Bruce Conner: Filmmaker + Culture Jammer

Bruce Conner was many things — filmmaker, photographer, sculptor, culture jammer — he was a prolific and influential artist, whose work plied many territories, but was never dull. Primarily known for his innovative filmmaking, Conner built entire films from scraps of found footage that he culled from newsreels, public service announcements, B movies, and other forms of preexisting media. A Movie (1958), Conner’s best-known work, was built soley of pre-existing footage, which he manipulated through kinetic editing, heavy repetition, and image juxtaposition.

Stan Brakhage, a fellow experimental filmmaker and friend to Conner, writes of Conner in his book Film at Wit’s End. According to Brakhage, Connor signed into a 1960 contract with a New York art gallery, and contractual stipulations constricted Connor’s free-spirited, culture jammer tendencies, by requiring Conner to attend gallery openings for his work Connor was required to attend gallery openings for his work. , but Connor did not really enjoy doing this, which lead to unpredictable behavior on Connor’s part, such as wandering throughout the crowd, speaking not a word, butbut pinning typography buttons on attendees that either said, “I AM BRUCE CONNOR,” or “I AM NOT BRUCE CONNOR.” Despite his unwillingness to mingle with the New York art crowd, pinning buttons brought greater publicity, than if he opted to conform and do the traditional cocktail-party gallery thing.

The culture jamming continued when Connor published “Bruce Conner Makes a Sandwhich” in the September 1967 edition of Artforum. The article, which was verbosely written, detailed a step-by-step walk through of Connor’s experience fixing a peanut butter, banana, bacon, lettuce, and Swiss cheese sandwich. Copious photos accompanied the article and, to a certain extent, Connor was poking fun at the idea of art and the art-world by glorifying his artistic discovery of a new genre of sandwich. During the ‘60s, Connor moved to San Francisco, where he created some of his non-film artwork, such as his Mandala drawings, tapestry artwork, and famous culture-jamming artifacts, like as painting the word Love on asphalt, in the same generic typeface used to print road directions for traffic lanes and me sort of type that normally would read “left turn only” or “slow” indications. (There is a photo of the pavement art in the gallery below).

Last year, Chicago filmmaker Jason Halprin screened a few Bruce Conner 16mm prints, which were beaten and battered, but I had the pleasure of watching Bruce Connor’s 1978 Devo music video Mongloid, as well as the atomic bomb meditation Crossroads (1976), and the Brian Eno + David Byrne collaboration America is Waiting (1981). We attempted to watch A Movie, but the print was in dire need of repair and fell apart in the projector.

Prior to his death, Conner jokingly announced his own death on two separate occasions, to serve as some sort of morbid conceptual art event — inevitably, he died — kicking the bucket on July 7, 2008, at age 81, leaving behind work that has inspired generations of filmmakers and artists.