I curated a show about unfinished films that will be up at Gladstone Gallery this summer. Some details below:- The Unfinished Film Gladstone Gallery 515 West 24th Street June 24 – July 29 Opening Reception: June 23, 6-8pm Kenneth Anger Stan Brakhage Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Joseph Cornell Maya Deren Sergei Eisenstein Oskar Fischinger Morgan Fisher Hollis Frampton David Gatten Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville Jack Goldstein Ken Jacobs Gregory Markopoulos Albert and David Maysles Pier Paolo Pasolini David Robbins Paul Sharits Harry Smith Erich von Stroheim Leslie Thornton Dziga Vertov Andy Warhol Gladstone Gallery is pleased to announce “The Unfinished Film,” an exhibition curated by Thomas Beard. What can be learned from unfinished films, from works that arrive to us as fragments? Considered collectively—from Erich von Stroheim’s Queen Kelly to Sergei Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico! to Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind and beyond—perhaps they constitute a secret canon, the most raw and, in turn, revealing sides of an artist’s practice. Included in the show are projects that are intentionally unfinished as well as those abandoned out of frustration, halted by dwindling resources, cut short by death, or curtailed by political circumstance. Representing cinema in a wide range of intermediary states, these are works that unveil the particularities of their origins, lay bare the vicissitudes of their process and production. At the heart of the exhibition will be a black box theater with a regular, daily schedule of unfinished films and related works, many of which are rarely screened and some that have never before been exhibited publicly. The lineup—whose diverse contents feature the oneiric episodes of Harry Smith and Leslie Thornton alongside the incisive essays of Godard/Miéville and Pasolini—is anchored by the ultimate unfinished film, Hollis Frampton’s Magellan. In its final form, Frampton’s epic cycle was to contain nearly 1,000 films totaling 36 hours in length that would unfold over an entire calendar year, though only a fraction of these were completed. The serial project, metaphorically modeled on Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe, was to consume the last decade of Frampton’s career and its many ambitions included the “making of a coherent body of work that shall systematically map the terrain of film art, together with its boundaries, according to poetic principles extrapolated or induced from film’s irrational natural history,” or, put simply, “making film over as it should have been.” Accompanying the programs presented in the cinema will be a constellation of ephemera and works on paper, such as Kenneth Anger’s drawings for Puce Women, the unmade, feature-length version of Puce Moment, and Joseph Cornell’s scenario Monsieur Phot, represented by an edition that Cornell gave to Susan Sontag when they began their correspondence in the mid-1960s. A number of these pieces maintain a more diagrammatic character, like Dziga Vertov’s 1936 schema for his unrealized “creative laboratory,” or Paul Sharits’s drawings for Passare, a piece that was conceived as a lengthy, many-chaptered film series but which had its final life as a suite of meticulous, multi-colored notational systems. Here and elsewhere in the show, the work on view is accompanied by another, imagined work, born out of the fantasy of the original’s completion. Said another way, as Frampton did when comparing Magellan to Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, “The Monument was not built. There are other ways to build monuments. The ways to build them are to build them immaterially, in the mind.” “The Unfinished Film” will be accompanied by a publication with texts by Giorgio Agamben, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Sergei Eisenstein, Oskar Fischinger, Hollis Frampton, Gregory Markopoulos, Annette Michelson, Robert Smithson, and Dziga Vertov. Thomas Beard is a founder and director of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. He recently co-curated the cinema for Greater New York 2010 at MoMA PS1 and is currently working on the film program for the 2012 Whitney Biennial.Screening Schedule June 24 3pmThe Director and His Actor Look at Footage Showing Preparations for an Unmade Film (2) Morgan Fisher, 1968, 15 minsBatman Dracula (excerpt) Andy Warhol, 1964, 68 mins June 27 - July 1 Monday 3pmMagellan Hollis Frampton The Birth of MagellanCadenza I and XIV 1977-1980, 12 minsMindfall I and VII 1977-1980, 36 minsMatrix 1977-1979, 28 minsPalindrome 1969, 22 minsNoctiluca 1974, 4 mins Tuesday 3pm The Straits of MagellanPublic Domain 1972, 14 minsStraits of Magellan: Drafts and Fragments 1974, 18 minsIngenivm Nobis Ipsa Pvella Fecit 1975, 62 minsSummer Solstice 1974, 32 minsPas de Trois 1975, 5 mins Wednesday 3pm The Straits of MagellanAutumnal Equinox 1974, 27 minsStraits of Magellan: Drafts and Fragments 1974, 17 minsThe Red Gate 1976, 52 mins Thursday 3pm The Straits of MagellanWinter Solstice 1974, 33 minsStraits of Magellan: Drafts and Fragments 1974, 17 minsThe Green Gate 1976, 53 mins Friday 3pm The Death of MagellanApparatus Sum 1972, 3 minsOtherwise Unexplained Fires 1976, 14 minsQuaternion 1976, 4 minsYellow Springs 1972, 6 minsFor Georgia O’Keefe 1976, 4 minsMore Than Meets the Eye 1979, 8 minsNot the First Time 1976, 5 minsTiger Balm 1972, 10 minsProcession 1976, 3 minsGloria! 1979, 10 mins July 5 - July 8 Tuesday, Thursday 3pmOrson Welles in Spain Albert and David Maysles, 1966, 10 minsQue Viva Mexico! Sergei Eisenstein, 1931, 85 minsWednesday, Friday 3pmPuce Moment Kenneth Anger, 1949, 6 minsQueen Kelly Erich von Stroheim, 1928, 97 mins July 11 - July 15 Monday, Wednesday 3pmNotes on an African Orestes Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970, 73 mins Tuesday, Thursday 3pmWhite Dust from Mongolia Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, 32 mins, 1980 Friday 3pmIci et ailleurs Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville, 1976, 53 mins July 18 - 22 Monday - Friday 3pmSecret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts David Gatten Part ISecret History of the Dividing Line 2002, 20 mins Part IIThe Great Art of Knowing 2004, 37 mins Part IIIMoxon’s Mechanick Exercises or The Doctrine of Handy-Works Applied to the Art of Printing 1999, 26 mins Part IVThe Enjoyment of Reading 2001, 16 mins July 25 - 29 Monday, Wednesday 3pmKustom Kar Kommandos Kenneth Anger, 1965, 3 minsPeggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue                Leslie Thornton, 1984, 21 minsPeggy and Fred in Kansas Leslie Thornton, 1987, 11 minsFilm No. 16: Oz, The Tin Woodman’s Dream Harry Smith, 1967, 15 mins Tuesday, Thursday 3pmPeggy and Fred and Pete Leslie Thornton, 1988, 23 minsThe Witch’s Cradle Maya Deren, 1943, 12 mins(Dung Smoke Enters the Palace) Leslie Thornton, 1989, 16 mins Haiti Footage Maya Deren, 1947-1954, 30 mins Friday 3pmTwo Found Objects of Charles Boultenhouse Stan Brakhage, 1996, 7 minsGammelion Gregory Markopoulos, 1968, 55 mins

I curated a show about unfinished films that will be up at Gladstone Gallery this summer. Some details below:

-

The Unfinished Film
Gladstone Gallery
515 West 24th Street
June 24 – July 29
Opening Reception: June 23, 6-8pm

Kenneth Anger
Stan Brakhage
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Joseph Cornell
Maya Deren
Sergei Eisenstein
Oskar Fischinger
Morgan Fisher
Hollis Frampton
David Gatten
Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville
Jack Goldstein
Ken Jacobs
Gregory Markopoulos
Albert and David Maysles
Pier Paolo Pasolini
David Robbins
Paul Sharits
Harry Smith
Erich von Stroheim
Leslie Thornton
Dziga Vertov
Andy Warhol

Gladstone Gallery is pleased to announce “The Unfinished Film,” an exhibition curated by Thomas Beard. What can be learned from unfinished films, from works that arrive to us as fragments? Considered collectively—from Erich von Stroheim’s Queen Kelly to Sergei Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico! to Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind and beyond—perhaps they constitute a secret canon, the most raw and, in turn, revealing sides of an artist’s practice. Included in the show are projects that are intentionally unfinished as well as those abandoned out of frustration, halted by dwindling resources, cut short by death, or curtailed by political circumstance. Representing cinema in a wide range of intermediary states, these are works that unveil the particularities of their origins, lay bare the vicissitudes of their process and production.

At the heart of the exhibition will be a black box theater with a regular, daily schedule of unfinished films and related works, many of which are rarely screened and some that have never before been exhibited publicly. The lineup—whose diverse contents feature the oneiric episodes of Harry Smith and Leslie Thornton alongside the incisive essays of Godard/Miéville and Pasolini—is anchored by the ultimate unfinished film, Hollis Frampton’s Magellan. In its final form, Frampton’s epic cycle was to contain nearly 1,000 films totaling 36 hours in length that would unfold over an entire calendar year, though only a fraction of these were completed. The serial project, metaphorically modeled on Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe, was to consume the last decade of Frampton’s career and its many ambitions included the “making of a coherent body of work that shall systematically map the terrain of film art, together with its boundaries, according to poetic principles extrapolated or induced from film’s irrational natural history,” or, put simply, “making film over as it should have been.”

Accompanying the programs presented in the cinema will be a constellation of ephemera and works on paper, such as Kenneth Anger’s drawings for Puce Women, the unmade, feature-length version of Puce Moment, and Joseph Cornell’s scenario Monsieur Phot, represented by an edition that Cornell gave to Susan Sontag when they began their correspondence in the mid-1960s. A number of these pieces maintain a more diagrammatic character, like Dziga Vertov’s 1936 schema for his unrealized “creative laboratory,” or Paul Sharits’s drawings for Passare, a piece that was conceived as a lengthy, many-chaptered film series but which had its final life as a suite of meticulous, multi-colored notational systems. Here and elsewhere in the show, the work on view is accompanied by another, imagined work, born out of the fantasy of the original’s completion. Said another way, as Frampton did when comparing Magellan to Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, “The Monument was not built. There are other ways to build monuments. The ways to build them are to build them immaterially, in the mind.”

“The Unfinished Film” will be accompanied by a publication with texts by Giorgio Agamben, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Sergei Eisenstein, Oskar Fischinger, Hollis Frampton, Gregory Markopoulos, Annette Michelson, Robert Smithson, and Dziga Vertov.

Thomas Beard is a founder and director of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. He recently co-curated the cinema for Greater New York 2010 at MoMA PS1 and is currently working on the film program for the 2012 Whitney Biennial.

Screening Schedule

June 24

3pm

The Director and His Actor Look at Footage Showing Preparations for an Unmade Film (2)
Morgan Fisher, 1968, 15 mins
Batman Dracula (excerpt)
Andy Warhol, 1964, 68 mins

June 27 - July 1

Monday

3pm

Magellan
Hollis Frampton

The Birth of Magellan

Cadenza I and XIV
1977-1980, 12 mins
Mindfall I and VII
1977-1980, 36 mins
Matrix
1977-1979, 28 mins
Palindrome
1969, 22 mins
Noctiluca
1974, 4 mins

Tuesday

3pm

The Straits of Magellan

Public Domain
1972, 14 mins
Straits of Magellan: Drafts and Fragments
1974, 18 mins
Ingenivm Nobis Ipsa Pvella Fecit
1975, 62 mins
Summer Solstice
1974, 32 mins
Pas de Trois
1975, 5 mins

Wednesday

3pm

The Straits of Magellan

Autumnal Equinox
1974, 27 mins
Straits of Magellan: Drafts and Fragments
1974, 17 mins
The Red Gate
1976, 52 mins

Thursday

3pm

The Straits of Magellan

Winter Solstice
1974, 33 mins
Straits of Magellan: Drafts and Fragments
1974, 17 mins
The Green Gate
1976, 53 mins

Friday

3pm

The Death of Magellan

Apparatus Sum
1972, 3 mins
Otherwise Unexplained Fires
1976, 14 mins
Quaternion
1976, 4 mins
Yellow Springs
1972, 6 mins
For Georgia O’Keefe
1976, 4 mins
More Than Meets the Eye
1979, 8 mins
Not the First Time
1976, 5 mins
Tiger Balm
1972, 10 mins
Procession
1976, 3 mins
Gloria!
1979, 10 mins

July 5 - July 8

Tuesday, Thursday

3pm

Orson Welles in Spain
Albert and David Maysles, 1966, 10 mins
Que Viva Mexico!
Sergei Eisenstein, 1931, 85 mins

Wednesday, Friday

3pm

Puce Moment
Kenneth Anger, 1949, 6 mins
Queen Kelly
Erich von Stroheim, 1928, 97 mins

July 11 - July 15

Monday, Wednesday

3pm

Notes on an African Orestes
Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970, 73 mins

Tuesday, Thursday

3pm

White Dust from Mongolia
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, 32 mins, 1980

Friday

3pm

Ici et ailleurs
Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville, 1976, 53 mins

July 18 - 22

Monday - Friday

3pm

Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts
David Gatten

Part I
Secret History of the Dividing Line
2002, 20 mins
Part II
The Great Art of Knowing
2004, 37 mins
Part III
Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises or The Doctrine of Handy-Works Applied to the Art of Printing
1999, 26 mins
Part IV
The Enjoyment of Reading
2001, 16 mins

July 25 - 29

Monday, Wednesday

3pm

Kustom Kar Kommandos
Kenneth Anger, 1965, 3 mins
Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue               
Leslie Thornton, 1984, 21 mins
Peggy and Fred in Kansas
Leslie Thornton, 1987, 11 mins
Film No. 16: Oz, The Tin Woodman’s Dream
Harry Smith, 1967, 15 mins

Tuesday, Thursday

3pm

Peggy and Fred and Pete
Leslie Thornton, 1988, 23 mins
The Witch’s Cradle
Maya Deren, 1943, 12 mins
(Dung Smoke Enters the Palace)
Leslie Thornton, 1989, 16 mins
Haiti Footage
Maya Deren, 1947-1954, 30 mins

Friday

3pm

Two Found Objects of Charles Boultenhouse
Stan Brakhage, 1996, 7 mins
Gammelion
Gregory Markopoulos, 1968, 55 mins