Thursday, Friday, Saturday, each day at 5.30 p.m. in the Lagerhalle
This year's author retropsective is dedicated to the "Jon Swift" of
experimental cinema, Stan VanDerBeek, who died in 1984. VanDerBeek began his
career in the 1950's making independent art film while learning animation
techniques and working painting scenary and set designs for the American TV
show, "Winky Dink and You." His earliest films, made between 1955 and 1965
mostly consist of animated paintings and collages, combined in a form of
"organic development."
VanDerBeek's ironic compositions were created very much in the spirit of the
surreal and dadaist collages on Max Ernst, but with a wild, rough informalety
more akin to the expressionism of the Beat Generation. His extraordinary method
of montage still captivates today. These collage films became very popular and
won prizes at a variety of festivals. Terry Gilliam from the Monty Python team
quotes VanDerBeek as being one of his earliest sources of inspiration.
In the 1960's, VanDerBeek began working with the likes of Claes Oldenburg and
Allen Kaprow, as well as representatives of modern dance, such as Merce
Cunningham and Yvonne Rainer. Building his Movie Drome theater at Stony Point -
New York at just about the same time, he designed shows here using multiple
projectors. These presentations contained a very great number of random image
sequences and continuities, with the result that none of the performances were
alike.
His desire for the utopian led him to work with Ken Kwolton in a co-operation
at the Bell Telephone Company laboratories, where dozens of computer animated
films and holographic experiments were created by the end of the 1960's. At the
same time, VanDerBeek taught at many universities, researching new methods of
representation, from the steam projections at the Guggenheim Museum, to the
interactive television transmissions of his "Violence Sonata" broadcast on
several channels in 1970.
A filmlist of all shown retrospectives are available:
Dr. William Moritz from the Californian Institute of Arts will give an
introduction to the life work of this pioneer of the visual utopia.