Bruce Conner
CROSSROADS
(1976, 35mm, black/white, sound, 37min)
Original Music by Patrick Gleeson and Terry Riley
Courtesy of the Conner Family Trust and Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles
© Conner Family Trust
Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive

About the film
CROSSROADS is a 1976 short film directed by renowned artist Bruce Conner. It features 37 minutes of extreme slow-motion replays of Operation Crossroads, a series of US nuclear bomb tests held on 25 July 25, 1946, less than a year after bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The underwater nuclear test took place at Bikini Atoll, a coral reef in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

The event was captured for research purposes by five hundred cameras stationed on unmanned planes, nearby boats, high-altitude aircraft and from more distant points on the surrounding land. The location was partly selected because the network of islands formed an almost complete ellipse around the detonation site, allowing for a comprehensive documentation of the event from numerous angles. In many respects, CROSSROADS is sometimes described as a found film, as Conner once remarked “All I added were the splices”. The footage is accompanied by avant-garde Western classical music composed for electric organ by Terry Riley and sound produced on a Moog synthesizer by Patrick Gleeson.

About the artist
Bruce Conner (November 18, 1933 – July 7, 2008) was an American artist renowned for his work in film, assemblage, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, photography, and conceptual pranks. Born in McPherson, Kansas and raised in Wichita, he attended Wichita State and got his BFA from Nebraska University in 1956, where he met and married Jean Sandstedt in 1957 before transplanting to San Francisco.

Initially known for his assemblage, Conner turned to film with A MOVIE in 1958, and other media soon after, with a freewheeling curiosity and resistance to pigeonholing that would last throughout his lifetime. He was an intensely focused artist whose tremendous discipline and skill was sometimes obscured by an irreverent playfulness, and a wildly diverse and frenetic output. Conner achieved much fame but showed little interest in its trappings, often refusing to be photographed, and occasionally not signing his work. For his “Who’s Who in American Art” entry, he sent a notice of his death, and he exhibited a series of his collages under the name of his friend, Dennis Hopper.

In San Francisco, Conner and friends including Joan Brown, Jay De Feo, Manuel Neri, and Wallace Berman were associated with Beat and post-Beat movements, but also formed their own collective, the Rat-Bastard Protective Association. After a two-year sojourn in Mexico and other travels in the mid-1960’s, Conner returned to San Francisco and went into a period of exile from 1967 to 1971, when he quit exhibiting or teaching art. Upon ending this hiatus he returned to more public practice, making some of his most mature films, including CROSSROADS and TAKE THE 5:10 TO DREAMLAND, as well as continuing his work in diverse media.

Despite his efforts to ensure the contrary, Conner’s reputation has only expanded over the years. His contributions to cinema stand among his greatest achievements. Many attribute the birth of the music video to his 1961 film COSMIC RAY, as well as his more direct forays into the form in AMERICA IS WAITING (for David Byrne and Brian Eno) and MEA CULPA (with Devo). A MOVIE has achieved canonicity, and is today taught in introductory film history courses across the world. Key exhibitions include the seminal “2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story Part II” retrospective at the Walker Art Center, which was expanded upon in the highly lauded “BRUCE CONNER: IT’S ALL TRUE,” organised by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The survey opened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in July 2016 and travelled to SFMOMA and the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid. Conner is today recognized as one of the most important American artists of the 20th century.

Aideen Barry
Klostės
4K black and white with sound (no spoken word)
64 minutes
2022
IMMA Collection: Purchase, 2023

About the film:
Klostės, translating as Folds/Pleats, in English is a 4k nonverbal monochromatic stop-motion animated feature film based on a number of short stories, myths, and hidden histories of the Inter-War Modernist city of Kaunas Lithuania. This art film is directed by Aideen Barry and is a socially engaged moving image work created by citizens; artists, teachers, musicians, composers, young people, children, residents and volunteer groups whose main aim is to interpret and bring to life the invisible stories of this wunderkammer of a city of modernist gems.

Klostės is screened on Living Canvas at IMMA as part of the opening of the major three-year display celebrating IMMA’s Permanent Collection titled IMMA Collection: Art as Agency, that showcases over 100 artists from the 1960s to the present, highlighting key works including many recent acquisitions.

About Aideen Barry
Aideen Barry is a conceptual artist based in Ireland with an international multifaceted practice spanning filmmaking, performance, experimental lens-based media, drawing, and sculpture. Her work employs visual trickery to create a heightened suspension of reality, with a central theme of exploring sinister systems.

Barry’s recent projects are intersectional and collaborative, working with artists such as Peter Gabriel, William Kentridge, and The Centre of the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg, as well as Inuit throat singer ᕇᑦ Riit, singe Lukhanyiso Skosana, performer IBOKWE, Llewellyn Mnguni, composers Irene Buckley, choreographers Junk Ensemble, fashion designer Richard Malone, Tropical Popical & Margaret O’Connor, writer Sinéad Gleeson, poet Doireann Ni Ghríofa, composers Tshegofatso Moeng and Philip Miller. Barry engages with a diverse range of collaborators, including artists, pop singers, archives, archivists, historians, scientists and activists, transcending pop culture and visual culture to create massive interventionist artworks. Notably, she collaborated with nearly a thousand Lithuanian citizens to create the feature film Klostės, which is now part of the National Collection at IMMA and contributed to Kaunas receiving UNESCO World Heritage Status. Her works serve as a Brechtian hammer, while also democratising access to visual culture for various audiences and stakeholders, inviting them to co-author the creative process.

Significant projects include: projects and exhibitions at; The Bangkok Art Biennial curated by Dr. Apinan Poshyananda, FORMAT international festival of photography, UK, film screenings at the BFI and the IFI, solo at IMMA, solos at Salzburg Kunstverein, Oakville Galleries, Canada The Welt Museum, Vienna, Matucana 100; Chile,The Irish Museum of Modern Art PS; Ireland, CAC Malaga; Spain, The Headlands Center for the Arts; US, Centre for the Less Good Idea; South Africa, Art OMI; US, The Whitaker Museum;UK , NASA Kennedy Space Center; US, Skaftfell; Iceland, Banff Centre; Canada, Centre Cultural Irlandais; France. Selected Solo and international projects at: Galleri Image, Aarhus, Denmark, Zona Maco, Ch ACO; Chile, The Katzen Center at the American Museum; US, Wexner Center: US Elephant Gallery; UK, Moderna Musett; Sweden, Musée des Beaux Arts,Lyon; France, Louise T. Blouin Gallery; UK, Galeria Isabel Hurley; Spain, Artscene Shanghai;China and Project 304 Gallery; Thailand, BAC Geneva; Switzerland, Liste Art Fair; Switzerland, Catharine Clark Gallery; US, NYU DC; US, Crawford Municipal Gallery,Project Art Centre, Temple Bar Gallery, Limerick City Gallery, The RHA, Visual,Mothers Tankstation, The Butler Gallery; Ireland, an An Post EUROPA stamp commission and a collection of edition works with various Kunstverein in Europe and beyond.

Barry is a member of Aosdána and the Royal Hibernian Academy, and her work is held in private collections and public museum collections worldwide.

Clare Langan
The Heart of a Tree
HD video, sound
12 minutes
2020

About the film:
The Heart of a Tree contemplates the centrality of these giants of nature to the planet’s survival, and ours. Trees provide us with the very air we breathe. It is a glimpse into a future world where human beings have evolved and adapted in order to survive.

This film is a timely metaphor of a world turned upside down by our disregard for nature and the planet. The film is shot in a barren treeless landscape, which could either be a future vision of earth or another planet. The inhabitants negotiate their way thought this inhospitable environment, harvesting air, the new gold. They plant trees on a deserted black beach, hoping to repopulate the planet with its source of oxygen.

The Heart of a Tree explores the disconnection between humankind and nature and ultimately within ourselves. It is about redressing this imbalance, which has reached a tipping point. Global ecology is a delicate balancing act. It has become necessary for humans to evolve within their environment in order to survive. The work’s narrative contains this tension between harmony and strife.

The Heart of a Tree was shot was Clare Langan and Oscar nominated cinematographer Robbie Ryan with music by the late Jóhann Jóhannsson. The work is held in the collection of Fondazione In Between Art Film, Rome, and The Crawford Gallery of Art, Cork.

The Heart of a Tree is screened as part of the closing weekend of the major group exhibition Take A Breath, running in the Main Galleries at IMMA until 17 March 2025.

Contributors:

Film Credits

Director – Clare Langan
Cinematography – Robbie Ryan/ Clare Langan
Choreography – Maria Nilsson Waller

Cast:
Marcia Liu
Erik Nevin
Maria Nilsson Waller

Art Director – Anna Rackard
Costume Designer – Judith Williams
Editor – Daniel Goddard

With the music of – Jóhann Jóhannsson

‘Odi Et Amo (Theatre of Voices Version)’
Written and Performed by Jóhann Jóhannsson
Published by Mute Song Ltd
Courtesy of Universal Music

Music and Sound design Daniel Goddard
Featuring voices of Chris Davies
Cathy, Georgie and Nancy Goddard
Dubbing mixer Ben Young

“The Heart of a Tree”
DANIEL J L GODDARD
PUBLISHING: DOWNTOWN MUSIC / SONGTRUST

Producer in Iceland – Stefan Arni
Executive Producer – Edwina Forkin
Catering – Tristan Elizabeth Gribbin

Special thanks to; Maria Nilsson Waller, Anna Rackard, Robbie Ryan, Judith Williams, Tim Husom, Rosalie Vos, Deutsche Grammophon,Brian Langan, Daniel Goddard, Páll Gíslason at Kerlingafjöll, Iceland

Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland
An Arni & Kinski | Zanzibar Production

About Clare Langan
Clare Langan studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and with a Fulbright Scholarship, completed a film workshop at NYU. In 2017, Langan was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from The National University of Ireland. In 2019, the artist was elected a member of Aosdána. She has represented Ireland in numerous international Biennales, including the 25th Bienal de Sao Paulo, 2002 Brazil; The Liverpool Biennial – International 2002, Tate Liverpool: Sounds and Visions, Art Film and Video from Europe, 2009, Museum of Modern Art, Tel Aviv; Singapore Biennial 2008; Dojima River Biennale 2009, Osaka Japan; Busan Biennale 2010, South Korea and B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, Frankfurt 2017. In 2003 Langan presented A Film Trilogy at MoMA in New York and at the RHA, Dublin.

In 2023, At the Gates of Silent Memory, curated by Eamonn Maxwell was exhibited at The Luan Gallery Athlone. It was accompanied by a publication with an in-conversation with Mary Mc Carthy, Director of the Crawford Gallery of Art. Two of her films were recently purchased by The Crawford Gallery of Art for the National Collection. Other exhibitions in 2023 include her solo exhibition The New Dawn Fades, at The Golden Thread Gallery Belfast; The Voyage Out – Clare Langan, Ulla Schildt & Tonje Bøe Birkeland at Gyldenpris Kunsthall, Norway; solo photography exhibition Elizium Sarah Walker Gallery and  8 Alba curated by Carolina Ciuti at Dimora delle Balze, Sicily.

In 2022, her work was shown in Kunsthaus Kaufbeuren, Germany, as well as numerous film festivals worldwide with the release of The Rewilding. In 2020, her film The Heart of a Tree premiered at Kino Der Kunst Munich, where it was acquired by the prestigious Fondazione In Between Art and Film Rome. They commissioned an essay by Teresa Castro, examining the film in a wider conversation, as part of their series STILL- Studies on Moving Images. Flight from the City was selected by the Crawford Gallery for Artists Film International (AFI), which toured worldwide through 2021 to Whitechapel Gallery, London, Hammer Museum, LA, NBK, Berlin, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Ballroom Marfa, Texas, and The Museum of Modern Art, Moscow.

The Heart of a Tree 1 won The Progressive Vision Curtin O’ Donoghue Photography Prize at The RHA Annual Exhibition 2022. She was featured on RTE’s The Works Presents, interviewed by John Kelly, in 2022. Her films have won numerous awards including the Principle Prize at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Germany 2007, and the Prix Videoformes Award 2013, France.

Langan’s films and photographs are in a number of international public and private collections including IMMA, The Crawford Gallery of Art, The Arts Council of Ireland, Fondazione In Between Art and Film, Rome, The Office of Public Works, the Tony Podesta Private Collection, Washington, and the Hugo and Carla Brown Collection, UK. She has undertaken numerous public art commissions including NUI Maynooth and Castletown House.Langan’s current project Earthbound 2025 is in production.