Standard Gauge: The Films of Morgan Fisher

Monday 12 September – Sunday 18 September 2005

‘By obeying a difficult but arbitrary rule, Morgan Fisher has invented a world, neither fictional nor documentary, without recourse to montage, and without a conventional locus of meaning. He approaches the ideal of a film void. It expresses nothing.’
– William E Jones

California-based filmmaker Morgan Fisher began his career as an editor in the commercial film industry before exploring the avant-garde. The combined experience has led Fisher to examine and deconstruct the narrative of film and the industry itself with wry humour, creating an entirely unique and intimate view of cinema and its physical presentation.

This retrospective of Fisher's playful, self-referential films includes works such as Standard Gauge and Projection Instructions – which turns over directing and starring duties to the unseen man in the booth – and Fisher’s most recent piece, ( ). A hit at the Rotterdam Film Festival and the 2004 Whitney Biennial, ( ) is comprised entirely of insert shots that have been relieved of their original duty – providing crucial plot development for a variety of other movies – to allow each to stand on individual visual merits.

Morgan Fisher introduces the screening on 17 and 18 September.

Curated by Chrissie Iles from tbe Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

This series is related to the Open Systems exhibition

  Film