BRUCE CONNER / RECORDING ANGEL

The multidisciplinary artist Bruce Conner (1933–2008) was truly an enigma. He moved effortlessly from sculptural assemblage to painting, conceptual art, collage, drawing, photography and experimental filmmaking without any sense of hierarchy. Deeply embedded in American countercultural movements of the postwar period from the Beat poets of the 1950s to the emergent punk scenes of the 1970s and 1980s, Conner had a radical and restless eye that brought with it a wry humor, biting wit and love of the uncanny and the revolutionary. Nowhere was Conner's restless eye more apparent than in his now legendary body of experimental films that he undertook in 1958, which were composed of found, scavenged, and original footage. In fact, in many ways Conner can be seen as the pioneer of the remix and cutup techniques of filmmaking that are now so ubiquitous while he has also been called the "father of the music video" in recognition of his rapid-fire editing techniques used in every music video and film trailer made today. As he once said to an interviewer in 1986, "I learned to distrust words. I placed my bet on vision."