Film Screenings / Programs / Series
MEDIA AVANT-GARDES: GYÖRGY KEPES AND CAVS/MIT
October 12 – October 13
October 12-13, 2024
The Hungarian-American artist, educator, and impresario György Kepes, a forgotten precursor of media art, was among the first to coin the term “visual culture,” and to treat it as an independent research subject. His quest to resolve the ever-increasing dichotomy between art and science led him to design the program of the Light Workshop at the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937 and to found the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at MIT in 1967.
Kepes, who became involved in the European avant-garde movement at a young age, joined fellow Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy’s Berlin studio in 1930 with the hope of mastering motion pictures, which were then seen as the most socially impactful artistic medium. Although Kepes’s aspiration to become a film director was never realized, his friendships and collaborations with cinema legends like Dziga Vertov, Boris Kaufmann, Maya Deren, Saul Bass, and Robert Gardner profoundly shaped his entire body of work.
CAVS, which Kepes founded at MIT, became one of the most internationally significant workshops for experimental filmmaking and early video art. Many prominent figures in the field, such as Peter Campus, Juan Downey, Antoni Muntadas, Nam June Paik, Stan VanDerBeek, and Aldo Tambellini, either worked there or were associated with the Center.
This film series brings together Kepes’s previously unknown moving-image works – which utilize cinematography to illustrate specific visual problems – as well as films by Kepes’s colleagues and students, and later works that emerged from CAVS following Kepes’s retirement, which demonstrate his ongoing legacy. In addition, the program marks the NYC premiere of the new documentary, GYÖRGY KEPES. INTERTHINKING ART + SCIENCE, directed by Márton Orosz, who is also the guest-programmer of this series.
Márton Orosz will be here in person to present all four programs! For more info about the documentary, GYÖRGY KEPES. INTERTHINKING ART + SCIENCE, click here.
Co-presented with the Liszt Institute New York.
Special thanks to Noémi Sallai (Liszt Institute New York); Michael Angeletti & Geoff Willard (Stanford University Libraries); Miguel Armas (Light Cone); Mackenzie Beasley & Marisa Bourgoin (Smithsonian Institution); Bronte Billman (ACMI); Jens Blumenstein (Schott Jena); Chicago History Museum; Michael Gotkin; Mickey Gral (Chicago Film Archives); Amanda Hawk & Thera Webb (MIT Libraries); and Tanvi Karia (Charles Correa Foundation).
PROGRAM 1:
Márton Orosz
GYÖRGY KEPES. INTERTHINKING ART + SCIENCE
2023/24, 97 min, digital
Márton Orosz’s feature-length documentary represents the first comprehensive assessment of György Kepes’s extraordinary life, introducing him not only as a shapeshifter of modernism but also as a polymath and visionary thinker whose legacy served as a beacon in the history of new media art.
Sat, Oct 12 at 5:00.
PROGRAM 2:
EARLY WORKS – GYÖRGY KEPES, HIS ASSOCIATES, AND STUDENTS
This program opens with films that Kepes made in collaboration with László Moholy-Nagy in Europe and at the Chicago School of Design, known as the “American Bauhaus.” It also features works by students who directly or indirectly reflect Kepes’s structuralist approach to the aesthetic principles of vision. Many of these works are distinguished by their use of mechanically controlled light or optical modulation through lenses, prisms, and mirrors, often combined with hand-drawn animated special effects. Among the noteworthy pieces are experimental films by Millie & Morton Goldsholl, who founded one of the leading corporate design agencies in the Midwest, and a unique selection of works by Frank Eidlitz, a pioneer of Australian media art. These films, marked by fast-paced visual transitions, often comprise montages that reinterpret Kepes’s photographs and paintings. The program will also feature Kepes’s own experiments, which delve into the space-altering quality of artificial light.
László Moholy-Nagy A LIGHTPLAY: BLACK WHITE GRAY 1932, 5.5 min, 16mm, silent. Title sequence by György Kepes.
László Moholy-Nagy, György Kepes, and Sybille Pietzsch (uncredited contributors) under the direction of Egon von Tresckow DER FEINSCHMECKER (publicity film for Jena Glass) 1934, 2 min, 35mm-to-digital, silent
László Moholy-Nagy [Unused special effects for William Cameron Menzies’s THINGS TO COME] 1936, 2 min, 16mm-to-DCP, silent
Nathan Lerner LIGHT MACHINE 1941, 4 min, 16mm-to-digital, silent
Charles M. Correa YOU AND YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD 1955, 9.5 min, 16mm-to-digital. Made as Correa’s MIT Master’s Thesis. Copyright Charles Correa, courtesy Charles Correa Foundation.
Millie & Morton Goldsholl NIGHT DRIVING 1957, 8.5 min, 16mm-to-digital
Millie & Morton Goldsholl LENS DISTORTION 1969, 4 min, 16mm-to-digital
Woolf and Lau UNTITLED (COLORED LIGHT PATTERNS) 1964, 2 min, 8mm-to-digital, silent
György Kepes ILLUMINATIONS 1965, 2 min, 8mm-to-digital, silent
György Kepes SQUARES FORMING PATTERNS 1 1965, 2.5 min, 16mm-to-digital
György Kepes SQUARES FORMING PATTERNS 2 1965, 2.5 min, 16mm-to-digital, silent
Frank Eidlitz EKTA 1966-67, 6 min, 16mm-to-digital. Courtesy of the ACMI Collection.
Frank Eidlitz RAGA DOLL 1966-67, 7 min, 16mm-to-digital. Courtesy of the ACMI Collection.
Frank Eidlitz CALDER 1966, 6 min, 16mm-to-digital. Courtesy of the ACMI Collection.
Frank Eidlitz LIGHT 1966, 6 min, 16mm-to-digital. Courtesy of the ACMI Collection.
Total running time: ca. 75 min.
Sat, Oct 12 at 7:45.
PROGRAM 3:
EXPERIMENTS AT CAVS UNDER KEPES’S DIRECTORSHIP
During Kepes’s directorship (1967-74) of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), he invited numerous influential filmmakers to join as Fellows. Kepes’s program promoted the innovative use of technologies that altered human perception and introduced new sensory experiences, thereby enhancing the interaction between art and its audience.
This section features groundbreaking works that expanded the boundaries of media aesthetics. It includes early television art by Ted Kraynik, which introduced a “manifesto on synergetic art,” video works, and “video actions” that combined live events with novel electronic imaging techniques by Douglas Davis, as well as Otto Piene and Aldo Tambellini, who were involved in the revolutionary art television program A MEDIUM IS THE MEDIUM (1969). Additionally, it presents early computer animations by Stan VanDerBeek, created through the poetic metamorphosis of digitally generated images. The program also highlights early cybernetic installations developed under the auspices of CAVS, including Wen-Ying Tsai’s kinetic symphony, which combines engineering and art, and Kepes’s own programmed installation, FLAME ORCHARD, which explores the synesthetic relationship between music and imagery through light as a metaphor for participatory art.
Stan VanDerBeek MOIRAGE 1967, 9.5 min, 16mm. Restored by Anthology Film Archives.
Ted Kraynik VIDEO LUMINAR 1968, 6.5 min, video
Aldo Tambellini BLACK GATE COLOGNE 1968/69, ca. 10-min excerpt, video. Courtesy of the Aldo Tambellini Art Foundation.
Wen-Ying Tsai CYBERNETIC PLAY ON FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDEN’S “THE SCHOOLMASTER” 1969, 6.5 min, 16mm-to-digital
Stan VanDerBeek FILM FORM NO. 1 1970, 11 min, 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives with the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Stan VanDerBeek POEMFIELD NO. 2 1971, 6 min, 16mm
György Kepes FLAME ORCHARD 1972, 7 min, 16mm-to-digital
Douglas Davis THE AUSTRIAN TAPES 1974, 17 min, video. Courtesy of ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.
Otto Piene THE FLIGHT OF DAEDALUS... (from “Icarus, a Sky Opera”) 1981, 3 min, video
Total running time: ca. 85 min.
Sun, Oct 13 at 5:15.
PROGRAM 4:
CAVS FILMS AFTER KEPES
In the two decades following Kepes’s retirement in 1974, CAVS became one of the world’s foremost hubs for video and experimental film. It made room for the display of the first projection mapping exhibit, housed the world’s first artistic video synthesizer, and hosted the artists who developed the first interactive video discs. CAVS also became a laboratory for research on the aesthetic applications of virtual reality, holography, and laser-based immersive environments. Under Otto Piene, inventor of Sky Art, CAVS opened new frontiers in video application with multimedia performances, including the kinetic-environmental sculpture created for the 1977 documenta 6 in Kassel, which was documented by Richard Leacock & Jon Rubin. The work of the Fellows often explored the structural characteristics of moving images (Peter Campus, Marc Adrian, Vin Grabill) or engaged in post-conceptual, socio-political analysis (Antoni Muntadas). Other works utilized non-linear narratives or semiotically driven visual associations (Juan Downey, Betsy Connors).
Juan Downey LAS MENINAS (MAIDS OF HONOR) 1975, 20.5 min, video
Peter Campus FOUR SIDED TAPE 1976, 3 min, video
Richard Leacock & Jon Rubin CENTERBEAM 1978, 12 min, 16mm-to-digital
Vin Grabill ENERGY 1980, 2 min, video
Marc Adrian CENTER 80 1980, 14 min, 16mm-to-digital
Antoni Muntadas WATCHING THE PRESS/READING TELEVISION 1981, 11 min, video
Bernd Kracke MEDIA GAMES 1982, 5 min, video
Vin Grabill VIDAGO 1982/83, 7 min, video
Betsy Connors SWAN POND 1983, 3 min, video
Michael Naimark DISPLACEMENTS 1980/84, 2 min, video
Michael Naimark DISPLACEMENTS 2005, 1 min, digital
Total running time: ca. 85 min.
Sun, Oct 13 at 7:45.
