Monday March 16, 7:30pm
working title (Shattered)
by James Fotopoulos & Barney Rosset
admission $6 – free for Members
Still from “Untitled (working title Shattered)” (James Fotopoulos & Barney Rosset, 2006)
Microscope presents as the third of a series of four screening programs in connection with the current exhibit “James Fotopoulos: The Given” the NY premiere of a collaborative feature working title (Shattered) made with the legendary Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset and completed in 2006. The work arose out of discussions for a trilogy based on literary works, with working title (Shattered) first conceived as an adaption of the Samuel Beckett play Eleutheria. Eventually stops and starts in the process, including those related to rights issues, led to the expansion of the concept to incorporate other ideas as well as biographical aspects of Rosset’s life, including his visual archive, dream journals, parts of plays and books that he published as well as Rosset’s own footage shot in Thailand.
working title (Shattered) involved a series of edits from its original over 3-hour long first cut. Today the work exists in “four or five” versions ranging from slightly over 60 minutes to more than 2 hours. The 78-minute version will be screened, followed by scenes cut from longer edits.
working title (Shattered)
by James Fotopoulos & Barney Rosset
video, color, sound, 2006, 78 minute version
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Barney Rosset was born in Chicago in 1922 and died in Manhattan in 2012 at the age of 89. Rosset was the legendary publisher of Grove Press, which he acquired in 1951, and the Evergreen Review, launched in 1957 through which he introduced to the American audience many of the most important avant-garde and controversial writers of the 20th century – including D.H. Lawrence, Samuel Beckett, Pablo Neruda, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Jean Genet, Eugène Ionesco, Marguerite Duras, Malcolm X, Octavio Paz, Kenzaburō Ōe, Harold Pinter, Pauline Réage (Anne Desclos), John Rechy, and Tom Stoppard among many others – successfully challenging obscenity laws in the Supreme Court on several occasions. In addition to his work in publishing, Rosset had a lifelong interest in film. He served in a photographic & film unit in China During World War II and produced and/or distributed works such as the feature Strange Victory in 1948, Samuel Beckett’s Film (1965), and I am Curious (Yellow) in 1968 among others.
James Fotopoulos is an artist working primarily with the mediums of moving image, sculpture, and drawing. Among his many notable film and video works, which range from several seconds to over seven hours are Zero (1997), his first feature that debuted when Fotopoulos was 20, Migrating Forms (1999), Christabel (2001), Jerusalem (2003-2004), The Sky Song (2007), Alice in Wonderland (2010), Dignity (2012), and There (2014). His works have screened and exhibited in the US and abroad including at MoMA P.S.1, Walker Art Center, Whitney Biennial, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Arts and Design, Andy Warhol Museum, Sundance Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, London Film Festival, Festival del Film Locarno, Museo de Art Contemportaneo del Zulia, Venezuela, Biennial for Videoart, Mechelen, Belgium, among others. His work has been discussed in Artforum, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Hyperallergic, The New York Post, and others. He is a recipient of a Creative Capital Foundation Grant. James Fotopoulos was born in Chicago, IL in 1976 and currently lives and works in New York.
Still from “Untitled (working title Shattered)” (James Fotopoulos & Barney Rosset, 2006)
Microscope gratefully acknowledges the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation as the Official Sponsor of the Event Series
