Fred Worden (assistant professor, Visual Arts) will be featured on the American Originals Now series at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. on December 11 and 17. Since the 1970s, Worden has been making experimental films primarily to examine “how a stream of still pictures passing through a projector at a speed meant to overwhelm the eyes might be harnessed to purposes other than representation or naturalism.” With wholehearted revelry in cinematic illusion and a commitment to kinetic abstractions, he produces short films and digital videos that draw attention to subjective perceptual play through the manipulation of visual phenomena. His work has been exhibited at festivals and venues in Paris, Hong Kong, Rotterdam, London, New York, and Toronto.
On December 11 at 4:30 in the East Building Concourse, a program features several of his more recent works, including Here (2005, 7 minutes), “a conjuring in order to accommodate a clandestine rendezvous between Sir Laurence Olivier and Georges Méliés”; Possessed (2010, 9 minutes, pictured here), a reworking of a short clip from an early Joan Crawford movie that establishes her firmly on the “outside”; and the ribald When Worlds Collude (2008, 13 minutes).
On December 17, also at 4:30 in the East Building Concourse, Worden will present “After Hours in the Cerebral Kitchen,” a talk/lecture he has designed to contextualize his interest in the moving image and human perception. Following the presentation, Worden will show one of his early 16 mm nonfiction film How the Hell I Ripped Jack Goldstein’s Painting in the Elevator (1989, 22 minutes, pictured) and offer a rare opportunity to view and discuss his current work in progress, tentatively titled All or Nothing.
