Expanded cinema

Stan VanDerBeek, Movie-Drome, c1963-65. Interior view. Documentation (PDF).

Carolee Schneemann, Snows, 1967. Performance at the Martinique Theatre, NY. EAI. Artist.

Still from Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1967) by Ronald Nameth. Film on UbuWeb.

Valie Export, Abstract Film No. 1, 1967-68. MoMA. Artist.

Michael Snow, Two Sides to Every Story, 1974. Installation view at Projected Images exhibition, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Synchronised film projectors on 2 sides of suspended screen, 16 mm colour, sound. 300 x 600 x 1250 cm. CCCA. Video.

"'Expanded cinema' is an elastic name for many sorts of film and projection event. It is notoriously difficult to pin down or define. At full stretch, it embraces the most contradictory dimensions of film and video art, from the vividly spectacular to the starkly materialist. Stan VanDerBeek's synthetic multimedia Movie-Drome of the 1960s, for example, is in high contrast to the analytic and primal cinema of 1970s Filmaktion screenings in the UK. Some kinds of expanded cinema widen the field of vision so far that they dissolve cinema itself as a separate entity, merging it into cybernetic space, as envisaged in Gene Youngblood's seminal book of 1970 or in Carolee Schneemann's manifesto-like performance scripts of the same era. Other variants seek film's ontology in the medium's simplest elements, such as the projector lightbeam or the bare bulb. In 'paracinema', the notion of the film medium is itself questioned, and the cinematic is sought outside or beyond the film machine." (Rees et al 2011: 12)

Filmmakers, artists

• Yann Beauvais
• Tony Conrad
• Gill Eatherley
• Filmaktion (Le Grice, Raban, Eatherley, Nicolson)
• B+W Hein
• Tony Hill
• Ken Jacobs
• Jeff Keen
• KwieKulik
• Malcolm Le Grice
• Maurice Lemaître
• Anthony McCall
• Werner Nekes
• Annabel Nicolson
• Hélio Oiticica
• William Raban
• Joost Rekveld
• Lis Rhodes
• Hans Scheugl
• Ernst Schmidt Jr.
• Carolee Schneemann
• Paul Sharits
• Michael Snow
• José Val Del Omar
• Valie Export
• Stan VanDerBeek
• Peter Weibel
• Robert Whitman

Events

• New Cinema Festival I [aka "Expanded Cinema Survey", "Expanded Cinema Festival"], Film-Makers' Cinematheque, New York, 1-30 Nov 1965. [1] [2] [3]
• 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, 69th Regiment Armory, New York, 13-23 Oct 1966. Conjured up by Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver.
• XSCREEN Festival, Cologne, 1968. Organised by W+B Hein. [4] [5]
• International Underground Film Festival, NFT, London, 14-20 Sep 1970. Organised by the Robert Street Arts Lab, the co-op, the Other Cinema and other independent film distributors.
• Filmaktion events, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 22-27 Jun 1973. William Raban's documentation (online video, 7 min). [6] [7]
• Projected Images exhibition, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 21 Sep-3 Nov 1974. Works by Peter Campus, Rockne Krebs, Paul Sharits, Michael Snow, Ted Victoria, Robert Whitman. 46pp catalogue published.
• Festival of Expanded Cinema, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 4-11 Jan 1976. Curated by Deke Dusinberre. 64pp catalogue published.
• Expanded Cinema season at Arnolfini gallery, Bristol, 1-10 Apr 1976. Works by Marilyn Halford, Ron Hazelden, Jeff Keen, William Raban, Tony Sinden.
• Landscape in Film and Video exhibition and events, LFMC / Air Gallery / B2 Gallery, London, 1983. Curated by Michael O'Pray and Jez Welsh.
• Video Art: Expanded Forms exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art at Equitable Center, 1988. Curated by John G. Hanhardt. Catalogue. Curator's essay in Leonardo (1990).
• Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964-77 exhibition, Whitney Museum, New York, 18 Oct 2001-6 Jan 2002. Curated by Chrissie Iles. 183pp catalogue published. Curator's essay. Reviews: Kimmelman (NYT), Wilson (Frieze).
• Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after Film exhibition, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 16 Nov 2002-30 Mar 2003. Curated by Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel. 635pp catalogue published.
• X-Screen exhibition, Mumok, Vienna, 13 Dec 2003-7 Mar 2004. Curated by Matthias Michalka. Review: Webber (Frieze). 216pp book published.
• Expanded Cinema: Film as Spectacle, Event and Performance exhibition, HMKV, Dortmund, 10-26 Sep 2004. Curated by Mark Webber. Featured 32 artists.
• Expanded Cinema: Space / Time / Structure symposium, WKV, Stuttgart, 7-10 Dec 2006. Curated by Mark Webber. Featured 30 works by 20 artists. [8]
• The Live Record conference, BFI Southbank, London, 6 Dec 2008. Brochure.
• Expanded Cinema: Activating the Space of Reception conference, Tate Modern, London, 17-19 Apr 2009. Video recordings. Audio recordings.
• Playing in the Shadows conference, Tate Modern, London, 26 Oct 2012. Video recordings.
• Never Twice: Live Expanded Cinema Performance exhibition, Microscope Gallery, New York, 11 Dec 2015-10 Jan 2016. Featured 8 artists. Video discussion

Stan VanDerBeek, "Culture: Intercom", 1966, PDF, Log.

Carolee Schneemann, "Expanded Cinema: Free Form Recollections of New York", 1970, PDF.

Artists' writings

• Jonas Mekas, "On the Expanding Eye", Village Voice, 6 Feb 1964; repr. in Mekas, Movie Journal: The Rise of the New American Cinema, 1959-71, New York: Collier, 1972, pp 118-120.
• Jonas Mekas, "More On Expanded Cinema: Emshwiller, Stern, Ken Jacobs, Ken Dewey", Village Voice, 2 Dec 1965; repr. in Mekas, Movie Journal: The Rise of the New American Cinema, 1959-71, New York: Collier, 1972.
• Stan VanDerBeek, "“Culture: Intercom” and Expanded Cinema: A Proposal and Manifesto", Film Culture 40 (Spring 1966), pp 15-18; repr. in Motive, Nov 1966, pp 13-23; repr. in The Tulane Drama Review 11:1 (Autumn 1966), pp 38-48.
• Jonas Mekas, "On the Plastic Inevitables and the Strobe Light", Village Voice, 26 May 1966; repr. in Mekas, Movie Journal: The Rise of the New American Cinema, 1959-71, New York: Collier, 1972, pp 242-244.
• Carolee Schneemann, "Expanded Cinema: Free Form Recollections of New York", International Underground Film Festival, London, 1970.
• Werner Nekes, "Some Notes on Some Expanded Films", International Underground Film Festival, London, 1970.
• Annabel Nicolson, "Artist as Filmmaker", Art and Artists, Dec 1972; repr. in A Perspective on English Avant-Garde Film, 1978.

Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, 1970, Log, PDF.

Film/art history and theory

For catalogues see Events above.

Books

• Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, intro. R. Buckminster Fuller, New York: Dutton, 1970, 432 pp.
  • Cine expandido, Buenos Aires: Eduntref, 2012, 456 pp. [9] (Spanish)
  • Expanded cinema, trans. Pier Luigi Capucci and Simonetta Fadda, Bologna: CLUEB, 2013, xvi+388 pp. (Italian)
• Hans Scheugl, Erweitertes Kino. Die Wiener Filme der 60er Jahre, Vienna: Triton, 2002. (German)
• X-Screen: Film Installations and Actions in the 1960s and 1970s, ed. Matthias Michalka, Cologne: Walther König, 2004. Kotz's essay.
• Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema, eds. Janine Marchessault and Susan Lord, University of Toronto Press, 2008, 368 pp.
• Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance and Film, eds. A.L. Rees, David Curtis, Duncan White, and Stephen Ball, London: Tate Publishing, 2011, 304 pp. Reviews: Utterson (Screen), MacDonald (MIRAJ).
• Moving Image, ed. Omar Kholeif, London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2015, 239 pp.

Journal issues

• Tulane Drama Review 11(1): "Film & Theatre", Aug 1966. [10]
• Art and Artists: "Artists' Films", London, Dec 1972.
• Art in-sight 14 (Filmwaves 27:1): "On Expanded Cinema", ed. Jackie Hatfield, 2005. Texts by Jackie Hatfield, Grahame Weinbren, Chris Hales. [11]

Essays, book chapters

• Sheldon Renan, "Expanded Cinema", ch 6 in Renan, An Introduction to the American Underground Film, New York: Dutton, 1967, pp 227-257.
• John G. Hanhardt, "The Passion for Perceiving: Expanded Forms of Film and Video Art", Art Journal 45(3): "Video: The Reflexive Medium", Autumn 1985, pp 213-216.
• Felicity Sparrow, "Light Illusions Artists and Cinema; Filmmakers and Galleries", Vertigo 2:1 (Spring 2001).
• Peter Weibel, "Expanded Cinema, Video and Virtual Environments", in Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after Film, eds. Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel, MIT Press, 2003, pp 110-124.
• Valie Export, "Expanded Cinema as Expanded Reality", Senses of Cinema 28 (Oct 2003).
• Jackie Hatfield, "Expanded Cinema and Narrative: Some Reasons for a Review of the Avant-Garde Debates Around Narrativity", Millennium Film Journal 39-40: "Hidden Currents", New York, Winter 2003.
• Jackie Hatfield, "The Subject in Expanded Cinema", Art in-sight 11 (Filmwaves 24:2), 2004, pp 14-18.
• Peter Weibel, "Expanded Cinema: Material Films, Film Actions (without Film), Project and Concept Films", in Beyond Art: A Third Culture. A Comparative Study in Cultures, Art and Science in 20th Century Austria and Hungary, ed. Weibel, 2005.
• Nicole Brenez, "Improvised Notes on French Expanded Cinema", trans. Franck Le Gac, Millenium Film Journal 43/44 (Summer/Fall 2005).
• Bruno Lessard, "Missed Encounters: Film Theory and Expanded Cinema", Refractory blog, 26 Dec 2008.
• Duncan White, "Mapping Expanded Cinema", Vertigo 4:2 (Winter-Spring 2009).
• Marc Glöde, "Expanded Cinema", in See This Sound Compendium, c2009.
• Duncan White, "British Expanded Cinema and the ‘Live Culture’ 1969–79", Visual Culture in Britain 11:1 (2010), pp 93-108.
• Lucy Reynolds, "Magic Tricks? Shadow Play in British Expanded Cinema", Afterall 23, Spring 2010. [12]
• Hans Scheugl, "Expanded Cinemas Exploding", 2012. (German)
  • "Expanded Cinemas Exploding", in Film Unframed: A History of Austrian Avant-Garde Cinema, ed. Peter Tscherkassky, Vienna, 2012.
• Chris Meigh-Andrews, "Expanded Cinema", ch 4 in Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art, Bloomsbury, 2013. [13]
• gary comenas, "Jonas Mekas and the Film-Makers' Cinematheque", WarholStars.org, 2014.

See also

Experimental film, Video