A Brief History of “Poor Man’s Expression”

For more information on the exhibition in Berlin, see →; for a preview of the publication Poor Man’s Expression, see →.

More on Botschaft can be found in the text of Natascha Sadr Haghighian in this issue, see →. There is not much information online about the Botschaft (Berlin, 1990–1996), as the group actively rejected being historicized. Brief profiles can be found here: → and here, the beginning of an upcoming source archive: →.

In 2009 Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek (Friends of the German Cinematheque) was renamed Arsenal – Institute of Film and Video Art. See their website: →.

Anselm Franke, “Tilting in the Image-Space of Social and Technological Worlds,” in Poor Man’s Expression, ed. Martin Ebner and Florian Zeyfang (Berlin: Sternberg Press, forthcoming).

Julio García Espinosa’s Por un cine imperfecto first appeared in Cine cubano 66/67 (1969), then, in an incomplete English translation, in Afterimage 3 (Summer 1971), and finally in a new translation by Julianne Burton in Jump Cut, no. 20 (1979), available at →. See also Hito Steyerl, “In Defense of the Poor Image,” in e-flux journal, no. 10, →.

Volker Pantenburg recently underscored this in a lecture, “Experimentalfilm und Kunsträume,” delivered at the conference “Entgrenzung des Kinos – Grenzen des Films” (Cinema without Walls – Borderlands of Film) at ICI Berlin, April 23, 2010. The text is due to be published.

In Eastern Europe 16 mm was less available, so most experimental films were done through film academies on 35 mm film.

Michael Eng, “Numéro un et Numéro Deux: It was Outside, The Rejection of the Image,” in I said I love. That is the promise. The Tvideo Politics of Jean-Luc Godard, ed. Gareth James and Florian Zeyfang, OE Critical Readers in Visual Cultures no. 4 (Berlin: b_books, 2003), 291.

Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

Eng, “Numéro un et Numéro Deux,” 291.

Axel John Wieder, “To Be Lit and to Illuminate,” in Poor Man’s Expression, l.

Eng, “Numéro un et Numéro Deux,” 291.

Branden Joseph, “What Is a Minor History?” in Poor Man’s Expression, l.

As in the recent example of Jack Smith and Bruce Conner, the administration aims at achieving an understanding with testamentary executors and copyright owners to show these films.