Following up on the recent post on the International Experimental Media Congress, here’s a resource on the contentious previous one held in 1989; under various names, they’ve been held numerous times before (I believe the latest was the 8th edition, if you will.) It’s oft-referenced, and it’s presence was felt at the recent one as well. Here’s some resources on the matter. I’ll update this post as I come upon more material (especially the program) as well – if you have any that you’d like to share, I’d love to put it up. There’s a number of glaring absences naturally, be it Fred Camper’s “The End of Avant-Garde Film”, J. Hoberman’s “Avant to Live: Fear and Trembling at the Whitney Biennial”, Paul Arhur’s “No More Causes?” and many others that I probably don’t know. Perhaps I will. If someone has a more comprehensive list, then naturally, I’ll defer to them.
Above is (with permission) Tom Gunning’s “Towards a Minor Cinema: Fonoroff, Herwitz, Ahwesh, Lapore, Klahr and Solomon” published in an issue of Motion Picture. Here it is as a .pdf.
Here (Google Books preview) is a brief response by Scott MacDonald to both the essay by Tom Gunning and the Congress in A Critical Cinema 5, as way of introduction to his interview with Peggy Ahwesh. It was through this brief bit that I first heard of the “storied congress.”
Here is an easily accessible version of the Open Letter on the website of media artist Al Razutis; there is a futher response by him on his site as well.
Finally, here seems to be a good overview of the whole deal written by William C. Wees from the Canadian Journal of Film Studies. “Let’s Set the Record Straight” (.pdf)
