Invocation of My Demon Brother / Another Movie
Introduction by Morgan Fisher
Music by Scott Benzel
June 6, 7 – 9pm | / 687 Minna Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
In celebration of the current exhibition Kenneth Anger / Morgan Fisher, / and Canyon Cinema are pleased to announce a special screening of Invocation of My Demon Brother and Another Movie introduced by Morgan Fisher and punctuated by a performance of new music by Scott Benzel performed by Gail Hernández Rosa on violin, Clio Tilton on viola, Stephanie Li on cello, and Benzel on electronic instruments.
Focusing on the film’s score by Ottorino Respighi, Morgan Fisher’s Another Movie invokes A Movie by Bruce Conner to reflect on the haunted space between Respighi’s pines and Conner’s montage. Soundtrack is just as vital in Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother, as Mick Jagger’s aggressive score for Moog synthesizer drives the tension of the film’s montage.
The evening event will feature an introduction of the films by Morgan Fisher, followed by a special screening of Fisher’s Another Movie and Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother in its original 16mm format. The screenings will be previewed and segued by a live performances of Inversion V – after Never Learn Not to Love by Dennis Wilson, for string trio and electronics, 2014/2019, Prelude to ‘Invocation’ for string trio and electronics, 2019, and ‘Invocation’ Coda, for string trio and electronics, 2019, by Scott Benzel.
For the prelude and coda for string trio and electronics, Benzel employs a variety of machine learning and generative algorithms trained on Mick Jagger’s original score. In a nod to Bobby Beausoleil’s appearance in Anger’s film, Inversion V makes inverted use of Never Learn Not to Love, a song credited to Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys on their Capitol Records album 20/20, but actually written by Charles Manson. Inversion in music is the process of reversing a score by turning its pages upside down. Reading the upside-down score as if normal, the backward musical notes are played to haunting effect.
Scott Benzel is a Los Angeles based artist, musician and composer. His work has been shown or performed at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum Of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, LA><ART, The MAK Center for Art and Architecture, The Palm Springs Art Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and was featured in Made in LA 2012 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. His collaborative partnerships include work with Mike Kelley, Michael Smith, Sam Durant, Mark Hagen, Kathryn Andrews, Tom Recchion, Andrea Bowers, Destroy All Monsters, and Red Krayola.
Morgan Fisher is an American experimental filmmaker and artist best known for his structuralist and minimalist films referencing the material processes of celluloid film and the means and methods of producing moving pictures. In the past two decades he has also exhibited paintings and, more recently, photographs. His work has been included in three Whitney Biennial exhibitions, 1985, 2004 and 2014, and is represented in international public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, FRAC Ile-de-France, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987.
Kenneth Anger is an independent filmmaker and author. He has been recognized with life achievement awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics, the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Silverlake Film Festival, the Mar del Plata Film Festival, and the Maya Deren Award for Experimental Film/Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Among other notable honors, he received the Poetic Film Prize at Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz, France in 1949, which was presented by Jean Cocteau. Anger’s work has screened around the world, including at the Institut Francais de Vienne in Austria, the Galerie Agnes B. in Paris, the National Film Theatre in London and Anthology Film Archive in New York. He is the author of Hollywood Babylon.
Kenneth Anger / Morgan Fisher is on view at / until June 23, 2019.