“Here was a death assumed to be closely documented and clearly communicated. There couldn’t have been more cameramen, reporters, witnesses, and yet all of it is fragmented into thousands of points of view.” – Bruce Conner
In the nearly 60 years since the broadcasted assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Kohn Gallery presents REPORT (1963-67) by the late Bruce Conner (1933-2008). A fundamental work in the trajectory of 1960s avant-garde film, REPORT underscores an analysis of the ineffectuality of media, further channeling a distinct parallel to present-day media consumption. In the film, Conner documents the zeitgeist of the Kennedy era and reconstructs his tragic death utilizing fragmented newsreel footage and live radio transmissions in combination with manipulated film leader. His masterful assemblage of visceral and auditory elements, not only contemplate the event but act as a vehicle for critique of the media’s complicity in the posthumous consumerism that followed.
The film, which took two and a half years to complete, is the eighth and final version that Conner released in 1967. Conceived as a personal medium for grief, Conner’s multiple reworkings represent his metamorphic process in which thefilm transforms from a proximate and personal response, to a mournful iteration co-opted by society and transformed by media’s presence.
Conner responds to the scarcity of public information by composing available broadcasted imagery to conjure a retelling of the events that transpired. In the two-part film–“the death of Kennedy” and “epilogue”–Conner imagines an illusory montage sequence that transports viewers into a volatile ether of repetition, inversion and distortion juxtaposed with sonic flashbacks.
As Bruce Jenkins wrote, “The epilogue of REPORT is one of the most innovative and sustained experiments in Eisensteinian vertical montage in the history of the medium. It is as well as an astounding exposé of the media’s mode of creating meaning, of constructing messages, and ultimately controlling information.”
Conner’s narrative devices in REPORT bring into frame an experimental mise-en-scène that, through its subliminal implications, comments on the power of media communications. REPORT marks a moment in which the character of media shifts: the emergence of the mass audience–one engaged in a passive and consumerist position that further brings into question the condition of contemporary media.
