Artist Tony Oursler, friend and collaborator of Tony Conrad, will present The Most Interesting Man Alive, 2016, a short feature produced by Oursler in collaboration with Tony Conrad. Shot over a period of six months in Oursler’s studio in New York City, the film is a performative mixture of written, oral history, and improvisational sequences structured around various notable points in the multimedia artist’s life from childhood through his formative creative years. Characters in Conrad’s memory are performed by friends and fellow artists such as Paige Sarlin, Constance Dejong, Joe Gibbons, Maríe Losier, Peggy Ahwesh and Jennifer Walshe. The film examines how memories can be reimagined and recombined to form new meaning, asking how exactly we become who we are.

From his early experiences working with the artist Jack Smith in the early 1960s to his later investigations with film’s sculptural and performative properties, Tony Conrad’s contributions to filmmaking were emblematic of the artist’s experimental and wide-ranging career. In conjunction with Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective, this screening series brings together a selection of Conrad’s films, from the structural works of the 1960s to videos made for public access television in the 1990s, and extends to fellow travelers such as Tony Oursler, Paul Sharits, and Lary 7, offering a glimpse into the artist’s interests in challenging the boundaries of artistic genre.

This event is held in partnership with Lightbox Film Center. Click here for more information.

Programming at ICA has been made possible in part by the Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts and the Lise Spiegel Wilks and Jeffrey Wilks Family Foundation, and by Hilarie L. & Mitchell Morgan. Support for visiting artists has been generously provided by the Sachs Contemporary Art Fund.