Creative Time Table: July 2009

Friday, July 24, 2009

July 24, 2009 - Andy Warhol On Being Shot

"I always worry that when nutty people do something, they'll do the same thing again a few years later without ever remembering that they've dont it before - and they'll think it's a whole new thing they're doing. I was shot in 1968, so that was the 1968 version. But then I have to think 'Will someone want to do a 1970s remake of shooting me?' So that's another kind of fan." - Warhol

July 24, 2009 - Warhol's Movies by Jonas Mekas

"You watch a Warhol film without being hurried. From the beginning it prevents the viewer from being in a hurry. The camera hardly moves from the spot. It remains foccused on the subject as if there were nothing more beautiful and important than this subject. We can look at it longer than we are accustomed to doing, and this gives the viewers an oppurtiunituy to clear their minds of everything. We begin to understand that we have never really seen what happens when hair is cut or how one eats. Although we have had out hair cut and we have eaten, we have never truly perceived the act of hair cutting or eating. The whole reality of our environment suddenly becomes interesting in a new way, we feel that everything has to be filmed in a different way." - Jonas Mekas

July 24, 2009 - On Warhol's Films

In the beginning Warhol's films mainly concentrated on the simplest proceedings and events : Sleep (1963) was his six hour film debut and shows a sleeping man while the camera slowly moves over individual parts of his body. Actually the film consists of only 20 minutes, the rest being repetition of the first sequence, repeating the technique of his silkscreen pictures. Empire (1964) presents an eight-hour view of Manhattan''s pride, The Empire State Building, photographed from the 44th floor of the Time-Life building. The film portrait of Henry Geldzahler shows the art connoisseur smoking a cigar- for 100 minutes.
He claimed that one could do more while watching his films than when watching other films : one could eat and drink, smoke, cough and look away and then look back again and always find that everything was still there.