Tone Glow is excited to announce “The Body Electric,” a program highlighting six films by the visual artist and filmmaker Paul Sharits (1943-1993). Born in Colorado, Sharits was a protégé of Stan Brakhage (whose works were previously shown at the IMSS) and was deeply interested in individualizing the film frame so it could be understood as the medium’s “basic module of information,” creating various optical phenomena in the process. His first “pure color” film, Ray Gun Virus (1966), was built on a desire to create “vibratory fields” that couldn’t be attained in his painting practice. Informed by the classical music training he received as a child, he approached his early works like a composer, constructing them frame by frame to create rhythmic patterns and motifs that could generate melodic lines, tonal centers, and “temporal chords of color.” Sharits sought to find ways for vision to “function in ways usually particular to hearing,” which included ways to compress and expand one’s experience of time. His later films contained multiple, discrete sections to “create logical propositions”; their structure was inspired by sonatas and other musical forms.

Epileptic Seizure Comparison (1976), one of Sharits’ most extraordinary works, extracts footage from a medical film that looks at brain wave activity during seizures. These images are interspersed with frames of pure color, creating immense flickering effects whose formal properties “serve to emphasize the contortions and movements in the figure.” Sharits wanted the film to help viewers “move beyond voyeurism and actually enter into the convulsive state, to allow a deeper empathy for the condition.” The films featured in this event are split into two programs. The first half will focus on the more analytical side of Sharits’ practice, granting a chance to understand how film can be approached to construct recognizable patterns, elicit physiological responses, and offer opportunities for sense-making even when what is seen is non-figurative. The second half features three hallucinatory works featuring humans, concluding with the intensely visceral Epileptic Seizure Comparison.

Only one ticket is needed for the entire event. The films in the program will be screened on 16mm prints courtesy of Canyon Cinema and The Film-Makers’ Cooperative. These works feature immense strobing effects. Viewer discretion is advised. Thank you to Ben Creech for projecting the films.

Program 1 at 7:00 PM

1. Word Movie (Flux Film 29) (1966, color, sound, 4 mins)

2. Episodic Generation (1978, color, sound, 30 mins)

3. Ray Gun Virus (1966, color, sound, 14 mins)

TRT = 48 mins

Program 2 at 8:15 PM

1. Piece Mandala/End War (1966, color & b/w, silent, 5 mins)

2. T, O, U, C, H, I, N, G (1968, color, sound, 12 mins)

3. Epileptic Seizure Comparison (1976, color, sound, 34 mins)

TRT = 51 mins

Tone Glow is a publication dedicated to avant-garde music and film founded by Joshua Minsoo Kim. Alongside interviews and criticism, Tone Glow hosts film screenings around Chicago.

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Tags: Chicago, IMSS, International Museum of Surgical Science, Near North Side, Paul Sharits, Tone Glow, Tone Glow Presents “The Body Electric: Six Films By Paul Sharits”