KENNETH ANGER CYCLE

From May 4 to August 1, 2009, ZDB presented an extended event dedicated to the American director – Kenneth Anger.

This event brought together, exceptionally, a group of national and international artists and essayists, around his work. In diverse formats, it includes the retrospective presentation of the filmmaker’s work, the realization of an exhibition of visual arts, a conference, and a concert program.

Launched by ZDB, this initiative, to which the Serralves Foundation and the Cinemateca Portuguesa were associated as partners, took, as an initial condition, that this was a catalyst event in the periphery of meaning, guaranteeing a place of exception for this author.

During the week of the 4th to the 9th of May – the inaugural period and the moment of the greatest concentration of the event – the activities took place between Lisbon and Porto, divided between ZDB, Cinemateca Portuguesa, and Fundação de Serralves.

The programming and curatorship of this interdisciplinary event were curated by Natxo Checa, assisted by Miguel Ferrão; Sérgio Hydalgo and Marta Furtado. With assistance in the consulting of Benjamin Bréjon, Marco Pasi, Hugo Canoilas and António Rodrigues.

Centered on the work of one of the most outstanding authors of the 20th century, the Kenneth Anger Cycle focuses on exploring his influence in the most diverse cultural spectrum.

Kenneth Anger’s work is characterized by the impact of his journey, closely linked to hermetic imagery. Assuming himself as a magician-filmmaker, it is in the film, seen as the melting surface of his passion for magic and the cult of light, that Anger establishes a composite of fascination, involvement, and hypnosis.

Built around the Hollywood industry and, above all, its rumors – of which the two volumes of Hollywood Babylon (vol. I, 1965 and vol. II, 1984) are the statement – Kenneth Anger’s body of work elevates him beyond what could have been a path marked only in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, catapulting it to a state of active permanence, through a spaced but continuous production, and the incursion by new projects throughout its long career.

His work, marked by the force of the images and the clear polarization of their contents, was filled with moments of exception, combining in the film what is most hidden in the relationship between man, natural forces, and the inevitability of a symbol-mediated language.

Assuming that Kenneth Anger focuses on the demonic vision of a portion of time, almost spontaneous and reactive, it is at a turning point – the last version of Lucifer Rising (1966-80), that this vision will have expanded, becoming the last more divine and everlasting instance.

The time in the works of Kenneth Anger – the time between dream and hypnosis – that already Fireworks (1947), the first official film of the filmmaker (connotated with the moment when he will have declared himself publicly as an adept of the self-analysis by Aleister Crowley), summoned – brings to the cinema an alchemical context of ultimate transformation, of mystical redemption by fire and of the exaltation of the belief in a man who surpasses himself in these ways in his animal and intellectual domains.

Com um modelo narrativo baseado na análise comparativa de mitos, religiões e rituais – com uma preponderância de apropriação de símbolos ligados à Abadia de Thelema – é na criação de um sistema complexo de relações, que a obra de Anger sustenta um impulso gerador de reconstruções imediatas da realidade, incidindo assim no carácter transformador do mago. Conotada com um certo anacronismo relacionado com as técnicas de realização que apresenta, o uso singular da música destaca-se na sua obra, incidindo na sincronização com as imagens, absolutamente intencional e amplificadora de sentidos.

In this regard, it is worth mentioning the continuous review that the director made to his films, starting from the soundtracks, changing, whenever necessary, the understanding of the visible, either with the introduction of new images or with the punctual reordering of the previous contents.

If the image activates the intoxicating process that runs through Anger’s work, the music contextualizes it and offers different levels of understanding. We do not know if Kenneth Anger will be the same today who, questioned by Vasco Câmara in 1993, affirmed his belief in the past as something that “did not die”; if so, this cycle should confirm it.

KENNETH ANGER CYCLE CINEMA PROGRAM

An exhaustive film retrospective will be shown at the Cinemateca Portuguesa and, in a compact session at the Serralves Foundation. The sessions will feature a conference by Marco Pasi and the presence of Kenneth Anger.

Cinemateca Portuguesa

May 4th, at 9:30 pm, Dr. Félix Ribeiro Room:
Cinema session
Fireworks (1947, 20 min., 35 mm, preto & branco, som)
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954, 38 min., 35 mm, cor ,som)
Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969, 12 min., 35 mm, cor, som)
Lucifer Rising (1981, 29 min., 35 mm, cor, som)
Ich Will! (2008, 35 min., DVD, cor, som)

Marco Pasi Conference with the presence of Kenneth Anger
Anger without Tears: The occult films of Kenneth Anger

Marco Pasi will take an approach to the hidden context in which Kenneth Anger’s films can be placed and understood. It will introduce, in particular, aspects of life and principles defined by the British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), who fulfilled a role of constant reference for Anger. Crowley’s own artistic production, and Anger’s interest in it in his own work, will also be discussed. Pasi’s communication will also focus on the renewed interest in the occult in general, and in Crowley, in particular, that artistic contemporaneity has shown. He will thus take, as an assertion, the understanding of Anger’s work as a formidable comparative term, essential to an assertive analysis of this recent trend.

May 7th, at 9:30 pm, Dr. Félix Ribeiro Room:
Cinema session
Puce Moment (1949, 6 min., 35 mm, cor, som)
Rabbit’s Moon (1950, 16 min., 35 mm, preto & branco – colorido, som)
Eaux d’Artifice (1953, 12 min., 35 mm, preto & branco, cor)
Scorpio Rising (1964, 28 min., 35 mm, cor, som)
Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965, 3 min., 35 mm, cor, som)

Serralves Foundation

May 5th, at the Serralves Library, at 6 pm:
Conferência de Marco Pasi: Anger without Tears: The occult films of Kenneth Anger
with the presence of Kenneth Anger.

May 5th, at the Serralves Auditorium, at 9:30 pm
Cinema session:
Fireworks (1947, 20 min., 35 mm, preto & branco, som)
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954, 38 min., 35 mm, cor ,som)
Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969, 12 min., 35 mm, cor, som)
Lucifer Rising (1981, 29 min., 35 mm, cor, som)
Ich Will! (2008, 35 min., DVD, cor, som)

KENNETH ANGER CYCLE CONCERT PROGRAM

Within the scope of the Kenneth Anger Cycle, ZDB Müzique prepared a set of transgressive proposals that, like the iconographic Anger, an esoteric angel of the most remote bizarre, enter the night from the side where there are fewer people.

May 6th, at 9:30 pm, in the Serralves Foundation Auditorium
May 9, at 10 pm, at the Palace of Valadares, Largo do Carmo
Technicolor Skul and Mark Stewart + Mécanosphère

May 15th, at 11 pm at Galeria Zé dos Bois
Larsen & amp; Little Annie

June 4th, at 23h at Galeria Zé dos Bois
Baby Dee

June 22, 2009, at 7 pm, at the ZDB
Presentation / conference by Olivier Schefer
« Somnambules et zombies : politique et esthétique du déplacement »
Integrated in the activities of the Kenneth Anger Cycle and as a complement to the exhibition BRIGHT STAR IN THE MORNING, Olivier Schefer presented the conference «Somnambules et zombies: politique et esthétique du déplacement».

Conference with the projection of images dedicated to the contemporary aesthetics of intermediate and transitory . Making the themes of magnetic science of the century converge. XVIII, the hypnosis of the century. XIX, Land Art and B series filmography, Olivier Schefer will refer to displacement and invisibility witnessed in sleepwalkers or zombie beings. Taking the example of the Congolese Obeah ritual, Schefer will address the issue of magician in the process of mockery.

Olivier Schefer is a professor of aesthetics, philosophy, and art at Sorbonne University (Paris 1). He works on Romanticism and its modern implications, having been present at the ZDB in September 2007, in the cycle of conferences and debates held within the scope of the exhibition Transitioners de Société Réaliste .
Recent publications: “Anish Kapoor: To Darkness: Svayambh” (Fage, 2007), “Les corps du retour” (Zombies) (Fresh Theorie, Ed. Léo Scheer, 2006), “Résonances du romantisme” (La Lettre Volée, 2005 ).