Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Art - Photography and Film, grade: 62, University of Westminster (Media, Arts and Design), course: Contemporary Photographic Practices, language: English, abstract: In 1964 Pop artist Andy Warhol started to take his “Screen Tests”, short portrait films of his colleagues and friends who visited him in his famous studio, the “Factory” in New York. Today, more than forty years after the last test was taken, fascination with the films still motivates people to look at them in exhibitions and books. They still catch us with their complex character as time witnesses and social documents, combined with a strong effect as extraordinarily personal pieces of art. In the following essay, I will illustrate in which way these complex films and their meanings are shaped in different contexts of representation: installed in an exhibition and printed in book form. At first when dealing with this question, it needs to be clear what the Screen Tests are: The films are not screen tests in the conventional sense of the word. The term usually means short test films taken of actors on castings to decide if they get a part in a film. In Warhol’s Screen Tests, the sitter was instructed to look straight into the camera, without movement or emoting, and if possible even without blinking over the three minutes of recording time. People were recorded in close- ups, deprived of the chance to hide even the smallest movement of their faces (Angell, 2006). The “Stillies”, as Warhol called them in the beginning, were often produced spontaneously and with casual rapidity. The conceptual sophistication of these films as a whole makes this long- term project a central piece of Warhol’s work as a portrait artist in the medium of both film and painting. They can be seen as the “stem cells of Warhol’s portraiture” (Angell, 2006, p.12): Giving us an overview over the world of fame and glamour in the 1960s scene, with almost exclusively well- known sitters, they deal with the same objects – celebrities – as Warhol’s paintings do. Like all of Warhol’s early films, they are taken on his first film camera “Bolex” in black- and- white and on silent speed (16 instead of 24 frames per second). It is especially the combination of the slow silent speed, the almost- stillness of the obedient sitters and the unusual lack of sound in the films, which makes these portraits “hybrid art images” (Sokolowski, 2004, p. 9), on the borderline between still photography and the moving image.

"In the mid-1960s, at the height of his creative powers, Andy Warhol produced hundreds of three-minute cinematic portraits, called "Screen Tests." Although rarely screened now, these short films captured a virtual who's who of the avant-garde, including such cultural icons as Edie Sedgwick, Bob Dylan, Salvador Dalí, and Susan Sontag. In this initial volume of the authorized catalogue raisonné of Warhol's films, Warhol authority Callie Angell examines all 189 people captured by Warhol's lens. Stills from many of the films appear here for the first time. Drawing on 13 years of original research into the Screen Test subjects and their relationships to Warhol, Angell provides an unprecedented look at the pop art master's working method, and a unique record of his colorful social and professional life"--Publisher's description.

This stunning publication is the first to examine in tandem the work and influence of two towering figures in contemporary art Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) are two of the most internationally renowned artists of the past 100 years, famous not only for their artwork but also for influencing the culture of their time. This exciting book is the first to consider the work of these artists alongside one another, in dialogue and in correspondence, to explore the artists' meticulous observations of modern and contemporary art, life, and politics. Andy Warhol's investigation of consumer society, fame, and celebrity offers thought-provoking points of connection with Ai Weiwei's interrogation of the relationship between tradition and modernity, the role of the individual to the state, questions of human rights, and the value of freedom of expression. Parallels also exist between the ways in which each artist transformed the understanding of artistic value and studio production, and redefined the role of the artist--as impresario, cultural producer, activist, and brand. Alongside beautifully reproduced images by both artists--including works by Ai Weiwei published here for the first time--are illuminating essays by an international team of art experts, curators, and scholars that survey the scope of the artists' careers and interpret the significant impact of Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei on modern art and contemporary life. This deluxe, collectible catalogue is available in three different, limited-edition colors. Published in collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (12/11/15-04/24/16) The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (06/01/16-09/01/16)

In Hito Steyerl's writing we begin to see how, even if the hopes and desires for coherent collective political projects have been displaced onto images and screens, it is precisely here that we must look frankly at the technology that seals them in. The Wretched of the Screen collects a number of Steyerl's landmark essays from recent years in which she has steadily developed her very own politics of the image. Twisting the politics of representation around the representation of politics, these essays uncover a rich trove of information in the formal shifts and aberrant distortions of accelerated capitalism, of the art system as a vast mine of labor extraction and passionate commitment, of occupation and internship, of structural and literal violence, enchantment and fun, of hysterical, uncontrollable flight through the wreckage of postcolonial and modernist discourses and their unanticipated openings. e-flux journal Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle