In collaboration with the film collection of the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou
Light Cone extends an invitation to the American film critic J. Hoberman to present a film program in connection with his latest book, Everything Is Now (Verso Books, 2025).
Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop argues that a new vanguard arose from the subterranean cross-fertilization of unruly, if not transgressive, modes. The first underground movies produced in New York were closely related in attitude and strategy to other current artworld tendencies, notably Junk Sculpture (assemblages) and Happenings. Thus, Ray Wisniewski’s Doomshow (1963) turns the deinstallation of a gallery show of so-called “No!Art” into a kind of ritual performance, Ken Jacobs’s Little Stabs at Happiness (1959-63) fuses elements of Happenings and home-movies while asserting itself as a film-object, and Michael Snow’s New York Eye and Ear Control (1964), which parodies the underground picaresque, is powered by the improvisational energy of Free Jazz.
Subsequent movies were more aggressively norm-shattering as well as performative in their use of what was then called “Mixed Media”. Jud Yalkut’s D.M.T. (1966) preserves a pioneering light show by Jackie Cassen, Barbara Rubin’s Christmas on Earth (1963-65) was exhibited as a kinetic installation, and Yalkut’s Kusama’s Self-Obliteration (1967) documents the happenings that propelled Yayoi Kusama from the gallery into the streets, and from the artworld into the counterculture. All three films are by or based on the work of female artists and need to be seen in the light of Andy Warhol’s contemporary activities.
– J. Hoberman
DOOMSHOW
by Ray WISNIEWSKI
1964 / 16mm / b&w / sound / 10' 00
LITTLE STABS AT HAPPINESS
by Ken JACOBS
1959-1963 / 16mm / color / sound / 15' 00
NEW YORK EYE AND EAR CONTROL
by Michael SNOW
1964 / 16mm / b&w / sound / 34' 00
D.M.T.
by Jud YALKUT
1966 / 16mm / color / sound / 3' 00
CHRISTMAS ON EARTH
by Barbara RUBIN
1963 / 16mm (double screen) / color-b&w / sound / 30' 00
KUSAMA'S SELF-OBLITERATION
by Yayoi KUSAMA & Jud YALKUT
1967 / 16mm / color / sound / 24' 00
