A MovieThe music video
Found footage, cut to a record
Conner was cutting stock footage to pop music in 1958. His later films for Devo, Brian Eno and David Byrne are often counted among the first music videos.
Assemblage
Art built from found objects and scraps, and its film equivalent, made from found images set side by side.
In the visual arts, assemblage means sculpture made from things gathered rather than carved or cast: junk, furniture, nylon, newspaper. California artists of the 1950s, Bruce Conner among them, made it their own.
Conner brought the same instinct to film. A Movie and Cosmic Ray are assemblages in time, built from stock footage, newsreels and countdown leader, where meaning comes from what sits next to what.
Films to start with
In the order they were made. Runtimes are approximate.
A Movie
Countdown leader, stock footage, newsreel disasters and a submarine periscope, cut to Respighi's Pines of Rome. It starts as a joke and ends somewhere else.
Still from Cosmic Ray to come. Cosmic Ray
A strobing collage of a nude dancer, fireworks, military footage and Mickey Mouse, cut to Ray Charles's What'd I Say.
Where it led
Lines from these films into work you may already know.
A MovieNearby
Movements, forms and techniques that share filmmakers or methods with this one.