Rameau's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen

Each of Michael Snow's works, spanning across painting, sculpture, video, film, photography, holography, drawing, publishing and music, invites us to experience, question and contemplate the representation, its process and material. Rameau's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen illustrates his research both in the visual arts and in sound: For me, it is an authentic 'talking picture,' built from the true units of the syllable and the frame. All the possible image/sound relationships centering around people and speech generate the movie-audience relationships: a wide range of emotional possibilities; the experience of seeing/hearing this film. 'Speech,' 'Language,' 'Culture' - their sources, their nature... recorded, imaged, prove (?) that in this case a word is worth 1000 pictures.

"Michael Snow's Rameau's Nephew Etc. makes me crazy, makes the top of my head go flying off. I have a need of its particular regenerative insanity at least once a month."

Amy Taubin, The Soho Weekly News, 1977

Published with support by the Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Délégation aux arts plastiques, CNAP (FIACRE).

Photos: Jeff Guess

This box contains:
* the 4-1/4-hour film on two DVDs
* a 184-page bilingual book by Ivora Cusack and Stéfani de Loppinot, prefaced by Michael Snow and translated by Pip Chodorov, analyzing the 25 sequences of the film and making available for the first time reproductions of Snow's original preparatory scripts and notes archived at the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto (Canada)