Produced on the occasion of Morgan Fisher’s exhibitions The Frame and Beyond at the Generali Foundation, Vienna, 2 March 2–29 July, 2012 & Translations at Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, 23 October, 2011–5 February, 2012.

Complementing Fisher’s Two Exhibitions monograph, this volume compiles the Los Angeles-based artist’s writings of the past three decades, from 1975 to the present. Fisher discusses his own films, paintings, installations and photographs and the works of artists such as Carl Andre and Blinky Palermo. A final section compiles his film and video transcripts and narrations.

Produced on the occasion of Morgan Fisher’s exhibitions The Frame and Beyond at the Generali Foundation, Vienna, 2 March 2–29 July, 2012 & Translations at Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, 23 October, 2011–5 February, 2012.

Morgan Fisher studied art history at Harvard from 1960 to 1964 before attending film school in Los Angeles and going into film. He then worked in Hollywood for several years, mostly as an editor, an experience that shaped his experimental practice. In the 1970s, Fisher created several film installations that can be described as works of Expanded Cinema. From the mid-1990s, in a further development, he turned to monochrome painting and installations of monochrome paintings.

With introductions by Sabine Folie and Susanne Titz, essays by Thom Andersen, Rainer Bellenbaum / Sabeth Buchmann, Yve-Alain Bois and short texts by Morgan Fisher

Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Julia Peyton-Jones, Beatrix Ruf. Texts by Will Bradley, Stuart Comer.

A central figure in Glasgow’s vibrant art scene, Luke Fowler’s cinematic collages break down conventional approaches to biographical and documentary filmmaking. Fowler’s films have often been linked to British Free Cinema, the distinctive aesthetic of which came out of a conscious decision to engage with the reality of contemporary Britain in the 1950s. Avoiding didactic voice-over commentaries and narrative continuity, Fowler similarly uses impressionistic sound and editing. However, Fowler moves beyond simply referencing the work of his predecessors. Intuitively applying the logic, aesthetics, and politics of his subjects onto the film he is making about them, he creates atmospheric, sampled histories that reverberate with the vitality of the people he studies.

“The films of Nathaniel Dorsky blend a beauteous celebration of the sensual world with a deep sense of introspection and solitude. They are occasions for reflection and meditation, on light, landscape, time and the motions of consciousness. Their luminous photography emphasizes the elemental frisson between solidity and luminosity, between spirit and matter, while his uniquely developed montage permits a fluid and flowing experience of time. Dorsky’s films reveal the mystery behind everyday existence, providing intimations of eternity.”—Steve Polta, San Francisco Cinematheque.

In Devotional Cinema, Dorsky moves through meditations on image-moments in works by key filmmakers (Carl Theodor Dreyer, Yasujiro Ozu, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Roberto Rossellini), and arrives at the heart of what constitutes a devotional practice.

Artists, scholars, filmmakers, and writers revisit the films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub. Jean-Marie Straub (b. 1933) and Danièle Huillet (1936–2006) met in Paris in 1954. Straub wanted to make a film about Johann Sebastian Bach, to which Huillet thought: “He’s planning to do far too much; he won’t manage it alone.” It was the beginning of a fifty-year collaboration, which brought about one of the most unconventional and controversial bodies of work in modern cinema. Tell it to the Stones presents variations from a prolonged re-encounter with Huillet and Straub’s work that was sparked by a three-month exhibition, complete cinema retrospective, workshops, and music performances in Berlin in the fall of 2017.

Contributing artists, scholars, filmmakers, and writers have revisited this collective experience in new texts, revised transcripts, conceptual essays, and visual montages. What happens during an encounter happens in between: between language and image, gestures and words, looks and everything unsaid. “To help us build the in-between,” is how Huillet once imagined a task for those who come to see their films. The present compendium revives these encounters and reveals the urgencies of how Straub and Huillet’s oeuvre matters today, perhaps more than ever.

A book produced in conjunction with Bauer Verlag’s eponymous series of screenings at the Studio/Cinema in Brooklyn. Bauer Verlag was established in 2012 in Frankfurt as an artist collective to publish text-based books by artists and friends.

With contributions from Nicholas Vargelis, Kerstin Stakemeier, Steve Beck, Lis Rhodes, Leslie Bauer, Érik Bullot, C.Vanaik, VUE Committee, Shirley Clarke, Hilary Harris, Giuliana Bruno, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Peter Larsen, Elissa Suh, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Storm de Hirsch, Mark Fisher, Bruce Baillie, Rachel Haidu, Kai Althoff, Jennifer Reeves, Karl Holmqvist, Eros in Le Wind, Marie Menken, Jonas Raam.