Artwork: Inbox: Charles Atlas, courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Groundbreaking filmmaker and video artist Charles Atlas (American, b.1949) has established himself at the forefront of the avant-garde over the past 40 years by collaborating with luminaries across the disciplines of visual art, dance, music, theater, and television.
.
He arrived in New York via St. Louis, MI, in 1970 at the age of 20, with dreams of becoming a filmmaker working during a period that gave birth to some of the cinema’s greatest revolutionaries. He got a job working with the legendary Merce Cunningham Dance Company, first as assistant stage manager and then becoming a lighting designer.
.
By 1974, he was the company’s filmmaker-in-residence, acquiring a Super 8 movie camera and setting out to create unedited filmic works. Soon Atlas and Cunningham began to create “media-dance,” a partnership between the camera and the performer where they move together for a series of dance performances designed specifically for film—absorbing many of the lessons that Marcel Duchamp introduced earlier in the century.
.
Read the Full Story at Crave Online