Michel Auder Chronicles and Other Scenes 2
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Michel Auder Chronicles and Other Scenes 2 Foreword The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is pleased to host an exhibition of videos by Michel Auder in our Media Field gallery. This space, which has been dedicated to electronic media since 2002, has been a forum for many group and solo exhibitions of established and emerging artists. Michel Auder: Chronicles and Other Scenes provides the opportunity to survey the career of an often underappreciated pioneer in the video field. I first met Michel Auder in the late 1980s in New York City. It has been a great pleasure to become reacquainted with him and his work during the planning and execu- tion of this show. His work lends itself to a wide array of curricular discussions, including the history of video art, Andy Warhol and his circle, the New York underground film scene in the 1970s, as well as the art world in the 1980s and 90s. The collaborations between artist, curator, and professor represents what have come to be a hallmark of the Williams museum. I am grateful to Assistant Curator, Lisa Dorin, for her dedication to the Media Field programming. She has worked closely with C. Ondine Chavoya, Assistant Professor of Art, and Michel Auder to organize this exhibi- tion. I would like to acknowledge Ondine for the text that follows. It is the first scholarly investigation of this magnitude into the artist’s work. I would also like to thank Michel for opening up his archives to Lisa and Ondine and for his thoughtful and candid discussions about his art and life. I know all three of them join me in thanking Richard Lescarbeau, Video Assistant in the Art Department and Ben Greenfield of Cogs for their technical expertise, and Rita Gonzalez, Special Assistant to the Head of the Center for Arts of the Americas, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, for editorial assistance and critical feed- back. Other members of the museum staff whose contributions have been significant and should be recognized are Suzanne Augugliaro, who designed this brochure; Cara Starke MA’05, who worked tirelessly on the footnotes; and Michael Chapman and Hideyo Oka- mura, who installed and maintained the exhibition. As John Hanhardt, Senior Curator of Film and Media Arts at the Guggenheim Museum, recently cautioned, “…the history forged by pioneering media artists is ignored by or simply unknown to later generations of artists, critics, curators, and gallery owners. The rush to introduce ‘new’ work into today’s art-world economy has erased this history and the work that was done in the past.”1 This exhibition has been organized in recogni- tion of Michel Auder’s importance as an artist and his palpable, if largely undocumented, influence on the subsequent generation of media artists. Linda Shearer Director June 2004 1 John G. Hanhardt, “The Cinematic Avant-Garde,” The Worlds of Nam June Paik (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2000), 76. Front and back cover: Video stills, Keeping Busy, 1969. All images reproduced courtesy of the artist unless otherwise indicated. 3 Michel Auder: spanned a variety of styles and after the original footage was shot. Chronicles and Other Scenes genres, from fictional narratives to As time passes, certain situations, C. Ondine Chavoya media appropriation collages, trav- people, and images are revisited, elogues to exercises in mediated edited, and released from the Michel Auder has fervently voyeurism, and video portraits of archive. Accordingly, the chronicles recorded his life, experiences, and artists and friends such as Taylor necessarily change with time. This observations on video for over thirty Mead, Alice Neel, Larry Rivers, process of explicit recollection is years. Auder is an exemplary video Cindy Sherman, Annie Sprinkle, not about retrieval as much as it is raconteur, whose work elicits a and Hannah Wilke. Fundamentally, about retelling and the processes sense of intimacy paired with the Michel Auder is an assiduous visual of memory: looking back from the conscious pleasure of looking. The chronicler who has documented present on events in the past and participatory character of Auder’s and shared his life and observa- searching for a means to tell sto- videos is shaped by his use of the tions with the medium of video. ries, to communicate. camera as a tool of social inter- Recording scenes and images that Michel Auder is a poet of visual action. Auder’s video chronicles attract his eye and mind, Auder’s observation, who has been infor- create the impression that he car- chronicles are transposed into visu- mally named the “Video Laureate.”1 ries a camera with him everywhere ally seductive and eloquent videos. Auder’s chronicles of situations, and that the camera inevitably These cinema verité-style memoirs behaviors, intimate details, and mediates his perception and experi- have simultaneously documented unexpected gestures offer glimpses ence. This seemingly indefatigable Auder’s personal domestic environ- into the quotidian and profound. use of video provokes a sense of ment and that of the New York art These videos are remarkable for infinite coverage, ostensibly effac- world, from the glitterati of Andy their aesthetic and historical value, ing the distinction between experi- Warhol’s Factory in the late-1960s offering an intimate view into a ence, memory, and representation, to the present. Life and art are not social scene “whose members and consequently brings further necessarily discrete entities here, have long since apotheosized into attention to the way technologies since they are so intensely and cultural mythology”2 or have been of representation mediate between fascinatingly intertwined. A conflu- otherwise recognized for their individual and social histories. ence of representational systems Launching his career as a fash- informs these video chronicles, ion photographer, Auder began however the home mode and video making films in the early 1960s. diary formats are the most immedi- By 1968, filmmaking became ately perceptible. his primary conduit through his Over the years, Auder has association with a constellation recorded a massive amount of of radical independent filmmak- video, literally thousands of hours. ers in Paris known as the Zanzibar The archive of footage he has Group. Auder began exploring the amassed, and continues to collect, Michel Auder portrait, 2003. Photo by Miss Liz Wendelbo. documentary value and creative provides the source material from possibilities of video soon after which he creates discrete works important contributions to art and portable video equipment became that range in length from under five culture. Collectively, the archive available beyond the television minutes to several hours. While a and videos effectively function as industry. Michel Auder acquired his few works were formed completely a form of visual autobiography: a first Sony Portapak video camera in-camera, most have been edited means of documenting the self, in 1969; since then, his work has years, and sometimes decades, most often in relation to others. 4 Film historian and theorist Michael nouvelle vague for the manner with of Philippe Garrel. Glamour and Renov has identified this form which they presented certain aspects style were so central to their code of “essayistic” autobiography in of modern life, including frank explo- of ethics and aesthetics that Zanzi- recent film and video as “the site rations of sexuality, and challenged bar participants were often referred of a vital creative initiative being bourgeois morality. To this day, the to as the “Dandies of 1968.” undertaken by film- and video- French new wave’s cinematic fascina- At times bewilderingly innova- makers around the world that is tion with the details and small rituals tive and experimental, Zanzibar transforming the ways we think of everyday life is lavishly evident in films enact a more extreme rejec- about ourselves for ourselves and Auder’s work. Even so, it was Jean- tion of classical narrative than for others.”3 Luc Godard and Andy Warhol who their forbearers, preferring impro- decisively inspired Auder. Both film visation and untrained actors while France, 1968 artists eschewed traditional real- often making films without scripts. Michel Auder was born in ist conventions and in distinct ways Such concepts were not necessar- 1944, in the small industrial prov- manipulated the basic form and ele- ily new to Auder; between 1964 ince of Soissons, France, approxi- ments of cinema. For Auder, Godard and 1965, he shot, directed, mately sixty miles north of Paris. and Warhol were formative influences and edited his first 16mm film, An aspiring filmmaker, he moved and confirmed his desire to “make Anne Evadée des Saisons, which to Paris in his late teens, where he films differently from the principles stared Sabine Surget, Miss France found employment as an appren- that had been laid out for so many 1962, first runner-up Miss United tice photographer. By 1961, Auder years in the Hollywood system.”4 Nations 1963, and his romantic opened his own photographic Auder encountered a cadre of interest at that time. Discovering studio and was introduced to New kindred thinkers when he became that the screenplay was irretriev- York City while on assignment involved with the Zanzibar Group ably misplaced during production, with the legendary fashion photog- that formed in France in early 1968. Auder was nonetheless determined rapher Hiro for Harper’s Bazaar. Incorporating roughly a dozen young to carry through relying on improvi- Enthralled with the New York filmmakers, most in their early twen- sation to complete the film. scene, Auder overstayed a two- ties, the group was allied in their con- A parallel cinema, exist- week visa until he was deported viction that cinema was the medium ing apart from and in opposition several months later. Returning to with which immediate actions and to standard structures of produc- Paris, Auder learned he had been emotions could be captured and tion and distribution, Zanzibar conscripted for military service.