The 2006 Biennial widens its lens with a number of film, video, and performance events that add further dimensions to the exhibition. A variety of programs are featured, from screenings of recent work by established artists such as Kenneth Anger, James Benning, and Michael Snow, to evenings featuring live performances by legendary figures like Taylor Mead and Ira Cohen. Politically themed films and videos confront current events in Iraq, the post-9/11 situation and the relationship of the US with the Middle East and Afghanistan. In a program entitled “Pictures from Afghanistan,” Dominic Angerame’s digital video Anaconda Targets (2004) presents chilling footage of a 2002 military operation recorded aboard a US gunship helicopter. In Jennifer Reeves’ acclaimed film The Time We Killed (2004), set in the aftermath of 9/11, the events taking place outside parallel the mental turmoil of an agoraphobic poet.

Lori Cheatle and Daisy Wright’s video This Land is Your Land (2O04) explores the influence of corporations on everyday life in the US. George Butler’s Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry (2004), a film released at the height of the 2004 presidential campaign, recounts former nominee Kerry’s engagement in the Vietnam War, documenting his path from youthful idealism to disillusionment. Showing elsewhere in the exhibition is work by Deep Dish Television (DDTV), the original alternative satellite network in America, co-founded by filmmaker and activist DeeDee Halleck. DDTV’s program collection Shocking and Awful (2004–2005) examines the latest violent and highly controversial actions in Iraq.

On view in March, April, and May (see schedule at end of release), Cameron Jamie’s film installation Kranky Klaus (2002-03), with a soundtrack by the Melvins, documents the pagan myth of Krampus—a shaggy beast said to roam the valleys of Austria on the night of December 6. Jamie will be joined by the Melvins and Keiji Haino for a live performance at Symphony Space (2537 Broadway, at 95th Street) on Wednesday, May 17, at 8 pm. Tickets are available at www.symphonyspace.org.

In conjunction with his film installation Version, on view in the Biennial, Mathias Poledna is presenting a classic work by Maya Deren, Meditation on Violence (1948), alongside a recent film of his own. The Deren film is a 12-minute movement study, with a soundtrack of Chinese flute and Haitian drums, partly shot in Deren’s apartment and partly on the grounds of The Cloisters.

As part of his participation in the Biennial, Christopher Williams has selected to screen films by such esteemed filmmakers such as Carl Theodor Dreyer, Joris Ivens, Peter Kubelka, Jean Rouch, and Luis Buñuel, whose work has been important to him. Williams, whose photographic work is elsewhere in the show, has organized a mini-film festival within the Biennial in the form of two programs, one of which includes rarely screened films by Otto Mühl, Joris Ivens, Harun Farocki, Peter Kubelka, David Lamelas, Yves Allégret and Eli Lotar, Jean Painlevé, Jean Rouch, and Morgan Fisher; a second program includes films by Mühl, Dreyer, Tony Conrad, Ivens, Kubelka, John Baldessari, and Buñuel. The film schedule is listed at the end of this release.

Andrew Lampert’s triple-screen installation Varieties of Slow (2005) is an “ultimate slowing down” – a shot of book spines is projected over a variable period of time. The work is shown alongside a sound work inspired by American composer Morton Feldman. A performance with experimental cellist Okkyung Lee is scheduled for 5 pm on May 6.

On March 17 and May 12, poet/photographer/filmmaker Ira Cohen reads from his work, along with a special screening of his psychedelic film The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (1968). Cohen, born in 1935, is one of the seminal figures in the countercultural movement that began in the 1960s. Writing about the film in the Biennial catalog, writer/curator Jenny Moore notes, “In New York in the late 1960s, Cohen created his Mylar Chamber, a room covered with bendable, distorting mirrors in which he produced psychedelic photographs of shamans, divas, the rock stars Jimi Hendrix and Noel Redding, and the legendary filmmaker Jack Smith. These melting, vibrant images are featured in his film The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda. An extraordinary visual trip into a mythical land populated by wizards, sorcerers, dreaming plants, and magical animals, with an accompanying soundtrack by Velvet Underground drummer Angus McLise, the film epitomizes the hallucinogenic experiences of the psychedelic era, melding image with sound, color, movement, and light.”

On April 1 and April 30, Warhol film legend and notorious provocateur Taylor Mead (b. 1924) reads poetry live; the program includes a screening of Excavating Taylor Mead, a film by William A. Kirkley that documents Mead’s life. As Jenny Moore describes him in the Biennial catalog, “Poet, performer, actor, and painter Taylor Mead has been defying the establishment for over half a century and remains one of the brightest stars of the American underground…Mead continues to publish poetry and performs weekly at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, captivating audiences with his wry, dramatically vivid comments on sex, death, genius, and his own unique celebrity.”

A selection of Kenneth Anger’s films will be shown on April 22 and May 13. These include the classics Invocation of My Demon Brother (1968) and Lucifer Rising (1980), as well as Anger’s latest work, Mouse Heaven (2005).

An Exchange of Film Programs with Trinidad

Extending beyond national borders, an unusual exchange will occur with the innovative, ongoing Studio Film Club. Films shown at the Studio Film Club, an alternative cinema in Trinidad, are being brought to the museum, and films by Biennial film artists are being screened in Trinidad. Peter Doig and Che Lovelace’s Studio Film Club series is a weekly Thursday evening series that has been taking place since early 2003 in Doig’s studio, a former rum factory behind the Caribbean Contemporary Arts space in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. Doig and Lovelace show movies that offer an alternative to the local multiplex, screened in an atmosphere that encourages give and take with the audience. To advertise each screening, Doig paints quickly executed posters that are often hung at the Studio Film Club while still wet. Several of Doig’s film posters are being shown in the 2006 Biennial.