‘In 1951, Ed Emshwiller (1925–1990), a World War II veteran and fledgling commercial illustrator from Michigan who had studied in Paris and at the Art Students League of New York, bought a house with his wife, Carol, in Levittown, a newly built community on Long Island that offered lines of credit to GIs. A prime midcentury symbol of cookie-cutter conformity, middle-class anxiety, and real-estate redlining, Levittown provided the Emshwillers with a secure base from which to launch their careers, Ed as an artist, Carol as a writer. The Emshwillers were perhaps the sole residents who fully dedicated themselves to the postwar American project of self-fulfillment and integrated personality (in a segregated community). “They were the only beatniks in Levittown,” recalled their then-teenage neighbor Bill Griffith, who went on to create the Zippy the Pinhead comics. His father, Griffith maintains, envied the Emshwillers. They didn’t commute to Manhattan every day.
‘Instead, Ed Emshwiller worked in his second-floor home studio, painting illustrations for the covers of sci-fi magazines, including Galaxy, Infinity, and Astounding Science Fiction, and cheap novels by Philip K. Dick, Leigh Brackett, and Samuel R. Delaney. Emshwiller was good at this, and successful. He won five Hugo Awards. He supported his growing family. Some months, his illustrations accounted for a third of all those published in the sci-fi pulps. He drew aliens on other planets, spacemen in cockpits zipping through the cosmos, and rats controlling men’s brains. He painted women in crazed poses with defiant looks in their eyes. A 1957 illustration titled Disintegration of a Field-Force features a blast of light behind a body-suited woman twisting and reaching in space, and it predicts the dance films he would make.
‘By the 1960s, Emshwiller, like Andy Warhol, had turned from commercial illustration to 16-mm filmmaking, blacking out the windows in his studio so he could make movies, Factory style, in Levittown. His singular body of work experimented with form, dance, narrative, and social psychology; he mixed them together, sometimes uneasily. “Dream Dance: The Art of Ed Emshwiller,” a film series and exhibition curated by Jesse Pires at Lightbox Film Center and the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, celebrated Emshwiller’s lifework across the popular and the experimental, combining his genre illustrations with his films, videos, and computer animations. Shown together, they reveal Emshwiller as a voracious bohemian workaholic.
‘Self-taught, he first experimented by photographing close-ups of paint, rewinding the film in the camera, then filming dancers so they would move around the brushstrokes. He debuted Dance Chromatic in 1959 at Amos Vogel’s Cinema 16 in Manhattan and promptly won an award. Soon he was part of the New York avant-garde. Jonas and Adolfas Mekas modeled for one of his illustrations, appearing as a space pilot and an emaciated wraith, respectively, on the cover of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Emshwiller returned the favor by acting in Adolfas’s Hallelujah the Hills (1963).
‘Emshwiller was as prolific a filmmaker as he was an illustrator, working on more than seven dozen films and videos in his lifetime. He also became a cinematographer, shooting Jonas Mekas’s The Brig (1964) and several documentaries. He shot black-voter-registration drives in Mississippi, cinema vérité style, and Resnais-like hallways filled with banks of data-crunching computers for a PBS film on mind control. He worked for the United States Information Agency as a director-cinematographer and made Project Apollo in 1968, a stunningly original spaceflight film. Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick both came to visit him in Levittown. It seems like they were the only filmmakers he ever turned down. While he was a dean at CalArts in the 1970s, he worked on primitive computer animations with Alvy Ray Smith, one of the guys who would go on to start Pixar.
“It’s Emshwiller’s body that is vomiting out its existential memories and suspicions,” Jonas Mekas wrote in the Village Voice in 1970. Emshwiller’s busyness, his constant Brownian motion, takes away from his most lasting achievement as a film artist. Post–Maya Deren and pre–Yvonne Rainer, he is the best director of dance films in experimental and expanded cinema. The two dozen or so he made, including Chrysalis (1973) and Film with Three Dancers (1970), surpass his earlier, knottier film work with an otherworldly beauty absent from death-haunted cascades of images like Thanatopsis (1962) and Relativity (1966).
‘His dance films take place “in space”; Film with Three Dancers features Creation of the Humanoids–esque performers in monochrome leotards and silver bathing caps who are lit with colored lights similar to those in Italian space flicks and horror movies. Made with the Alwin Nikolais Dance Company and often featuring the choreographer-dancer Carolyn Carlson, three movement studies connect Emshwiller’s view of natural landscapes and space flight to the human body. In other videos, like Scape-Mates (1972) and Pilobolus and Joan (1973), which was written by Carol, Emshwiller took dance from his homemade stage into the laboratory, where the real world met a virtual one inside his computer.
‘In the latter film, members of the dance troupe Pilobolus crawl in centipede-like formation against a chroma-key backdrop of the twin towers, serenaded at times by a folk singer. In the former, dance figures blip out of colorful grids and blocks. Both films are trippy, complex, and not a little nuts. A final work, Hungers (1988), an avant-garde space opera worthy of Sun Ra, with music by Morton Subotnick sung on-screen by Joan La Barbara, expresses the human soul flying free from corporeality, free from Levittown and any known planet.’ — A. S. Hamrah, Artforum
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Stills
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Further
Ed Emshwiller @ Wikipedia
SCIENCE-FICTION VISIONARY ED EMSHWILLER GETS RECOGNITION AS AN EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKER
Ed Emshwiller @ Electronic Arts Intermix
Ed Emshwiller @ IMDb
Dream Dance: The Art of Ed Emshwiller
EE @ Video Data Bank
9.8 Ed Emshwiller
Book: Emshwiller: Infinity x Two: The Art & Life of Ed & Carol Emshwiller
EE @ Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre
The Films of Ed Emshwiller
EE @ Underground Film Journal
EE @ letterboxd
The Body and the Cosmos
The art of Ed Emshwiller, 1925–1990
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Extras
Screening Room with Ed Emshwiller (Excerpt)
Pulp Art – Ed Emshwiller
Ed Emshwiller on the Dick Cavett show, May 1978
Art of Ed Emshwiller Panel
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“Later That Same Life”
Peter “Stoney” Emshwiller, is the son of experimental filmmaker and sf artist Ed Emshwiller and sf writer Carol Emshwiller.
When he was 18 years old, his father Ed shot footage of Peter interviewing his future self.
I sat in a well-lit chair in a completely black studio and, like some teenaged Johnny Carson, chatted with an invisible older me. During this one-way conversation, I asked my older self tons of questions about my future – from career to family to art to friendships to sex. Then I recorded many different reactions to each possible answer, ranging from polite nods, to joy, sadness, annoyance, surprise, and outright horror….
My filmmaker father, Ed Emshwiller, ran the camera for me and covered the first half of this interview in various ways – with close ups, wide shots, “two shots” (but with one person), over-the-shoulder foreground shots (with no one in the background), etc. And for 38 years, I waited to edit in my older self’s responses.
He writes, “A recent health scare (happily a false alarm) made me realize I ain’t gonna live forever, and that it’s time to finish this project. So I’m finally going to (gulp) face my younger self and record the other half of the conversation.”
The result is “Later That Same Life,” and he’s looking for crowdsourced funding to put it all together. Toward that end, he’s released a few minutes of highlights. The Emshwillers’ “conversation” is by turns combative, sweet and funny. Be warned that there’s some R-rated language here; on the other hand, those are some of the funniest parts:
At one point, the 56-year-old Emshwiller tells the teenager, “I’m old; I’m fat, and in your mind I’m a failure.” On the other hand, the question “Are you exceedingly rich?” elicits laughter from them both.
Asked whether he marries, the older Emshwiller begins to rhapsodize about his wife. Then, when he realizes whom he’s “talking” to, he turns stern: “Oh my God, she’s 12 years old now. Stay away from her.”
The most affecting part comes when the younger Emshwiller asks, “What’s happened to the family?” The elder version replies, “I don’t know what I should tell you.” After a long pause, he says quietly, “You should spend as much time as you can with them. Spend more time with Dad.” The teenage version stops, wipes his eyes and asks for the camera to be stopped.
On his Rockethub page, Emshwiller writes of some of the questions tackled in the film: “What is success? What is failure? Who decides how to judge a life? … And, while (we’re) chatting, what’s the deal with that beard, dude?”
Valid questions, each one.
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11 of Ed Emshwiller’s 23 films
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Dance Chromatic (1959)
‘Integrating film and painting, “Dance Chromatic” reveals that the contradiction between the desire to convey the organic growth of form and painting’s lack of temporal extension led Emshwiller into filmmaking.’ — Letterboxd
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Thanatopsis (1962)
‘An expression of internal anguish. The confrontation of a man and his torment. Juxtaposed against his external composure are images of a woman and lights in distortion, with tension heightened by the sounds of power saws and a heartbeat.’ — film-makers coop
the entirety
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Totem (1963)
‘Ed Emshwiller described this collaboration with composer-choreographer Alwin Nikolais: “A filmic interpretation of a modern dance ballet by Alwin Nikolais. Earth, fire, water and primordial mysteries in a cine-dance.”‘ — IMDb
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Scrambles (1964)
‘This biker documentary was selected for screening at the 1964 Flaherty Film Seminar. Emshwiller described it as “a roaring picture of motorcyclists in action. Modern Lancelots and their ladies-in-waiting go wide open for a day at the races. An impressionistic film of guys and gals who get their kicks in direct physical action.”’ — letterboxd
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Relativity (1966)
‘A man wonders, measures, views relationships, people, places, things, time, himself. A sensual journey through a series of subjective reflections. “[A] beautifully photographed color montage of shots; insect, animal, man and galaxy; a sobering antidote to the orgy of subjectivism going on elsewhere.” — Vincent Canby, The New York Times. “The artist’s search for the meaning of his own existence is never-ending and takes many forms. Ed Emshwiller’s remarkable epic, RELATIVITY, continues this exploration with extraordinary frankness and rare technical skill. The sequence which symbolically portrays a woman at the moment of sexual climax is one of the most beautiful in the literature of film.” — Willard Van Dyke. “RELATIVITY is a marvelously sensual film … it is, I have no doubt, a masterpiece.”‘ — Richard Whitehall
Excerpt
the entirety
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Project Apollo (1968)
‘Americans were largely unable to see Emshwiller’s masterful and unconventional documentary PROJECT APOLLO, made for the United States Information Agency in 1968. USIA productions were made to promote American interests to viewers in other countries; until 1990, federal law made it illegal (with some exceptions) to show such ideologically conceived material inside U.S. borders. With its modernist minimalist score, cool technical precision, and formalist design, PROJECT APOLLO was distinctive from most USIA films (of which there were thousands throughout the Cold War).’ — NYU Cinema Studies
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Carol (1970)
‘Off and on, Carol and I spent a few days in the woods filming. We got some images of her, some of trees, leaves, twigs and logs. These I combined with sounds from a thumb piano, which were sometimes modified electronically. The results: what seems to me to be a gentle, lyrical film.’ — EE
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Scape Mates (1972)
‘In one of his first experiments in video, Emshwiller creates an electronic landscape of both abstract and figurative elements, where colorized dancers are chroma-keyed into a mutable, computer-animated environment. Working with the “Scan-i-mate,” an early analog video synthesizer, Emshwiller choreographs an architectural, illusory video space, in which frames proliferate within frames, disembodied heads and hands move within a collage of animated forms, and the dancers and their environment are subjected to constant transformations through image processing. With its witty interplay of the “real” and the “unreal” in an electronically rendered videospace, and the skillful manipulation and articulation of a sculptural illusion of three-dimensionality, Scape-mates introduced a new vocabulary of video image-making.’ — Electronic Arts Intermix
Excerpt
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Crossings and Meetings (1974)
‘Before CGI was standard, Ed Emshwiller was already making computer-generated films. in Crossings and Meetings (1974), he used analog video layering to multiply human figures into ghost-like repetitions.’ — Anthology Recordings
Excerpt
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Sunstone (1979)
‘Sunstone is a landmark tape. Symbolic and poetic, it is a pivotal work in the development of an electronic language to articulate three-dimensional space. The opening image is an iconic face, which appears to be electronically “carved” from stone. A mystical third eye, brilliantly crafted from a digital palette, radiates with vibrant transformations of color and texture. Sculpting electronically, Emshwiller then transforms perspectival representation: the archetypal “sunstone” is revealed to be one facet of an open, revolving cube, each side of which holds a simultaneously visible, moving video image. Created with what was then complex technology over an eight-month period, this emblematic spinning cube metaphorically describes a three-dimensional, temporal space, both hyperreal and simulated. Emshwiller’s humanistic approach to technology ushered in the 1980s with a new electronic vocabulary for conceptualizing and visualizing images in space and time. Reflecting an image-saturated world, Sunstone marked a new stage in electronic art.’ — Electronic Arts Intermix
the entirety
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Skin Matrix (1984)
‘Emshwiller writes that the visually complex and densely textured Skin Matrix is a “video tapestry… a layering of different manifestations of energy: electronic (light, video, computer), inorganic (dunes, rocks, mud), organic (wood, plants), human (skin, hair), individual (faces, eyes), imagination (sculpture, robot).” His intricate electronic transformations of tactile surfaces, landscapes and human faces signify a metaphysical process that simultaneously masks and reveals; he achieves an uncanny spatial illusion of depth through layering and movement. Creating sophisticated image patterns and structures with the simple Bally Arcade computer (used for playing video games), Emshwiller weaves together the lush textures and kinetic energy of the organic and the technological.’ — Electronic Arts Intermix
the entirety
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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I’ve been lucky enough to ride some of those coasters on my Japan trips, but the one I’m most determined to ride next time is Hakugei, which in Japan has been nicknamed ‘The Ghost’, which is part of the allure. France is pretty good with cookies for some reason, and they’re getting better at donuts, but cakes flummox them. I’m glad you enjoyed the Manson show. Weird when ‘scary’ acts do that ‘How’s it going, Vienna?’ stuff. That was the same thing with Black Sabbath. They’d be laying down great, gloomed out rips, and Ozzy, god rest his soul, would be running around flashing victory signs like a cheerleader. Very disconcerting. I wonder if Dildo is some old Native American word or something. Love wondering why films made in France run at 25 fps whereas films made in the US run at 24 fps, and why ‘Room Temperature’ runs at 25 fps, and why that extra 1 fps is such a problem that we have to pay some technician biggish money to tighten the film to 24 fps in order to release it on a US Blu-ray, G. ** Adem Berbic, I’ve only read Dustan in English obviously, but his prose does not seem special to me. My loss. Cool and luck and encouragement on your new thing. If your next thing isn’t harder to write, you’re doing something wrong. That’s my motto. Then we should hit Parc Asterix one of the times you’re over. ** _Black_Acrylic, Jupiter looks good, agreed. I like wooden coasters, but they’re so fucking bumpy. Being in pain on a coaster is a bit counter-productive. ** Thom, Hi, Thom! I think if I had to choose my favorite Suzuki is kind of the predictable aka best known one, ‘Tokyo Drifter’. I hate when that happens. With you on the big white coaster. That’s the siren to me too. All the luck with the guitar-less gig. I love guitars, but it’s great when they’re superfluous. You got the smoke even in Oregon? That stuff just won’t quit. Maybe it’ll end up over here. Best of everything until next time. ** Ezra, Hi, Ezra. There is something to be said for observing coasters without riding them. What you imagine riding them will feel like can be voluminous whereas riding them gives you slight variations on the same thrill/adrenaline rush no matter how they’re built. Hope you aced that lecture. Did you? Oh, I do miss cocaine, sigh. Since I did not do cocaine, my Wednesday was surely less enjoyable than yours, but I’m a romantic. ** Travis (fka Cal), Hi. No problem, time is very flexible here on the blog. Well, unless you’re in charging of making it. I’m so sorry that you’ve been dealing with deaths. But, I hesitate to say, they are or can be very good for the writing. That sounds awful, but there you go. Do you submit your work to sites and journals and stuff? Having writer friends with whom you all share your works can be an actual trigger to going public. I guess that’s obvious. I’m very glad I’m not in Texas even when Paris is boiling. Although I went to Houston last year to show our film, and I liked it. It reminded me of LA even. Anyway, make sure to hit some AC pit stops as often as possible. Love back. ** HaRpEr //, Now that they’re converting a lot of the wooden coasters into hybrid steel/wood coasters, they can have pretty decently long lives. And they’re actually fun to ride while still giving you the remaining frame of a building beauty. I do think knowing when to take a break from a novel is important. You think your inspiration and impetus will die, but that very rarely happens, in my experience. Sometimes it’s time to let your brain play with the novel without your antsy fingers being involved. ** Bill, I loved it: ‘Flue’! Haha, see, the Skycycle is the only one that scares me too much to try. My heights fear only really kicks in when the world below isn’t whizzing by. Well, I’d hate for you to lose the little new music festival. What a dilemma. ** laura w, Give me a great dark ride over a great coaster any day, but they can be pretty uplifting. That coworker is a fucking snake. Insecure men in positions of power are the world’s biggest problem. Need I even name them. What’s cool is that what I write about scares me until I start writing about it, and then it doesn’t. Strange. Yay, confusing folks! Victoire! My day might have been better than yours, but your day today is probably going to make mine seem very blah. ** Right. I’m guessing that a lot of you don’t know the work of Ed Emshwiller because of the ultra-limited way in which experimental films reach the public these days due to the movie world’s gutlessness and hyper-capitalist aims, so I thought I would do my part to let you know that his very interesting films exist and give you the chance to partake or not. See you tomorrow.
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