For the Birds

For the Birds

2000 · 8 min

Part three of a cycle of digital video works I'm beginning to call-after Bataille-«Theory of religion, theory of ecstasy.» The other two parts are Mirror and The Zapruder Footage.... This tape is inspired by the 11th century Sufi mystical text The Conference of the Birds. It is a text which explores transparency and opacity, multiplicity and unity, narrative and insight, the mundane and the ecstatic. I include a postscript from the text which I included at the end of the tape perhaps best responds to the attempt to parse it: «Seek the trunk of the tree and do not worry whether the branches do or do not exist.»

Directed by Keith Sanborn

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The Genius

The Genius · 1993

MovieComedyCrime

A ramshackle underground SF satire set and shot in the self-absorbed art world of lower Manhattan, written, produced, and directed by Joe Gibbons, who also plays one of the lead parts. Gibbons plays a mad scientist who's developed a technique for transferring personalities from one person's body to another; he becomes obsessed with an outlaw artist (played by performance artist Karen Finley) who destroys paintings in various galleries as a form of anarchist, anticapitalist protest.

Mirror

Joan of Arc and Dorothy of Kansas become one thanks to Hildegard von Bingen.

The Deadman

The Deadman · 1989

Made in collaboration with Keith Sanborn, The Deadman is based on a story by Bataille, charting "the adventures of a near-naked heroine who sets in motion a scabrous free-form orgy before returning to the house to die — a combination of elegance, raunchy defilement and barbaric splendor." — Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader.

Negative Capability

Negative Capability · 2024

Negative Capability

An exploration of Keats’s proposition, that “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason…the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.” We live in an age of contradictions and uncertainties and no one was more adept at holding these contradictions together visually and with more finesse than Vincent Grenier to whose memory this film is dedicated, along with a certain amount of lunacy.

Kapital

Kapital · 1982

1982, 3.5 min, 16mm, anaglyph 3D

Terrain

Terrain · 2023

A short essay on the triangular Square du Vert-Galant, one of the favorite repairs of the vanishing Paris of Guy Debord. Yet another slow film.

Slow Death

Slow Death · 2023

A slow four-part film on death and the persistence of the dead. Where ignorant armies clash by night: the dolphin-torn and gong-tormented sea.

Fascination

Fascination · 1988

1980-88, 11 min, 16mm, silent. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives. Separate digital soundtrack accompaniment.

Something is Seen But One Doesn't Know What

Something is Seen But One Doesn't Know What · 1986

Something is Seen But One Doesn't Know What

A film by Keith Sanborn

The Zapruder Footage: An Investigation of Consensual Hallucination

The Zapruder Footage: An Investigation of Consensual Hallucination · 1999

The Zapruder Footage: An Investigation of Consensual Hallucination

Various permutations and combinations of the Zapruder footage of the assassination of JFK. Intended as an investigation of the footage as visual, experiential, and cultural document. In the USA this footage is both notorious and invisible; seldom actually seen, it is very well known; when seen, it remains opaque. This work is intended to add a level of "transparency" to original. It is set to Jajouka music in order to bring to the foreground the ritual aspects of this visual, mechanical; and media historical event. For some reason I had a memory of that footage being black and white.

The Gift

The Gift · 1991

An experimental film essay on architectural excess, with its aim not functional shelter but conspicuous destruction of wealth

The Artwork in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility by Walter Benjamin as told to Keith Sanborn

The Artwork in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility by Walter Benjamin as told to Keith Sanborn · 1996

The Artwork in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility by Walter Benjamin as told to Keith Sanborn

An attempt to problematize ownership and authorship in the age of digital reproduction. Inspired by the Walter Benjamin essay of the same name and the activities of the Situationists.

Joan's Studio

Joan's Studio · 2024

An exploration of Joan Jonas’s studio in Nova Scotia in August 2019, by night with torch, but no spear. Special thanks to Peggy Ahwesh for pelican lighting effects.

1970 or the Collapse of History in the Hysterical Sublime

1970 or the Collapse of History in the Hysterical Sublime · 1988

1970 or the Collapse of History in the Hysterical Sublime

8mm-to-digital and 16mm projector performance. This work includes the film NAVIGATION, which has been preserved by Anthology Film Archives.

Operation Double Trouble

Operation Double Trouble · 2004

Operation Double Trouble

A simple and, possibly as a result of this, effective reworking of a recent propaganda film. The original film is Enduring Freedom: The Opening Chapter. It was made for a large scale cinema release as a short or commercial and was commissioned by the US Marine Corps and the US Navy. Sanborn copied the film and showed each scene in its glorious bombast and heroism twice.

One Minute for Jonas on the Day of His Occultation

One Minute for Jonas on the Day of His Occultation · 2019

One Minute for Jonas on the Day of His Occultation

2019, 1 min, digital

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