MUSIC AND MEDIA
The Museum of Modern Art
Laurie Anderson, This Castle Town, commissioned by the World Expo 2005, Aichi, Japan.
MoMA PRESENTS: MUSIC AND MEDIA, THREE EVENINGS OF DIALOGUE WITH LEADING MUSIC AND MEDIA INNOVATORS
Laurie Anderson, Michel Gondry, and Brian Eno screen and talk about their work.
CUNY Graduate Center, Proshansky Auditorium (365 Fifth Avenue, at 34 Street)
September 23 and 30; October 7, 2004 at 7 p.m.
www.moma.org/visit_moma/momafilm/musicandmedia.html
The mixing of media took off in the late 1960s. The barriers between artistic disciplines broke down, and artists began moving freely between painting, sculpture, photography, film and media. Nowadays they choose one medium or over another to suit the idea of the work.
Music was at the forefront of this inter-disciplinary experimentation. Musicians led the way in developing new working methods — they were interdisciplinary from get-go. The work of Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno and Michel Gondry evince their background in music. Anderson was a teenage violin soloist, Gondry played drums in a rock band, and Eno is a well-known pioneer of electronic music.
Music is infused with a wild innovative energy that was especially invigorating to media art, an art form that thrives on trampling conventional restrictions. The development of media art over the recent decades paralleled the transformation of our musical environment. For Anderson, Eno and Gondry, music and art are not separate forms. In their art and in their careers, the artists merge art and music seamlessly. Installations, feature films, performance pieces and other hybrid projects are imbued with a sensibility that owes much to the artists’ musical background.
The program each evening will pair an artist with a commentator who finds the artist’s work exhilarating. The dialogue between the artist and the fan will be rounded out with screenings, sounds and other media works.
E-mail your questions to the participating artists to moma_media@moma.org. Selected questions will be answered during the respective artists’ evenings.
Laurie Anderson and Greil Marcus
September 23
7:00 pm
Laurie Anderson was in Chicago on the road to becoming a concert violinist, before moving to New York where she chose art instead. She flourishes in the disparate worlds of music, the avant-garde, and mainstream art, commanding a “technology” style honed over a decades-long career.
Michel Gondry and Ed Halter
September 30
7:00 pm
Starting out as the drummer of the pop band Oui Oui, Michel Gondry went on to direct music videos in which dreams, fantasy, and reality collide. He is known for his off-kilter work with Bjork, Beck, and The Chemical Brothers, and the recent feature film he directed, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), written by Charlie Kaufman.
Respondent Ed Halter is a film critic with the Village Voice. He is director and guiding light of the New York Underground Film Festival.
Brian Eno and Todd Haynes
October 7
7:00 pm
Installation artist, producer, and rock and electronic musician Brian Eno has worked with many aspects of media throughout his career. After his early days as an art student, member of the band Roxy Music, and collaborator with musicians such as Robert Fripp and David Byrne, he gravitated towards “new music,” a genre indebted to jazz, improvisation, world music, and pop. According to Eno the palette of color can be treated as the palette of sound.
Respondent Todd Haynes began making critically acclaimed independent films in the 1980s and has written and directed feature films that include Safe (1995), Velvet Goldmine (1998), and Far from Heaven (2002).
Music and Media is organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in association with the City University of New York Graduate Center, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.
CUNY Graduate Center, Proshansky Auditorium, is at 365 Fifth Avenue, at 34 Street
Box Office Hours: Monday through Sunday, 12:30-10:30 p.m.
Ticketing: Tickets can be purchased in person at the MoMA Visitor Center (open daily 10:00 a.m.- 2:00 p.m. and 3:00-5:30 p.m.) at the MoMA Design Store, 44 West 53 Street, in Manhattan, and at the box office at CUNY’s Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, at 34 Street. Remaining tickets will be available at the door on the evening of the program. To purchase or reserve tickets through the box office at the CUNY Graduate Center, please call (212) 817-8215 or email continuinged@gc.cuny.edu.
