Bruce Conner, filmmaker, Beat artist (RIP)

Bruce Conner, a pioneering collage filmmaker and Beat-era assemblage artist, died yesterday. He was 74. Conner is best known for his experimental cut-up films made from found footage and TV advertisements. In the decades since his first gallery shows in the 1950s, Conner collaborated with the likes of DEVO, Terry Riley, Brian Eno, and David Byrne. From Wikipedia:

Conner’s first and possibly most famous film, entitled A Movie (1958), combined his thrift store hunting process and his use of still photography. It is referred to as the piece that brought Conner to notoriety. In skillfully editing stock footage, Conner created abstract metaphors of mankind's violence. He subsequently made nearly two dozen non-narrative experimental films.

While Conner was living in Massachusetts in 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Conner filmed the television coverage of the event (near Kennedy's birthplace) and edited and re-edited the footage with stock footage into another meditation on violence which he titled Report. The film was issued several times as it was re-edited.

According to Conner's friend and fellow film-maker Stan Brakhage in his book Film at Wit's End, Conner was signed into a New York gallery contract in the early 1960s, which stipulated stylistic and personal restraint beyond Conner's freewheeling nature. Conner reacted by attending openings, only to move among the crowd wordlessly pinning buttons that read "I am Bruce Conner" or "I am not Bruce Conner" to their clothes. Many send-ups of artistic authorship followed, including a five page piece Conner had published in a major art publication in which Conner's making of a peanut butter, banana, bacon, lettuce, and Swiss cheese sandwich was reported step-by-step in great detail, with numerous photographs, as though it were a work of art.

Bruce Conner (Wikipedia), DEVO - Mongoloid: A film by Bruce Conner (YouTube), Prolific Beat era artist Bruce Conner dies (San Francisco Chronicle, thanks RU Sirius!)

• [David Pescovitz]

  @Kipple1 #8, VALE says:

  “I’ve known Bruce Conner since the 70s and corraled him into taking photos of the San Francisco 1977-78 Punk scene for my “Search & Destroy” magazine. When I interviewed him for our “Pranks” book, he talked about writing fake biographies and obituaries for the “Who’s Who” and “Who Was Who” reference books, so it seemed highly appropriate to print a fake photo — his idea, not mine. Does anyone know who this photo is?! — Vale, RE/Search founder

• [PeaceLove]

  I was blown away by Connor’s films when I first encountered them as an undergrad at U. of Chicago twenty-five years ago. Their film archive, to which I had keys, contained 16mm copies of A Movie, Cosmic Ray (fantastic), Report (on the assassination of JFK), and Marilyn Times Five (found footage of a naked young woman who looked like Marilyn Monroe, repeated five times). Connor was an pioneering mash-up artist, combining a ton of appropriated footage with killer tunes like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ I Put a Spell On You and Ray Charles’ What I’d Say.

  Even in those days (early Eighties), that kind of rapid-fire, ironic montage was quite explosive, and often revelatory. There’s a moment in Report when, in the midst of the Connor’s stuttery visual and aural chaos of the early news coming out of Dallas, the soundtrack suddenly quiets down and an announcer’s voice (Cronkite?) comes on and somberly announces, “The President of the United States…is dead.” It’s a very sad moment because it cuts through the media storm to the personal tragedy at its heart, the death of a man.

  Hats off to Connor’s memory! Condolences to his friends and family, and celebration for the gifts he gave.

• [David Pescovitz]

  @Kipple1 #8, I’m going to ask him! If he gets back to me with an answer, I’ll post it here.

• [kipple1]

  Has anyone noticed that the Bruce Conner portrait featured in the Bruce Conner entry of RE/Search’s Pranks is definitely not him?
  Pesco, does Vale have an explanation? I always assumed it was just another prank…

• [glutton]

  Source/title for the sandwich article, anyone?

• [glutton]

  sorry, ignore. google=friend. me=stupid.

  For anyone who is interested:

  Published in ARTFORUM (Vol. 6, #1, Sept. 1967). “Bruce Conner makes a Sandwich”

• [reviewstew]

  Conner photographs on view in Berkeley at the moment:

  http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/bruce_conner

• [David Pescovitz]

  Thanks Glutton and Reviewstew for those pointers!

• [halfvenus]

  He’s with Thomas Disch now.

• [Kim Scarborough]

  A Movie can be viewed/downloaded here.

• [cherry shiva]

  one of my heroes. ‘crossroads’ blew my mind when i was a student.
  thanks for that and more – blend well image master !