Michael Snow

Michael Snow was considered one of Canadas most important artists and one of the worlds leading experimental filmmakers His wideranging and multidisciplinary oeuvre explored the possibilities inherent in different mediums and genres and encompassed film and video painting sculpture photography writing and music Snows practice comprised a thorough investigation into the nature of perception While Snow early established himself as a successful painter and musician in his native Toronto it was his 1962 move to New York City that marked the beginning of his rise to international prominence He entered into a longlasting and fruitful dialogue with downtown Manhattans artistic avant garde exchanging ideas with figures such as Yvonne Rainer Philip Glass Sol LeWitt and Richard Foreman and developing of some of his most ambitious and influential works to date His 1964 film New York Eye and Ear Control documents his growing involvement with the burgeoning free jazz movement and the soundtrack boasts a lineup that includes Albert Ayler Don Cherry and Sonny Murray Snow would continue to pursue improvised music both on his own and in ensembles such as Torontos CCMC The generation and reception of sound in the broader sense emerged as one of his main concerns reflected in performance and tape works that share qualities with contemporaneous experiments by composers like Steve Reich At the same time Snow made alliances within the underground film scene centered around Jonas Mekas Filmmakers Cinematheque an experience that encouraged him to find ways to transfer his concerns with music and photography into the realm of the moving image He assisted Hollis Frampton on films such as Nostalgia1971 and it was legendary director Ken Jacobs whose loan of equipment helped Snow create his most famous and influential work the groundbreaking 1967 film Wavelength Wavelength which notoriously includes a 45minute camera zoom within a fixed frame remains one of the most studied and admired works of structuralist filmmaking Other of Snows films of this period including Back and Forth 1969 and La Région Centrale 1971 similarly explored the mechanics of filmmaking to simultaneously investigate the functional processes of cinema and of thinking itself In the 1970s and 1980s Snow responding to a growing institutional commitment to his work experimented more with largescale installations including public sculptures such as Flightstop 1979 and The Audience 198889 In recent years he focused on the specific nature and potential of digital media yielding works like the videofilm Corpus Callosum 2002 Regardless of artistic genre Snow consistently engaged in an analytical discourse on the nature of consciousness and experience language and temporality He died on January 5th 2023