Jud Yalkut

An unreleased diary film shot during the Fairleigh-Dickinson Artist Seminar simultaneous to the production of Back and Forth by Michael Snow.

Part of the "Video-Film Concert" collection on EAI. From 1966 - 1972. Music by K. S. Narayanaswami.

Yalkut's film is the only record of Nam June Paik's legendary 1967 performance Opera Sextronique in New York, which was interrupted by the arrest of cellist Charlotte Moorman, who was performing topless. The incident led to Moorman's subsequent notoriety as the "Topless Cellist." This restaging of the first two movements of Opera Sextronique, performed by Moorman and filmed by Yalkut in a studio, was shot immediately after the arrest incident to present at Moorman's trial. (The judge did not permit it to be shown in court.)

1965, black- and-white, 8 min., double-screen projection.

"This sensuous sea of color, motion, light that seems to surround us completely and we swim in it almost bodily and it is like going through the most fantastic dream." - Jonas Mekas

PLANES is an exploration of the corollaries between psychic space and the physical escape of consciousness beyond the earth's biosphere.

The ritual of amorous adventure among the domestic peccaries of North America.

Part of a restored collection of rare early works by Nam June Paik, Electronic Fables is an example of Paik's early improvisations and experiments with electronic image manipulation, prior to his invention of the Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer. This piece also makes use of anecdotes by John Cage and other influential artists and cultural figures.

Abstract light poem tribute to Julio Le Parc, first winner at the 1966 Venice Biennial of a Painting Prize for Kinetic Art, filmed at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York. Premiered at the Gate Theater, New York.

Part of a collection of restored early works by Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut, this piece is historically significant as well as remarkably prescient. Video Tape Study No.3 is a direct media intervention, in which Paik distorts and manipulates footage from news conferences by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and New York Mayor Lindsey.

A poetic montage of the 'sculpture garden house' of 67 year old hermit-builder Clarence Schmidt of Woodstock, New York, appraised as 'a really great work of folk art' by curators Lawrence Alloway and Henry Geldzahler. The film includes some of the only footage taken of Clarence living within the seven-story mountain interior of his creation, which was tragically gutted by fire in the winter of 1967-68. A homage to Clarence and his more than forty years of devotion to the transmutation of cast-off objects into an environment or beauty and love.

A four-screen within one frame film, shot in un-slit regular 8mm, in four sections of four performance / happening / destruction art events presented in 1967 at the Judson Gallery below Washington Square in New York City. SOME MANIPULATIONS captures the confrontational light pieces of Jean Toche, an avant garde musical performance by Nam June Paik and cellist Charlotte Moorman, an actionist painting event by Steve Rose, and a classic Dada lecture/performance by Al Hansen. SOME MANIPULATIONS was premiered in December 1967 as one of the continuous loop elements in Jud Yalkut's DESTRUCT FILM environment, in which spectator/participants were obliged to walk, sit on, and dive into a floor covered with unrolled "junk" 16mm film in order to view the rotating slide and film projections. The film's inclusion represented an instance of ultimate feedback of events back into the space in which they had been presented.

Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas’s first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols. Blending everyday encounters with portraits of the avant-garde art scene, it forms an epic, personal meditation on community, creativity, and the passage of time.

"Comprises film and videotape from the August (1969) epic freak-out in New York State (White Lake- "Woodstock") with all the groups you can name, and a cast of half a million. Unlike the Rolling Stones films shown on British television, this is full-color and the techniques are more imaginative and acid-based than the Stones film, good as that was." – Alex Gross, London "International Times." Selected for the Montreal International Festival of Film in 16mm at the Museé des Beaux Arts; the Encounter With The American Cinema at Sorrento, Italy, 1970 (Selection of Martin Scorcese); and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris American Underground Film Weekend. Silent version premiered in 1969, accompanied by video and light show, in the extended opening program of Global Village in New York City.

"The question is, it is either going to be a stoned age or a new Stone Age" - Louis Brigante

A film exploration of the work and aesthetic concepts of Yayoi Kusama, painter, sculptor, and environmentalist, conceived in terms of an intense emotional experience with metaphysical overtones, an extension of my ultimate interest in a total fusion of the arts in a spirit of mutual collaboration. —Jud Yalkut

A film directed by Jud Yalkut

This early work belongs in the company of Paik and Yalkut's classic collaborative "video-films," including Video Tape Study No. 3, Beatles Electronique, and Missa of Zen. To the accompaniment of the abrupt sonic interjections of Fluxus-affiliated composer Takehisa Kosugi, Yalkut's black and white film records brief, masked actions: an arm with clenching fist; a pair of faces, visible only about the eyes, which squint, gaze, and rest; Paik eating a slice of bread. Reminiscent of Beckett's theater, as well as the minimal movements of 1960s avant-garde dance, Cinéma Metaphysique is a study in gesture and stillness, noise and silence.

In Missa of Zen, a TV screen, filmed from an extremely oblique angle, appears as a ghostly, flickering sliver at the side of a darkened frame. The images playing across its surface are rendered abstract by the perspective: we witness the transmission of information, but at a great distance. Isolated in silence and darkness, the television set slips into the realm of the unheimlich — an uncanny object, at once familiar and unfamiliar. Situating mediated America at the crossroads of missa — Latin for the Christian mass — and Zen Buddhism, Paik highlights the connections between mass culture and the transcendental.

Waiting for Commercials is a hilarious compendium of Japanese TV commercials. "Beckett wrote 'Waiting for Godot' twenty years ago, but instead of Godot, TV commercial after TV commercial arrived". This early example of Paik's use of appropriated television imagery as pop cultural artifact was originally created for a performance piece of the same name, which featured Charlotte Moorman and her cello.