The Kitchen
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“‘Well, What If?’ That’s Been My Guiding Principle”: Charles Atlas on His Recent 3D and Live Video Work, Including His Kitchen Exhibition, the past is here, the futures are coming
With video installations now filling every gallery and museum, the moving image has become a ubiquitous refuge for lovers of the ocular spectacle. Moving colors and sounds pull viewers into darkened spaces where they contemplate films made to work across multiple screens, films that can’t be contained within the traditional theater model. But before there were graduate programs in video art, before there were dedicated media rooms in museums, there was Charles Atlas. Charles Atlas has been a pioneering figure in film and video for over four decades, expanding the limits of his medium, while forging a unique aesthetic that […]
by Michelle Handelman on May 8, 2018 -
JAY SCHEIB ON FASSBINDER’S “WORLD OF WIRES”
For many years Welt am Draht, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1973 three-and-a-half hour, made-for-TV science fiction opus was one of the late German directors’ most underscreened films. Dazzlingly stylish, and with narrative and thematic concerns anticipating the cyberpunk themes that would take root in science fiction more than a decade later, the film was only shown in America once in 1997 — that is, before it was restored and received a short run at MoMA in 2010. Fassbinder was quoted in MoMA’s catalogue as saying the film, translated as World on a Wire, is “a very beautiful story that depicts a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 7, 2012 -
DAVID BYRNE LOOKS FORWARD TO THE MOVIES
I was describing this performance art piece by David Byrne to a friend the other day, but, of course and like everything, it’s on YouTube. It’s from The Kitchen Presents: Two Moon July, a television special produced by the New York performing arts and video center that was my first place of employment. Here, Byrne returns from Los Angeles with a copy of Variety and looks forward to all the upcomings. With Toronto starting this week and the fall festival season in gear, it felt like the right time to post this.
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 6, 2011 -
Raul Ruiz Remembered By James Schamus
The great Chilean filmmaker Raul Ruiz passed away today in Paris. Through his feature The Golden Boat, which was James Schamus’s first as a producer, Raul gave a group of us in New York’s nascent ’80s independent scene (including myself and Robin O’Hara) a wonderful and nearly indescribable introduction to filmmaking. So, I’m grateful here to James for this piece remembering Ruiz and those thrilling and formative days. — Scott Macaulay Raul Ruiz: First Thoughts Raul Ruiz passed away today, age 70, in Paris. He’ll be remembered as one of the truly great, idiosyncratic and visionary voices of world cinema. […]
by James Schamus on Aug 19, 2011 -
BRENT GREEN BRINGS “GRAVITY” TO THE KITCHEN
Brent Green is one of Filmmaker‘s favorite young artists, a wholly original animator and performer who has become something of an art world star on the basis of his idiosyncratic, low-fi short films and live events. Tonight and tomorrow he brings the full evening live version of Gravity is Everywhere Back Then to New York’s The Kitchen. From The Kitchen’s website: Inspired by the real actions of the eccentric Leonard Wood, filmmaker Brent Green brings to life this love story like no other in his first feature-length film. Shot entirely on the full-scale town he built in his backyard, Green […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2011 -
CAULEEN SMITH PREMIERES VIDEO INSTALLATION AT THE KITCHEN
Filmmaker and artist Cauleen Smith, one of our “25 New Faces of 1998,” is premiering a new video installation at New York’s The Kitchen this week. Remote Viewing will be on view January 7 – March 5, 2011. Admission is free. There will be an opening reception for the exhibition at The Kitchen on Friday, January 7 from 6:00-8:00pm, and a special screening curated by the artist on Monday, February 28 at 7:00pm. From the catalog: California-based filmmaker, screenwriter, and video installation artist, Cauleen Smith is best known for Afro-futurist cinematic works that weave intimate narratives of love, yearning, and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 6, 2011 -
TRAILER WATCH: ADAM PENDLETON’S “BAND”
Artist Adam Pendleton has created a new large-scale video installation at New York’s The Kitchen inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s Rolling Stones’ deconstruction, Sympathy for the Devil. It features the band Deerhoof and runs through December 23. From the catalog copy: This solo exhibition presents the U.S. premiere of Adam Pendleton’s new large scale video installation. Pendleton’s BAND is a form and content refashioning of Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil, which stands in open contrast to the earlier film. Modeling Godard’s belief that radical formal complexity can undermine the bourgeois logic implicit to narrative filmmaking, BAND tracks the indie-rock band […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 27, 2010 -
SAM GREEN, “UTOPIA IN FOUR MOVEMENTS”
After Sam Green and Dave Cerf premiered their “live documentary” Utopia in Four Movements at Sundance, I wrote the below as part of a Sundance wrap-up at FilmInFocus. Also part of New Frontier was Sam Green and Dave Cerf’s Utopia in Four Movements. In what was billed as a “live documentary,” filmmaker Green, who previously helmed the doc, The Weather Underground, explores a precondition for revolution: a shared vision of utopia. The score was composed and played live by The Quavers (Catherine McCrae, Dennis Cronin, T. Griffin, and Cerf), and Green did live voiceover over film clips and slides. Recalling […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 11, 2010 -
Artist and Filmmaker Gretchen Bender Dies at 53
I learned over the holidays that artist Gretchen Bender, whose intelligent, visually seductive work crossed lines between visual art and film, sculpture and video, died in New York on Sunday, December 18 of cancer. She was 53. Bender, who, early in her career exhibited at the East Village Nature Morte Gallery and later Metro Pictures, created conceptually concise and elegant work that often critiqued mainstream media and the power imbalances contained within its representations. And while many artists at this time were working with appropriation and engaging in similar sorts of critique, Bender’s work always cunningly embodied within itself a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 3, 2005
