Book Launch: “Accidental Archivism. Shaping Cinema’s Futures with Remnants of the Past”

The Blank Generation 
With live piano accompaniment by Daniel Hendrickson 
Amos Poe, USA 1975, 55 min, No Dialogue, 16mm

“Shortly after moving to Berlin from Hollywood in 2006, Vaginal Davis started sniffing through the vaults of the Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art. She sensed that the Berlin archive was a good place to start looking for early feminist and queer traces. The result was Rising Stars, Falling Stars—a monthly series of experimental rarities, long-forgotten commercial films, and even familiar classics of early cinema, viewed from her tilted perspective. Each screening was accompanied by live musicians and introduced by Ms. Davis.”

Quoted from a conversation between Marc Siegel and Vaginal Davis, in: Accidental Archivism. Shaping Cinema’s Futures with Remnants of the Past.

Vaginal Davis’s famous series, Rising Stars, Falling Stars, which took place at the Arsenal from 2006 to 2018, returns for one evening. On the occasion of her book launch Davis presents Amos Poes’ The Blank Generation (1975), a home movie about the birth of New York punk with Iggy Pop, Blondie, and Patti Smith. Her musical “partner in grime,” as she would say, is the one and only Daniel Hendrickson.

Vaginal Davisis a queer art-punk legend, performance artist, painter, and writer. In 2007, Davis left Los Angeles and came to Berlin to work with the CHEAP Collective. Soon after she began her own film series under the title Rising Stars Falling Stars. Since then Vaginal Davis – with curatorial and musical support from Daniel Hendrickson – has been regularly presenting selections from the archive of the Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art.

Book: “Accidental Archivism. Shaping Cinema’s Futures with Remnants of the Past”, edited by Vinzenz Hediger (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt) and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus (Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst) and published in the “Configurations of film” series with meson press.