Pier Marton: Vita Highlights

SUMMARIES + ENDORSEMENTS &  LECTURES & PRESENTATIONS

SHORT
Pier Marton’s video work is in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (M.o.M.A.), the Paris Beaubourg Museum. the Paris Mémorial de la Shoah, Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum and Toronto’s National Gallery of Canada, as well as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. He has given talks about his work at M.o.M.A., the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Carnegie Museum, and at Yad Vashem in Israel. His work has been praised by the New York Times, The Village Voice and Arts Magazine. He is the recipient of various grants like the National Endowment for the Arts and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. He has taught at major U.S. universities like U.C.L.A., U.C. San Diego, Carnegie Mellon, Penn State, Washington University and the School of the Art Institute where he chaired the video department. Some recent presentation topics include: The Holocaust in 1,000 Years, Shoah & Film, Slow Cinema. His latest efforts as the “Unlearning Specialist” at the School of No Media target our cultural blind-spots and our hide-and-seek games with “reality.”

LONGER
– Lectured with own work at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the Carnegie Museum (Pittsburgh), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), SUNY Buffalo’s Media Studies,  and many other schools including l’École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs (Paris).
– Work reviewed in NYTimes, Arts Magazine, The Village Voice, and in Europe, in Flash Art, Le Monde, Libération, Art Press.
– Work collected in Museum of Modern Art, Carnegie Museum, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C., and abroad in the National Gallery of Canada (Toronto), the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), and the Beaubourg Museum/Musée Georges Pompidou and the Mémorial de la Shoah (Paris).
– Shows also in NY’s Whitney Museum, the New Museum and the Jewish Museum, the Berlin Film Festival and the French and Spanish National TV networks.
– Written for the influential film magazine, Les Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), the New Art Examiner (Chicago) and La Opinión (Los Angeles).
– Grants by National Endowment for the Arts, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, Illinois Council for the Arts.
– Work featured in two Thames and Hudson anthologies, one on video art, the other on new media.
– Taught at Occidental College, U.C.L.A, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chair), U.C.San Diego, Carnegie Mellon, Penn State, Washington University.
– Baccalauréat Math/Sciences, Paris, France, Cum Laude B.F.A. and Master of Fine Arts from U.C.L.A. Film School, Los Angeles.
Besides the Shoah, much of his artwork, and some of his teaching, have focused on cultural blind spots and issues of violence and its representation.
– Gives annual film presentations at the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Research Center, and at the Cinema St. Louis – Robert Classic French Film Festival.
– Now as the Unlearning Specialist at the School of No Media, he aims to investigate the violence of representation, what lies beyond that – and what constitutes “what is” (True reality is always unrealistic. Franz Kafka & The essence of normalcy is the refusal of reality. Ernst Becker). Since 2008. after spending three weeks in an I.C.U., he struggles in a lonely place… not to get caught up by the ubiquitous myths.

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LONGER CV available upon request

• Work in the collections of the M.o.M.A.,, and at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C., the Carnegie Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Mémorial de la Shoah and the Beaubourg Museum (Paris) – with its Collection Catalogue. Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix (NYC) and Facets (Chicago).

• • Work reviewed in Flash Art, Arts Magazine, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Libération, Art Press, Le Monde (Paris).
  • In-person lectures/presentations (among others): M.o.M.A., Carnegie Museum, Walker Art Center, Anthology Film Archives, AIVF, School of Visual Arts (NYC), Art Metropole (Canada), Visual Studies, CalArts, SUNY Buffalo Media Study, Yad Vashem (Israel), Arts Déco (France), Yom HaShoah (Holocaust) Commemoration w. 1,000 in attendance (St. Louis).
  • Work included in shows in Venice/São Paolo/Paris Biennials, A.F.I., M.o.M.A., Whitney, New Museum’s The Other Man show, curated by Marcia Tucker along with John Coplans work, Jewish Museum, The Kitchen (NYC), Beaubourg & Musée d’Art Moderne (Paris), Pier Marton Retrospective, Ramat Gan Museum, Israel.

• Books with featured work (partial list): Video Art by Michael Rush, Thames and Hudson, 2003; New Media in Late 20th-Century Art, Michael Rush, Thames and Hudson, N.Y. 1999; Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation, ed. By Timothy Druckrey, Aperture 1996; Vidéo et Après, Éditions du Centre Georges Pompidou/Éditions Carré, Paris 1992; Eye for I: Video Self-Portraits, A Traveling Exhibition, Raymond Bellour, New York: Independent Curators Inc. [ICI], 1989; Communications No. 48. Paris, 1988.
• Installations: JEW toured the U.S. as part of the Witness and Legacy show; Peace Museum, Chicago; Jewish Museum, Vienna, Austria.
• Eye and Thou: Jewish Autobiography in Film and Video, Dr. Sander Gilman discusses Pier Marton’s Say I’m a Jew with the author, Conference through Institute for the Study of Jews in American Life, U.S.C, Los Angeles.
• Written for Les Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), La Opinión (Los Angeles), the New Art Examiner (Chicago), and film reviews for papers, with more recent ones on my blog and on previous websites.
• Writing on Holocaust Art published in Absence/Presence, Dr. Stephen Feinstein ed., Syracuse  U. Press, 2005.
• Say I’m a Jew presented at the same time and and the same Berlin Film Festival when/where Claude Lanzmann introduces his Shoah – I did not know about his film when I did my short piece.
• Work broadcast on The Learning Channel (a live satellite performance), and on French and Spanish TV.
• Panelist: Carnegie International, Chicago Film Center & French Embassy Cultural Services on African Cinema, College Art Association w. Chris Burden.
• Recipient of various National Endowment for the Arts grants and past jury member.
• Videographer for Shoah Foundation, David Dorfman, Suzanne Lacy, UCLA Dance Festival.
• Body in Hermann Nitsch’s Action, L.A.C.E. & Some Serious Business. (cf. bottom of page)
  
• Lead actor in The Man Without a World, a feature film by Eleanor Antin, with artists Allan Kaprow, Newton Harrison and poet, Jeremy Rothenberg, (cf. bottom of page).
  
• Lead actor, Euripides’ The Bacchae, one year rehearsal as Dionysos w. Ron Sossi, The Odyssey Theater. Studies w. Grotowski disciple, Leonidas Ossetynski, and with pantomime, Richmond Shepard, Los Angeles.
• Past Board of Directors: St. Louis Film Critics Association, Foundation for Art Resources (FAR), Los Angeles, Exhibition Committee St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Research Center.
• Studied with Jean Baudrillard, filmmaker Shirley Clarke (thesis advisor), Bill Moritz, Gene Youngblood and Bruce Nauman at U.C.L.A. (+ time with Chick Strand, Elfriede Fischinger & Slavko Vorkapich).
• Taught at Washington University (13 years), Carnegie Mellon, School of Art Institute of Chicago (chair), Minneapolis College of Art and Design, UC San Diego, UCLA, San Francisco Art Institute, CCA, Occidental College (a selection).
• Son of photographer/artist, Ervin Marton, who took portraits of Picasso, Chagall, Cocteau, Camus, Cendrars, among many others.
• Member of the Global Brain Group.
• B.F.A. (Cum Laude) and M.F.A. from UCLA Film School.
• Baccalauréat Mathematics & Natural Sciences, Paris, France.
  

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  [where to fit this?
  – As a teenager, in the context of being seen by the Centre Alfred Binet in Paris, I was subjected by Serge Lebovici (teacher of Tobie Nathan) to a humiliating group cross-examination reminiscent of Ken Loach’s anti-psychiatry film Family Life. This became later a brutal way to viscerally connect to Artaud, and to all of his writings).
  – Which brings me to Chris Marker to whom I once said that my video work had been inspired by Artaud. “I did see Artaud in person at the Sorbonne (ed. was it actually the Vieux-Colombier?)… It is absurd to claim you were inspired by Artaud!” – end of any further conversation.
  – Speaking of those, I once had a rich and lively talk with Susan Sontag; yes, she had published an important book in English on Artaud, but here we were both saying how significant Ernst Friedrich‘s antiwar book, War Against War, had been for us… she asked me why, unlike her going to Sarajevo, I had not yet gone to a war zone. I answered that I hear the bombs all the time in my head. And I don’t need to go there.]
  

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Two collaborations

In 1978, the Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch visited Los Angeles.

 In 1991, the artist Eleanor Antin cast Pier Marton in the title role for her feature film, The Man Without a World
— a silent Yiddish film, now “touring the world” in the context of a new score (with two outstanding composer-musicians) and a 4K renovation —

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The renowned late poet, Jerome Rothenberg playing the rabbi while Pier Marton plays the poet.