Pier Marton's Video Works

*Electronic Arts Intermix in NYC describes* *the work in their own way.*
One of the great debates in the West ever since the 19th century (or even since the exile to Egypt!) is whether the Jews can produce art. Pier Marton is living proof that they can not only produce art but also that reflecting on being Jewish can be a fundamental aspect of the art they produce. Marton is innovative and self-reflexive: an original whose sense of “being Jewish” is both profound and playful. He is an artist for our age in which being Jewish confronts the past and deals with the present age that is as much rooted in the debates about representation and the Shoah as in Zeek/Jewcy culture. Sander L. Gilman Author, The Jew's Body and Jewish Self Hatred
	In every age, the prophetic tradition is reborn by the forces of human events. In our time, Pier Marton rakes the virtual screens and the tablets of our hypocrisies with the sharp claws of the avenging angel, piercing the complacent facade of the status quo to reveal the underlying agonies of our conflicting moralities. Aribert Munzner Professor Emeritus The Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Collected Works: 1979-1984

•Tapes (1979), 16 min. color

The unraveling of the author's personal & collective fears through short performance vignettes playing off the newly accessible medium of video (with a J. Hoberman review in the Village Voice when it played at The Kitchen).

•Unity Through Strength 1981-1982, 6:30 min, color

Television reality as a passivity-inducing fabrication. Uses the sounds from an industry’s “audio-sweetening” demo along with U.S. end-of-night-broadcast-imagery and footage surrounding Archbishop Romero’s killing.

•Telepathos 1982, 2:10 min, color

An effort to demystify through telepathy (low-tech), a (high-tech) live satellite broadcast of the National Artist Conference on the Learning Channel connecting U.C.L.A., N.Y.U. and University of Iowa.

•heaven is what i've done (for my fellow beings) 1984, 2:36 min, color

A Public Service Announcement, to measure the lightness of our despair in light of the economic depression (1984 was a resounding year to go through with Reagan as president - Orwell's warnings had become too real).

A stand-out, an unforgettable image of Marton talking suicide. J. Hoberman, The Village Voice A carefully crafted chaos, a brilliant meditation on the refinement of anguish. Nightmares, he insists can only be dreamed by a conscious mind. Douglas Blau, Flash Art & Arts Magazine Turns your brains inside out like Hitchcock's trickiest scenes. As sharp as a crack of the whip. Patrick Rousseau, Libération, Paris

Say I'm a Jew
1985, 28:21 min, color

Presented as part of a touring installation called JEW and included in the exhibit Witness and Legacy
Related sites:
the University of Tennessee and Knoxville Museum of Art with a segment with a panoramic view
and a (presently, non-functioning RealPlayer version of) Say I'm a Jew & the University Museum, Albany, NY.
Face to face interviews about issues of identity for the European Children of Holocaust Survivors now living in the U.S. Here are a few related images from Say I'm a Jew and JEW.	The most remarkable achievement... Individual identity, individual healing, individual transcendence are his subjects. It deserves a much wider audience. John Russell in the N.Y.Times The complete review.

(are we and/or do we) LIKE MEN
1986, 16:42 min, color - In collaboration with Wendy Ultan and Glenn Biegon

	Again, through face to face interviews, the tape locates the place of violence in men's lives,and the people surrounding them.		Like Men "is Pier Marton's heartfelt exposé of male vulnerability. It is a stunning effort, a real labor of love. Linda Frye Burnham, The L.A. Weekly

	In the process of being finished, a one hour project, reflecting Jewish issues of time and "the need to connect": Time To Be (Jews in Paradise) It features interviews with Rabbis Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Arthur Green, Lawrence Kushner, Lynn Gottlieb, Arthur Waskow, David Zeller , Dr. Avivah Zornberg and many others (more about it here) There is a four minute installment, Never the less with Dr. Zornberg.


	What of the Holocaust is being remembered and how? What kind of knowledge is being passed down? And how do we grasp the world today in light of such knowledge? These are the questions we find embedded in the works of a current generation of writers and artists born after, but indelibly shaped by, the Holocaust, writers such as Melvin Bukiet, Thane Rosenbaum, Francine Prose, and Anne Michaels; artists like Art Spiegelman, Shimon Attie, Ellen Rothenberg, Vera Frenkel, and Pier Marton; film-makers like Abraham Ravett; composers like Steve Reich. The Future's Past Is Now by James E. Young

*DISTRIBUTORS* (some with viewing facilities): - Chicago, but they mail anywhere in the world: Facets Multimedia -(800) 331 6197 - New York City: Electronic Arts Intermix in West Chelsea -- (212) 337 0680, and the Museum of Modern Art		*ARCHIVES/COLLECTIONS* (often with viewing available): - Boston: M.I.T.'s Libraries - Los Angeles area: The Otis/Parson Library in L. A., and the Long Beach Museum Archives - Pittsburgh: The Carnegie Museum, and the Carnegie Mellon University Media Center - New York Area: Holocaust Resource Center and Archives, CUNY at Bayside - Ottawa, Canada:The National Gallery - Paris, France: Beaubourg/Centre George Pompidou - La Collection du Musée d'Art Moderne.