INDETERMINATE CINEMA: TONY CONRAD & GUEST MUSICIANS - TEN YEARS ALIVE ON THE INFINITE PLAIN

The influence of violinist, composer, film and videomaker Tony Conrad (US, 1940) cannot be overestimated: he was one of the originators of the Minimalist music movement and a key figure in the experimental film scene in New York during the 1960s. He was co-founder of the ‘Theatre of Eternal Music’ collective (with John Cale, LaMonte Young and Angus MacLise), which developed a new musical language counter to any existing conventions of the time, and labeled as “dream music”. Music was thus set free from the stronghold of musical ’high’ culture, by putting improvisation and participation above compositional authoritarianism, and by focusing on the aspect of listening itself through a new use of harmonic intervals. With his audiovisual Conrad also questions and undermines the laws of looking and listening. In his best-known film, The Flicker (1966), he searched for a visual equivalent of musical consonance, which resulted in a bombardment of stroboscopic flashes, producing optical color effects in their turn. After his collaboration with the Krautrock formation Faust during the 1970s Conrad chose to lecture full time at the media faculty of Buffalo University. Since his work was brought back to attention in the 1990s he is more active than ever in a wide range of areas.

Created in New York in 1972, the performance Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain seems to be the ideal synthesis of Tony Conrad’s research: his structural approach to cinema unites with his minimal and open approach to music. Four projectors showing a hypnotic and flashing film loop are joined by musicians, producing continuous sound chords. The result is a suspended audiovisual environment, which is reflective and unravels very slowly; “very meditational and very terrific”, as Conrad put it himself. This event creates a great opportunity to live this historic performance, never presented in Belgium.

WATCH AND LISTEN

RESERVATIONS:
PALEIS VOOR SCHONE KUNSTEN / PALAIS DES BEAUX-ARTS
T +32 (0)2 507 82 00
www.bozar.be

part of Open Archive #1

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