Tony Conrad

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Tony Conrad (2003)

Anthony "Tony" Schmaltz Conrad (born March 7, 1940 in Concord , New Hampshire ; † April 9, 2016 in Cheektowaga , New York ) was an American avant-garde video artist , experimental filmmaker , musician and composer , sound artist, Teacher and writer.

life and work

Tony Conrad studied mathematics at Harvard University until 1962 . He started working as a film artist in the early 1960s.

The most famous film by Conrad is The Flicker ( English for The Flicker ) from 1965. It is considered a key work of the early structural films . The film consists of all black and all white images, which, as the title suggests, flicker when the film is projected. When the film was shown for the first time, several viewers in the audience became physically ill, as the rapid, lightning-fast sequences of images can cause epileptic attacks in a small percentage of the population. Conrad began his work as a video and performance artist in the 1970s as a professor at Antioch College in Antioch , Ohio , and at the Center for Media Studies at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York .

Conrad's work is shown in many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and PS 1 in New York City. His film The Flicker has been accepted into the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art . Tony Conrad took part in Documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972 with The Flicker and Straight and Narrow in the Film Show: New American Cinema department and was represented as an artist at Documenta 6 in 1977 and also at Documenta IX in 1992.

In the mid-1960s, Conrad was a member of the Theater of Eternal Music (also: The Dream Syndicate ), which also included John Cale , Angus MacLise and Terry Riley , La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela , who only used pure tuning and sustained tones, to produce a form of minimal music they called "dream music". In 1973 Conrad also worked with the Krautrock band Faust .

Tony Conrad has received awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts , New York State Council on the Arts, New York State University, Rockefeller Foundation, and New York Foundation for the Arts. Four Violins was included on The Wire's "100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)" list.

Discographic notes

  • Tony Conrad - Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain (Superior Viaduct, 2017)

Literature and Sources

  • Exhibition catalog: documenta 5. Survey of Reality - Imagery Today ; Catalog (as a file folder) Volume 1: (Material); Volume 2: (list of exhibits); Kassel 1972
  • documenta archive (ed.); Resubmission d5 - A survey of the archive on documenta 1972 ; Kassel / Ostfildern 2001, ISBN 3-7757-1121-X
  • Catalog for documenta 6: Volume 1: Painting, sculpture / environment, performance; Volume 2: photography, film, video; Volume 3: Hand drawings, utopian design, books; Kassel 1977 ISBN 3-920453-00-X
  • Documenta IX: Kassel, June 13th - September 20th, 1992 - catalog in three volumes; Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-89322-380-0 (German) / ISBN 3-89322-381-9 (English)
  • Woody Vasulka and Peter Weibel (Eds.): Buffalo heads. Media study, media practice, media pioneers. 1973–1990 , Cambridge / Mass .: The MIT Press, 2008, ISBN 0-262-72050-7

Web links

Commons : Tony Conrad  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Colin Dabkowski: Tony Conrad, avant garde pioneer and UB professor, dies at 76. In: buffalo.com. The Buffalo News, April 9, 2016, accessed April 10, 2016 .
  2. ^ J. Hoberman: Tony Conrad, Experimental Filmmaker and Musician, Dies at 76. In: nytimes.com. The New York Times , April 9, 2016, accessed April 11, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Conrad, Tony
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Conrad, Anthony Schmaltz (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film and video artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Concord , New Hampshire , United States
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 2016
Place of death Cheektowaga , New York , United States