William C. Wees: Recycled Images: The Art and Politics of Found Footage Films (1993)

An important film-theoretical work, especially significant for its attempt to delimit the phenomenon of found footage film.

Includes condensed commentary from author’s 1991 informal interviews with North American filmmakers who have made extensive use of found footage: Craig Baldwin, Abigail Child, Bruce Conner, David Rimmer, Keith Sanborn, Chick Strand, and Leslie Thornton.

Published in conjuction with the Anthology Film Archives’ May 1993 survey of found footage and collage films.

Publisher Anthology Film Archives, New York City, 1993
ISBN 0911689192, 9780911689198
117 pages
via Alex Costa

Commentary: Pierre Rannou (Esse, 2008).

WorldCat

PDF (32 MB)

Konstantin Akinsha: The Second Life of Soviet Photomontage, 1935-1980s (2012)

“This dissertation explores the development of Soviet photomontage from the second half of the 1930s to the end of the 1970s. Until now, the transformation of the modernist medium and its incorporation into the everyday practice of Soviet visual propaganda during and after the Second World War has not attracted much scholarly attention. The firm association of photomontage with the Russian avant-garde in general, and with Constructivism in particular, has led art historians to disregard the fact that the medium was practised in the USSR until the final days of the Soviet system. The conservative government organisations in control of propaganda preserved satirical photomontage in its post-Dadaist phase and Heartfield-like form, finding it useful in the production of negative propaganda.”

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation
University of Edinburgh, 2012
328 pages + 368 pages of illustrations

Publisher
Author

PDF (29 MB)

thresholds, 41: Revolution! (2013)

“What actions are prompted by revolution in the space of the city? Which publics take part in this struggle, and who are the agents that mobilize it? And after a revolution has subsided, how is it remembered, represented and memorialized? thresholds 41: REVOLUTION! turns to the history, design, and cultural production of the public realm as a site of dissensus. Rather than focusing on a specific revolutionary time and place, we have strived to include different periods and regions, organizing contributions in terms of the relations they establish between sites, actors, and contexts. In the essays and designs featured in these pages, political struggle often shifts established roles—agitators create new types of public space, designers become activists and fundraisers, individual figures fade in favor of collectives or groups, and actions are best remembered through misrepresentation. How do we write revolution, who writes it and for whom? And, in turn, how does urban conflict inform writing, design, and cultural production at large? Our authors, designers, and artists open up revolution as subject, as event, and as historiographical problem—a problem complicated by discrete actions, multiple publics, critical practices, and the politics of display and remembrance.”

Contributors: David Gissen, Robin Adèle Greeley, Britt Eversole, Arindam Dutta, Diane E. Davis and Prassana Raman, Mark Jarzombek, Thérèse F. Tierney, Kenneth Ip, Nasser Rabbat, Reinhold Martin, Tunney Lee and Lawrence Vale, Andrés Jaque Architects + Office for Political Innovation, Santiago Cirugeda + Recetas Urbanas, Nomeda Urbonas and Gediminas Urbonas, The Yes Men, Ateya Khorakiwala, Simone Brott, Andrés Estefane, Kelly Presutti, Mechtild Widrich, Montenegro Airways

Edited by Ana María León
Publisher SA+P Press / MIT Department of Architecture, Cambridge, MA, Spring 2013
Open Access
ISSN 1091-711X
ISBN 9780983508267
212 pages

Journal website

PDF (13 MB)