Film
Conrad's most famous film, The Flicker (1966), is considered a key early work of the structural film movement. The film consists of only completely black and completely white images, which, as the title suggests, produces a flicker when projected. When the film was first screened several viewers in the audience became physically ill. (Rapid flashes produce epileptic attacks in a small percentage of population.) Conrad began to work in video and performance in the 1970s as a professor at Antioch College in Ohio and the Center for Media Studies at the University at Buffalo.
Another of Conrad's early films, "Coming Attractions" (1970) led indirectly to the founding of Syntonic Research and the Environments series of natural sound recordings.
Conrad's work has been shown at many museums including the Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1 in New York City. In 1991, he had a video retrospective at The Kitchen, an artist-run-organization in New York City. His film The Flicker was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art's exhibition, The American Century. In 2006, the full hour-long recording of Conrad's Joan of Arc was released, a 1968 recording for the soundtrack to Piero Heliczer's like-named short film.
Conrad has been a faculty member in the State University of New York at Buffalo since 1976. He continues to teach there in the Department of Media Study as well as work on many notable B&W film image projects with Princess G. St. Mary.
Read more about this topic: Tony Conrad
Famous quotes containing the word film:
“You should look straight at a film; thats the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.”
—Werner Herzog (b. 1942)
“If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, youve got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and youre dumb and blind.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1948)
“I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because youre making a horror film doesnt mean you cant make an artful film.”
—David Cronenberg (b. 1943)