Hallucinogenic Religion (Bruce Conner)

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A couple of weeks ago at It’s All True, the Bruce Conner show at MOMA. Conner was an interesting figure in  San Francisco in the late 1950s and 1960s. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, religion pops up, on view as hallucinatory and trance-like, saturated by photography and film, visionary and meditative, alert to the historical moment, overwhelmed by death and destruction, laced with LSD and hopped up with amphetamines. I’m posting here still images from the Angel photograms, the inky black Buddhist mandalas, and the late and the ecstatic Easter Morning, being a fast paced film utterly compelling, saturated with bright spring like color accompanied by Terrence Riley’s signature In C.

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About zjb

Zachary Braiterman is Professor of Religion in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University. His specialization is modern Jewish thought and philosophical aesthetics. http://religion.syr.edu
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2 Responses to Hallucinogenic Religion (Bruce Conner)

  1. dmf says:

    perhaps this says more about me than the medium but when I’m looking at projections in galleries as intriguing or pleasing as the images may be I don’t get caught up in them, always a step back if you will.

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