Tony Conrad

This Is Cosmos (2014)

Based on the ideas of Russian philosopher, Nikolai Fedorov, Anton Vidokle's film was shot in Siberia, Crimea, and Kazakhstan. Fedorov, like others, believed that death was a mistake, "because the energy of cosmos is indestructible, because true religion is ...

Loose Connection (2011)

To make Loose Connection, Conrad built a camera that moved in two directions simultaneously: it could be rolled backward and forward on a waist-high rig made with baby carriage wheels, and it automatically rotated 360 degrees. When he finally developed the ...

Tony Conrad: DreaMinimalist (2008)

The latest in Marie Losier's ongoing series of film portraits of avant-garde directors (George and Mike Kuchar, Guy Maddin, Richard Foreman), DreaMinimalist offers an insightful and hilarious encounter with Conrad as he sings, dances and remembers his yout ...

Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain (2005)

Stroboscopic vertical lines on a loop accompanying minimalist drone music compositions. ...

Conversation II (2005)

A short video by Tony Conrad. ...

Grading Tips for Teachers (2003)

Tony Conrad provides useful & alternative grading tips for teachers. Made in Buffalo, NY. ...

Scanty Claus (2002)

Mrs. Claus complains because Santa is away. ...

The Genius (1993)

A ramshackle underground SF satire set and shot in the self-absorbed art world of lower Manhattan, written, produced, and directed by Joe Gibbons, who also plays one of the lead parts. Gibbons plays a mad scientist who's developed a technique for transferr ...

Vidi Vici: Narrative and the death of desire (1988)

If the intersection of desire and authority is phallus, the intersection of absence and vigilance is vagina. The tape's laconic title (I saw, I conquered—but I didn't come) encodes its vaginal pretense. In effect, Vidi Vici is a male artist exploring a v ...

The A Ha! Experience (1988)

A young woman, on the brink of sexual awakening, is shocked by the presence of her mother in bed. The imagined presence of the mother's body haunts all further sexual encounters and desire, directing and controlling the scene of passion. Writes Zando: "The ...

Hey Bud (1987)

Hey Bud begins with the suicide of Bud Dwyer, a government official who killed himself on television. Writes Zando: "I view the suicide as pornographic. The suicide, exposed to a wide television audience, becomes a kind of sex act that plays upon the tensi ...

Weak Bodies and Strong Wills (1986)

The visual track of Weak Bodies and Strong Wills comes from my 1973 film, Enlightenment through Experience: Interim Semester at Albright College. The found film images had been kept in a closet at Albright College, where I was invited to teach a workshop. ...

Run Dick, Run Jane (1985)

This version of the Dick and Jane and Baby Sally tale was influenced by Dorothy Bloch, who stresses the role of childhood fear that the parent will kill the child. An alternative title, "The Scissors Bird," is intended as a reference to "The Story of Littl ...

In Line (1985)

A trisection of the spectators' power over their own image language: word, trance, and command are installed as valences of the artist's license, revealed as figures of parental authority. How peculiar that people like being an audience because they enjoy ...

Beholden to Victory (1983)

Using the devices of the war film genre, Tony Conrad cast his film with friends and colleagues, such as Mike Kelley, David Antin, Sheldon Nodelman, and Tony Oursler. Rather than directing the actors, he presented them with unscripted scenarios that could ...

Palace of Error (1982)

"A theory discourse among three participants, enacted in silhouette. ...

Accordion (1981)

"A man, an accordion, a ladder, and a video camera. It's as simple as that. ...

Teddy Tells Jokes (1980)

This exquisite single shot is a complement to Combat Status Go. Here the viewer is positioned casually, even though every other element in the film experiences a painful precision: piano, gun, wardrobe; conversation directed at (and across the bow of) the ...

Cycles of 3s and 7s (1977)

"Cycles of 3s and 7s is a doubled statement. First and foremost, it is a commentary on computer art and the role of computers in video. Secondly, its arithmetic project has some bearing on the construction of musical scales. In reclaiming the computer as a ...

Movie Show (1977)

"A curiosity, Movie Show looks backward to the era of structural films, particularly Ken Jacobs's Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son. The clip of film used in this performance is taken from my Articulation of Boolean Algebra for Film Opticals, the work with which I ...

Concord Ultimatum (1977)

"Originally intended as one scene in a larger work concerned with the metaphorical destruction of the viewer (through demolition of the camera), Concord Ultimatum unexpectedly became the occasion of the larger project's demise. In addressing the camera mec ...

Tiding over till Tomorrow (1977)

Originally debuted in 1977, where it took the form of a dual slide projection with live piano accompaniment by the artist. In the 2012 installation version at the Buffalo AKG, the slides were transferred to digital projection and Conrad's live accompanimen ...

Articulation of Boolean Algebra for Film Opticals (1975)

Made out of six patterns of alternating black and white imposed upon the full surface of the film strip. ...

Film Feedback (1974)

Negative image is shot from a small rear-projection screen, the film comes out of the camera continuously (in the dark room) and is immediately processed, dried, and projected on the screen. ...

7302 Creole (1973)

4-X Attack (1973)

A machine-gun film roll of 4-X negative film was exposed using pressure (hammering) and was flashed in its exploded physical configuration. ...

Four Square (1971)

Four Square is a film designed for four screens surrounding the audience. Through its spatial distribution of abstract image and sound it begins to build up a TIME/SPACE experience where the mental construction of the events do not clearly differentiate be ...

Straight and Narrow (1970)

Straight and Narrow is a study of subjective colour and visual rhythm, although it is printed on black and white film, the hypnotic pacing of the images will cause most viewers to experience a programmed gamut of hallucinatory colour effects. Through the i ...

Coming Attractions (1970)

"Coming Attractions" looks backward into the memories and forward into the future of Francis Francine, an elegantly dowdy transvestite of, and indeed beyond, a certain age. The memories, haunted by a Spirit of Seductions Past (played by a quite glorious na ...

Library (1970)

Initially titled "Books for all". A moving institutional commission in which the filmmakers lovingly portray New Jersey's public library system. ...

Joan of Arc (1967)

The story of Joan of Arc as applied to the present revolution in arts and more. The Gothic is applied to the War in Vietnam. The film is experimental in the sense that in it the visual becomes tactile. ...

The Eye of Count Flickerstein (1967)

A Dracula parody where the camera moves to the eye of Count Flickerstein and the image changes to static-like patterns. ...

The Flicker (1966)

A film consisting of alternating black and white frames. ...

Chumlum (1963)

Ron Rice's Chumlum is one of those films in which the conditions of its construction are integral to the experience of watching it. It is a record of a cadre of creative people having fun on camera, playing dress-up, dancing, flirting, lazing around. ...

Flaming Creatures (1963)

Filmmaker and artist Jack Smith described his own film as a "comedy set in a haunted movie studio." Flaming Creatures begins humorously enough with several men and women, mostly of indeterminate gender, vamping it up in front of the camera and participatin ...

The Autumn Feast (1961)

A deliberately non-synchronous film, shot in 8mm with the sound on tape. Piero Heliczer reads his poem "The Autumn Feast," and the visuals interact with, but does not literally represent, what is read. ...

The Velvet Underground (2021)

Experience the iconic rock band's legacy in the first major documentary to tell their story. Directed with the era's avant-garde spirit by Todd Haynes, this kaleidoscopic oral history combines exclusive interviews with dazzling archival footage. ...

Escape From Rented Island: The Lost Paradise of Jack Smith (2017)

In his essay film, Jerry Tartaglia, longtime archivist and restorer of the film estate of queer New York underground, experimental film, and performance legend Jack Smith, deals less with Smith's life than with his work, analyzing Smith's aesthetic idiosyn ...

Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present (2016)

Feature documentary on the pioneering life and work of iconoclastic filmmaker/musician/composer/artist Tony Conrad. ...

The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye (2012)

An intimate, affecting portrait of the life and work of ground-breaking performance artist and music pioneer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV +) and their wife and collaborator, Lady Jaye, centered around the daring sexual transforma ...

Lower East Side 12.12.12: Tony Conrad Interviewed by Michael Cohen (2012)

Tony Conrad interviewed on the streets of NYC. ...

Tony Conrad: DreaMinimalist (2008)

The latest in Marie Losier's ongoing series of film portraits of avant-garde directors (George and Mike Kuchar, Guy Maddin, Richard Foreman), DreaMinimalist offers an insightful and hilarious encounter with Conrad as he sings, dances and remembers his yout ...

365 Day Project (2007)

This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas' 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were ...

Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (2007)

In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's performances and films punctuate interviews with artists, critics, friends and foes to create an engaging portrai ...

Grading Tips for Teachers (2003)

Tony Conrad provides useful & alternative grading tips for teachers. Made in Buffalo, NY. ...

Music in the Afternoon (2002)

Fellow violinist and artist Tony Conrad, in collaboration with software engineer Tom Demeyer, made for Steina the instrument seen in this title. Conrad and the Vasulkas all taught at the University at Buffalo in the Media Study Department from 1976 to 1979 ...

Scanty Claus (2002)

Mrs. Claus complains because Santa is away. ...

Grandma Baba and Little Boris (2000)

Tradition, mystical revelation, the passing on of family secrets--all that is lost in translation. In this magical fairytale Grandma Baba struggles with the impossibility of telling what needs to be told. How can she pass on the traditions and stories of t ...

Birth of a Nation (1997)

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own "nation of cinema," a vital ...

The Genius (1993)

A ramshackle underground SF satire set and shot in the self-absorbed art world of lower Manhattan, written, produced, and directed by Joe Gibbons, who also plays one of the lead parts. Gibbons plays a mad scientist who's developed a technique for transferr ...

In Line (1985)

A trisection of the spectators' power over their own image language: word, trance, and command are installed as valences of the artist's license, revealed as figures of parental authority. How peculiar that people like being an audience because they enjoy ...

Home Movies 1971-81 (1985)

Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years. ...

Palace of Error (1982)

"A theory discourse among three participants, enacted in silhouette. ...

Accordion (1981)

"A man, an accordion, a ladder, and a video camera. It's as simple as that. ...

Teddy Tells Jokes (1980)

This exquisite single shot is a complement to Combat Status Go. Here the viewer is positioned casually, even though every other element in the film experiences a painful precision: piano, gun, wardrobe; conversation directed at (and across the bow of) the ...

Tiding over till Tomorrow (1977)

Originally debuted in 1977, where it took the form of a dual slide projection with live piano accompaniment by the artist. In the 2012 installation version at the Buffalo AKG, the slides were transferred to digital projection and Conrad's live accompanimen ...

Diaries, Notes, and Sketches (1968)

Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas's first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols. Blending everyday encounters with portraits of the avant-garde art scene, it ...

The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (1968)

At the court of the Yellow Emperor, the Majoon Traveler & Lady Firefly appear in the Hall of Unconscious Magnetism. ...

Joan of Arc (1967)

The story of Joan of Arc as applied to the present revolution in arts and more. The Gothic is applied to the War in Vietnam. The film is experimental in the sense that in it the visual becomes tactile. ...

Normal Love (1965)

A follow-up to now legendary film Flaming Creatures. This vivid, full-color homage to B-movies is a dizzying display of camp that clearly affirms Smith's role as the driving force behind underground cinema and performance art of the post-war era. The direc ...