Author: DC (Page 339 of 1094)

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Jillian McDonald Horror Make-Up, 2006
‘I transform myself from normal to zombie in the midst of a daily subway commute. Instead of improving my features, like the woman who steadily applies makeup en route to work or play, I become gruesome. This work takes cues from the legion of women who perform beauty rituals on the subway in a curious private zone where they seem unaware of anything outside their activity, and the rising cult of zombies in popular culture, where zombie gatherings and zombie lore flourish. Locating the audience physically in the subway performance space positions them as both voyeurs and potential victims.’

 

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Chuvabak Wips, 2017
‘Some tests I made for the video I will not finish.’

 

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Kim Dorland Zombies, 2013 – 2020
Oil on canvas

 

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Liu Zheng Survivors, 2002
Thermal transfers on canvas

 

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Huang Yan Brother and Sister No. 3, 2006
‘Posed as if for formal portraits – indeed, recalling ancestor portraits – two young children stand against a blank white background wearing their school uniform of crisp white shirt and red ‘Young Pioneer’ scarf. Their faces have been painted a startling dead white, obliterating any hint of individuality, and overlaying their features appears imagery from Song or Yuan Dynasty literati painting: on the boy, a typical shan shui landscape scene of mountain peaks receding into the distance, and on his pigtailed sister’s face a bird and flower painting. The paintings are made by Huang Yan’s wife, Zhang Tiemei, an accomplished and classically trained artist. These children are masked by their Chineseness, their national identity worn like a uniform.’

 

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Eugenio Merino Fidel Castro Zombie, 2007
silicon, cloth, paint

 

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Christophe de Rohan Chabot Britney/Skull, 2020
‘Recent outings from singers or hit-girls like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, or Lady Gaga provide a glimpse – for whoever wishes to read between the lines – of a classic process of zombification aimed to propagate a substance to control populations, via mass media channels: ‘just like the zombification of a subject, who the boko relieves of their soul in order to submit their body to his will and transform them into a docile and economically viable slave, the state of artificial somnambulism is provoked through a staging that involves a relationship of domination and constraint, which can go as far as death or erotic possession.’3 Possibly derived from the MK Ultra project, secretly undertaken by the CIA between 1953 and 19734 whose initial goal was to experiment with methods of behavioural modification for the purposes of espionage within the context of the Cold War (using drugs, psychological harassment, physical abuse, and so on), these practices and knowledges apparently later spread into civil society, and more specifically into the nebulous show business, in order to make use of the personality of stars as an effective mass broadcast medium for ideological content, reproducible archetypes and subliminal messages.’

 

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DAY6 Zombie, 2020
‘I feel like I became a zombie / Not alive, but I’m still walkin’ / When the sunrise is upon me / I’ll be waiting for the day to pass by, oh why? / I became a zombie / And there’s nothing that can cure me / So tomorrow I know I’ll be just the same / You’ll see me wishin’ to stop and close my eyes’

 

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Cao Fei Haze and Fog, 2013
‘Zombies have long been an important metaphor in Western popular culture but not so in China. Often violently blank they allow for evil motives to be projected onto them. In the western zombie film the zombie’s brain is dead but the body is alive. In ‘Haze and Fog’the ‘walking dead’ are people with something dead inside only not their brain but their soul. The artist has departed from the like of U.S. TV show ‘The Walking Dead’, or the horror adventure game ‘Silent Hill’, and their protagonists’ search for equilibrium. Instead of strong violence and shock, or a tense atmosphere through the unseen, Cao Fei’s ‘Haze and Fog’ examines people up close, slowly and in detail. Zooming into the international modern cells of new immigrants moved from traditional housing areas, we see people whose daily rituals have changed and traditions lost.’

 

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Jevgeni Zolotko Sacrifice, 2018
‘Sacrifice is one of Zolotko’s eeriest works. An abandoned horse trailer painted light grey that includes a startling sound was first exhibited at the first Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art. This was the artist’s childhood memory from when he saw a metal container with dead horses locked inside.’

 

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Manuel Lobartz Dog from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1978
Dog and silicon mask

 

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Manuel Pomar The living dead, 2006
‘Series of slideshows in stop motion and fixed images where the members of a collective are inert image after image.’

 

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Richard Hawkins disembodied zombies, 1997
Ink-jet print. 47 x 36 in. (119.4 x 91.4 cm)

 

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Aziz Anzabi Above Water Level 1, 2020
Canvas, Oil

 

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Frank Tovey The Loopy, 1978
‘While studying the Fine Arts at Leeds Polytechnic between 1975 & 1978, Frank Tovey (Fad Gadget) was guided by tutor Jeff Nuttall to embrace the art of performance with his special blend of dark, gothic literary influence. A product of this challenge was The Loopy, based off of the Richard Matheson short story “Dance of the Dead,” and BERG, Anne Quinn’s 1964 novel. Tovey used his studies in mime and interest in electro-acoustic soundscapes, masks, and puppets to realise these projects in full.’

 

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Markus Lüpertz Zombie, 1995
painted plaster

 

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Oleg Vdovenko Last Breath, 2018
‘As part of his “Last Breath” project, the Russian artist Olev Vdovenko paints paintings whose universe brings life through his creations to abyssal creatures that are solely the fruit of his imagination. Faceless, toothless zombies with cadaverous faces with prominent skulls and whose protruding eyes literally come out of their sockets. Oleg Vdovenko knows how to exploit all these attributes in order to create real evil and apocalyptic beings which seem to come from the flames of hell.’

 

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David Wojnarowicz Untitled, 1984
collaged paper and acrylic on cast plaster

 

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Joseph Oland Carl Grimes Loses An Eye, 2018
‘This is an illustration inspired by own of the most memorable scene from the popular television series The Walking Dead where Carl Grimes catches a bullet in the eye.’

 

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Thomas Schütte Zombies, 2007
‘Many years ago, my Paris gallerist Philip Nelson came to see me with a frequent flyer, and they wanted a design for the headquarters of a fashion company. While we were drinking coffee, I downloaded a Großer Geist sculpture of 1997 and chopped off its arms and legs. You can have this, I told them, but they didn’t want it. I made it anyway, but just one. The leftovers, the arms. legs and heads, became the Zombies.’

 

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Jacques Tourneur I Walked with a Zombie, 1943
‘Okay i like this film it very good, but I will always be shocked when watching the girl walking becoming a zombie because it Shirley Temple book a men grabbed her hand it pulled it down to his private area Gross they had to move to another seat, in the theater. 55.20 when the white girl sees the black zombie was creepy this might have been the scene that Shirley Temple was talking about as it very scary.’

 

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Ewa Juszkiewicz Zombie Girl in Blue, 2013
oil on canvas

 

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Folkert de Jong The Dance, 2008
Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam, artificial gemstones

 

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Tom Friedman Zombie, 2008
newspaper and wheat paste

 

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NubyTech Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Controller, 2006
‘The chainsaw peripheral both come packed in stylized boxes. The box looks exactly like a set of three-paned, double windows from one of the dark and dreary cabins so commonplace in the villages of Capcom title. Clearly viewable through the windows is the chainsaw controller, which actually protrudes from one side of the box, revealing a saw blade splotched in fake red blood. The backside of the package shows a gruesome drawing of the Chainsaw Man cutting off Kennedy’s head. However, the device’s plastic blade serves no control purpose which does not move though it resembles its in-game counterpart.’

 

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Raymond Pettibon No Title (Mormon Secrets), 1985
ink on paper

 

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Eliza Douglas Living Dead, 2019
‘Surely the most famous model from the art world, artist Eliza Douglas, recently dressed up as a zombie for an exhibition at the Francesca Pia Gallery in Zurich. Performing in front of a screen presenting excerpts from the series The Walking Dead in which only the zombies appear, she exposes herself as one of their number that has toppled from the screen. But it is well and truly Eliza Douglas – with her attributes (she wears a Balenciaga t-shirt) and her recognisable style – as a zombie, dragging herself along the floor, reproducing their gestures, codified by show business: taking advantage of a personal presentation, the artist poses both as subject and object of this performance, using self-reflexivity to signify the zombification at work on her person.’

 

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Wayne Tully How To Draw A Zombie Head, 2010
‘I do all this from my imagination, I just set my sketch pad up and start filming me drawing, I’ve never been a fan of any sort of time lapse videos, as I like to split it up into 3 or more parts and I like the spontaneous sketching to generate new ideas and drawings – Quick sketching is the name of the game!’

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** h now j, Hi. Thank you, and my pleasure about the post. Like Dulac, huh, very interesting, I can see that. Is it difficult writing about Warhol with so much having been written about him? Or maybe that just provides more impetus? ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thank you for the Haunted McMansion. I fear I would be like Sarah Winchester with her Winchester House and just keep adding new haunted wings forever. Well, I don’t fear that, actually. There are worse things one could devote one’s life to doing. Professional diving is one of love’s bugaboos, eh? Interesting. I just yesterday found a slave guy who’s thing is putting on a scuba diving suit and fighting with another scuba diver underwater until he loses and drowns. Maybe hooking up with him would change love’s mind, ha ha? Love quitting his job at Starbucks to become a zombie coiffure, G. ** Mieze, Hi, Mieze. Very, very sad indeed. I don’t think I ever tussled more or even at all with anyone ever here than I used to do with Joe, but I really valued that and him. I’m happy I got to see him IRL albeit briefly a few years ago, and it was a warm meeting. Hang in there as best you can, and lots of love from your neighbor, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Yes, indeed. I think that was discussed in the post even. ** Jeff J, Hi, J. Yes, the doc on her is disappointing, for sure. The Lannan Foundation, that funded Bookworm, pulled its funding, and that’s that. Patrick Lannan, the foundation’s head, retired recently, and his kids, who took over, don’t think Bookworm is worth it. Bastards. Agree with you of course about ‘CG’ and ‘WN’. I’m guessing the lesser status of those two novels has a lot to do with the more heft = more important bullshit that leads to the Franzen, et al = genius syndrome? I love the new JC EP! I think it’s my favorite of you guys’ stuff yet. The tightness thrills me. I like all three tracks. ‘Property is Theft’ is like some unholy merge of X and Fad Gadget meets Wire or something. My favorite is ‘King Blank’, which won’t surprise you. Awesome! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Having seen Joe and your dad and of course you in Glasgow is very precious. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Yes, the news about Joe is very shocking and hard to reconcile. Death is truly hateful. ** Misanthrope, Warmest hugs galore, man. All I’ve seen is stills from ‘Bones and All’ but they look kind of fun if maybe a little overstyled. ** Jamie, Hi, Jamie. Really happy you liked your first dip into Menken. Wait, you’re coming to or already in Paris? Holy moly. Sure, I’d love to see you. Do you have my cell#? If not, write to me at my email — denniscooper72@outlook.com — so we can figure out a way to hook up. This afternoon is good. I’m free until around 5 pm or so. Mm, there’s a show of experimental Italian film/video from the 60s -> at Jeu de Paume that I want to check out and maybe you would too? Anyway, here’s to hoping I see you as soon as today. Love over double espressos, me. ** Prince S, Hi. Oh, wow, that does sound like a challenging week, pal. I hope you enjoy the reading at the very least. My week is basically just kind of getting things together for the trip to LA next Monday. A deleted scene from Zac’s and my film ‘LCTG’ is in a gallery show here that opens on Saturday, and that might be fun. Huh, a friend of mine here is reading ‘The Loser’ right now, and it’s his first Bernhard too. Odd/cool. I trust you, of course, on the situation in Iran. It’s so, so rare that revolutions anywhere actually bring down authoritarian regimes, but their impact is not erasable at least. I’ll dream of an overthrow. Yes, the film is ‘Room Temperature’ at long, long last. Lots of week-ahead-easing love, me. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Just saw your email. I’ll get to it in a sec. Thank you! Tomorrow’s the big day! ** Brian, Hi, B. One less hole thanks to my blog, yay. There are haunts that don’t use the overused jump scare technique and are more about weird architecture and tone and stuff, but unfortunately I think all the haunts in the NYC area are more traditional scare-chasing types. Oh, I didn’t know CUNY had a campus up there. From what you describe, even titling that class a Gothic Lit class seems pretty flimsy and click bait-y. Your take on ‘The Damned’ sounds super interesting and fresh. I want to read it. Good for you, man! Starting to get ready for the LA trip is starting eat everything else, but … I rewatched Godard’s ‘Vivre sa vie’, which is so insanely great. Zac and I dug through our archives and found a deleted scene from our film ‘LCTG’ that we like enough to put in a group gallery show here. Mostly just trying to see friends and some art before I split. Not bad. Things okay. Did Tuesday start any parties in your skull? ** Okay. On behalf of Halloween, I decided to challenge myself to come up with a zombie-themed post even though I think zombies are a pretty exhausted trope at this point, and you can either tell me if I managed or silently judge the post, your call. See you tomorrow.

* (restored/upgraded/revised)

 

‘There is no why for my making films. I just liked the twitters of the machine, and since it was an extension of painting for me, I tried it and loved it. In painting I never liked the staid and static, always looked for what would change the source of light and stance, using glitters, glass beads, luminous paint, so the camera was a natural for me to try but how expensive!’ — Marie Menken

‘The realist sees only the front of a building, the outlines, a street, a tree. Marie Menken sees in them the motion of time and eye. She sees the motions of heart in a tree. … A rain that she sees, a tender rain, becomes the memory of all rains she ever saw; a garden that she sees becomes a memory of all gardens, all color, all perfume, all mid-summer and sun.’ – Jonas Mekas

‘Marie Menken (1910-1970) is the unsung heroine of the American avant-garde cinema. Best known for her role as a protagonist in Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls, she was, far more importantly, a mentor, muse and major influence for such key experimental filmmakers as Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas and Andy Warhol. Menken created an extraordinary body of exuberant and stunningly beautiful films shaped, above all, by her intuitive understanding of handheld cinematography. Beginning with her celebrated first film, Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945), Menken used the hand-cranked Bolex camerafavored by avant-garde filmmakers to introduce a new agility, grace and spontaneity into experimental cinema, a lightness of camera and form hitherto unseen in American film.

‘With Noguchi, Menken also began a spirited dialogue between cinema and the plastic and painterly arts that extends across her films in a witty yet deeply insightful exploration of the formal language and methodology specific to those schools and painters with whom Menken was close – from the Abstract Expressionist drip painting humorously critiqued in Drips in Strips (1963), to the factory production of Pop art in the revelatory Andy Warhol (1964) and the Fluxus practice of Robert Watts in Watts with Eggs (1967).

‘The longtime creative and marital partner of poet-filmmaker Willard Maas, Menken began as an accomplished painter whose eccentrically textured and effulgent canvases incorporate all manner of reflective media – phosphorescent paint, crushed glass, sequins – in a playful challenge to the traditional boundaries of the painted canvas. Light remained a major focus of Menken’s films, most notably in major works such as Notebook (1940-62) and Lights (1964-66) which transform her Bolex into an instrument for painting marvelous sculptural forms from neon and city lights.

‘Like the painters-turned-filmmakers Robert Breer and Carmen D’Avino, Menken (who animated the chess sequence in Maya Deren’s At Land) embraced various animation techniques – collage, stop-motion cinematography – as a direct extension of her painting. Yet for Menken, animation also became a way of radically transforming the world around her, reimagining postwar New York City, for example, in her masterpiece of single frame cinematography Go! Go! Go! (1962-64), a work that condenses two years of patient documentary filmmaking into a delirious and exhilarating vision of a hyperactive city.

‘An important first step towards the recuperation of Menken as a major artist and figure in the postwar avant-garde scene, Martina Kudláček’s recent documentary Notes on Marie Menken (2006) includes rare footage and revealing interviews with a number of close friends and colleagues such as Anger, Mekas, Gerard Malanga and Alfred Leslie.’ — collaged

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Marie Menken @ IMDb
Marie Menken @ Wikipedia
‘Notes on Marie Menken’
‘Making Light of IT: Marie Menken’
Marie Menken @ The Filmmakers Coop
‘Who’s the Source for ‘Virginia Woolf’?’
‘More Notes on Marie Menken’
‘By Marie Menken’
Marie Menken @ mubi
Video: Jonas Mekas talks about Marie Menken
‘Marie Menken and the mechanical representation of labor’
Marie Menken’s works @ Ubuweb

 

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Documentary

View an excerpt from Martina Kudlácek’s 2006 film on the influential New York experimental film maker, artist and woman-about-town, Marie Menken. Given access to Menken’s archive by her nephew, Kudlácek mixes rare footage with a soundtrack by John Zorn and interviews with Menken’s contemporaries, including Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Gerard Malanga, Jonas Mekas and Billy Name. Written and directed by Martina Kudláček, camera: Martina Kudláček, editor: Henry Hills, sound: Judy Karp, original Music: John Zorn.

 

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Marie Menken in Andy Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls

‘Reel #10 from The Chelsea Girls. This reel is silent in the 3 hrs 15 mins theatrical release. Andy Warhol: “Willard Maas and Marie Menken were the last of the great bohemians.” They wrote and filmed and drank—their friends called them “scholarly drunks” and were involved with all the modern poets.” Menken was a significant part of the inspiration for the character Martha in Edward Albee’s 1962 play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ — davesshindig

 

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Paintings

‘Marie Menken was known initially not for her films but for her paintings she made from sand and other nontraditional materials. Her first show opened at the Betty Parsons Gallery in November 1949 (the show that followed hers was Jackson Pollock’s), and her paintings were described before the opening by F.Y.I, the employee newsletter of Time, Inc., where she worked as a night clerk on the overseas cable desk. According to F.Y.I., her paintings were made from “stone chips, stone powders, marble chips, marble dust, ground silicate, sand, cement dust, luminous paints, glass particles, glues and lacquers, occasionally string and fiber. ” So Dwight was perhaps right to call these paintings desertipicti; the species epithet means “of the Painted Desert.” Menken had a second show at Betty Parsons in February 1951, and her third, held at Tibor de Nagy the following month, featured Pollock-like swirls of phosphorescent paint that glowed in the dark.

Marie Menken, If Earth in Earth Delight, 1951, oil, sand, glass, and thread on masonite, 11 ½ x 17 ½ inches.

‘Menken’s paintings are . . . “idiosyncratic” is the word likely to be employed. She experimented with sand, string, glass–like a Julian Schnabel aforehand, though on a human scale. The paintings are on masonite (board), not canvas. Except for one, which is on brown paper that has been crumpled, rubbed with what appears to be colored pencil, and then stretched more-or-less flat again. The masonite, at least in the case of IF EARTH, appears to have been trimmed by hand–which explains the irregular edges of the image I sent you.

Marie Menken, Untitled, [1951], oil, sequins, shells, and phosphorescent paint on masonite, 12 x 18 inches. Not signed, not dated.

‘The paintings on masonite, including IF EARTH IN EARTH DELIGHT, are stuccoed with sand, strings, beads, glass, etc. They are not all so brown as IF EARTH. One is mostly green, as I remember, another reddish. Another has Pollock-like swirls of phosphorescent paint studded with tiny shells. I did not know it was phosphorescent until one night I went into the dark basement where all the Ripley stuff was being unpacked . . . and got quite a start. It seems pretty clear Menken liked the play of light, just as she says somewhere. Because of the raised and encrusted surfaces of the paintings the light dances or changes patterns according to your angle of viewing–even in the work made from dull crumpled paper.

Marie Menken, Doctor Coon’s Ghar Hotu, 1951, oil, sand, and thread on masonite, 11 ½ X 21 inches.

‘While Martina [Kudlacek] was making her documentary of Menken, she preserved for Anthology Film Archives footage Menken shot in Guadix Spain [Gravediggers of Guadix] during the same 1958 trip with Kenneth Anger which resulted in her Arabesque for him at the Alhambra. The Guadix footage is unforgettable. Spooky monks, who look like they will retire to their cells to flog themselves or each other, are repetitively spading, spading, spading the red Spanish earth . . . and Menken’s camera goes to that earth as if it can’t help itself. The effect, I remember, is exactly as you say about her camera: it’s stop-start, momentum infused with the potential of interruption, lingering and delay. I even seem to remember that the earth hits the lens at some point….

A Green Dream, 1946, oil, sand, glass, and thread on masonite, 13 x 13 inches.

‘The comparison to IF EARTH IN EARTH DELIGHT is dramatic. The painting was shown at Betty Parsons in 1951 and the film wasn’t shot until 1958 but in each the texture, the color, the granularity–even in a way the non-translucent limits of the dull, unreflective medium of earth–are made to do a lot of esthetic work on our behalf. Put this similarity together with her George Herbert title (it’s from the poem “The Priesthood”) and one could work up a whole exegesis. Speculative, but then, she’s the one that picked the title.

Ten Cents’ Worth of Tears, 1954, oil, sand, beads, and thread on masonite, 9 3/4 x 13 3/8 inches.

‘The stanzas in the middle, where the title comes from, are so much to the point that she could not have been innocent of them. “Yet have I often seen, by cunning hand / And force of fire, what curious things are made / Of wretched earth.” And next: But since those great ones, be they ne’er so great, / Come from the earth, from whence those vessels come; / So that at once both feeder, dish, and meat, / Have one beginning and one final sum: / I do not greatly wonder at the sight, / If earth in earth delight.’ — Douglas Crace

 

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15 of Marie Menken’s 24 films

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Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945)
‘Visual Variations on Noguchi is a riveting visual study of the dynamic relationship between film movement and sculptural form. Marie Menken made the film while looking after Isamu Noguchi’s MacDougal Alley studio in 1945. It is both Menken’s first film, and the first within in a series of her films that study the work of prominent modern artists including Piet Mondrian, Dwight Ripley and Andy Warhol. Produced at a particularly rich moment of innovation within the avant-garde, the film can be read as an important intermediary between visual art and cinema in post-war North America. As such, it is an indispensable film for contemporary viewers of cinema and modern art alike.’ — Senses of Cinema

Excerpt

 

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Glimpse of the Garden (1957)
‘Marie Menken was a pioneer of experimental film in the New York avant-garde scene; known as The Body by Andy Warhol and her peers she struck an imposing figure at a formidable six-foot-two inches tall. Her marriage to poet Willard Maas and their wicked arguments inspired playwright Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Viriginia Woolf and her salon-home was a sort of proto-factory, the place where Warhol met Albee, Marilyn Monroe and filmmaker Kenneth Anger.At odds with her size Menken’s ‘little, little’ films are often feminised, described as lyrical and ephemeral they are known for their fragility of movement and intuitive sense of pace. Glimpse of the Garden (1957), filmed through a magnifying glass is a visual poem that illuminates the strange in the ordinary. In a collage of textured close-ups flowers and plants take on a surreal quality, shifting streams of foliage dance to a phonographic recording of birdsong and Menken’s somatic camera delicately captures the everyday act as an act of art.’ — The Plant

the entire film

 

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Dwightiana (1959)
‘Menken’s 16mm, stop-motion tribute to the art of Dwight Ripley was filmed in 1959 in his apartment at 416 East Fifty-eighth Street in New York. She used his drawings as flats.The remarkably contemporary soundtrack for steel drum, guitar, flute, and voice was written for the occasion by Maya Deren’s young husband, Teiji Ito, and is available in his album Music for Maya (Tzadik). Stan Brakhage called Dwightiana a pioneer example of the film portrait, abstract rather than narrative (the colored pencils represent Ripley’s palette). Ripley was also a botanist, and Menken’s unusual title alludes to botanical nomenclature as if Dwightiana might be the name of a species as well as a work “about” Dwight.’ — Dwight Ripley Info

 

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Arabesque for Kenneth Anger (1958 – 1961)
‘Arabesque for Kenneth Anger is Marie Menken’s tribute to her fellow avant-garde filmmaker, Kenneth Anger, whose influence obviously looms large over this expressive, evocative short. The film, shot in a Moorish palace in Spain over the course of an afternoon, is concerned, as Anger always was, with light and color, and especially with the ways in which forms could be made to interact with the tempos of music and cutting. The film is set to a lively score by composer Teiji Ito, who combines Spanish guitar and castanet motifs with Japanese-influenced reeds, resulting in a driving, vivacious score that’s perfectly suited to Menken’s imagery. Although the score was made later, to fit the short, the film sometimes seems to move with the tempo of the music, as when the circular ripples in a puddle dance to the beat of the snapping castanets. Even better is a wonderful section where the film takes on the stuttery rhythm of the percussion as the frame seems to jump and skip, giving the illusion of a sideways motion through a courtyard but in fact repeatedly returning to the same spot again and again. The black edges of the frame take on the function of cutaway walls, so that the viewer is faked out into believing that the camera is moving from one room to the next. It’s a compelling image of being in constant motion while never quite going anywhere; the camera is essentially running in place.’ — Only the Cinema

the entire film

 

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Eye Music in Red Major (1961)
‘A study in light based on persistence of vision and enhancement from eye fatigue.’ — M.M.

Stream it here

 

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Drips In Strips (1961)
‘Spattered paint responding to gravity, forming its own patterns and combinations of color.’ — M.M.

Stream it here

 

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Wrestling (1964)
‘Described as a ‘TV concrete’ by filmmaker Marie Menken, Wrestling is visual variations on a televised wrestling match.’ — David Lewis

Stream it here

 

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Mood Mondrian (1965)
‘”A film of a painting of a sound. Piet Mondrian’s ‘Broadway Boogie-Woogie’ is translated into visual boogie rhythm.” –M.M. “Mood Indigo can already be described as an extraordinary and perhaps revolutionary cinematic achievement.” — Joseph LeSueur. In 2006, John Zorn wrote a belated, ideal score for Menken’s film Mood Indigo. It was included in the album Filmworks XVII: Notes on Marie Menken/Ray Bandar: A Life with Skulls (Tzadik Records).’ — collaged

 

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Andy Warhol (1965)
‘Using a hand-held camera, Menken captures Warhol and his assistants as they work at the Factory. The result is an intimate portrait of the artist in the process of creating some of his most famous works, including the Brillo boxes, the Jackie series, and the Flowers silkscreens.’ — MUBI

Stream it here

 

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Moonplay (1964 – 1966)
‘An expansion upon an idea put forward in Marie Menken’s film Notebook; single-frame footage of the moon shot on various nights, blinking and darting around within Menken’s field of vision.’ — David Lewis, All Movie Guide

 

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Go! Go! Go! (1962 – 1964)
‘In transit across the Brooklyn Bridge, cables and railings whirr and weave, interrupted by lampposts beating across the frame. Now in Manhattan, window grids pulse and ripple. Reflected sunlight off the metal of cars and trucks, strikes the screen. Wooden crates, iron railings, construction barriers flutter by. Blocks of stuttering bricks and windows are punctuated by foreground figures–pedestrians, cars, broad sides of trucks–popping in and out of frame. Sometimes the frame of the car window from which Marie Menken is capturing these single-frame samples hovers in view. A flurry of images mark out the density and clutter of vendor’s wares. A collage of urban signage stamps its imperatives of grabbing and directing attention; these signs fly at the screen too quickly to be read, leaving viewers instead with their collective impact of attraction.’ — Angela Joosse

the entire film

 

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Lights (1966)
‘”Made during the brief Christmas-lit season, usually between the hours of midnight and 1:00 A.M., when vehicle and foot traffic was light, over a period of three years. Based on store decorations, window displays, fountains, public promenades, Park Avenue lights, building and church facades. I had to keep my camera under my coat to warm it up, as the temperature was close to zero much of the time.”‘ — M.M.

the entire film

 

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Sidewalks (1966)
‘Marie Menken points her camera downward and picks up the rhythms of walking and its visual counterpoint in the patterns of sidewalks.’ — David Lewis, All Movie Guide

‘Sidewalks’ projected behind a performance by Richard Barone

 

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‎Watts with Eggs (1967)
‘By 1967, Menken had become interested in the work of Fluxus artist Robert Watts and made a short animation piece, Watts with EGGS, in which she animates his chrome-casted Box of Eggs. The film opens with lights reflected in the eggs (of course), then, through single framing, pixilates a man’s hand arranging eggs in different patterns. The hands (those of John Hawkins) fill the box back up with eggs. Next, the eggs do the same routine, but more magically, more serenely, without the assistance of the hands. Menken also introduces a string and a feather duster into animated action, so that the eggs, one by one, seem to be coming directly out of the duster (objects infect objects). By the end, the eggs are magically back in their box.’ — Melissa Ragona

Stream it here

 

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Excursion (1968)
‘A boat trip with friends round Manhattan, shot in single-frame mode – it gets dark.’ — Ute Aurand

Stream it here

 

 

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p.s. RIP Joe Mills. I’m very sad to announce the death of a very long time distinguished local of this blog. Joe commented here and contributed to the post’s content for many years, and he was great friends with many of the long standing commenters and local community. A few veteran d.l.s are putting together a memorial post about Joe that will appear here very soon. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Ah, shit, at least I got to see five songs by Destroyer. Sucks for you. Very hard to pick a favorite. There were quite of number of those haunts I liked the look of a lot. Haunted Hoochie is really legendary, and that’s definitely in the running, Psycho Path: The Dark Ride very possibly, or maybe Crawford School of Terror? But, oh, yeah, I’ve always wanted to visit Dent Schoolhouse too. Can I maybe sort of glue them together to make a haunted McMansion? Love pissing on a scalding hot rock for some reason, G. ** David Ehrenstein, Ah, that makes sense, and, of course, that is the obvious very high priority. ** l@rst, Hi. No, knowing how the internet and browsers work, I wasn’t expecting dancing pages, don’t worry. I loved what it is. Sweet, man! Haunted things are getting pretty expensive these days. Understandable, but I do miss the days when haunts had an empty tin can by the entrance with a ‘if you feel like it’ post-it attached. I think there are a couple of pretty terrific looking haunted houses in your area, if I’m not mistaken. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Unfortunately all the haunts in the weekend post are outside of California, so I won’t be able to partake. But I’m going to hit as many of the haunts in the earlier SoCal-centric post as humanly possible. ** Jack WV, Hi, Jack! Good to meet you, and welcome! My pleasure on the post, of course. So are you over your haunted house attraction days? Might I have possibly reawakened it a bit? Please come back and hang out anytime. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Yeah, it looks really different than ‘The Assassination …’, which I also liked. I don’t know, Marilyn Monroe, I guess I just don’t know if I need more about her. ** h now j, Hi. Sorry I missed your comment. No, it looks like I’ll just miss you in LA. Oh, right, it’s a holiday there. Are you able to use it to have holiday in some way? ** Paul Curran, Not bad, right? Excellent, my eyes and my email will be having a an anticipatory staring contest. Thanks, bud! ** Brian, Hi, Brian! Yeah, you know, I’m all scholarly about them and never get scared, but I know I’m nerdy/weird. They’re great folk art at their best, for sure. Yes, our new film is about a family who builds a haunted house attraction in their home. Upper East Side, interesting. In my head I had you downtown, I guess just because that’s where the campus is. Jeez, what a boring Gothic Lit class, what the hell?! Your prof is asleep at the wheel. What are you thinking of doing with/about ‘The Damned’? That’s pretty interesting. I was in LA last July, but I haven’t been there since then, and now I’ll likely be there a fair amount until we’ve shot the film. LA has some very sweet haunted houses that I will be a total pest of a chin-rubbing, time-consuming visitor, yes. Also, Zac and I are hoping to talk to the makers of the best ones and see if they’d either give or lend or rent us their props and decor for our film because our budget is, like, very tight. How was your weekend? ** Jeff J, Hi. As I told Dominick, i’ve always been really curious about The Haunted Hoochie because it’s such a legend. And Dent Schoolhouse too actually. But there were quite a few where I felt pain at being stuck in my imagination. Your EP is on my today calendar. Wow, I just typed calendar. I’m sure I’ll see Michael. I haven’t talked to him, but I hear he’s doing okay. I’m pretty certain that Bookworm is never going to return, or at least not on NPR. I think there are people trying to talk him into doing it as a podcast. I don’t know if I can remember why I like ‘CG’ so particularly. Of course the economy appeals to me. Similar to how much I love ‘Wittgenstein’s Nephew’ which most Bernhard people consider very minor. I’ll have to think about it or pick it up and have another gander. It’s so great though, right? ** Prince S, Hey! Um, the new film will be ready to be seen sometime next year, but I don’t know when. We’re likely not going to shoot it until the beginning of the year, and then there’s the editing and finding ways to show it and stuff. Not before the summer at the earliest, I suspect. Of course, yes, what’s going in Iran. Horrible, horrible, but it seems so … promising? Like maybe an actual breakthrough? I know so little to nothing about how things work there, but seeing people seriously and collectively and in a big way battle dictatorship with such belief and seeming ferocity is very exciting. New book! Whoa! Incredible! Excited! Wow. What a funny dream you had. Of course in real life I would never ever be like that. Which is, I guess, the humor’s source for me. How’s your week looking? ** Okay. This Marie Menken Day isn’t from hugely long ago, about five or six years back, but, since I originally made it, much more of her work has become available to watch online, so I decided to give it an upgrade and expansion and relaunch it, so there you go. She’s great. Visit her/it please. See you tomorrow.