Babette Mangolte

Babette Mangolte (Américaine née en France) est une cinéaste expérimentale et une photographe connue internationalement qui vit à New York depuis 1970. Parmi ses films les plus récents, Seven Easy Pieces by Marina Abramovic a été présenté en première au Festival du cinéma de Berlin, en 2007. Elle a réalisé deux films sur les chorégraphies d’Yvonne Rainer, AG Indexical en 2007 et RoS Indexical en 2008, ainsi que Roof Piece on the High Line (filmé en 2011 et monté en 2012), dépeignant une chorégraphie de Trisha Brown. Son film le plus récent, Edward Krasinski’s Studio, a été filmé à Varsovie en novembre 2011 et monté en 2012. Ses installations récentes comprennent Presence (Biennale de Berlin, 2008), Rushes (Cologne, 2009) et How to Look… (Biennale du Whitney Museum of American Art, 2010). Elle s’intéresse à la création d’espaces architecturaux qui suggèrent des interactions spécifiques entre les spectateurs, les photographies et les films présentés dans l’installation. Mangolte est aussi connue pour ses archives photographiques qui documentent le théâtre expérimental, la danse et la performance des années 1970 et 1980. Elle publie également des essais, théorise sa pratique de photographie documentaire sur la performance et a de plus publié des écrits sur l’évolution des technologies.

Babette Mangolte is an experimental filmmaker living in New York City. A complete retrospective of her films and camerawork was organized by Madeleine Bernstorff and Klaus Volkmer for the Berlin and Munich Cinematheque in 2000. And in 2004 Anthology Films Archives in New York City opened her recent film Les Modèles de Pickpocket (2003) accompanied by a retrospective of all her films. In 2007 her film Seven Easy Piecesby Marina Abramovic (2007) premiered at the Berlinale 2007.

Her films and photo work were included in The American Century show in 1999 at the Whitney Museum in New York and Century City at the Tate Britain in London in 2001.

Mangolte is also known for her photography of dance, theater and performances. Her work was included with several performance photographs and two film installations in a show titled Art, Lies and Videotapes: Exposing Performance organized by Adrian George at TATE Liverpool (United Kingdom) in 2003.

In 2007 she realized a new installation of her films and photographs from the 1970’s in the show “Live Art on Camera” at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK, Curator Alice Maude-Roxby and she participated in the survey exhibition on performance history “ Un teatre sense teatre” at Museu d’Art Contemporari de Barcelona, Curator Bernard Blistene (touring to Museu Berardo, Lisboa, Portugal and Wexner Art Center, USA). In summer 2007 Mangolte had her first retrospective solo show in the US at BROADWAY 1602, New York which included the premier of “Richard Serra, Film Portrait 1977.”

Mangolte will be included in the Berlin Biennale 2008.

She has published an essay on photography “My History: The Intractable,” in October Fall 1998 and a text reflecting on changing technologies “A Matter of Time: Analog versus Digital, the perennial question of shifting technology and its implications for an experimental filmmaker’s odyssey” published in Camera Obscura Camera Lucida: Essays in honor of Annette Michelson (Amsterdam University Press 2002) that has been translated in French (Trafic # 50 Spring 2004) and in German (Frau and Films Fall 2004). In 2005, Mangolte wrote “Balancing act between instinct and reason or how to organize volumes on a flat surface in shooting photographs, films, and videos of performance,” published in “After the Act. The (Re)Presentation of Performance Art” (MOMU Vienna ).

She is currently working on a text about Robert Bresson.