Leslie Thornton

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Electronic Arts Intermix is pleased to present an evening honoring the legacy of Ron Vawter, a leading presence in downtown theater, film, and video from the mid-1970s until his premature death from AIDS-related causes in 1994. Although devoted to theater, Vawter made work with many of the leading film- and video-makers of the 1980s and 90s throughout his career. Held on the 30th anniversary of his passing, the program will highlight Vawter’s collaborations with artists in video, featuring works by Joan Jonas, Ken Kobland, Leslie Thornton, and The Wooster Group. A discussion with Ken Kobland and Leslie Thornton will follow the program.

Born to a Green Beret father and WAVE mother in the years following World War II, Vawter was given a “gift” of enlistment papers for his 17th birthday. Incredibly, Vawter’s induction into the Green Beret Special Forces would steer him toward avant-garde performance. While stationed as a recruiting officer at Centre Street in New York City, Vawter became involved with Richard Schechner’s downtown theater troupe The Performance Group, from which The Wooster Group emerged in 1975. A founding member of The Wooster Group, Vawter, together with director Elizabeth LeCompte, and performers Willem Dafoe, Spalding Gray, and Kate Valk, would participate in some of the most indelible pieces in the legendary experimental theater group’s repertoire. Vawter also performed in stagings by Richard Foreman, Mabou Mines, and Jeff Weiss.

Although devoted to theater, Vawter collaborated with many of the leading film and video-makers of the 1980s and ‘90s, including Shu Lea Cheang, Lizzie Borden, and Jonathan Demme. Together, the works in this program convey Vawter’s distinctive and multifaceted career towards the end of his life, a pivotal moment of experimentation in video and performance, non-commercial art making, and AIDS activism—all strands of Vawter’s prodigious legacy. Famously photogenic, Vawter’s iconic visage and versatile charm shine across a range of roles: from a flamboyant hermit in Ken Kobland and The Wooster Group’s Flaubert Dreams of Travel But The Illness of His Mother Prevents It (1986), to a dream interpreter in Joan Jonas’ Volcano Saga (1989), to oppositional cultural figures Roy Cohn and Jack Smith, captured backstage in Ken Kobland’s End Credits (1994) for Jill Godmilow’s film version of Vawter’s legendary dual performance. Thornton’s The Last Time I Saw Ron (1994) creates a moving elegy to the artist’s memory, employing footage taken of Vawter shortly before his death.

This screening accompanies a weekend tribute to Vawter at Anthology Film Archives from April 19-21, featuring the stage and screen versions of Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, and Free Fall (1994), a documentary portrait of Vawter shot during one of his performances of this work. From April 19-26, Le Cinéma Club will stream Bruce and Norman Yonemoto’s Made in Hollywood (1989), in which Vawter stars opposite Patricia Arquette. An online, closed-captioned version of EAI's program will be accessible for a limited time in May.

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)’s venue is located at 264 Canal Street, 3W, near several Canal Street subway stations. Our floor is accessible by elevator (63" × 60" car, 31" door) and stairway. Due to the age and other characteristics of the building, our bathrooms are not ADA-accessible, though several such bathrooms are located nearby. If you have questions about access, please contact cstrange@eai.org in advance of the event.

EAI is pleased to partner with cinema arts non-profit Mono No Aware to co-present Leslie Thornton: Tuned to a Shifting Ground, a program that includes the world premiere of a new work. Thornton's hybrid film/video Fog Fog Fog Ants was commissioned by Mono No Aware specifically for the occasion and will be available for distribution through EAI.

Working for over four decades, Leslie Thornton has created a deep and complex body of films, videos and installations. For this event, Thornton will present some her earliest works and influences, and touch upon stages of her development as an artist and participant in the shifting ground of technological image making. A student of filmmakers such as Hollis Frampton, Stan Brakhage, Paul Sharits and Peter Kubelka, Thornton locates her work as squarely emanating from avant-garde and verite cinematic traditions. She will trace her own aesthetic shifts from the coolness of structural film to a current interest in the strategies of engagement essential to narrative form. Her new work, Fog Fog Fog Ants, combines a clash of hand-made film and digital imagery, with a beguiling and assaultive monologue performed by Thornton. This program is part of MONO NO AWARE X, an annual festival of expanded cinema and installations taking place from November 3 - December 3, 2016. For more information visit mononoawarefilm.com

EAI and The Sagamore Hotel in Miami Beach presented Screen Play: Moving Image Art, a special exhibition of moving image artworks for the public spaces of the hotel during Art Basel Miami Beach. Screen Play, guest curated by Lori Zippay, EAI's Executive Director, brought together video, film, and digital artworks drawn from the EAI collection across six decades. These works highlighted the cross-disciplinary relation of the moving image to other artistic media and forms—performance, photography, painting, drawing, sculpture—while also exploring the distinctive vocabularies of video, film, and digital media. The public encountered artists' moving image works in multiple public spaces of the hotel, as well as a dedicated "EAI TV Channel" for the hotel guest rooms. Screen Play featured moving image works by artists including Michael Bell-Smith, Takeshi Murata, Leslie Thornton, Jacolby Satterwhite, Joan Jonas, Merce Cunningham, Alex Hubbard, Dara Birnbaum, Shana Moulton, Lawrence Weiner, Steina, and John Baldessari.

EAI celebrated the art of short-form video and film with a summer screening of works that clock in at two minutes or less. Between Yoko Ono's fifteen second Eye Blink (1966) and Leslie Thornton's two minute Let Me Count the Ways: Minus 6 (2006), the forty-five works in this forty-five minute screening demonstrated why a concise statement is so powerful. Ranging from analog video abstraction to quick visual comedy, conceptual exercises to formal experiments with duration, commissioned public service announcements to critiques of the quintessential short-form structure, the TV commercial, the works in this screening demonstrated the enormous possibilities that artists have found in less than one hundred and twenty seconds.

The screening included works by Dan Asher, Beth B, Phyllis Baldino, Michael Bell-Smith, Dara Birnbaum, Cheryl Donegan, VALIE EXPORT, Forcefield, Matthew Geller, Gran Fury, Gary Hill, Ken Jacobs, Tom Kalin, Kalup Linzy, George Maciunas, Charlotte Moorman, Shana Moulton, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Martha Rosler, Paul Sharits, Stuart Sherman, Shelly Silver, Michael Smith, Leslie Thornton, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Lawrence Weiner and Bruce and Norman Yonemoto.

EAI participated in The NY Art Book Fair 2009, organized by Printed Matter at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. EAI's project space, installed in P.S.1's basement vault, presented FREE TRADE, a program of videos exploring economies of exchange in a globalized world: the circulation of art, ideas, information and capital. On view were new and historical works, drawn from EAI's extensive collection, by artists including Chris Burden, Bernadette Corporation, Martha Rosler, Dan Graham, VALIE EXPORT, Dara Birnbaum, Kalup Linzy, Seth Price, Lawrence Weiner, Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, Ken Jacobs, Gordon Matta-Clark, Muntadas, Takeshi Murata, Leslie Thornton and Ryan Trecartin.

Leslie Thornton joined EAI for an evening exploring the role of photography in her moving image work. Thornton's rigorously experimental film and video work is an investigation into the production of meaning through media. For Thornton, form and content are equal and inseparable.

At EAI, Thornton screened rarely-seen film and video works in which she has investigated the porous boundaries between the still and the moving image. She spoke about the impact and influence of photographic concepts and techniques on her media practice. In addition, Thornton's presentation included a special performance in which the artist reduced a sheet of stills from Adynata into individual photographs that were given to the audience.

EAI participated in Off LOOP, the video art festival associated with LOOP '04 Barcelona. EAI screened screening a program of recent additions to the EAI collection that combined evocative, at times haunting, themes with a baroque style. Included in the program were works by Cheryl Donegan, Seoungho Cho, Peggy Ahwesh, Leslie Thornton, Phyllis Baldino, and Cecelia Condit.

EAI presents ongoing programs that feature new and historical works from the EAI collection in Dia's rooftop Video Salon and Café. The Spring 2003 program included works by Charles Atlas, Phyllis Baldino, Kristin Lucas, and Leslie Thornton.

EAI presents ongoing programs that feature new and historical works from the EAI collection in Dia's rooftop Video Salon and Café. The Spring 2002 program included works by Seoungho Cho, Tony Cokes, Mary Lucier, and Leslie Thornton.