Early Monthly Segments

This month we pair films by Barbara Hammer and Kurt Kren to draw out some fascinating similarities from both their works. Barbara Hammer, the lesbian filmmaker known for her radical and poetic films on lesbian identity and Kurt Kren, best known for documenting (in a uniquely structural way) the early performances of the Viennese Aktionist movement, may never have shared a stage, but their extensive catalogues share an obsession with interests beyond the radical body.

While Kren’s explosive early Aktionist films have a well-deserved infamy (particularly the Otto Muehl film 7/64 Leda and the Swan and 16/67 September 20th—the eating, drinking, pissing and shitting film), other ‘60s era films had a different definition of “graphic”, basing films like 2/60 48 Heads From The Szondi-Test on images taken from printed matter, flattening the possibilities of film down to a two-dimensional picture plane. In the ‘70s his films moved from the micro to the macro, shifting to large swathes of time that he harnessed by creating long time-exposures, most notably with the stunning 31/75 Asyl, where Kren used a series of masks to re-expose three rolls of film over twenty-one days, creating a landscape fragmented across time.

Barbara Hammer’s Sanctus and Bent Time each tackle similar themes in Hammer’s own particular way. Sanctus takes early x-rays shot by Dr. James Sibley Watson and optically prints them into a remarkable film about the way our bodies are imaged in relationship to medicine and disease. Dr. Watson’s eerie moving x-rays transform the human body into an ethereal, two-dimensional object. Bent Time explores the fourth dimension, time, in her wondrous trip across the continental United States, stopping at ancient places like Chaco Canyon and more recent sites such as the Stanford Linear Accelerator. Driven by a Pauline Oliveros score, the film maps the energy of time and history in an exciting play of light, movement and sound.

Programme:
2/60 48 Köpfe Aus Dem Szondi-Test (48 Heads From The Szondi-Test), Kurt Kren, 1960, 16mm, Austria, 4.5 min. b&w, silent
10/65 Selbstverstümmelung (Self-Mutilation), Kurt Kren, 1965, 16mm, Austria, 5 min. b&w, silent
Sanctus, Barbara Hammer, 1990, 16mm, USA, 19 min. colour, sound
32/76 An W + B (To W + B), Kurt Kren, 1976, Austria, 7 min. colour, silent
34/77 Tschibo, Kurt Kren, 1977, 16mm, Austria, 2 min. colour, silent
31/75 Asyl (Asylum), Kurt Kren, 1975, 16mm, Austria, 9 min. colour, silent
Bent Time, Barbara Hammer, 1983, 16mm, USA, 22 min. colour, sound
50/96 Snapshots (for Bruce), Kurt Kren, 1996, 16mm, Austria, 5 min. colour, silent

@ Gladstone Hotel, Art Bar | 1214 Queen St West
Monday February 20, 2012 | 7:30 pm screening, $5 suggested donation

Upcoming #37 = March 19 = 3^rd Anniversary!