Screening Dates

Gordon Matta-Clark, the artist, urban explorer, and ​“anarchitect” most famous for the ​“building cuts” he performed on various decomposing structures in the 1970s, made 18 short films before his untimely death from cancer in 1978. The power of the cut to create strange new juxtapositions, the epistemological faculty of an opening that introduces light to new planes—metaphorical connections between Matta-Clark’s work and the cinematic apparatus abound. This program collects six of his films shot between 1972 and 1976, documenting four building cuts, one formal experiment, and one car crash. In all of his work, Matta-Clark sought to expose the thinness of the boundaries that divide people, mediums, spaces, and ideas. With sledgehammer, chainsaw, and his own two feet, he punched through these walls with an urgency that has been increasingly felt in the decades since his passing, cutting new holes for light to pour in. —Dylan Adamson

Film prints courtesy of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark

Introduction by critic and programmer Dylan Adamson and Jessamyn Fiore, co-director of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark.


Fire Child
USA 1971
10 min. 16mm

Fresh Kill
USA 1972
13 min. 16mm

Bingo/​Ninths
USA 1974
10 min. 16mm Silent.

Splitting
USA 1974
11 min. 16mm Silent.

Conical Intersect
USA 1975
19 min. 16mm Silent.

City Slivers
USA 1976
15 min. 16mm

Media
Note

Dylan Adamson is a critic and programmer based in Toronto. His writing can be found at The Walrus, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. He is the technical and collections manager at Vtape, and has guest-programmed films at TIFF, Anthology Film Archives, and the Cinematheque Quebecoise.

Jessamyn Fiore is the co-director of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark as well as a curator and writer. Her curated and co-curated exhibitions have been hosted internationally, most recently Gordon Matta-Clark: Graffiti Archive 1972/73 at White Columns Gallery in New York. She also edited 112 Greene Street: The Early Years (1970–1974), published by David Zwirner and Radius Books in 2012.