Press Release World Premiere, Tour Announced for Exposed: Songs for Unseen Warhol Films
Andy Warhol, Paraphernalia, 1966, © The Andy Warhol Museum
For immediate release
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
The Andy Warhol Museum, in partnership with The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, is proud to announce the world premiere of Exposed: Songs for Unseen Warhol Films.
The performance, presented in celebration of The Warhol’s 20th anniversary, combines 15 never publicly seen Warhol films with live performances by songwriters that represent a musical trajectory from the 1970s until today.
Five composers – Tom Verlaine, Martin Rev, Dean Wareham, Eleanor Friedberger, and Bradford Cox – were selected to write and perform the music. Wareham, guest music curator for the project, added, “I am excited to be working on these unseen Warhol films, and to perform alongside my musical heroes Tom Verlaine and Martin Rev, and with two favorite younger artists – Eleanor Friedberger and Bradford Cox.”
The short films date from the 1960s and have been digitally restored by MPC/Technicolor. They feature notables such as John Giorno, Marcel Duchamp, Allen Ginsberg, Mario Montez, Marisol, Taylor Mead, Jack Smith, Mary Woronov, Edie Sedgwick, and Warhol himself. Geralyn Huxley, curator of film and video, said, “It’s so wonderful to be able to share these newly digitized films that reveal different aspects of Warhol and his filmmaking.”
The world premiere of Exposed: Songs for Unseen Warhol Films will take place in Pittsburgh at the Carnegie Music Hall (Oakland), on Friday, October 17, 2014. It will open on the West Coast at UCLA on Friday, October 24, 2014, followed by an East Coast debut at The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) on Thursday, November 6, through Saturday, November 8, 2014. “It’s an honor to be partnering with BAM and UCLA on this exciting performance/film commission. I feel so fortunate to be premiering these Warhol films as part of a project that involves such an amazing dream team of artists,” commented Ben Harrison, curator of performing arts.
The project was produced for The Warhol by staff members Ben Harrison, Geralyn Huxley, curator of film and video; and Greg Pierce, assistant curator of film and video; in consultation with Wareham. It was jointly commissioned by The Warhol, The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2014 Next Wave Festival and UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance. Production design is by Clear Story.
This production is presented as part of The Andy Warhol Museum’s 20th anniversary observances.
Digital transfer of Warhol films courtesy of MPC
Artist Biographies
Tom Verlaine is one of the key figures of the punk rock movement. His band, Television, emerged as one of best groups of the New York underground scene in the mid-1970s and he continues his writing and guitar playing in a solo career. Television’s iconic “Marquee Moon” regularly appears in critics’ lists of the greatest rock albums ever recorded. Rolling Stone named Verlaine one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.
Martin Rev first made his mark in New York with the co-founding of his electronic punk band, Suicide, in the 1970s. His style varies widely from release to release, from electronic no wave (“Martin Rev”), to bubblegum electronic (See Me Ridin and Strangeworld), to heavy synthesizer rock (“To Live”), to baroque/orchestral (“Stigmata”). Rev provided soundtracks for Stefan Roloff videos and contributed to The Raveonettes’ 2005 album, “Pretty in Black”.
Dean Wareham’s band Galaxie 500, formed in Boston in the 1980s, influenced a generation of indie rock bands. He went on to record seven studio albums with his next band, Luna, and three more with his wife Britta Phillips – as Dean & Britta – before releasing his first solo album this year. Dean & Britta recently collaborated with The Warhol in 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests.
Bradford Cox began producing music as a young boy in the 1990s by using tape recorders to mix instrumental tracks and his own vocals. He is best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the garage band, Deerhunter, which he founded in 2001. Based in Athens, Georgia, Cox continues to release solo material under the pseudonym Atlas Sound.
Eleanor Friedberger came to fame in the early 2000s as the vocalist in the brother- sister duo, the Fiery Furnaces. She went solo this decade, releasing her debut “Last Summer” in 2011, followed by “Personal Record” in 2013. Eleanor’s music is playful, yet more straightforward than the Furnaces’, and pays homage to the introspective pop of the ’70s.
The Andy Warhol Museum Film Collection
From the time he obtained his first film camera in 1963 until his death in 1987, Warhol actively explored the moving image, creating epic films, personal portraits, programs for cable television, and music videos. His films and video capture the rich and raw texture of the fertile cultural milieu in which he lived and worked.
Warhol produced thousands of reels of films, from epics lasting for hours to his minutes-long Screen Tests. The Warhol currently has a collection of approximately 350 preserved Warhol films, several hundred Screen Tests, as well as the entire output of the artist’s work in video. The museum displays these productions on a regular basis, and a recent re-imaging of the exhibition space features an on-demand film and video gallery.
Exposed: Songs for Unseen Warhol Films is The Warhol’s second commissioned performance involving its film collection. The first was 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, co-commissioned by The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust for the Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts 2008, which has toured internationally over the past 5 years, playing over 85 dates.
Exposed: Songs for Unseen Warhol Films Tour Information
The Andy Warhol Museum
Friday, October 17, 2014, 8 p.m.
Carnegie Music Hall (Oakland)
Tickets for this event are scheduled to go on sale Tuesday, June 10. $25/$20 Members and students.
Visit http://www.warhol.org or call 412-237-8300
Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA Friday, October 24, 2014, 8 p.m.
Royce Hall
http://cap.ucla.edu/
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
Next Wave Festival
Thursday, November 6 – Saturday, November 8, 2014 Peter Jay Sharp Building
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House http://www.bam.org/
The Warhol receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; and The Heinz Endowments. Further support is provided by the Allegheny Regional Asset District.
The Andy Warhol Museum
Located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the place of Andy Warhol’s birth, The Andy Warhol Museum holds the largest collection of Warhol’s artworks and archival materials and is one of the most comprehensive single-artist museums in the world. The Warhol is one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.
Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh
Established in 1895 by Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is a collection of four distinctive museums: Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Science Center, and The Andy Warhol Museum. The museums reach more than 1.4 million people a year through exhibitions, educational programs, outreach activities, and special events.