Joseph Cornell was a cinephile, film collector, filmmaker and pioneering American assemblage artist. He called his work ‘white magic’ to distinguish it from the darker arts of the surrealists with whom he had a dialogue. From the late 30s onward he reworked Hollywood movies, travelogues and education films to create touching, sophisticated edits and juxtapositions. The first programme includes Rose Hobart which Dali accused Cornell of stealing from his dreams, and the newly rediscovered The Wool Collage. The second programme shows collaborations with other experimental filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage and Larry Jordan. Gnir Rednow and other titles here draw on material shot by Cornell’s collaborators which he then edited and reworked according to his particular aesthetic.

Microscope Gallery is very pleased to welcome filmmaker and curator Roger Beebe back to New York and the gallery, this time for a rare program of his video works. The night features the debut of Beebe’s just completed “REVERSED RITES/RIVER RIGHTED”, which as indicated by the title re-reverses “River Rites” by Ben Russell; New York premieres of “Congratulations (One Step at a Time”), which will be playing pre-show, and of “Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes), Part 2 “The Crying Game”; as well as a handful of earlier works made during the past decade or so, including “Touch Me Karakoke” (2008) and “Dirty Harry and the Hendersons” (1998).

“Xander Marro (American b. 1975) has been living the good life in the feminist sub-underground for too many years to count on her long bony fingers. She draws pictures (usually narrative), makes movies (usually not narrative), produces plays with elaborate sets and costumes (usually narrative, but confusing), and then makes stuff like quilts and dioramas (probably narrative?). Her work is often about spiritual relationships to the material stuff of this world. Co-founder of the Dirt Palace in 2000 AD (feminist cupcake-encrusted netherworld located along the dioxin filled banks of the Woonasquatucket River, which is to say in Providence, RI, USA). Her studio (and heart) is there still.” –X.M.