Synesthesia: Glenn Branca

1997-2001, 37 min, color, sound

Tony Oursler's Synesthesia project features interviews with twelve legendary figures in the downtown music, performance and art scenes: John Cale, Thurston Moore, Dan Graham, Genesis P-Orridge, Kim Gordon, Glenn Branca, Laurie Anderson, Tony Conrad, David Byrne, Lydia Lunch, Alan Vega, and Arto Lindsay. These works were originally included as one element of Oursler and Mike Kelley's multimedia installation The Poetics Project. These conversations reveal fascinating insights and anecdotes from some of the most influential figures in the experimental rock and art underground of the 1970s and '80s, from pre-punk innovators to post-punk icons, from industrial and avant-garde music to noise bands and "no wave."

Glenn Branca emerged from New York's no-wave scene in the late 1970s, composing and performing radical guitar music with his bands The Static and Theoretical Girls. A rock iconoclast and avant-garde composer, he began orchestrating experimental symphonies of massed guitars and percussion for the Glenn Branca Ensemble in the 1980s, and continues to compose and perform.

Produced by Tony Oursler. Questions: Tony Oursler, Mike Kelley, David West, Linda Post. Camera: Linda Post, Tony Oursler. Editing: Tony Oursler, Elizabeth Kading.