THURSDAY, JULY 24 – 7:30 PM & 10 PM
TICKETS FOR PROGRAM 1
TICKETS FOR PROGRAM 2
Drawing from spiritual systems spanning from Buddhism to alchemy to Kabbalah, Jordan Belson’s films posit sensuous dances of light and color as windows into a wider vision of awareness. From the 1940’s until his passing in 2011, Belson was a trailblazer in the San Francisco art scene and a pioneer in ‘Non-Objectivism,’ which he described as, “[constructing] real events in an unreal world.”
Spectacle is proud to present an evening of rarely seen Belson films. We will be projecting new 16 mm prints made from Belson’s original internegatives. We have invited Bradley Eros to curate a program responding to these works. Belson has been a foundational influence in Eros’s work since he was first introduced to the films as a student of Ron Eppel’s at the University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana. Eros’s first published essay was a 1972 essay on Belson’s films for legendary film zine The MacGuffin.
Works by Bradley Eros (Mediamystics and Vampÿrates) will be interwoven with Belson’s, making use of celluloid and multi-screen projection to transform the theater into a conduit for the numinous.
LIGHT
Dir. Jordan Belson, 1973.
United States. 8 min.
16mm.
CYCLES
Dirs. Jordan Belson & Steve Beck. 1975.
United States. 10 min.
16mm.
MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
Dir. Jordan Belson. 1977.
United States. 10 min.
16mm.
INFINITY
Dir. Jordan Belson. 1979.
United States. 8 min.
16mm.
Specially curated films, projections, video, slides, texts & graphics by Bradley Eros
7:30pm – Belson x Mediamystics: Bradley Eros & Jeanne Liotta
DERVISH MACHINE
Dirs. Bradley Eros & Jeanne Liotta. 1992.
United States. 10 min.
Super-8 to 16mm.
OPEN SESAME
Dirs. Bradley Eros & Jeanne Liotta. 1989.
United States. 7 min.
AERODYNAMICS OF THE BLACK SUN
Dirs. Bradley Eros & Lili Chin. 2006.
6 min.
OBSERVANDO EL CIELO
Dir. Jeanne Liotta. 2007.
17 min.
16mm.
ECLIPSE
Dir. Jeanne Liotta. 2005.
3 min.
16mm.
10:00pm – Belson x Vampÿrates: Bradley Eros & Richard Sylvarnes (2020 – 2025?, or centuries before?) Expanded Cinema with Slides, film, video & digital layers, original & found (stolen) materials
TRANSTRANS (TRANSFORMERS TRANSFORMED)
Dirs. Bradley Eros & Tim Geraghty. 2009.
12 min.
PYROTECHNICS
Dirs. Aline Mare / Erotic Psyche (Eros & Aline Mare). 1985.
11 min.
Bradley Eros is an artist-catalyst actively involved in diverse aspects of the New York underground, working with myriad media: experimental film & video, collage, photography, poetry, performance, sound, text, installation, expanded & contracted cinema, plus a curator, designer, researcher, composer & investigator. Concepts include: Mediamystics, Optipus, ephemeral cinema, Erotic Psyche, subterranean science, Vampÿrates, Mushroom Archive, Ocula, cinema povera, metaBody, poetic accidents, fragmentstein, musique plastique, Oysters of the Id, Narcolepsy Cinema, Artaud-Butoh, The Owl of Minerva, Velvet Hermetic System, Imageless Film, Eros c’est Lamour, kinoSonik & Black Hole Cinema.
Jeanne Liotta makes films, moving image installations, projector performances and other primarily lens-based works. Her cosmic cinema is a lively mix of art, science and natural philosophy, produced by photographing celestial events, researching the sci vis archive and performing experientially with time, light and motion.
She has been making work for over 3 decades, which includes her early collaborations with Bradley Eros, her signature 16mm film of the night skies, Observando El Cielo (2007), which received the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, as well as Eclipse (2005) which was featured in the Whitney Biennial.
Liotta is the author of a monograph about the Joseph Cornell Collection at Anthology Film Archives, “Joseph Cornell: Films” published by San Francisco Cinematheque and “Enter Germs, Enter the World: Hand processing artists films in the AIDS era” for Millennium Film Journal. She is Professor Emerita at University of Colorado Boulder and Associate Chair of Moving Image in the Bard MFA Program . Her films are distributed by Lightcone, Paris and her artwork is represented by Microscope Gallery, New York.
Richard Sylvarnes is a visual artist, music maker and professional photographer. He has exhibited and performed at a multitude of spaces, venues, clubs and galleries: Anthology Film Archives, The Film-makers’ Coop, Microscope Gallery, Synesthesia, Spectacle, St. Marks Church, Sunview Luncheonette, Chaos Computer, Secret Project Robot, Lincoln Center, Le Petit Versailles, Mono No Aware, Tank Space, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Nancy Driscoll Gallery, Eyebeam, Secret Project Robot, Scott Alan Gallery, Theatre 80 St. Marks, Phyllis Harriman Gallery, Neikrug Gallery, the Kitchen among others in New York City; Emerson Gallery (Berlin), Galerie Du Jour (Paris), The Ragged School (London), the Horse Hospital (London), Galerie Tristesse (Berlin), Subliminal Projects (Los Angeles), Gallery Blütenweiss (Berlin), OK LA (Montreal). In 2009 he received a Creative Capital Grant to work with the four-time Bessie Award winning choreographer David Neumann on a work titled “Big Eater” which premiered at the Kitchen in 2010. Also, in 2008, he was nominated for a Rockefeller Renew Media Fellowship.