Tag Archives for Angus MacLise

DREAMWEAPON – The Art and Life of Angus MacLise opens May 10, 2011 in New York


Photo of Angus MacLise in Kathmandu by Ira Cohen

Via Boo-Hooray:

DREAMWEAPON / The Art and Life of Angus MacLise is the upcoming exhibit at pop-up / parasite gallery Boo-Hooray presenting the work of the American artist, poet, percussionist, and composer active in New York, San Francisco, Paris, London and Kathmandu in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The exhibition series is open every day May 10th – May 29th and will include an overview of poetry, artwork, and publications in Chelsea, a sound installation featuring the complete MacLise tapes archive in Chinatown, and a night of film at Anthology Film Archives screening never-before seen outtakes from Ira Cohen’s The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda. DREAMWEAPON is curated
by Johan Kugelberg and Will Cameron.

June 10, L.A.: "The Alchemy of Things Unknown" opening at Khastoo

This looks intriguing. Here’s the press release…

The Alchemy of Things Unknown (and a Visual Meditation on Transformation)
at Khastoo Gallery (7556 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90046 / (323) 472 6498 )

June 10 – July 31, 2010

Opening reception: Thursday, June 10th, 6pm – 8pm
With a film performance by Raha Raissnia, sound by Charles Curtis.

“After the cursing comes laughter, so that the soul is saved from the dead.”
– Carl Gustav Jung, The Red Book

This exhibition intends to examine and expose individual works of art in relation to theosophy, sacred tradition and devotional practice. From William Blake’s illuminated works of divine imagination to Carl Gustav Jung’s drawings of collective symbolic unconscious, the visual is undoubtedly an integral creative tool for reaching, exploring, animating and pervading the indefinable spaces beyond body and mind.

The artists in this exhibition, some more explicitly than others, sought after or seek spiritual truths through art making and employ an almost fervent and reverent experimentation to their practice, one that is both ritualistic and against the grain. This mystic behavior is what defines the show; the persistence on new and unorthodox visual experimentation reaches beyond the worldly sphere to heightened states of consciousness.

This exhibition is made possible, in part, by the generous contributions of William Breeze, Ordo Templi Orientis, Richard Metzger, John Contreras, Scott Hobbs, David Brafman, William Swofford Cameron, Hetty Maclise, and The Estate of Alfred Jensen.

More info:
http://www.khastoo.com

Sunday, July 19 7pm: Arthur co-presents The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda + Paradise Now screening at ATA in SF

atasun197pm_1

Sunday, July 19

Artists’ Television Access
992 Valencia, S.F.
(415) 824-3890
http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=4128

7pm

$7

MCMAF & Arthur Magazine co-present

The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda + Paradise Now

Take an alchemical journey with Ira Cohen’s The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda, a mythosphere filtered through Mylar and worthy of Kenneth Anger’s most lysergic moments, with ritual music provided by ex-Velvet Undergrounder Angus MacLise. Also on the program is Marty Topp’s Paradise Now: The Living Theatre in Amerika. “Life, revolution and theater are three words for the same thing: an unconditional NO to the present society” – Julian Beck, Living Theatre co-founder

NYTimes on Arthur's "The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda" release on DVD

August 27, 2006 – Sunday New York Times

Long, Strange Trip for a Hypnotic Film

By JAMES GADDY

It took 38 years, but Ira Cohen’s cult film, “The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda,” which was first screened in 1968 at the high point of the psychedelic hippie head rush, is now commercially available. Given the close calls, the long absences and his chaotic archival system, Mr. Cohen, 71, is a little surprised himself.

“It didn’t really involve patience,” he said in his apartment on West 106th Street in Manhattan, surrounded by books stacked waist high. “It was just reality.”

In 1961 Mr. Cohen built a room in his New York loft lined with large panels of Mylar plastic, a sort of bendable mirror that causes images to crackle and swirl in hypnotic, sometimes beautiful patterns. After a few years experimenting with the technique in photographs, he invited his friends from the downtown scene — like Beverly Grant, Vali Myers and Tony Conrad — to make a film.

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