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WPS1 Art Radio is the Internet station of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, a MoMA affiliate, featuring an MP3 stream of music, talk, and historical recordings and a free on-demand archive of over 1200 programs.
The brainchild of Film-Makers' Cooperative Director and filmmaker MM Serra, WPS1'S VOICES OF THE UNDERGROUND is a series of radio conversations with filmmakers, musicians, writers, critics, and cinephiles working within an alternative practice of filmmaking. Each interview is a platform for active members of the community to express THEIR views and visions on the past, present, and future of experimental and underground cinema. WPS1'S LIVELY RADIO CONVERSATIONS DELIVER a kaleidoscopic overview of auteurs – BOTH AMERICAN AND INTERNATIONAL -- involved with the cinema not for any personal or financial gain, but from a passion for THE ART OF THE MOVING IMAGE. Every interview highlights a major FIGURE in the history of the CINEMA underground, as well as a driving force in its current moment.
Filmmaker and Film-Coop director MM Serra interviews Peggy Ahwesh. Ahwesh's films combine narrative and documentary styles, improvised performance, Super-8 film, found footage, digital animation, and Pixelvision video. (1 hour)
WPS1's David Weinstein hosts a discussion with Film Co-op Executive Director MM
Serra, composer Philip Glass and
filmmaker Bill Morrison about the task of
film preservation, archiving the avant garde, and the unique relation of music
to film.
Film-Makers' Cooperative is
the largest archive and distributor of independent and avant-garde films in the
world. Created in 1962 by Jonas Mekas and colleagues, the Co-op continues to be
run by artists. It has more than 5,000 films and videotapes in its collection.
2nd Annual Film-Makers' Cooperative Benefit Concert
Tuesday Sept. 27, 2005 at 8 PM
Angel Orensanz Foundation
172 Norfolk Street (below Houston) New York City
Tickets $40 at the door or call 212.267.5665 or at TicketWeb
Featuring performances by Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Sue Garner, Todd Reynolds, Mark Stewart, Patrick Watson,
Elliott Sharp, Tim Barnes, Alan Licht and Lee Ranaldo to films by...
Ken Jacobs, Harry Smith, Emiley Hubley, Bill Morrison, Donna Cameron, Jenn Reeves and Ron Rice.
Film-Makers' Cooperative director and filmmaker MM Serra interviews the legendary American avant garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs. Ken Jacobs has been a central figure in experimental cinema since his beginnings in the 1960's through the present day. His films include Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son, Blonde Cobra, Perfect Film, and Star Spangled To Death. He is the founder of Millennium Film Workshop. He coined the term "paracinema," referring to cinematic experiences outside of the experiences provided by standard cinema technology. His Nervous System projections use multiple projectors and variable frame-rates to create a unique cinematic experience.
Filmmaker, artist, and theoretician Peter Kubelka in conversation with experimental film and videomaker MM Serra.
Kubelka's short works helped characterize and define the European and experimental underground cinema of the 1960s. His ironic travelogue Our Trip to Africa (1966) is a montage of sights -- hunters, natives, animals, and buildings -- accompanied by effusions of sound. Kubelka studied in Vienna and Rome, and made his first film, Mosaik im Vertrauen, in 1955. He went on to invent the metric film technique, which reduced images to abstract, black-and-white frames, and to develop sound film, a form of visual and auditory landscape whose rhythm lingers on in the subconscious long after the screen has dimmed.
An independent filmmaker since 1952, Peter Kubelka works in film, cooking, music, architecture, lectures, and writing. In 1964, he co-founded the Austrian Film Museum and was its curator for many decades. In 1978, he became professor in film and video at the Art Academy in Frankfurt, where he also served as Rector in the period of 1985-88. Kubelka's theoretical work on cooking began in 1967, and in 1980 his teaching position was expanded to include "Film and Cooking as Art". He is a co-founder of the Anthology Film Archives in New York.
MM Serra is Executive Director of The New America Cinema Group, Inc./ The Film-Makers' Cooperative (FMC), founded in 1961 by a group of 20 New York artists (including Jonas Mekas, Robert Frank, Jack Smith, Marie Menken) to create a network for the distribution and exhibition of experimental films. FMC has over 500 members and 4,000 films and new media for rental and sale. FMC programs monthly screenings in a series titled Jewels and Gems at the Collective Unconscious in New York. (36 minutes)
Mike Kuchar is a pioneer in the creation of underground cinema in New York City, along with his twin brother, George. He is the creator of a huge wealth of 8mm, 16mm, and video works, including his classic Sins of the Fleshapoids which inspired outstanding contemporary filmmakers such as John Waters. Kuchar continues to create outstanding videos and in 2007 moved to San Francisco living with his twin brother.
In honor or the 45th anniversary of the Film-makers' Cooperative, the largest archive and distributor of independent and avant-garde films in the world, Jonas Mekas, who founded the Coop with twenty-plus other filmmakers in 1962, sat down with MM Serra, its current Director, and talked about events in the 50s and 60s that help forge his New America Cinema movement. Ultra-spry, even ferocious, at age 84 Mekas recounts events involving fascinating characters of the time such as Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, and the miraculous Barbara Rubin. (36 minutes)
In a benefit for the Coop, two programs of works by the Film-Makers' Coop's Board of Directors along with films that have inspired them from the FMC collection and a third program of old and new works selected by the Coop's staff screens at Anthology Film Archives, May 12-14, 2006.
Film-makers' Cooperative director MM Serra in conversation with filmmaker Jennifer Reeves whose works utilize complex optical-printing and animation techniques. (45 minutes)
Filmmaker and director of the the Film-Makers' Cooperative M.M. Serra sits down with two essential activists from the world of film:
Ed Halter is a curator of film and media and a frequent contributor to The Village Voice and numerous other periodicals. From 1995 to 2005, he programmed and oversaw the New York Underground Film Festival, and has curated for venues such as the Museum of Modern Art and elsewhere. He is a visiting assistant professor in the department of Film and Electronic Arts at Bard College, and has lectured at Harvard, Yale, NYU, and other schools. His nonfiction book From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games was published by Thunder's Mouth Press in June 2006.
P. Adams Sitney is a historian of film art and a co-founding member of Anthology Film Archives in New York. He is the author of the book Visionary Film, originally published in 1974, which was the first major study on the post-war American avant garde cinema, and is today considered a classic. Among his other publications are Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of Vision in Cinema and Literature from 1992 and the forthcoming book Eyes Upside Down: Visionary Film-makers and the Heritage of Emerson. His article on filmmaker Saul Levine in the May 2007 issue of Artforum. He is Professor of Visual Arts at Princeton University.(45 minutes)
Lynn Sachs, Bradley Eros, and MM Serra discuss the world of the Film-makers' Cooperative in advance of their 46th Anniversary Benefit at Angel Orensanz Center for the Arts, 172 Norfolk Street, between Houston and Stanton Streets, in New York City on Monday April 23rd, 2007 at 7 pm. Special guests performers include Philip Glass and Bill Frisell along with a screenings of rare and fabulous film treasures.
Multidisciplinary artist (and pioneer of the form) Carolee Schneemann, has elevated the discourse on the body, sexuality, and gender through her work and life. She was a full participant, and a courageous one, in the cultural turbulence of the sixties; confronting taboos, challenging traditions, and embracing new forms. Her ongoing work as a painter and her merge into the downtown New York performance scene of that era (Judson Dance Theater, Warhol's Factory, assorted Happenings and kinetic theater) lead to her own performances and films such as the notorious 1964 Meat Joy, a "celebration of flesh as material," a living montage of naked bodies, raw fish, chickens, and sausages. And that's just the first few years.
In this conversation with filmmaker, archivist, and historian MM Serra, Schneemann discusses her film Fuses at length along with anecdotes and reflections on life and work, sex and tech, cats and people, and much more. Fuses is included in the Summer 2006 exhibit Into Me, Out of Me curated by Klaus Biesenbach at P.S.1.
The panel was recorded by Art Radio WPS1 on March 1, 2008, as part of the live event series for WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. With guests Carolee Schneemann, Peggy Ahwesh, Ara Osterweil, Barbara Hammer, Melissa Ragona, moderated by editor Robin Blaetz. This panel was organized by MM Serra of Film-Makers' Cooperative.
