Radical Film Night:The Ant Farm Collective

description: 2 short films from the 1960's and 70's radical video collective, Ant Farm.

The Eternal Frame
1975, 23:50 min, b&w and color, sound

The Eternal Frame is an examination of the role that the media plays in the creation of (post) modern historical myths. For T.R. Uthco and Ant Farm, the iconic event that signified the ultimate collusion of historical spectacle and media image was the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. The work begins with an excerpt from the only filmed record of Kennedy's assassination: Super-8 footage shot by Abraham Zapruder, a bystander on the parade route.

Using those infamous few frames of film as their starting point, T.R. Uthco and Ant Farm construct a multi-levelled event that is simultaneously a live performance spectacle, a taped re-enactment of the assassination, a mock documentary, and, perhaps most insidiously, a simulation of the Zapruder film itself. Performed in Dealey Plaza in Dallas -- the actual site of the assassination -- the re-enactment elicits bizarre responses from the spectators, who react to the simulation as though it were the original event.

Media Burn
Media Burn integrates performance, spectacle and media critique, as Ant Farm stages an explosive collusion of two of America's most potent cultural symbols: the automobile and television. On July 4, 1975, at San Francisco's Cow Palace, Ant Farm presented the "ultimate media event." In this alternative Bicentennial celebration, a "Phantom Dream Car" -- a reconstructed 1959 El Dorado Cadillac convertible -- was driven through a wall of burning TV sets.