Screen Texts

Guy Debord: Complete Cinematic Works
Translated and edited by Ken Babb
A.K. Press

The rarely seen movies produced by the Situationist philosopher are presented for the mind's eye. From the imageless rant Howls for Sade (1952) through the 1973 film version of The Society of the Spectacle to In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978), his final exercise in détournement (misappropriation), titled with an untranslatable Latin palindrome, Debord alternately railed against and pranked the cinema institution. The six scripts are illustrated with frame enlargements and augmented by relevant letters and manifestos. The absence of production information makes the enterprise seem all the more rarefied.

No Ghost Just a Shell
By Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno
D.A.P.

Speaking of détournement, the Paris-based artists Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno purchased the rights to an obscure anime character and featured her in two video pieces. Somewhere between art book and art project, No Ghost Just a Shell(as opposed to Ghost in the Shell) illustrates their videos as well as pieces by a number of other artists and poets featuring AnnLee in what her "liberators" grandly term un film d'imaginaire.

Manny Farber: About Face
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego

The painter Manny Farber must be sick and tired of people reminding him that he was (is?) the most provocative American film critic of his generation. But like his writing (and the movies), Farber's representational canvases encourage you to ponder flat surfaces and juxtaposition. A number of essays mark the points of confluence between Farber's two pursuits—they're overshadowed by the reproductions of the artist's mental movies.