Pictures of the Lost

Barbara Buckner

1978, 22:58 min, color, silent

Composed in twenty-two movements that coalesce into a haunting psychic journey, the enigmatic Pictures of the Lost evokes states of heightened consciousness, symbolic and ritual gesture, and spiritual transformations. Buckner's dreamlike, rhythmic visions, rendered in saturated hues, create a...

Pilobolus and Joan

Ed Emshwiller

1973, 57:40 min, color, sound

Pilobolus and Joan is a dance/narrative journey of transformation, a theatrical search for self and love based on Carol Emshwiller's story Metamorphosed. In this inversion of Kafka's Metamorphosis, a cockroach awakens as a man — actually a four-man being, as enacted here by members of the...

Pilot

General Idea

1977, 28:56 min, color, sound

Produced for public television broadcast in Ontario, this witty survey of General Idea's early work takes the form of a prime-time newsmagazine, with General Idea as the subject. Hosts AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal describe their collective transformation from young strivers to "famous, glamorous artists," and the diversification of the General Idea media empire. Using a library of clips, they recount General Idea's public performances, films, magazine projects, and fashion designs.

Pine Barrens

Nancy Holt

1975, 30:24 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on HD video

"Pine Barrens is concerned with evoking through film a barren wilderness in south-central New Jersey. The camera is always in motion — tracking, pivoting, and walking through the landscape. Though they are never seen in the film, the voices of the local people, the 'Pineys,' are heard relating their feelings about the land, their attitudes about city life, their myths of the area, etc. their voices and the music of 'Bill Patton's Pine Barrens Trio' add a psychological dimension to the landscape." — Nancy Holt

Pinea Silva

Carolee Schneemann

2012, 9:24 min, color, sound, HD video

Schneemann's performance-lecture Pinea Silva was first presented in December 2011 as part of EAI's 40th Anniversary Benefit. Aided by a PowerPoint presentation of images culled from the Internet, the artist analyzes traditional Christmas imagery with an eye toward the psycho-sexual, positing a re-writing of traditional symbols in which the Christmas tree is understood as vulvic. Deploying humor in her delivery, slides and props, Schneemann uses the performance-lecture as a distinctive forum for questioning the relationships of gender, sexuality, power and culture.

Pinochet Porn

Ellen Cantor

2008-16, 123 min, b&w and color, sound, Super 8mm film on HD video, English and Spanish with English subtitles

An epic experimental film, Pinochet Porn, embodies – though a dizzying array of stories and narrative methods – the multifaceted work of artist Ellen Cantor. Using her 2004 series of eighty-two drawings, Circus Lives from Hell, as an unconventional “script,” Cantor worked on Pinochet Porn, her most ambitious project, for the last five years of her life. The feature-length, episodic narrative, about the intertwined lives of five children and their maturation into adulthood, would be completed posthumously by her close collaborators – including her cast and crew – according to her directives.

Place Mattes

Barbara Hammer

1987, 7:36 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on video

Traveling mattes of the artist's torso, limbs, and extremities in Puget Sound, Yosemite and the Yucatan. Her attempt to "touch" nature is removed and blocked between figure and ground setups by the optical printer's flatness of planes.

Planet X

Ulysses Jenkins

2006, 6:20 min, color, sound

Writes Jenkins: "This video takes the 'Planet X' myth and interfaces it with the Katrina tragedy in New Orleans, LA, based upon their similar natural disaster principles. With a proclamation of prophecy spoken by avant garde jazz musician, Sun Ra, predicting a coming disaster to African-Americans."

Plastic Bag Tie-Up

Anthony Ramos

1972, 21:16 min, b&w, sound

In this harrowing performance, Ramos and the artist Lowell Darling are blindfolded, their hands and feet bound, and sealed into body-sized plastic bags. Over the course of 20 minutes, the men struggle to escape from the clear plastic bags. The real-time performance creates a palpable tension as the men writhe inside the bags. Ramos performed this piece at Cal Arts, shortly after he had been released from federal prison, where he had served 18 months for draft resistance during the Vietnam War.

Play or ‘Yes,’ ‘Yes,’ ‘Yes’

Barbara Hammer

1970, 11:16 min, b&w and color, silent, Super 8mm film on video