Known widely as the creator of The Flicker (and thus, in 1966, a harbinger of the “structural film” genre), Tony Conrad’s 16mm films are perhaps more meaningfully appreciated in the context of his musical explorations of duration and the indulgences of subjective experience: “I was devoted to the experiential excess that flickering light made accessible to ‘abstract’ film.” This quick, single-evening survey takes this seminal film as a point of departure to a presentation of Conrad’s later works. Following further refinement of modulated flicker phenomena (including Articulation of Boolean Algebra for Film Opticals and Straight and Narrow, created with Beverly Conrad), Conrad produced a series of process-based films and performances, which involved such treatments as electrocution and cooking, Curried 7302, 7302 Creole and 4-X Attack among them. Later video works—at times created for public access cable in Buffalo, New York—appropriate and critique the televisual language, explore the reflexive nature of video and attempt to short-circuit the authoritarian power structures inherent in contemporary corporate media. Video works to screen include Redressing Down and Tony’s Oscular Pets.
