[Frameworks] Andy Warhol's SLEEP / Providence, RI / Feb 18 / Magic Lantern + RK Projects

Sun Feb 12 17:03:53 CST 2012

I only mentioned Youtube because it is standard fare there for  
misinformed folks to put all kinds of soundtracks on say  Dog Star Man.

Not saying there is any comparison between the quality of the visuals.
But if one is going to the trouble of presenting actual film, why  
cater to the Youtube "audience", why not round up a couple of the  
correct projectors and advertise it as an authentic experience as  
intended by the maker.
\What I am comparing is the "pandering" aspect.

On Feb 12, 2012, at 2:35 PM, Damon wrote:

> While this presentation of Sleep certainly differs from the  
> original screenings of the film, it is also far from a Youtube  
> hommage.  Vexations played an important role in Warhol's conception  
> of the film, and he took from Satie a working method making  
> possible the editing of his short reels into a lengthy film.
>
> Sorry I don't have time at the moment to unpack this point as I'm  
> running out the door, but here is a link to some supporting  
> literature to this position:
> http://www.warholstars.org/news/johncage.html
>
> Damon S.
>
> On Feb 12, 2012, at 5:29 PM, Myron Ort wrote:
>
>> So 18fps plus sound.  Not so much an homage to Warhol as an homage  
>> to Youtube!   LOL.  At least with Youtube you can turn off the  
>> sound. No sets of ear plugs can do that as completely, and  
>> sometimes the bass from the speakers hits you in the gut anyway  
>> and creates a whole other unwanted experience even with earplugs.   
>> That is how I was forced to sit though the Sistiaga hand painted  
>> film with atrocious noise.  Echhhhhh!  One of the worst cinema  
>> experiences of my life.
>>
>>
>> Myron Ort
>>
>> On Feb 12, 2012, at 10:06 AM, Josh Guilford wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> .... .... .... ....
>>>
>>> R.K. Projects + Magic Lantern Cinema Present
>>> a very special screening of:
>>>
>>> SLEEP
>>>  by Andy Warhol
>>>
>>> featuring John Giorno
>>> 5.5hr long-form cinema projected on 16mm film
>>>
>>> w/ a performance of Erik Satie's, Vexations (1893)
>>> by Sakiko Mori, Daryl Seaver and XSV  @ 6:15pm
>>>
>>> Saturday February 18th from 6pm - 2am
>>> 40 Rice Street
>>> Providence
>>> 02907
>>>
>>>
>>>            Andy Warhol, Sleep, 1963,  16mm film, b/w, silent, 5  
>>> hours and 21 minutes @16fps
>>>            ©2012 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum  
>>> of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.
>>>            Film still courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum
>>>
>>>
>>> “What is sleep, after all, but the metabolic transformation of  
>>> the entire experience
>>> of time, our nightly release from the clock’s prison…”  -  
>>> Stephen Koch
>>>
>>> Sleep harbors a potential to alter the temporal fabric of our  
>>> world. What would it mean to live the time of sleep while awake,  
>>> to collectively activate its other temporality in a pocket of  
>>> space and sleep awake together?  If sleeping together amounts to  
>>> “sharing an inertia, an equal force that maintains the two  
>>> bodies together,” then the stillness of sleep may paradoxically  
>>> give way to a journey, with bodies “drifting like… narrow  
>>> boats moving off to the same open sea, toward the same horizon  
>>> always concealed afresh in mists…”1
>>>
>>> Magic Lantern Cinema and RK Projects have collaborated to present  
>>> an off-site screening of Andy Warhol’s 5.5hr anti-film –  
>>> Sleep. The first film that Warhol made after purchasing a 16mm  
>>> camera in 1963, Sleep began as an experiment to document an  
>>> activity that the amphetamine-induced energy of the 1960s seemed  
>>> to be rendering obsolete. Yet Warhol’s film is not simply a  
>>> documentary, but an erotic milieu for ruminating the  
>>> philosophical implications of time and repetition, as well as a  
>>> physical meditation on the non-narrative materiality of film  
>>> itself. Warhol completed the film after his experience attending  
>>> John Cage’s 1963 performance of Erik Satie’s epically  
>>> repetitive work for piano, Vexations, (1893) – a 52-beat segment  
>>> played slowly and in succession 840 times. The repetitive  
>>> structure of Vexations is apparent in Sleep as well: recorded as  
>>> a series of long takes using 100 ft. magazines (approx. 3 mins)  
>>> shot from multiple angles over a period of several weeks, the  
>>> shots were then repeated through loop-printing and spliced  
>>> together end-to-end, with emulsion and perforations left as-is.   
>>> And though the entire film was shot at sound speed (24fps), it  
>>> was meant to be projected at silent speed (16 or 18fps), causing  
>>> movements to appear in an ethereal slow-motion.  The result is a  
>>> highly constructed piece of minimalist long-form cinema whose  
>>> emphasis on time, materiality, repetition, and the quotidian has  
>>> drawn comparisons to modernist painting while also earning Warhol  
>>> a position as “the major precursor of structural film” and a  
>>> 1964 Independent Film Award for “taking cinema back to its  
>>> origins.”2
>>>
>>> Sleep premiered in New York City’s Gramercy Arts Theater in  
>>> 1963.  But the film’s extreme stillness and duration have been  
>>> said to promote a more casual and intermittent approach to  
>>> spectatorship than that affiliated with theatrical exhibition,  
>>> encouraging viewers to “chat during the screening, leave for a  
>>> hamburger and return, [or] greet friends [while] the film  
>>> serenely devolve[s] up there on the screen.”3  In an effort to  
>>> cultivate such an experience and acknowledge Warhol’s diverse  
>>> experiments with non-theatrical exhibition forms (from the  
>>> Factory walls to live multimedia performances), this screening  
>>> will be held in a vacant, slumbering warehouse at 40 Rice St.,  
>>> generously donated by The Armory Revival Co. in Providence, RI.  
>>> To mark this significant event, there will also be a staging of  
>>> the musical performance that inspired the film. Three Providence- 
>>> based musicians will be conducting a 45 minute performance of  
>>> Erik Satie’s Vexations immediately preceding the screening. In  
>>> addition, a selection of relevant reading materials will be on  
>>> display at the screening.
>>>
>>> Refreshments will be provided along with chairs, but viewers can  
>>> enter and exit at will, and sleeping bags are strongly  
>>> encouraged.  Join us for an evening of Sleep.
>>>
>>>
>>> SUGGESTED DONATIONS
>>> SLIDING SCALE: $3 - $5
>>>
>>> Funded by the Malcolm S. Forbes
>>> Center for Culture and Media Studies
>>> Brown University
>>>
>>> RK Projects + Magic Lantern Cinema
>>> 40 Rice Street
>>> Providence, RI 02907
>>>
>>> 1 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Fall of Sleep (New York: Fordham UP, 2009):  
>>> 19.
>>> 2 P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film (New York: Oxford UP, 2002):  
>>> 349; Film Culture 33 (Summer 1964): 1.
>>> 3 Stephen Koch, Stargazer: The Life, World and Films of Andy  
>>> Warhol (New York: Marion Boyars, 1991): 39.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> //////
>>>
>>>                                                           RK  
>>> PROJECTS │Providence  │ rkprojects.com   │  More info on  
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