear the music in its entirety. During the movements that Conner took excerpts from, the screen is black. We’ve just read Respighi’s descriptions, so we should in principle visualize the scenes he has told us his music describes. But we have been conditioned by years of hearing the music as we watch A Movie, so instead we see images from Conner’s film. While hearing the music in one film, we can’t help seeing images from another. During the third movement, which Conner used none of, we see the scene that Respighi said the music describes. This literalism, redundant and hence in principle banal, produces what I hope is a generative shock.” (MF)