The Early Films of Phill Niblock

Monday February 8, 2016, 7:30 pm

Los Angeles Filmforum presents

The Early Films of Phill Niblock

At Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), 6522 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90028

Phill Niblock in person! 

NOTE THE CHANGE FROM OUR USUAL DAY AND LOCATION!

As part of a series of West Coast events featuring the work of legendary experimental composer and intermedia artist Phill Niblock, Filmforum is pleased to present an evening of his early cinematic endeavors. All the films in this program were originally shot on 16mm in the late 1960s and early1970s, and thus predate the corpus of films for which Niblock is most renowned, The Movement of People Working, a monumental series of 16mm works developed over the course of twenty-five years beginning in the mid-1970s. Here, then, is a portrait of the minimalist composer we know today as the avant-garde filmmaker he was from the very start. In the earliest of these cinematic experiments, Niblock’s ties to the New York avant-garde are amply on display: Morning, Raoul, and Dog Track each suggests a productive conversation with the likes of Hollis Frampton, Michael Snow, and Yvonne Rainer. Yet no less prominent are the origins of Niblock’s sui generis amalgamation of both structuralist and diaristic impulses with a composer’s sense of rhythm and pattern and a painterly preoccupation with texture. In T H I R, these currents converge with the architectural approach to sound that would soon become Niblock’s signature as a creator of densely layered, microtonal sonic environments. Together, the four works presented here bear witness to a singular artistic vision, a virtuoso of the moving image who seems to have emerged fully formed from the creative womb, already a master of the instruments of his powerful craft.

“The film and music of Phill Niblock are of a single piece. And like a fractal understanding of the world, each version contains the whole. No matter the scale, we have an assured and commanding meditation on paradoxes elegantly resolved. Each experience leaves the viewer/listener feeling clear-headed, lightened and uplifted.”  – Abigail Nelson, “T H I R Redux,” from liner notes to Von Archives DVD release of T H I R.

 

Phill Niblock (b. 1933, Anderson, IN, U.S.A.) is a composer, filmmaker, videographer, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York and Ghent, Belgium. Niblock's musical compositions feature microtones of instrumental timbres, which generate other tones within the performance space. He presents these compositions alongside abstract films and videos. http://www.phillniblock.com/

Since the mid-1960s, Niblock's music and intermedia performances have been presented at venues across the world, including The Museum of Modern Art, Roulette, the Wadsworth Athenaeum, The Kitchen, the Festival d'Automne à Paris, the Pompidou Center in Paris, Eyebeam, Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, Institute of Contemporary Art London, Akademie der Kunste in Berlin, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard, and the World Music Institute at Merkin Concert Hall in New York. He has collaborated with a number of artists including Susan Stenger, Robert Poss, Jim O'Rourke, Ulrich Krieger, Seth Josel, Petr Kotik, and Tom Buckner. Niblock's music is available on the XI, Moikai, Mode and Touch labels.

Niblock has received grants from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, Phaedrus Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Creative Artists Public Service Program, Meet the Composer, and the Research Foundation of the City University of New York. He was a 1978 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow. Niblock received a Grants to Artists award in 1994. He received [Foundation for Contemporary Art]'s biennial John Cage Award, a $50,000 lifetime achievement award, in 2014.

Niblock has been an artist and member of Experimental Intermedia since 1968 and its Director since 1985. He is the producer of over 1,000 music and intermedia presentations at Experimental Intermedia since 1973. He also serves as the curator of Experimental Intermedia's XI Records label and co-founded its branch in Ghent, Belgium, EI v.z.w. Gent. He received his B.A. from Indiana University and was a Professor of Film, Video, and Photography at the College of Staten Island from 1971-1998. Niblock continues to perform around the world. (foundationforcontemporaryarts.org)

Phill Niblock at Experimental Intermedia: http://experimentalintermedia.org/pn/

See also: “Who’s Who in Filmmaking: Phill Niblock,” an article by Abigail Nelson originally published in Sight Lines, vol. 7, no. 3 (1973/74): http://www.vasulka.org/archive/Artists4/Niblock,Phil/general.pdf

Tickets: $10 general admission; $6 students (with ID)/seniors; free for Filmforum members.

Tickets available at http://bpt.me/2492926 or at the door.

For more event information: www.lafilmforum.org, or 323-377-7238