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Michel Auder Chronicles and Other Scenes 2

Foreword

The Williams College Museum of (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 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 , Andy and his circle, the New York scene in the , 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. 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 of the Americas, 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 (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 , trav- people, and images are revisited, elogues to exercises in mediated edited, and released from the Michel Auder has fervently , 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, , process of explicit recollection is years. Auder is an exemplary video Cindy Sherman, , 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- 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 known as the 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 who their forbearers, preferring impro- decisively inspired Auder. Both film visation and untrained actors while , 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 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. transformed into history. Between films were rarely screened in the He was instated in the photo and 1968 and 1970, the Zanzibar Group U.S. Although most were shot on film division of the French Army made thirteen films funded entirely by 35mm, these renegade produc- and ultimately deployed in Algeria a single patron, Sylvina Boissonnas, tions were noted for their imme- as a military photographer shortly a young heiress and future militant diacy, directness, and stripped- after the war ended. feminist. Henri Langlois often showed down style that, by comparison, Like other young filmmakers their films at the Cinémathèque Fran- made the French New Wave look of his generation, Auder was inter- çaise in late-night screenings and slick. Generally, Zanzibar produc- ested in challenging how modern thus ushered in the first installment tions are films of images, in which life was represented, particularly of the post-nouvelle vague generation. shots tend to be autonomous and by television and the classic nar- Many of these films have been lost narrative is secondary. Editing was rative techniques of cinema. He forever, but are perhaps best known consistently subtle and minimal, found encouragement in the films today through Jacquie Raynal’s Deux while sound was often asynchro- of Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Fois (1968) and the expansive career nous or absent. The coalescence 5 of these formal elements has been dérive, Auder recognized from Keeping Busy stalwartly maintained in Auder’s her performance in The . Michel Auder made approxi- practice after thirty years of pro- He boldly approached the model mately seven hour-long 16mm duction. These were defiantly turned spectral chanteuse for the films between 1964 and 1970, personal films, hovering between Velvet Underground and introduced which were shot and edited on a documentary and fiction, marking himself. Accompanying her was , hand-wound Moviola machine. and recording the emergence of the ultimate “offbeat vamp of the Keeping Busy (1969) was his the desires and demands that were underground”8 and star of the Warhol first film with synched sound as expressed in the May 1968 politi- filmsNude Restaurant, , the earlier films used “ cal uprising in France. Thus, the (1967), and Blue was on the portable radio as my Zanzibar films have been recently Movie (1968). A “high-cheekboned soundtrack.”11 Filmed on both described as “a curious collection Botticelli beauty,”9 Viva was the reign- 35mm and 16mm film,Keeping of cinematic parables that either ing queen in Warhol’s of “hand- Busy chronicles the lives of Viva addressed the demonstrations some women and beautiful men”10 and following the head-on or examined the personal that were transformed into serial production of Warhol’s . and political issues that were at Superstars. Viva and Auder started Auder’s verité film diary features their core.”5 Such is the case with dating and she soon inspired and the Superstars playing themselves Auder’s no longer extant films fea- starred in his next film. The ensuing over the course of several weeks turing lush Echtachrome footage of relationship was one of several asso- living out a jet set fantasy life, the 1968 protests. ciations between Zanzibar filmmakers gadding through a succession 1968 unfolded to be a propi- and Warhol’s factory scene. Other of luxurious locations including tious year for Auder. In that same Zanzibar participants, including Oliver , , and Malibu, and year, he attended a screening of Mosset, Caroline de Bendern, and using Auder’s production budget Andy Warhol’s underground epic Zouzou, had previously spent time at to do so. The film is non-nar- The Chelsea Girls in Paris at the Warhol’s Factory or had Factory ties. rative and non-sequential as it Gallery. The Chel- Nico would become Philippe Garrel’s cuts between various locations, sea Girls (1966) was Warhol’s muse and they collaborated on sev- although the principal footage was first commercially successful film, whichNewsweek deemed the “Iliad of the Underground” and decried as a “travelogue of hell.”6 Auder considered it “the best fucking film I had ever seen,”7 and his decisive response confirmed and reinvigorated his desire to make films differently. Inadvertently, the Left: Video still, Viva in Cleopatra, 1970. Right: Video still, Keeping Busy, 1969. experience proved exceptionally auspicious not only for his art but eral films, includingLa Cicatrice Inté- shot over an eleven-day period in also for his life, as it coincidentally rieure (1972) - released in the U.S. Rome inside numerous fashionable occasioned the initial encounter as the Inner Scar. hotel rooms, where the two stars with his future wife and collabora- simply lounge about and recount tor, Viva. Wandering through the events from Blue Movie. Keep- streets of Paris while on a dandy ing Busy is as much a document 6 of Viva and Waldon’s mundane ate film stock; as Viva reports, “He nal Court ruled unanimously that antics as it is of Auder and Viva’s used outdoor [film] when he should the Warhol film met the criteria for budding . have used indoor.”13 This oversight on all counts: it aroused Waldon and Viva had both produced a curious and unexpected prurient interest, offended com- reaped illustrious notoriety for aesthetic effect; the overexposure munity standards, and was totally their performances in Blue Movie altered the color saturation of the without any redeeming social and the candid depiction of sexual scene and created a hazy greenish- value or significance. As such, intercourse therein. Warhol’s film, blue tint. The result, as one reviewer Blue Movie was considered not to be art juridically, and, therefore, in violation of the Penal Code.16 Blue Movie was Warhol’s first film following his near-fatal assassina- tion attempt by . It would also become Viva’s final appearance in a Factory film, despite various offers by Warhol, as she felt unfairly compensated Left: Blue Movie book cover, 1970. Right: Video still, Keeping Busy, 1969. and exploited. Keeping Busy is both a para- originally titled Fuck, documents described it, was “a peculiar mixture Zanzibar and Factory document: its own time frame of production: of the obscene and the sentimental. featuring but shot during one afternoon in the …[T]he unfiltered daylight floods in sponsored by Sylvina Boissonnas apartment of David Bourdon, art on the sheets, the air, and the inter- through Auder’s association with critic and Vogue editor, recording locked bodies, changing them all into the Zanzibar Group.17 (In fact, the conversation and sexual rela- a heavenly pale blue – copulating many of the sequences shot in tions between the two individu- cherubs, lit by Hallmark cards.”14 Rome were filmed using the 35mm als. As Warhol recounted, “I’d in the Times character- camera of traveling companion always wanted to do a movie that ized Blue Movie as “a cheerful stag Philippe Garrel, who was in the was pure fucking, nothing else, film, rather prettily photographed in city filming at the same time.) This the way Eat had been just eating which the performers actually do what unscripted film diary of Super- and Sleep had been just sleeping. has only been simulated in more con- stars on holiday was subtitled “a So in October ’68 I shot a movie ventional films.”15 The Film Novel about what they did of Viva having sex with Louis Police Department had a decidedly to keep busy,” and unequivocally Waldon. I called it just Fuck.”12 different opinion, however, and the acknowledges Warhol’s influence Before and after the scene in film was eventually declared hardcore on Auder.18 Like the Warhol films, which the stars consummate by both city and state Auder’s film diary experimented Warhol’s sole directorial objective, courts. Blue Movie played at New with the relations (and tensions) Viva and Waldon discuss a litany York’s Garrick Theater for one week between the real-time of action of contemporary issues, including in July 1969 before police seized the and actors and the reel-time of Vietnam, Nixon, Lindsey, voting, print and arrested the theater man- film and audience. These films termites, and the police, among ager, projectionist, and ticket seller test the conventions of realism other things. for possession of obscene materials. and challenge the discrete cat- Warhol inadvertently shot the After deliberating for less than thirty egories of fiction, documentary, lovemaking scene with inappropri- minutes, a three-judge panel in Crimi- and biography. As John Hanhardt 7 has explained, “The arts have The Connection (1961) and The Cool tape recorders, or transistor.”23 long been concerned with how we World (1963), plays a director newly The thirty-minute ceremony was see reality and the world around arrived to Hollywood to make a New finally held at a drive-in chapel us, and Andy’s films made us York style underground film with and Ruth, the proprietor’s wife, rethink the way in which a camera Viva as its star. By posing as a movie was instructed how to operate records, represents – and misrep- within a movie, the plot suggests mul- the camera. Afterwards, Michel resents – reality. We do not see tiple levels of reality and representa- (“Angelo” in the novel) excitingly action upon action here, leading tion engaging such concepts as “play- raved about the nascent filmmak- logically to a conclusion.”19 Blue ing” on- and off-screen personae, er’s abilities; he then inspects the Movie, for example, presented real reality versus the filmed image, and camera and exclaims, “SHIT, the people and real sex so that realism all the while juxtaposing its stars’ pri- film didn’t go through the camera. was pushed to such an extent that vate lives with public events. These We don’t have ONE frame.”24 the “actors” could not be sepa- layers of the filmic and pro-filmic and rated from their lives. Filmmaker the intentional blurring of the fictional New York: The Chelsea Hotel , director of Lone- and biographical prompted critics to The newlyweds, Michel and some Cowboys and many other describe the Varda film as a “meta- Viva Auder, moved to the Chelsea Factory Films after 1966, char- Warhol movie.”21 Hotel in New York City following acterized the Warhol cinematic While filmingLion’s Love in Los Lion’s Love. A literary and archi- aesthetic as “one of performers. Angeles, Viva’s proposal to tectural landmark, the Chelsea …Content is the record on film of Auder, witnessed in an early scene Hotel was long renowned as a the people’s personalities in depth of Keeping Busy, was fulfilled. They residential, creative hub for artists and in some richness.”20 Taken as abandoned the set and fled to Las and writers. By the late 1960s, a whole, a parallel interpretation Vegas to be married, stalling Varda’s the Chelsea had become an estab- can be drawn to characterize Aud- production in the process. Yet, as Viva lished destination for the interna- er’s aesthetic practice, and, in this recounts in her best-selling roman à tional bohemian underground, and respect, Keeping Busy indicates clef, Superstar (or what she called Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls unde- the emergence of Auder’s video her “fictional semi-autobiographical niably influenced its notoriety. A chronicles and diaries. novel”22 published in 1970), their resident once described the hotel’s The scenes from Keeping Busy wedding was deferred multiple times madcap ambiance as “a cross filmed in Hollywood and Malibu so that Michel could film the cer- between the Plaza and the Port were completed while Viva was emony. First, Auder struggled to track Authority Bus Terminal.”25 In this starring in another film, this time down high-speed color film, ultimately context, Auder developed a fea- by celebrated nouvelle vague settling on Super-8 film, but then had ture film, an underground version filmmaker Agnes Varda. Viva was to locate a floodlight; the ceremony of Cleopatra, with Viva in the title offered one of the three lead roles was postponed, yet again, to hunt for role, alongside previous co-stars in Varda’s Lion’s Love (1969) and sound recording tape. For one book Louis Waldon as a queer Antony cast alongside and reviewer, writing in the Village Voice, and , a heterosexual , writers of the super- this seeming dependence on record- Cesar. The film also featured an successful musical . ing experience – and intentionally expanded band of Superstars, new The three performers ostensibly deferring experiences until they can and old, including Andrea Feld- play themselves with the narrative be suitably documented - exemplified man, , Ondine, caveat that they are waiting for a the emergent psychology of a new Ultra Violet, among others. big Hollywood break. Pioneer inde- generation who “are at more than a The intrigue surrounding the pendent filmmaker , loss when separated from cameras, status of the eccentrically 8 charismatic Superstars generated Auder was never able to release a Auder described as “Instant Grati- interest among prospective finan- final edit; instead, an earlier work fication!”28 Such features granted ciers. Ever since Nude Restaurant print was surreptitiously salvaged and Auder the freedom to work autono- (1967), Viva had seized the atten- screened at the mously without the demands of tion of the media as the archetypal, by Henri Langlois. Cleopatra (1970), producers and commercial formu- definitive Superstar persona.26 Viva also known as Viva Viva, survives las. was often described as a unique today as a degraded, third-generation Artists working in the early cross between Marlene Dietrich work print transferred first to video period of video were inspired by and Vanessa Redgrave, Greta Garbo and then later to DVD–a record of its the opportunity to experiment and Lucille Ball, while alternately own failed production. with and potentially transform the characterized as “the most widely Auder withdrew entirely from the moving image, both in its popular exhibited freak in Andy Warhol’s commercial film industry, following capacity and in art. Meanwhile, art- collection.”27 In her capacity as the production debacle that pre- ists and activists across the globe Warhol spokesperson and Super- vented Cleopatra from being released, focused video cameras on them- star, Viva was almost as famous as and opted for a new visual recording selves and others to investigate the Warhol for a period. This publicity technique: video. Michel and Viva salient contours and expressions of potential, along with an increased Auder purchased a Sony Portapak, identity, time, space, and percep- commercial interest in the piquant one of the first portable and commer- tion during this era of tremendous and profitable scandals associated cially available video cameras, with social and political change. In the with underground film, particularly the advance secured for the publica- process, these video pioneers chal- for its unconventional representa- tion of Viva’s novel Superstar. Video lenged the sanctioned and distinc- tions of sexuality, enabled Auder replaced film as Auder’s preferred tively modern boundaries of public to secure the funding necessary for medium because of its accessibility, and private by positioning the indi- production. Auder entered produc- mobility, and intimacy. Moreover, the vidual and the world of the “pri- tion with one condition; he insisted relative economy of video technol- vate” over and against the “public” on a complete lack of interference ogy enabled synchronized image and space of the media.29 Count- from his producers. sound recording, and, unlike film, less practitioners and enthusiasts celebrated video as a democratic medium: a cost-effective means to produce work and reach broader audiences. Auder, like other practitioners of personal documentaries, does not claim neutrality or objectivity with regard to his subject matter, and, thus, the distance generally Left: Promotional Film Still, Cleopatra, photograph by Jean-Pierre Laffont, 1969. Collection of C. Ondine Chavoya. associated with traditional docu- Right: Video still, Cleopatra, 1970. mentary practice is abandoned Auder’s Cleopatra is decidedly video possessed the unique quality or, at least, diminished. Portable idiosyncratic, recklessly garrulous, of real-time immediacy. The ability 16mm cameras, lightweight sound and ultimately courted production to view and record simultaneously equipment, and later video equip- disaster. When its producers saw was a distinctive innovation allow- ment enabled verité filmmakers the results, they were so incensed ing one to observe what the camera to respond to what was happening that they had the film destroyed. was recording in “real” time, which immediately around them while 9 they recorded and interpreted composition and narrative and rejects homes, etc. The restrictive range of the unfolding situation on film.30 the “erasure of the filmmaker” or conventional themes participates Accordingly, even when unseen by effacement of the recording apparatus in a selective idealization of family; the audience, the filmmaker can that characterized (illusionistic) real- the celebratory characteristics of be recognized as a participant as ism and, instead, flaunts “subjects home movies often obfuscate the well as documenter. interacting with the camera, openly realities of everyday domestic life. posing, firehosing camerawork, and As such, home movies rarely deal Chronicles: Video Diaries and scenes from daily life in no par- with personal trauma and family Home Movies ticular sequence”33 The cinematic strife; passionate arguments and When I used to go visit Michel at the Chelsea Hotel, around techniques strive to document time divorces are as rare as weddings 1970, a video camera was and place without the imposition of are commonplace.35 always there, always going, a supplementary authoritative narrative Michel Auder’s video chroni- part of the house, a part of his anchors, such as voiceover. In addition cles vividly documented the birth life, eyes, hands. It still is. A most magnificent love affair –- to the exemplars of the avant-garde and early years of daughter, Alex- no, not an affair: a life’s obses- “home movie style” identified by Zim- andra, and subsequent moments sion. , 1991 merman, filmmakers who have worked in the family’s turbulent history; in this mode include, Peggy Ahwesh, much of the earliest footage rep- Jonas Mekas has suggested that Bruce Baille, Bruce Conner, Jerome resents collaboration with Viva.36 until the 1960s “no filmmaker was Hill, Ken Jacobs, Taylor Mead, Marie The Family Chronicles present really filming his or her own life.”31 Menken, and Michel Auder. In this ordinary, everyday occurrences The availability of portable film context, the camera operates as an within a framework focused on and video technologies, coupled extension of the filmmaker’s interac- domestic life and the impact of with the blurring of boundaries tion with the environment, and filming marriage and childrearing on the between public life and the private is a means to be intimately involved couple’s relationship. The tapes self, promoted the emergence of with the subject matter. feature real-time recordings of new forms of personal, domestic, Scholars of visual communica- doing such and autobiographical filmmaking, tion have revealed how family home banal tasks as eating, sleeping, including film diaries and home movies and photo albums provide talking on the phone, gossiping, movies. In the process, this matrix highly coded and selective information kissing, arguing, nursing, or taking of forms challenged and extended about the social lives of the individuals a walk in the park with an infant the definitions of traditional film depicted. A clearly defined, systematic in a pram. Incidental and ambi- practice and avant-garde formal etiquette exists for the types of images ent sound from the street, televi- innovation. made, the circumstances under which sion, and radio is omnipresent and “Since the , with film- they are made and shown, and the the camera’s gaze often roams to makers such as Stan Brakhage persons and events depicted. Rich- inspect the environment. Using the and Jonas Mekas, the American ard Chalfen has defined this model most direct video methods, Auder avant-garde has appropriated home of visual communication centered on captures such quotidian rituals as movie style as a formal manifes- everyday domestic life and a circle shaving, applying makeup, dress- tation of a spontaneous, untam- of intimacy as the home mode.34 In ing and undressing, brushing hair, pered form of filmmaking,” film general, home mode practices favor bathing, etc. Throughout, intimate scholar Patricia R. Zimmerman documenting special events, holidays, scenes of mother and child are has noted.32 This non-conform- vacations, and rites of passage such as presented in conjunction with trav- ist, “amateurist” style knowingly birth, “baby’s first step,” birthdays, bar els and publicity appearances. purges the rigid standards of mitzvahs, graduations, weddings, new 10

Auder’s Family Chronicles , Jonas Mekas, Susan people in addition to the diarist does not avoid conflict or difficult Mogul, and Anne Robertson, in addi- often participate in the production issues in its representation of tion to Michel Auder, have produced of a video diary.41 Video provides the joys and stresses of marriage media works that document and more opportunities for social inter- and parenthood. As Gary Indiana reflect on their lived experience, so- action both in its creation and in has suggested, the complexity of called film and video diaries. In most reception. Thus, the video diary real life in Auder’s videos is never cases Michael Renov has noted, “the presents a peculiar conflation of reduced to dramatic formula.37 interest lies not so much in recover- the public and private. For example, we witness a public ing time past or in simply chronicling The video diary, like the home altercation that erupts as Viva daily life – there is little illusion of a movie with which it is aligned, attempts to breastfeed her child pristine retrieval – as in seizing the assumes an act of documentation, at a restaurant in a hotel. opportunity to rework experience at if only through the preservation Management refused to serve the the level of sound and image.”39 This and accumulation of quotid- couple and their guests for what condition provokes a reconsideration ian fragments. Glimpses of daily they considered the mother’s of the form and formats traditionally life become far more significant “indecency.” When Viva protests associated with diary practices, and, and vital than comprehensively and Michel threatens the man- likewise, Auder has grappled with sequenced scenarios. Whereas ager, they are thrown out of the the relevance of the term diary in his autobiography may present a fic- hotel where they had been staying. work. “I’m not really keeping a diary,” tive vantage point to reflect upon In subsequent shots, we see the he insists. Rather, Auder modestly the past, a film or video diary front pages of The Sun and Daily considers his work a “collection of provides “a series of discontinu- News where the episode we just images” while conceding, “I use the ous presents” as P. Adams Sitney witnessed was reported. We later diaristic form and the documentary suggested.42 The video diary see daughter Alexandra as a preco- form but I manipulate it.”40 Auder’s tends to privilege the process cious and inquisitive two year old manipulation and examination of and moment of composition, in a at Esalen in the Big Sur Mountains these forms engage two of video’s manner similar to a written one of California traveling in a Volkswa- essential properties: intimacy and where narration (or recording, in gen bus. There she has befriended real time. two spastic, blonde boys, a slightly The personal diary is generally older brawler and another obsessed understood to be a written record of with his middle finger. In one of events, experiences, and observa- the most frightening and hilarious tions. Traditionally, it is a private scenes, we witness Alexandra’s event, an intimate confessional and repartee with a young boy who confidant, where discretion and hon- gleefully demonstrates the func- esty is engendered by an assumed tions of his toy gun before launch- privacy or secrecy, and where con- ing into a lively “fuck you” match sumption, especially consumption by with the curly-haired girl. others, is generally illicit. The writ- By the late 1970s, the diary ten diary represents and records the the case of video) is transformed film was heralded as “a vastly internal world of a single ego, contrib- into an action in itself. And yet, important genre” in avant-garde uting to and narrating the construc- the written diary’s tense is gener- circles.38 Over time, artists such tion of individual interiority. Unlike ally that of the past perfect “rec- as Sadie Benning, Lynn Hersh- the written diary, composed and read ollections of events and states of man, Tom Kalin, , by individual, isolated subjects, other mind that have passed. The only 11 present it can record is that of an effective influence on both their performance, and their party is the moment of composition and “author” and “performers.” never over.”47 Perfectly aware that reflective commentary on writing: In his sociological study of home they are being filmed, individu- ‘So I make my first entry today’ movies, Richard Chalfen asserts als repeatedly address the camera (Thoreau). Image and audio that “picturetaking has the power directly in the work of Warhol and recording, by contrast, cannot to transform on-going patterns of Auder; such ruptures break the escape the present and the pres- activity into other behavioral rou- spell of filmic illusion, “the sense ent tense, for filming can only tines – into patterns of behavior that one is watching a world separate capture events as they happen.”43 are socially appropriate and cultur- from oneself.”48 Recognizing the In the work of Michel Auder, ally expected when cameras are in formative power of the camera, the this on-the-spot immediacy and use.”44 In other words, the presence filmmaker, and the act of filming intimacy often results in the of the camera introduces an impulse raises questions concerning the elliptical, fragmented, and casual toward theatricality, toward perform- fixed distinctions between docu- recording of spontaneous sight. ing an idea of self for the camera.45 mentary and performance, spon- In this discontinuous and hetero- David James has characterized this taneous and staged performance, geneous present, the videomaker as the “theater of self-presentation,” intimacy and distance. Auder has is witness, participant, and docu- in reference to the films of Andy emphasized this dynamic in his menter simultaneously. Here, the Warhol and the Superstars’ rela- work, stating, “…it’s more of a documentary impulse is greeted tion to the camera and filmic space, performance than reality. When I with a forceful and necessary where people are “always trying to turn the camera on… it becomes self-reflection, a reciprocal, or at accommodate themselves to the performance.”49 least, double focus. The viewer demands of the camera.”46 Consid- is made simultaneously aware of ering that many of the people sur- Real Time and Reel Families two events: the event recorded rounding Auder, and, thus, the mate- Auder began his domestic and the event of recording (narra- rial for his early video chronicles, had video chronicles several years tion intercalée). Indeed, our own ample experience with and exposure before PBS introduced the weekly witnessing is presumed in the via Warhol’s camera, Village Voice documentary series An American

Video stills, Chronicles: Family Diaries (Excerpts), 1971-1973. felt presence of the camera. The critic Andrew Sarris’s observation Family in 1973. This popular video chronicles by Michel Auder seems acutely pertinent: “Warhol’s series featured the Loud family are reflective texts – not simply in people are more real than real from Santa Barbara, California, the sense of self-consciousness, because the camera encourages their whose everyday lives were broad- but in the sense that the videos . They are all ‘perform- cast on national television. The and their very production exert ing’ because their lives are one long directors utilized an “observational 12 mode” of documentary filmmak- viewers to expect life represented not Chelsea Girls with Andy Warhol ing, which stresses the absent as it is lived but in condensed nar- Michel Auder has been nar- presence of the filmmaker and ratives, with scenes of heightened rowly characterized as a video editing that enhances the impres- action and sound accompaniments to voyeur, wherein the term voyeurism sion of real time, immediacy, and guide emotional responses.54 “For to generally implies a detachment intimacy.50 An American Family enter the world of the feature film is and distance from the subjects proved to be immensely influen- to enter the world of imagined time,” observed. One problem here is tial and is regarded today as the as Stephen Koch describes, “that that no categorical statement will origin of so-called “Reality TV.” arena where film uses the momentary do justice to Auder’s range. The At the time, art critic Douglas and concrete to seduce the mind issues and practice of voyeur- Davis applauded the series not into illusions of duration.”55 More- ism are certainly resonant for for its supposed transparent real- over, the record of quotidian frag- both artist and viewer, since the ism but for its critical function as ments from everyday life on video cinema-verité form Auder employs, documentary. Davis suggested, often requires some familiarity or or often combines with other styles “though edited, it made less contextual knowledge of the people of recording and editing, invites attempts to structure and pace and events depicted. In this sense, voyeurism. However, Auder is narrative events than any popular memory serves as an interpretative intimately involved in the situa- television series yet. Often long faculty and familiarity as a point of tions – often decidedly intimate stretches of meaningless, boring entry. As video historian Sean Cubitt situations – that he records and conversations were allowed to has pointed out, “the experience of exposes to the public. For Auder, play out, unstructured.”51 Auder’s watching someone else’s wedding video functions as a means of per- video chronicles share a similar tape is a bizarre one, especially when sonal expression, documenting the uninhibited tempo of expanse and you know absolutely no-one shown people, places, and events in his meaningful tedium. One tactic there.” The formulae and conventions immediate surroundings. he routinely employs is to simply are generally apparent enough, but a A comparison with Andy let the camera run, allowing situ- sense of exclusion may also occur - of Warhol’s relation to voyeurism, ations to develop unfettered. In viewing something private to which technology, and representation, these documents of everyday life you were uninvited. Nonetheless, and his objectification of aesthetic as lived, “he burdens the viewer Cubitt maintains that a correlative, if distance and emotional remove, with a slowness which becomes an unexpected, response “is the inten- may help elucidate this important omnipresent device.”52 The ten- sity of interest with which it’s possi- distinction. Warhol described his sion in Auder’s videos, as Yvette ble to watch total strangers enacting love affair with television and his Brackman has suggested, “lies an otherwise familiar spectacle.”56 “marriage” to recording technolo- in the gap between unreflected Perhaps, it is this intensity of interest gies in his book The Philosophy real-time documentation and the that led a reviewer to conclude, “One of Andy Warhol. He wrote, “The minute shifts of focus and framing does not simply watch Auder’s dia- acquisition of my tape recorder that distinguish Auder’s work as ries; one enters them….”57 Similarly, [in 1964] really finished whatever cameraman and editor, and raise the experience of observing Auder’s emotional life I might have had, his real-time recording into reflec- work has been characterized as evok- but I was glad to see it go.”59 tions of depth and duration.”53 ing “the feeling of losing oneself in Warhol’s tape recorder and camera The prospect of watching a the poetry of pure observation… [and] further allowed him to absent recorded event in real time often induces you to release yourself into and depersonalize himself and unsettles audiences, since modern the rhythm of captured moments.”58 thus bolster the emotional dis- mass media has accustomed tance required of voyeurism. One 13 of Warhol’s most distinguished footage from the opening gala for rare, in fact they provided the cinematic techniques involved Warhol’s 1970 retrospective at the source material for several of War- taking the voyeurism inherent in Whitney Museum and an afternoon hol’s works in other media, includ- both the film practice and expe- garden party hosted by ing his 1975 book The Philosophy rience and transforming it into and . Art world and celebrity of Andy Warhol (From A to B and the central principle of his work. gossip is indulged throughout, as are Back Again) – the “B” being Brigid Auder adopted this framework but thorny discussions about compensa- Berlin – and his lesser-known two- purged the sly malice of Warhol’s tion and duty, particularly Warhol’s act comedy Pork (1971), which exploits and the manipulative, responsibilities as “godfather” to premiered at La MaMa Experi- often sadistic psychological twists Alexandra, Viva and Michel’s daugh- mental Theatre and traveled to Warhol frequently employed to ter. The main participants, Brigid London’s Roundhouse theater. The achieve (inter-) personal drama. Berlin, Viva, and Warhol, regularly dialogue for the play was distilled Auder tempered the definitive voy- refer to their own mediated images: by writer and director Anthony eurism structuring Warhol’s films television appearances and journal- Ingrassia from hundreds of hours and re-personalized it via a more istic accounts. For example, Viva of recorded telephone conversa- intimate and compassionate gaze. describes showing a video of her tions between the two. The central And, it is through the framing of giving birth on television,62 and later figure is a disinterested voyeur this gaze, through his view, that laments her decreasing opportuni- named B. Marlowe surrounded by Auder’s own presence is registered ties for media appearances. Warhol “characters” that are thinly veiled in his films and videos. As Auder encourages Viva to oblige the advice caricatures of Superstars, includ- has indicated, “Even though you of her agent and participate in the ing Amanda Pork (), rarely see my face in them, they game show circuit, but she questions, Vulva (Viva, played by a tell my secrets.”60 “What would that do to my image?” queen), her husband portrayed as The people who surrounded The viewer becomes privy to “a virile Hollywood peacock,”63 Auder at the Chelsea – actors, intimate telephone conversations and their curly haired daughter. filmmakers, musicians, models, between Warhol and Brigid Berlin, In Auder’s video, Berlin con- assorted misfits, and other art- also known as Brigid Polk or simply tinually questions Warhol’s honesty ists – became the material of his work and emerge as the collec- tive exponent. His filming style developed as a response to his engagement in this New York art world community. As Auder explains, “The camera position in my work is loosely based on the relationship of the camera to the subject.”61 The compilation tape Video stills, Chelsea Girls with Andy Warhol, 1971-1976, released 1994. Chelsea Girls with Andy Warhol, 1971-1976 (1994) is a case in “The Duchess.” We observe one side and the reliability of his memory. point that casually documents the of the conversation, but hear both At one point, she mentions a circle of friends and their interac- sides since Auder has rigged the performance, to which tions with Andy Warhol. Though telephone unbeknownst to Warhol. Warhol mockingly replies, “Oh, largely shot within various Chel- Recorded telephone conversations you mean, ‘Bobby Zimmerman’ sea Hotel apartments, it includes between Berlin and Warhol were not that Edie [Sedgwick] was going to 14 marry?” Picking up on his derisive of Andy Warhol at a reception for the ment, assembled to tone, Brigid retorts, “But, you’re paperback release. She reads from a watch the footage he shot of their Warhola!” Warhol coyly responds, podium outfitted with a video monitor arrival. The camera then shifts to “Do you think that’s true? Do that features a silent Andy Warhol. them, and we watch as they view you think that woman downstairs Appropriately, the reading and tape their own images on the screen in is really my mother?” Later, in end as the video image of Warhol real time. Enthralled by the initial response to further proddings begins to flicker and finally fades out. encounter with this new technol- about his sincerity, Warhol com- The mise en abyme technique ogy, they vamp and strike various pares himself to Brigid’s father, operative in The Chelsea Girls with poses for the camera and for them- Richard E. Berlin, President of the Andy Warhol – the internal layering of selves. The effect is much more Hearst Corporation, “Your father mediated images and the mirroring than simple narcissistic display; is exactly like me, making money effect of recording technologies – is rather, this collective revelry in from trash, newspapers.” Aggra- a powerful motif in Auder’s videos identity as performative simula- vation escalates between Brigid and is flamboyantly displayed in crum enacts a subtle striptease, and Warhol when the topic of Pat The Cockettes, New York City, 1971 casting off imposed gender bina- Ast “playing her” is raised. Berlin (2002). The Cockettes were a San ries, and, ultimately, attests to a scolds Warhol for not calling or Francisco-based theatre troupe who desire for, and the power of, media visiting Viva since her daughter produced campy, platformed parodies (self-) representation. was born; all the while, Viva is of 1930s musicals and Hollywood present witnessing and hearing glamour, of which the disco diva Syl- Video Memories: The Morocco the telephone conversation, as vester – “You Make Me Feel Mighty Tapes Michel records and we observe. Real” – emerged. With great fanfare, When describing the method Viva finally enters the conversa- these “hyper-superstars”64 arrived in involved in rendering recorded tion and speaks directly to Warhol, New York, and Michel Auder was at experiences concrete via com- and compares the “most excru- the airport to greet them with camera pleted video chronicles, Auder ciating pain” of labor and child- in tow. He captured their extravagant asserts, “I try not to deal with the birth with the near-fatal gunshot antics and the shocked responses of material as soon as it’s made. It’s wound Warhol suffered at the the guileless public. hands of Valerie Solanas in 1968 “All closets were open,”65 the - the specter of which continu- New York Times proclaimed, at the ally haunts the video. \In another opening of the Cockettes’ Tinsel sequence, while Larry Rivers inter- Tarts in a Hot Coma. However, provi- views Warhol at on dence soon changed after the show Broadway in 1976, a commotion turned out to be a critical and com- erupts as must mercial flop. The washout revealed ward off a “crazy woman down- divisions between East and West stairs… in an army jacket… trying Coast sensibilities regarding gender Video still, The Cockettes, New York City, 1971, released 2002. to get in.” Auder’s camera cap- performance: “passing” and verisi- tures the image of the woman in militude were favored in , only years later that I deal with the the foyer through the surveillance while the ultra-camp aesthetic of the material. I store it up. I wait until camera monitor prominently dis- Cockettes enacted a fusion of I can look at it and say, ‘What was played on Warhol’s desk. The final communalism and glam rock that I doing?’”67 Importantly, Auder’s scene features Brigid Berlin read- flaunted the “incomplete pose.”66 videos are non-nostalgic since ing excerpts from The Philosophy Back in Michel’s Chelsea apart- the retrieval of the past into the 15 present, , is neither effects and meaning.69 This is par- another in re-collection and re-pre- necessarily dislocating nor disori- ticularly relevant and palpable in the sentation although not (necessar- enting. However, in its attempt two Moroccan chronicles featured in ily) in experience. The two videos to re-present the past, and the the exhibition, Chronicles/Morocco feature almost entirely different negotiation of memory and dura- 1971-72 (1976) and Morocco footage, thus reminding us of the tion, recollection and deferral, 1972: The Real Chronicles with Viva irremediable breach between expe- therein, a certain double valence (2002). As a pair they present a com- rience and its externalized repre- is produced, and this double plex tale of memory and forgetting sentation. valence is registered in the overall in terms of both form and content. Experience is always recon- style of his work and particularly Edited and released almost thirty structed in memory, and memories in its nuanced editing. On another years apart, the videos offer a power- are not pure representations. Con- occasion, Auder elaborated on ful testament to the dependence on sidering the strategies and overall this process, “That’s why I keep the vagaries of memory and its repre- style Auder has developed for his all my work, not because I think sentation. video chronicles, we can see how it’s great but because I had some Being able to control the past he, in fact, highlights the tensions kind of calling to shoot every may mean being in control of the between memory and forgetting, minute of it. There’s no reason present self. Auder’s model, however, recollection and narration, pres- for me to erase it even if it looks bad. Experience has told me that privileges the messiness of past, ervation and erasure. This tension I can look back 20 years later and present, and memory. The footage becomes a powerful metaphor find something interesting. I was for both tapes was all shot during the for the method of the chronicles smart enough to understand that same trip, a family vacation, but what itself, signaling “the very aporias, things get older and the meanings initially appears to be a simple travel- the contradictions, the gaps, the 68 change.” ogue is actually a highly manipulated failures involved in trying to make This scenario resembles construction. Several weeks into the language (or film)” represent or Freud’s description of nachtra- trip, tensions developed between even “substitute for experience glichkeit, or deferred actions, a the couple and Viva left while Auder and memory.”70 P. Adams Sitney term used to convey the manner stayed in Morocco for several more has described this cinematic strat- egy in autobiographical cinema as one that “confronts fully the rup- ture between the time of cinema and the time of experience and invents forms to contain what it finds there.”71 The title of the Moroccan coda, Morocco 1972: The Real Chronicles with Viva, not only recognizes this rupture but Left: Video still, Chronicles/Morocco, 1971-1972. Right: Video still, Morrocco 1972: The Real Chronicles with Viva, 2002. plays with it, flaunts it, and distills it, seeing as Auder has forewarned by which experiences, impres- months, almost a year total. The first us: “Nothing is real if it’s from sions, or memory traces are edit, released in 1976, eliminates the camera. Context and editing altered after the fact as a function almost all traces of Viva; the coda change everything. I see it as a of new experiences and are thus completed in 2002 restores her and pointing light inevitably fixed to rendered capable of reinvestment, daughter Alexandra. As such, they the time the event was shot.”72 producing new, even unexpected are temporally divided versions of one 16

Media Appropriation and Video equipment, The Games (Olympic devices shift the viewer’s focus Remixes Variations), completed in 1986, is a away from the drama of competi- During the 1980s, Auder wildly suggestive video and a tour de tion, and in its place incites a developed several videoworks that force paradigm of media appropria- brazen voyeuristic display that lan- utilize television as subject and tion practices of the era. guishes in covert glances. Auder’s material by appropriating and then The tape presents a mass of close-up, frame-filling compila- reconfiguring footage shot directly accentuated musculature and ten- tion of inguinal images is largely from a domestic television screen. dons; fragmented and magnified, fashioned from zooms focused on This collection of Reagan-era these protracted images revel in the athletic crotches (and assorted remixes, including Steve McQueen expressive capacity of the human chests) from the L.A. games.73 (1981), End of the World (1982), physique. This of transplanted The distorted fragments often Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling sports images has been thoroughly appear androgynous, but even (1986), and Racing in the Car reconfigured through Auder’s seam- when gender is evident, it becomes (1988), demonstrates Auder’s less use of scratch video in which clear that the video treats male creative and pioneering use of brief clips are rapidly repeated. After and female bodies indeterminately. scratch, montage, and experimen- dislocating the visual imagery, the Auder’s formal manipulations tal sound techniques. Likewise, details are rearranged, layered, and render the human body, as Hamza the focus on broadcast mass juxtaposed. The discordant and often Walker has suggested, simultane- media extended the artist’s long- hilarious effect is enhanced by the ously eroticized and mechanized. time examination of the medium of intricacy of his sound track. For exam- After surveying a variety of con- video and forms of representation. ple, as the image of crotch-grabbing spicuous Speedo adjustments, Although he did not grow up wrestlers is introduced, the voice of we observe an entire sprint shown with a television set, Auder’s first Howard Cosell announces “Let’s look in slow motion framed entirely at memory of television was the at the action again,” and the tape crotch level. The action presented 1956 Winter held in does just that, repeating the sequence is seen through the delicate fabric Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Perhaps several times while successively of running shorts as an Olympian’s it was this enduring memory that zooming closer. penis is violently flung from side

Video stills, The Games: Olympic Variations, 1984. compelled him to create an alter- This strategy of excess proves to side; meanwhile a disembod- native, furtive view of the 1984 immensely seductive and in conjunc- ied male voice declares, “We are Summer Olympic Games in Los tion with the overall alteration of looking for a few good men.” The Angeles. Composed entirely from syntax creates the powerful sensa- athletes’ expressions of pain and network coverage of the interna- tion of having time and momentum rapture look increasingly sexual as tional contest with home video perceptually altered. Such formal they multiply; the intensity of this 17 suggestion seemingly culminates tling Federation over ratings. And, attention on Waldon, his environ- with the image of spittle on a even while G.L.O.W. makes the WWF ment, and the mediated image of male runner’s face, which closely look like a serious athletic contest, Viva; occasionally, Auder’s bare resembles a pornographic cliché. the voice of a child, daughter Alex- feet enter the viewfinder and his In Gorgeous Ladies of Wres- andra, is heard in the opening of the figure is sometimes reflected in tling (1986), Auder similarly tape asking repeatedly, “Who won?” the television monitor and the zooms in on suggestive body con- narrow mirrored paneling behind tact and fragments of exposed Recent Work: Mediated Voyeurism it. In contrast, the follow-up video flesh recorded directly from the and Other Observations Louis Waldon in Chronicles: Los television screen. This time, The hyper-acceleration of con- Angeles/Bel Air (July 1999), the focus is on female wrestlers sumer video technology and the released in 2002, opens with the featured in a short-lived, campy accompanying ubiquity of video in face of its documenter, Michel television show popularly referred mass culture has stimulated both Auder. Digital video technologies to as G.L.O.W., which in retro- adaptation and transition in Auder’s have enabled Auder to record spect seems oddly emblematic of approach as observed in his chroni- himself in the scene with greater the various contrivances associ- cles with Louis Waldon produced in ease. The newer cameras are sig- ated with the mass media in the the past decade. In the first,Louis nificantly smaller, efficient, and late-1980s. In this gaudily overt Waldon (1994), Auder reunites with discrete, allowing Auder to posi- spectacle of good versus evil, Waldon in Los Angeles, and they tion the camera on a tabletop, or white lace, hearts, and pink span- reminisce about their initial meet- a similar stationary support, and dex (accompanied by matching ing, making Keeping Busy, Cannes, record events as they develop. He shades of lipstick and rouge) are and catch up on the fate and activi- is now free to wander and interact used to distinguish the heroines ties of estranged friends from times with less restraint, and, as such, from the villains sporting black past. While doing so, Waldon plays his presence is represented with leather, spikes, teased hair, and videotapes of two Warhol films star- greater frequency. Siouxsie Sioux style makeup. ring Viva: (1967) and Nude In general, Auder positions This impertinent role-playing Restaurant, also featuring Waldon. himself, reflectively, in the pres-

Video stills, The Games: Olympic Variations, 1984. media concoction seems to depict With Viva on the television moni- ent, more often in the work shot a fantasy world in which Molly tor, Waldon recalls thinking he was and edited in recent years. Imme- Ringwald and Jem, the then popu- in love with Viva while filming Blue diate and direct access to events lar “truly outrageous” cartoon Movie and expresses his utter aston- has increased through digital character, join forces to battle ishment that Auder and Viva actually recording technologies, while Hulk Hogan and the World Wres- married. The chronicle focuses its also making the camera and film- 18 maker’s presence less intrusive. camera. Shot out of Auder’s Brooklyn video, scenes from urban life are Auder’s recent work effectively studio window, The Conversation, punctured by visions of the coun- responds to the expanded struc- Brooklyn, 2002 (2003), captures a tryside, but the most arresting tures and technologies of surveil- private discussion between two young images are those gathered from lance and the anonymity of the women about sexuality and drugs, the picture window of a 12th-floor Internet. Various advances in tech- contraception and their hopes to be studio off Canal Street and Broad- nology have made electronic sur- better mothers than their own. “That way looking out onto lower Man- veillance increasingly powerful yet really might be the most transgres- hattan. From this perspective, the sive video I ever made because you viewer is offered glimpses of other really see those two young women people’s lives in unsuspecting, talking,” Auder explained. “They are intimate moments: a woman exer- about to be women, and they are cising on a rooftop terrace while talking right there on my stoop and workers tar an adjacent rooftop, a I can hear them from my studio and couple cuddling under the sheets, I just put my camera out and it just and another couple engaging in happened.”76 Another recent project in a “private” roof garden. Rear Window, NYC, 2002 (2003) The scenes are more suggestive Video still, The Roman Variations, released 1991. explicitly references Hitchcock’s nar- than graphic and are edited in a rative of voyeuristic intrigue as the manner to bring attention to the decreasingly visible.74 For exam- camera records the silent interactions distinctive subtleties of gesture and ple, a 1998 study by the American of neighbors. The viewer is irrevocably body language. In a later sequence, Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of isolated from the scenes documented; the camera surveys a group of New York estimated that there are access to these intimate scenes museum patrons being guided nearly 2,400 surveillance cam- is inescapably distanced. For the through a retrospective of photo- eras trained on public places in viewer, this distance cannot be over- graphs by Cindy Sherman, Auder’s Manhattan alone. Approximately come; we are plainly left to ponder wife at the time. The sequence is 2,000 of those cameras are oper- what can be communicated or inter- silent and directs viewers’ attention ated by private entities, with the preted through gesture, proximity, and to the intent gazes of museumgo- rest belonging to government body language. These recent videos ers and the degrees of engagement agencies.75 are exercises in mediated voyeur- or distraction. “I don’t know if I’m Auder’s recent work also ism, which has been defined by Clay a video voyeur,” Auder explained, responds to the relatively new Calvert in his book Voyeur Nation as ”I have a method of adapting to forms of mass-mediated, nonfic- “the consumption of revealing images my environment – that would be tion voyeurism as exemplified of and information about others’ my main talent. … I have spied in the explosive proliferation apparently real and unguarded lives, on people in a voyeuristic way, but of “reality”-based voyeuristic often yet not always for purposes of never on my friends – or if it is my media, from The Real World to entertainment but frequently at the friends, you cannot recognize them Big Brother, The Surreal Life to expense of privacy and discourse, in the footage. What are captured The Simple Life, and Survivor to through the means of mass media and are simply gestures or words that Cheaters. The defining charac- Internet.”77 are non-specific or general. It’s teristic of this highly profitable Rooftops and Other Scenes never about exposing somebody for format is unrehearsed, unscripted (1996) is a hybrid work intermixing what they do.”78 moments of real life played out aspects of travelogue, media appro- In conversation with media before, and captured by, a video priation, and visual chronicle. In this artist Stephen Vitiello, Auder 19 elaborated on the issues and itself to the lens as one big historic are banal, sinister, humorous, and ethics of exposure and anonymity, landmark, Auder is interested in ultimately fascinating. We hear “The worst that could happen to capturing the city’s character as the disembodied, anonymous, yet me is that someone would recog- revealed in the unconscious and utterly distinct New York voices nize themselves on the tape. This informal gestures of the city’s “share” shreds of gossip through is about bringing anonymity back inhabitants going about their daily the static, hiss, and distortion of into our lives.”79 lives.”82 Throughout the poetic the phone lines. We listen to lovers “My entire life is about observ- assembly of images, Auder’s obser- planning a tryst; an estranged ing. Maybe it becomes voyeurism vations of daily life are intercut couple concerned about their 18- at some point,” Auder recently with re-scanned imagery from year old daughter’s regular sexual claimed, and then somewhat Italian television. The video is liaisons with a neighborhood drug mockingly continued, “But voyeur- structured around variations on dealer; men betting on sports; two ism – the dictionary definition recurring motifs large and small. women talking about sex and com- of people having sex – I’ve seen These include traffic patterns, paring dates; lovers giggling and so much of that. And so, it better Vespa-filled streets, bustling piaz- bickering; and chillingly, two men be really good to be interesting to zas, vendors at Campo de’Fiori, planning a “hit.” At one point, we me.”80 The “dictionary definition” window gazing at exclusive bou- hear a man ask a woman if she is Auder references is that of voyeur- tiques, monumental and quotidian leaving him for another; there’s a ism as a sexual disorder, pathology, ruins, political rallies, violence and silence and he says, “I’m gonna or form of deviance, and, indeed, bondage in Renaissance paint- lose you… my battery’s dying.” such a definition helps to clarify ing, and Roman statuary featuring This incident serves as a fitting the distinction Auder insists on. fragmented genitalia. A recurrent allegory for both the recording pro- Sigmund Freud, in an essay on site of engagement for the obser- cess and human communication in sexuality, wrote that the, “Pleasure vations of ordinary life is the view general.83 in looking [scopophilia] becomes from Auder’s studio window onto Auder layered the appropri- a perversion (a) if it is restricted the cobble-stoned street below and ated audio recordings onto serene exclusively to the genitals, or (b) if the neighborhood tabacchi. From images of coastal landscapes, it is connected with the overriding here, we view activities both inside spectacular sunsets, drifting of disgust (as in the case of voy- and outside of the store, includ- clouds, gliding seagulls, plants eurs or people who look at excre- ing sales, daily chitchat, various swaying in the breeze, and ordi- tory functions), or, (c) if, instead demonstrative conversations, and nary household interiors. This com- of being preparatory to the normal a steady flow of handsome, young bination highlights the discrepancy sexual aim, it supplants it.”81 Carabinieri smoking and taking between image and sound creating An earlier video, The Roman lunch. The video concludes as an elegiac effect of reversal, where Variations (1991), is a chronicle two employees acknowledge the the sound is foregrounded as pri- of Auder’s time spent in Rome, camera and walk onto the street to mary and images form a visual during a residency at a studio greet the person behind it. soundtrack. As curator and critic provided by gallerist Barbara The audio structure for the Dan Cameron has noted, “The Gladstone. In this anti-travelogue, video Voyage to the Center of the disjunction between the banality Auder creates an elegant narra- Phone Lines (1993) consists of of the conversation and the serene tive of the everyday that is rich cordless and mobile phone con- emptiness of Auder’s images is and seductive in detail. As Hamza versations Auder recorded using subtly menacing,” and, as such, Walker has described, “Whereas an electronic scanner. The sur- alludes to the source of Auder’s Rome unavoidably announces reptitiously retrieved conversations title – Jules Verne’s novel Journey 20 to the Center of the Earth – and recounted, “it was my entire raison the admonition of adventure and d’être to have this camera with me peril it narrates.84 and interact with people through it. But I think that I have changed. I still Dear Video Diary go out with people but now I want to “During the 1970s, I was live it, I don’t want to film it. For the using my life as the basic mate- first time I am able to sit there watch- rial to make the work,” Auder ing and enjoying it without think- explained in 1999. “…I didn’t ing about my camera.”86 Auder’s think my life was so interesting; narrative recalls the words of Henri it was the people around that Frédéric Amiel in his Journal Intime, were interesting. Back then it was the first personal diary published like my whole life was a stage to in Europe (printed posthumously in make videotapes. I didn’t have a 1882 and 1884). Recording his most real life, it was all about making private and intimate thoughts in diary works.”85 The traditional liter- form for over a quarter of a century, ary diary may be considered as Amiel began to recognize that this a project committed to self-per- document of self-observation also ception, in which the diarist is had the potential to depersonalize the generally inclined to recognize same self. Thus, Amiel wrote, “I am her or himself through the agency a reflection reflected, as in two mir- of the diary. This self-percep- rors facing one another. My identity tion requires, with greater or less is somewhere between the first and intensity, that the documenter second persons, and totally fluid.”87 develop a sense of otherness apart from the documented subject. In literary studies, this arrangement has been described as the gap of the diaristic subject between the narrating self (erzählendes Ich) and the experiencing self (erlebendes Ich); in the case of video, the process can be understood as the temporal split between experience (filming) and secondary revision (editing). In a recent interview with Lisa Dorin, Assistant Curator at Williams College Museum of Art, Auder expressed a significant change in his approach to what Jonas Mekas characterized as his life’s obsession: recording life on video. In the 1970s, he 21

Endnotes

1 Jerry Saltz, “Michel Auder at Nicole Klagsbrun,” Art in America 82 (July 1994), 91. 2 Ed Halter, “Factory Family Secrets,” Village Voice (June 11-17, 2003), 116. 3 Michael Renov, “The Subject in History: The New Autobiography in Film and Video,” Afterimage 17 (Summer 1989), 5. 4 Mark Webber, “Excerpts from Taped Conversation Between Michel Auder and Mark Webber,” Michel Auder (Lüneburg, : Revolver-Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, 1999), 45. 5 John Petrakis, “Another Look at the French Films of 1968,” Chicago Tribune (October 13, 2000), N. In April 1968, Philippe Garrel, the unofficial leader of the Zanzibar Group, won the top prize at the fourth annual festival of young cinema at Hyeres for his first fea- ture, Marie Pour Memoire. In his acceptance speech, Garrel declared conventional cinema was an anathema and proclaimed, “If film was to have a value, it should be like a cobblestone hurled into the cinema.” Sally Shafto, “The New, New Wave,” Guardian (February 9, 2002), 4. 6 Jack Kroll, “Underground in Hell,” Newsweek (November 14, 1966), 109 and Dan Sullivan, “Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls at the Cinema Rendezvous,” New York Times (December 2, 1966), 45. 7 Jeremy Blake, “Son, You’d Better Get it Right” (Interview), Michel Auder (New York: Thread Waxing Space, 2000), 19. 8 Parker Tyler, Underground Film: A Critical History (New York: , 1969), 227. 9 David Remnick, “Flash and Fame at the Factory,” Washington Post (August 8, 1982), H1. 10 Sterling McIlhenny and Peter Ray, “Inside Andy Warhol,” Cavalier (September 1966), 86. 11 Blake, 19. 12 Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, : The Warhol ‘60s (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 294. 13 Guy Flatley, “How to Be Very Viva – A Bedroom Farce,” New York Times (November 9, 1969), D17. 14 David Denby, “Viva and Louis,” Film Quarterly 23.1 (Fall 1969), 43. 15 Vincent Canby, “Warhol’s Red Hot and ‘Blue’ Movie,” New York Times (August 10, 1969), D1. 16 Morris Kaplan, “3-Judge Panel Here Declares Warhol’s Blue Movie Obscene,” New York Times (September 18, 1969), 44. On the subject of pornography, Viva explains, “The Warhol films were about sexual disappointment and frustration: the way Andy saw the world, the way the world is, and the way nine-tenths of the population sees it, yet pretends they don’t.” Viva, “Viva and God,” Village Voice 111.1 (May 5, 1987), Art Supplement 9. 17 Keeping Busy was screened at the 7th New York Film Festival in 1969, where authorship was co-credited to Michel Auder and Viva. Other films featured in the “Underground Films at Elgin” series were Warhol’s Imitation of Christ, Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason, and shorts by Stan Brakhage, George Kuchar, Gerard Malanga, Jonas Mekas, and Lucas Samaras (New York Times advertisement, December 19, 1969). 18 As Lia Gangitano has commented, “Keeping Busy directly responds to Andy Warhol’s distilled film ennui by positing this presumed home movie as a worthy pastime for superstars on holiday.” Michel Auder: Secret Sharer Press Release (New York: Participant Inc., 2003). 19 Glenn Collins, “Where the Action Was,” New York Times (April 24, 1988), H23. 20 F. William Howton, “Filming Andy Warhol’s Trash: An Interview with Paul Morrissey,” Filmmakers Newsletter 5.8 (June 1972), 25. In an interview published in Arts Magazine, Gerard Malanga asked Warhol, “Why do you let your camera run for the time it runs?” Warhol responded, “Well, this way I can catch people being themselves instead of setting up a scene and shooting it and letting people act out parts that were written because it’s better to act naturally than act like someone else because you really get a better picture of people being themselves instead of trying to act like they’re themselves.” Gerard Malanga and Andy Warhol, “My Favorite Superstar: Notes of My Epic, Chelsea Girls,” Arts 41.4 (February 1967), 26. 21 As Vincent Canby noted, “Miss Varda has taken Viva, Warhol’s most valuable found object, and lit and framed her in a way that brings out the gentle pre-Raphaelit beauty suggested but never realized in things like Bike Boy, Lonesome Cowboys and Blue Movie.” Vincent Canby, “Film Fete: Viva, Ragni, and Rado in Lion’s Love,” New York Times (September 22, 1969), 37. 22 Flatley, D17. 23 Nick Browne, “Superstars and Yippies: Cheerful Chutzpah,” Village Voice 16.8 (May 6, 1971), 19. 24 Viva, Superstar (New York: Lancer Books, 1970), 224. 25 Maureen Dowd, “The Chelsea Hotel, ‘Kooky but Nice,’ Turns 100,” New York Times (November 21, 1983), B1. The Chelsea began as a cooperative apartment-hotel sponsored by a group of established artists who sought spacious studio accommodations, located in what was then the center of the theater district. When completed in 1883, the building’s eleven stories made it the tallest building in the city. The Queen Anne style building is a New York Landmark, both for architectural and historical interest. The hotel’s past is studded with names of literary and artistic notables that march through the decades, including: Mark Twain, Sarah Bernhardt, O. Henry, Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Flaherty, Thomas Wolfe, Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan, Niccolo Tucci, Arthur Miller, , William Burroughs, Larry Rivers, Jean Tinguely, Niki de Saint-Phalle, and many more. 26 Tony Rayns, “Lonesome Cowboys,” Cinema (UK) (October 1969), 10. 27 Review “Viva, Superstar,” Publishers Weekly 200 (September 20, 1971), 50. 28 Blake, 19. 29 Martha Rosler, “Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment,” in Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, eds. Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer (New York: Aperture Foundation, 1990), 32. 30 John G. Hanhardt, “The Cinematic Avant-Garde,” The Worlds of Nam June Paik (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2000), 86. 31 Scott MacDonald, “Interview with Jonas Mekas,” October 29 (Summer 1984), 89. 32 Patricia R. Zimmerman, “The Amateur, the Avant-Garde, and Ideologies of Art,” Journal of Film and Video 38.3–4 (Summer/Fall 1986), 81. 33 Zimmerman, 81. 34 Traditionally, home moviemakers rarely edit their footage; the rushes are commonly shown in the chronological order in which they were shot. Other characteristics typical of the home movie include flash frames, over- and underexposure, swish pans, variable focus, lack of establishing shots, jump cuts, hand-held cameras, abrupt changes in time and place, inconsistent characters and no apparent character development, unusual camera angles and movements, and a minimal narrative line. Jeffery K. Ruoff, “Home Movies and the Avant-Garde,” in To Free the Cinema: Jonas Mekas and the New York Underground, ed. David E. James (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 297. 35 Ruoff, 299. 36 Collaboration also resulted in Viva’s second book, The Baby: A Video Novel (New York: Random House, 1975). Illustrated with video frames, it is a literary counterpoint to the video chronicles Michel and Viva Auder made of their daughter’s life – and their own – since birth. For an interesting review of Viva’s participation in the International Festival of Women and Film 1896-1973 held in Toronto see, Carol Zemle, “Women & Video,” Artscanada 30 (October 1973), 30-39. 37 Gary Indiana in Michel Auder (New York: , 1991), 12. 38 P. Adams Sitney, “Autobiography in Avant-Garde Film,” Millennium Film Journal 1.1 (Winter 1977), 103. 39 Michael Renov, “Toward a Poetics of Documentary,” in Theorizing Documentary, ed. Michael Renov (New York: Routledge, 1993), 25. 40 Chun-Hui Wu, Interview with Michel Auder (: Chinese Film Archive, 2002). 41 See Christine Tamblyn, “Qualifying the Quotidian: Artist’s Video and the Production of Social Space,” Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, eds. Michael Renov and Erika Suderburg (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 24. 22

42 Sitney, 103. 43 David E. James, “Film Diary/Diary Film: Practice and Product in Walden,” in To Free the Cinema: Jonas Mekas and the New York Underground (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 153. 44 Richard Chalfen, Snapshot Versions of Life (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1987), 10-11. 45 Film theorist Bill Nichols refers to this recurrent scenario in documentary film as “virtual performance,” which “presents the logic of actual performance without signs of conscious awareness that this presentation is an act.” Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 122. 46 David E. James, Allegories of Cinema: American Film in the Sixties (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 67. See ’s essay “Face Value” for his description of the “ethics of anti-voyeuristic looking” in Warhol’s early films. Douglas Crimp, “Face Value,” in About Face: Andy Warhol Portraits, ed. Nicholas Baume (Hartford: Wadsworth Athenaeum, 1999), 110-125. 47 Andrew Sarris, “Film: Chelsea Girls,” Village Voice (December 15, 1966), 33. As another film critic wrote after seeing Warhol’sBlue Movie, “We may live our lives in constant reference to movie stars and talk about them in the most familiar terms. But as long as they are actors, as long as they are playing roles and trying to create illusions of some sort, there is a measure of respect, or reserve, and distance in our relations with them. In Warhol’s documentaries, however, the people are always playing themselves, and because of this and what they do…, the saving distance is annihilated, we are brought disastrously close, and we can only respond with the full cruelty of personal evaluation.” Denby, 43. 48 Fred Camper, “Some Notes on the Home Movie,” Journal of Film and Video 38.3-4 (1986), 13. 49 Wu, 2002. 50 James M. Moran, There’s No Place Like Home Video (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 123. 51 Douglas Davis, “Filmgoing/Videogoing: Making Distinctions,” Video Culture: A Critical Investigation, ed. John Hanhardt (Layton: Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1986), 273. 52 Heike Munder and Chrisoph Gerozissis, “Michel Auder,” Michel Auder (Lüneburg, Germany: Revolver-Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, 1999), 18. 53 Yvette Brackman, “Through the Viewfinder Into the Field,” Michel Auder (Lüneburg, Germany: Revolver-Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, 1999), 29. 54 Amy Cappellazzo, Making Time: Considering Time as Material in Contemporary Video and Film (Lake Worth: Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, 2000), 16. 55 Stephen Koch, Stargazer: The Life, World, and Films of Andy Warhol (New York: Marion Boyars, 1991), 86-87. 56 Sean Cubitt, Videography: Video Media as Art and Culture (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993), 6. 57 Halter, 116. 58 Brackman, 28. 59 Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 26. 60 Kristine McKenna, “Four ‘Diaries’ are Opened for Public Viewing,” (September 27, 1993), 6. 61 Wu, 2002. 62 For instance, A Natural Childbirth by Michel Auder was broadcast on December 7-8, 1971, sponsored by the Experiments in Art and Technology program. 63 Leonard Leff, “Warhol’s Pork,” Art in America 66.1 (January-February 1972), 113. 64 Jules Novick, “For this they had to come from Frisco?” New York Times (November 14, 1971), D1. 65 Mel Gussow, “Coast Transvestite Troupe,” New York Times (November 9, 1971), 61. 66 Mike Kelley, “Cross Gender/Cross Genre,” PAJ 64 (2000), 1-9. 67 Carole Ann Klonarides, “Michel Auder Interview from a Phone,” Bomb 48 (Summer 1994), 9. 68 Webber, 48-49. 69 See Renov, “The Subject of History: The New Autobiography in Film and Video,” 6. 70 Sitney, 61. 71 Sitney, 105. 72 Klonarides, 9. 73 In more recent years, British tabloids have been known to print images featuring the exposed parts of famous footballers on the field; such inadvertent exposures earned David Beckham the nickname “Goldenballs.” 74 “Secret videotaping may very well be the single greatest threat to personal privacy,” Louis Mizell Jr., a former special agent and intelligence officer in the U.S. Department of the State, argued in his 1998 book Invasion of Privacy. “More than 20,000 women, men, and children are unknowingly taped every day in situations where the expectation and the right to privacy should be guaranteed, i.e., while showering, dressing, using a public rest room, or making love in their own homes.” Louis R. Mizell Jr., Invasion of Privacy (New York: Berkley Books, 1998), 23. 75 Bruce Lambert, “Secret Surveillance Cameras Growing in City, Report Says,” New York Times (December 13, 1998), 61. 76 Lisa Dorin, Interview with Michel Auder, November 26, 2003, unpublished transcription. 77 Clay Calvert, Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, and Peering in Modern Culture (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000), 2-3. 78 Wu, 2002. 79 Stephen Vitiello and Michel Auder, “How Do I Know If I Need a Trunk-Tracking Scanner,” Felix 2.2 (1999), 30. 80 Wu, 2002. 81 Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, trans. James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 1962), 23. 82 Hamza Walker, Michel Auder: Retrospective 1969-2001, exhibition brochure (Chicago: Renaissance Society, 2002). 83 As Auder explained, “I actually did hear people I know. As a matter of fact, I picked up on a conversation between Robert Longo and Cindy [Sherman, Michel’s wife]. I did hear some of it but I turned it off. I didn’t want to… With the scanner I have, you pick something up and suddenly it’s gone. Even if it’s very interesting, you’re not able to control if you can follow that conversation. If a guy is traveling in a car, it will change stations and I’ll be off. If they’re stuck in traffic, talking to someone at home, you might be able to record for a long time. Sometimes it’ll be something really exciting and bing, it’s gone! You can’t really choose.” Vitiello, 30. 84 Dan Cameron, “Goings on About Town,” New Yorker (February 7, 1994), 20. 85 Webber, 46. 86 Lisa Dorin, “Interview with Michel Auder,” WCMAmail (Winter/Spring 2004), 7. 87 Quoted in Trevor Field, Form and Function in the Diary Novel (London: MacMillian Press, 1989), 154. 23

Michel Auder: Chronicles and Other Scenes February 14–May 23, 2004

Exhibition Checklist

Chelsea Girls with Andy Warhol, 1971-1976, released 1994, 88 minutes Polaroid Cocaine, 1993, 5 minutes Made for Denise, 1978, 5 minutes The Valerie Solanas Incident, 1971, 5 minutes My Last Bag of Heroin (For Real), 1986, 4 minutes Flying, 1983, 4 minutes Brooding Angels, Made for R.L., 1988, 6 minutes Chasing the Dragon, 1971-1987, released 1987, 43 minutes Cindy Sherman, 1988, released 1992, 42 minutes End of the World, 1982, 4 minutes Steve McQueen, 1981, 1 minute Racing in the Car, 1986, 3 minutes Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, 1986, 3 minutes The Games: Olympic Variations, 1984, 22 minutes Annie Sprinkle, 1981-84, 33 minutes Rooftops and Other Scenes, 1996, 49 minutes 5, 2003, 43 minutes Fun and Fire, Hudson, New York, 2002 Do You Know who is Donald Cammell?, 1967 Après Nous, Le Deluge, Denmark, 2003 The Conversation, Brooklyn, 2003 Tapei, Mon Amor, Taiwan, 2002 Rear Window, NYC, 2000 Apocalypse Later, Hudson, 2003 The Cockettes, New York City, 1971, released 2002, 28 minutes Taylor Mead “Special,” 1970-1982, released 2003, 43 minutes Voyage to the Center of the Phone Lines, 1993, 55 minutes The Roman Variations, 1991, 45 minutes Portrait of Alice Neel, 1976-1982, 120 minutes Keeping Busy, 1969, 68 minutes, 16mm film transferred to DVD Cleopatra, 1970, 155 minutes, 16mm film transferred to DVD Viva Book Signing, 1970, released 2000, 59 minutes Chronicles: Family Diaries (Excerpts), 1971-73, excerpts, 68 minutes Chronicles/Morocco, 1971-1972, 27 minutes Morocco 1972: The Real Chronicles with Viva, 2002, 32 minutes Chronicles: Van’s Last Performance, 1971, released 2002, 55 minutes A Coupla White Faggots Sitting Around Talking, 1980, 60 minutes T.W.U. Richard Serra, An Unsolicited Video by Michel Auder, 1980-82, released 2002, 14 minutes Stories, Myths, Ironies and Songs, 1983, released 1990, 28 minutes Louis Waldon, 1994, 82 minutes Louis Waldon in Chronicles: Los Angeles/Bel Air, July 1999, released 2002, 42 minutes

This exhibition was organized by Lisa Dorin, Assistant Curator and C. Ondine Chavoya, Assistant Professor of Art. 15 Lawrence Hall Drive Ste 2 Williamstown MA 01267-2566 tel: 413-597-2429 www.wcma.org 10AM-5PM Tuesday-Saturday 1PM-5PM Sunday Admission is free

Designed by Suzanne Augugliaro