DUCHAMP PGM 7: MERCE AND MARCEL
Charles Atlas & Merce Cunningham WALKAROUND TIME 1973, 48 min, 16mm-to-DCP WALKAROUND TIME marks Charles Atlas's first visual documentation of a Merce Cunningham dance. Its set consists of seven large translucent inflatables screen-printed with images taken from Marcel Duchamp's "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" (1915-1923), commonly referred to as "The Large Glass". Artist Jasper Johns, who had been Cunningham's artistic adviser since 1966, proposed the set idea to Cage, Cunningham, and Duchamp during an after-dinner conversation. "Though the choreography, music and decor were each independently conceived, they shared a common thematic purpose: an homage to the work of Marcel Duchamp. Cunningham has translated Duchamp's concern with transparency in terms of a dance which explores the possibilities of lateral movement across a proscenium space. Cunningham's ready-made is the 'laissez-faire' movement during the 'entr'acte', and when he changes costume on stage it is a nod to the famous nude." –Charles Atlas Shigeko Kubota & Nam June Paik MERCE BY MERCE BY PAIK PART TWO: MERCE AND MARCEL 1978, 13 min, video In MERCE AND MARCEL, Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kubota create a densely textured, transcultural collage that pays tribute to the eponymous artists by addressing the relationship of art and life. Paik and Kubota link art to the movements and gestures of the everyday: "Is this dance?" reads the text over an aerial view of taxis moving through the streets of New York, and the image of a baby's tottering first steps. A rare interview with Duchamp by Russell Connor is re-edited by Paik in a rapid, stutter-step progression. In a witty temporal layering that Paik terms a "dance of time," an interview with Cunningham, also by Connor, is intercut and superimposed with the earlier interview of Duchamp: "Time reversible – Time irreversible."