Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2625 Durant Avenue #2250
Berkeley, CA 94720-2250
Bruce Conner: Mabuhay Gardens
June 4, 2008 - August 3, 2008
"If rock ’n’ roll rose out of a culture of opposition, then the mid-seventies was a bad patch for rock ’n’ roll. Corporate rock smothered the airwaves, while beat-heavy disco swept through the club scene, leaving platform shoes and polyester in its wake. In the midst of this malaise, punk, that dark, rousing outburst, was finding its first expression in a marginalized scene that embodied the ardent anarchy indigenous to youth culture. Not a ready commodity, punk was anti-music flung at the mawkish mainstream.
In San Francisco, a failing Filipino supper club, the Mabuhay Gardens, became the unlikely haven for the punk scene. The thatched booths and tiki lamps bordered a stage where angst-ridden anthems ricocheted off the dilapidated walls. Into this demimonde of three-chord chaos came artist Bruce Conner, a proto-punk provocateur who scavenged cultural waste to construct his assemblages and found-footage films. Drawn to the unvarnished kineticism of this dusky scene, Conner became a habitué of the Fab Mab, as it came to be known."
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[notes by BAM|PFA Video Curator Steve Seid]
[Photo from BAM|PFA Web site. Caption: "Bruce Conner: Will Shatter: Negative Trend, January 29, 1978; black-and-white photograph; 9 7/8 x 13 1/8 in.; museum purchase: bequest of Thérèse Bonney, Class of 1916, by exchange; photo courtesy of the artist."]
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