Ken Jacobs, Blonde Cobra

Bar Laika is very pleased to present Ken Jacobs’ film Blonde Cobra (1963, 33 min).

The film features artist Jack Smith in what Jacobs calls “a look in on an exploding life, on a man of imagination suffering pre-fashionable Lower East Side deprivation and consumed with American 1950’s, 40’s, 30’s disgust.” Jacobs did little of the shooting himself, instead drawing on two unfinished films shot by Bob Fleischner. With its dissociative editing strategies, wild costumes, and scraps of music and voiceover, this baroque portrait deserves Jonas Mekas’ recommendation as “the masterpiece of Baudelairean cinema.”

Ken Jacobs is an essential figure in the history of American avant-garde film. A leader in cinematic and now digital experimentation since the late 1950s, he explores the mechanics of the moving image and the very act of viewing. Jacobs investigates the cinematic experience in its entirety, from production to projection. Whether undertaking archaeological journeys to the dawn of cinema or scrutinizing the interstices of new digital technologies, Jacobs’ work investigates, provokes, and draws power from the mysteries of the nature of human vision. 

For more information, contact laika@e-flux.com.