This expanded lecture explores the unique collaboration and friendship between George Maciunas and Jonas Mekas, beginning with examination of issues of the famous Film Culture magazine. Originally heavily influenced by Cahiers du cinéma, Jonas Mekas’s Film Culture would eventually grow to be an important intellectual and institutional space for the “new American cinema” (John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Robert Frank, Lionel Rogosin) and the closely related, ever difficult to name avant-garde-experimental-underground-independent-poetic film scene that thrived in New York beginning in the 1950s. George Maciunas designed the Film Culture issues present in the exhibition and was also crucial for helping organize the Film-makers’ Cooperative. Both in their collaborations and in their separate projects, Mekas and Maciunas played similar roles intellectually, institutionally and operationally, with Mekas working in and holding the independent film scene together and Maciunas the Fluxus project—and at the same time also active as artists.

A facsimile of the famous “Expanded Arts” issue designed by George Maciunas from 1966 together with a special edition of the magazine LURCH will be presented at the lecture.

David Quigley is professor for cultural theory at Merz Akademie, Stuttgart. Starting in 2013, Quigley began to record his lectures on vinyl records (The History of Art on Record), or on video (expanded lectures); both are meticulously produced. After finishing his studies in painting and philosophy in Vienna and Paris, he went on to teach at the University of Vienna and was a research fellow at Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. Quigley has published a monograph on Carl Einstein, and written for many magazine and publications, including Afterall, Spike Art Quarterly, Multitudes, among others. David Quigley lives in Vienna and Stuttgart.