Film Screenings / Programs / Retrospectives
LARY 7
January 23 – January 25
For more than three decades, the cinemas, music clubs, studios, galleries, and streets of New York City have been electrically charged by the singular presence of maverick media artist Lary 7. A sound artist, photographer, filmmaker, and bastion of all things mechanical and analogue, 7’s decidedly eclectic work takes many forms – from music to visual art to performance and beyond. He is fascinated with arcane machinery, and possesses a strange genius for recycling and reconfiguring scavenged and defunct equipment into something inspired and new. The co-founder of Plastikville Records and Directart Productions Ltd., Lary 7 is at once ever-present yet surprisingly elusive. He is an artist whose constant creativity is divorced from any inclination towards self-promotion. As a result of his deep-seated (and deeply refreshing) modesty, 7 has not received the attention he largely deserves within downtown film, music, and art circles.
Luckily for us, filmmaker and artist Danielle de Picciotto and musician, producer, and Einstürzende Neubauten-member Alexander Hacke have recently completed their affectionate and illuminating portrait, NOT JUNK YET: THE ART OF LARY 7. We’re thrilled to premiere this documentary, and have taken the opportunity to invite 7 to organize two programs of his work across various mediums. One program focuses on his deep output of photographic slide images, while the other will encompass projector performances and collaborations. But as always with Lary, attempting to predict or describe in advance what exactly will take place is as hopeless as trying to find a word that rhymes with orange. There’s only one way to find out what he has up his sleeve!
“Lary 7 is a multimedia alchemist able to coax profane and inscrutable sounds and images from numerous and mysterious devices. His work has been described as that of a magician or scientist, not always certain of the outcome, but determined to see it through to its (il)logical end. Since the late 1970s he’s been building, soldering, photographing, recording, mixing, filming, playing, recombining, collecting, re-interpreting, and creating in order to make something happen. […] Mr. 7 lives and works in Manhattan’s East Village and is one of the last remaining vestiges of a once vibrant community.” –Fabio Roberti, WFMU
Lary 7 will also be here to present a program of his work, in the context of our Show & Tell program; for more info click here.
