Anthony McCall

A Coupla White Faggots Sitting Around Talking

Michel Auder

Alexandra Auder, Geoffrey Carey

Critic Gary Indiana wrote this satire and plays Dom, a rich, naive and young homosexual who moves into his sister's apartment. He immediately becomes involved with the lives of his quirky new neighbors. Rippley (Taylor Meade) is the chatty but depressed author and talk show host. Dominatrix Mavis (Cookie Mueller) drops by to visit or ask for child sitting favors when free from the demands of her kinky clients. Jackie Curtis plays Buddie, the handsome hunk who picks up Dom in a local bar, and Geoffrey Carey is the Angel of Death who carefully watches over all activity. (IMDb)

Line Describing a Cone

Anthony McCall

LINE DESCRIBING A CONE is what I term a solid light film. It deals with the projected light beam itself, rather than treating the light beam as a mere carrier of coded information, which is decoded when it strikes the flat surface (the screen). It is projected in the normal way, on a 16mm film projector. Though inevitably there will be a wall that limits the length of the beam, a screen is not necessary. The viewer watches the film, by standing with his, or her, back towards what would normally be the screen, and looking along the beam towards the projector itself. The film begins as a coherent line of light, like a laser beam, and develops through the 30 minute duration, into a complete, hollow cone of light. Line Describing a Cone deals with one of the irreducible, necessary conditions of film: projected light. It deals with this phenomenon directly, independent of any other consideration. It is the first film to exist solely in real, three-dimensional, space.

ABC - We Print Anything - In the Cards

Carolee Schneemann

Carolee Schneemann, Anthony McCall

Video documentation of performance of the work hosted by De Appel, Amsterdam, in 1977 and filmed by Miguel-Ángel Cárdenas. In ABC - We print anything - In the cards (1977) Schneemann documented dreams, advice and conversations relating to her shifting relationships. She collated 315 numbered cards, containing both text and photographic imagery, which she photographed from her domestic life. Schneemann (the ‘C’ in ABC) analyses her complex set of experiences separating from ‘A’ (artist Anthony McCall) while drawing closer to ‘B’ (publisher Bruce McPherson). The cards capture the dynamic, paradoxical, humorous and contrary aspects of relationships, forming an intimate yet measured set of information.

Landscape for Fire

Anthony McCall

For Landscape for Fire, Anthony McCall and members of the British artist collaborative Exit followed McCall’s pre-determined score to torch containers of flammable material across a field. McCall describes it: "Over a three-year period, I did a number of these sculptural performances in landscape. Fire was the medium. The performances were based on a square grid defined by 36 small fires (6 x 6). The pieces, which usually took place at dusk, had a systematic, slowly changing structure." The work brought the grid — a conceptual focus for many artists in the 1970s and after — into a natural landscape, merging it with the vagaries of outdoor space and fire.

Argument

Andrew Tyndall, Anthony McCall

Three male voices dissect one edition of The New York Times through a series of locked-off shots, revealing the prejudice and latent content of news and advertisements, reading images as texts and presenting text as an image.

You and I, Horizontal

Anthony McCall

McCall’s digital animation presents a slowly shifting beam of “solid light” whose physical properties become outlined within the haze-filled space of the gallery and are further enhanced through viewer interaction. Exploring light across space and time, this immersive presentation complements CAM’s concurrent exhibition Place is the Space through the encounter between projection and architecture.

Line Describing a Cone 2.0

Anthony McCall

A digital re-make and reinterpretation of McCall’s landmark 1973 thirty-minute film installation Line Describing a Cone.

Sigmund Freud's Dora

Claire Pajaczkowska, Jane Weinstock

Joel Kovel, Silvia Kolbowski

This key work of the late 1970s, now digitally restored, is a unique attempt to combine contemporary debates around formalism, feminism and psychoanalysis in film. Implicitly engaged in a critical dialogue with filmmakers like Yvonne Rainer and Jean-Luc Godard, as well as the theorists of 'Screen' magazine, Sigmund Freud's Dora is a milestone in the evolution of structuralist film strategies into broader questions of representation.

Long Film for Ambient Light

Anthony McCall

This experimental "film" consists of an empty room with a bare lightbulb, and windows covered with a translucent material, for a duration of 24 hours. It is not necessary for visitors to stay for the entire duration - they can come and go as they please. Created by Anthony McCall, it is based on the architectural framing of time and light. It came at the end of a series of works in which McCall was stripping back cinema to its absolute minimum - light, time, and human experience/perception.

Landscape for White Squares

Anthony McCall

Landscape for White Squares features individuals emerging out of a dense fog, carrying large, square, white sheets.

Conical Solid

Anthony McCall

A flat blade of light rotating from a fixed central axis.