Friday, May 11
6:30pm door | 7pm show
Free and open to the public

Tony as hypnotist, Tony as magician, Tony as naturalist, Tony on a bike, Tony on skype! As we near the end of Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective, and the multi-institutional celebrations that took place throughout early 2018, we are excited to celebrate with an evening of films and videos featuring the late polymath, made by his friends, colleagues, and students. We remember our founder fondly, and hope to offer a fun and warm gathering for our community, with a couple of surprises thrown in.

Featuring work from 1984–2016, originating in Super 8mm to cellphone snaps, by Alice Alexandrescu, Martha Colburn, Stephen Gallagher, David Gracon, Tyler Hubby, David McCreery, Zeljko McMullen, and Lara Odell.

Program

p0st-it t0ny
Alice Alexandrescu
2min, 2010
Impromptu performance. Tony Conrad asked for my input on a superbly complex topic in media analysis. I gave him my best answer to fit the time constraints of a graduate level course and left the room.

Wilderness Theater
Anya Lewin & Lara Odell
11min, digital, 2006
“Wilderness Theater is a collaborative video by Anya Lewin and Lara Odell, with Tony Conrad as The Naturalist. Two bears, one brown and one white (played by Lewin and Odell), somnambulate through multiple split-screen spaces: a desert, a snowscape, a post-industrial ruin, a forest, and an interior dreamscape. The white bear, or ghost bear, is maybe the brown bear’s unwanted thought. Meanwhile, a naturalist logs his visions of the bears with a camera and notebook.”

Women in Jail Doc
David McCreery
10min, 2010
A “documentary” of Tony Conrad at work in his studio, in preparation for filming his film “women in jail” w/ Tony Conrad, Anna Brantwood and George Sherer.

Tony as my violin priest
Martha Colburn
2:30min, 2014
This is one of the last rolls of sound super 8mm ever processed. I made it one afternoon in tonys studio. He dressed up and we made a little set and he played violin.

Tangible Man
Stephen Gallagher
15min, 1984
Tangible Man (TM, also for trademark or transcendental meditation) is a critique of artist’s ability to render their interior world tangible in the form of an artwork.

We Are Fools – Scene 1 : The Magician
Zeljko McMullen
5min, 2013
Over the course of 7 years, I made an experimental feature film based off of different artists invoking archetypes from the Major Arcana of the Tarot. I set the stage for each of the 22 scenes, and had different artists improvise within it.

Tony Conrad: Bryant Park (excerpt)
Tyler Hubby
6:53min, 2016
Tony Skypes his media class while discussing his the installation of ‘Bryant Park Moratorium’ and later visits contemporary Bryant Park.

We Ride Bikes!
David Gracon
10:30min, 2000
This is a short lo-fi documentary about Buffalo’s first Critical Mass bike ride. Critical Mass is a celebration of community, public space and bike culture. The Buffalo Police shut down this ride and a debate ensued regarding bicycle rights.

Banner image: Tony Conrad with a video camera, c. mid-1990s. Image courtesy Tony Conrad Archives