BRUCE CONNER / RECORDING ANGEL

February 21, 2026 – July 18, 2026

“When I think about nonlinear perception, I think about the way you collect various pieces of information and put them into some kind of functional use to make sense of the world. It is about consciousness itself.”

–Bruce Conner

The multidisciplinary artist Bruce Conner (1933–2008) was truly an enigma. He moved effortlessly between sculptural assemblage, painting, conceptual art, collage, drawing, photography, and experimental filmmaking without any sense of hierarchy. Deeply embedded in American countercultural movements of the postwar period, from the Beat poets of the 1950s to the emergent punk scenes of the 1970s and 1980s, Conner had a radical and restless eye that brought with it a wry humor, biting wit, and love of the uncanny and the revolutionary. Nowhere was Conner’s irreverent inquisitiveness more apparent than in the now legendary body of experimental films he undertook in 1958, which were composed of found, scavenged, and original film footage. In many ways Conner can be seen as the pioneer of the remix and cut-up techniques of filmmaking that are now so ubiquitous. In fact, he has been called the “father of the music video” in recognition of the rapid-fire editing effects that he developed, which are widely used in music videos and film trailers today. As he said to an interviewer in 1986, “I learned to distrust words. I placed my bet on vision.”

BRUCE CONNER / RECORDING ANGEL brings together seven of Conner’s most iconic films in the Marciano Art Foundation’s Theater Gallery, projected in an alternating sequence on four different screens. On view will be a number of Conner’s pioneering works using the assemblage technique of cutting up and reediting found footage, such as the groundbreaking A MOVIE (1958), which brings together clips of Western serials, soft-core “stag” films, newsreels of car crashes, the usually unseen leaders that precede films, and so on, or his now legendary masterpiece CROSSROADS (1976), for which he reedited documentary footage of the Operation Crossroads underwater atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946. Throughout these works, Conner offers a meditation on both the power of images in consumer culture and the hubristic and violent nature of the human condition in general and postwar American economic and military hegemony in particular. Music, and the intimate connection of sound and image, makes its presence particularly felt in all of the works seen here, whether through Ottorino Respighi’s 1924 composition “Pines of Rome” in
A MOVIE, the haunting score by the minimalist composers Patrick Gleeson and Terry Riley in CROSSROADS, or the songs by Toni Basil, The Beatles, DEVO, David Byrne and Brian Eno, and Ray Charles that form the auditory backbones of Conner’s films BREAKAWAY, LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS, MONGOLOID, AMERICA IS WAITING, and THREE SCREEN RAY.

This survey of Conner’s radically innovative, lifelong cinematic output both explores the structural limits of the medium of film and highlights his poetic and biting cultural critique of the dark side of the American Dream.

BRUCE CONNER / RECORDING ANGEL is organized by independent curator Douglas Fogle for the Marciano Art Foundation. Thank you to Michelle Silva, Toni Basil, and Patrick Gleeson. Special thanks to Michael Kohn at Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, for his contribution to the restoration of Bruce Conner’s films.

Bruce Conner (November 18, 1933 – July 7, 2008) was an American artist renowned for his work in film, assemblage, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, photography, and conceptual pranks. Born in McPherson, Kansas and raised in Wichita, he attended Wichita State and got his BFA from Nebraska University in 1956, where he met and married Jean Sandstedt in 1957 before transplanting to San Francisco. Emerging from the California art scene, Conner’s work touches on various themes of postwar American society, from a rising consumer culture to the dread of nuclear apocalypse. His works have been included in major exhibitions, such as the historic 1961 “The Art of Assemblage” at the Museum of Modern Art. Career retrospectives have been presented at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2000)—which traveled to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art—and at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2016), which traveled to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California and Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. His works are represented in many public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

BRUCE CONNER / RECORDING ANGEL is now on view through July 18, 2026.

Image credit: Bruce Conner, CROSSROADS, 1976. 35mm, black/white, sound, 37 min. Digitally Restored, 2013. Courtesy of The Conner Family Trust and Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles. Copyright Conner Family Trust

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Bruce Conner was among the most important West Coast artists of his generation, with a nonhierarchical practice that included sculpture, drawing, film and photography. A devotee of underground and antiestablishment arts movements, Conner was integral to the Beat Generation and also emerged as a major figure in the punk scene of the 1970s and ’80s. He is known as the father of the music video because he was among the first artists to use quick-cut assemblages of found film footage.

The Marciano Art Foundation exhibit features seven of Conner’s most widely recognized experimental films including his now iconic rumination on nuclear war, “Crossroads,” 1976. The film was created by editing and reassembling declassified government footage of a 1946 test blast at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean recorded underwater by more than 700 cameras. In a 2014 review, former Times art critic Christopher Knight called the film “a 36-minute meditation on the atomic bomb that contained not an ounce of sarcasm, irony or cynicism.”

– Jessica Gelt

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A kind of Christian apopalyptic millenarianism that would be encountered again in Bruce Conner’s preceding Three Screen Ray on view at the Marciano Art Foundation, as well as in the infinite scroll of social media with its dizzying jump cuts of sex, violence, and pop music.

I encountered the sublime violence of Conner’s video works, monumentally installed and scored by Terry Riley, as a lilliputian war of American imperialism unfolded on my phone in streaming images, and I couldn’t wrest my eyes away.

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You have the rare chance to take in seven of the enigmatic artist Bruce Conner’s experimental films, including CROSSROADS, 1976, a mash-up of declassified footage of atomic bomb tests.

Bruce Conner: Recording Angel

A Conversation Featuring Michelle Silva of the Conner Family Trust and Chrissie Iles of the Whitney Museum

The multidisciplinary artist Bruce Conner (1933-2008) defied categorisation throughout his long and enigmatic career, drawing from the countercultural milieus of the post-war Beat poets and the nascent punk scenes of the 1970s and 80s to create biting, uncanny conceptual art. Bruce Conner / Recording Angel features seven of Conner’s most important experimental films on view in the Marciano Art Foundation’s Theater Gallery, projected in an alternating sequence on four separate screens. His pioneering assemblage technique of cutting up and re-editing found footage spliced references as disparate as car crash newsreels, softcore “stag” films and declassified documentation of atomic bomb tests, casting a surreal, radical gaze onto an increasingly fractal modernity. Organised by the curator Douglas Fogle, Recording Angel tracks Conner’s output from 1958 to 2006, telling the story of an indefatigable, critical mind.

The city’s robust offering of experimental video continues at the Marciano, which is screening seven of Bruce Conner’s films, including his 1976 masterpiece Crossroads, an unsettling montage of underwater atomic tests. It may come as a surprise that the creator of such bleak meditations on the postwar condition was also dubbed “the father of the music video”. Conner pioneered rapid-fire editing set to striking soundtracks, techniques that later became ubiquitous in the form. TikTokers take note.

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Independent curator Douglas Fogle makes good on counter-culture multidisciplinary artist Bruce Conner’s approach to his craft, which he best summed in a 1986 interview: “I learned to distrust words. I placed my bet on vision.” Catch a four-screen presentation of seven of his most quintessential films, woven together for a single projection in the Marciano Art Foundation Theater Gallery.

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Bruce Conner’s multidisciplinary practice included painting, conceptual art, photography, collage, but he is perhaps best known for his work with experimental film. Conner’s radical vision cemented his ongoing status in the cultural underground, from the Beats in the 1950s to the punks of the ’70s and ’80s. His pioneering use of appropriated found footage, cinematic remixing, and blistering edits influenced avant-garde and popular media, leading to his moniker as the “father of the music video.” Recording Angel brings together seven of his most influential films, including “A MOVIE” (1958), which juxtaposes Western TV shows, “stag” films, and car crashes; and “CROSSROADS” (1976), a compilation of underwater atomic bomb tests.

The Marciano Art Foundation (MAF) is currently hosting BRUCE CONNER / RECORDING ANGEL, a major exhibition dedicated to the pioneering experimental films of the late multidisciplinary artist Bruce Conner. Running from February 21 through July 18, 2026, the exhibition takes place in the Foundation’s Theater Gallery.

Organized by independent curator Douglas Fogle, the showcase brings together seven of Conner’s most iconic film works, representing nearly five decades of his artistic practice. The films are uniquely presented in an alternating sequence across four different screens, emphasizing Conner’s signature manipulation of light, sound, and found footage.

Bruce Conner (1933–2008) is widely recognized as a pioneer of the remix and cutup techniques in filmmaking. Because of his rapid-fire editing style, he has often been called the “father of the music video”. The current exhibition at MAF highlights how his cinematic works functioned as experimental analyses of 20th-century America, exploring themes of consumerism, authoritarianism, and the existential threat of nuclear war.

Visitors to the exhibition will encounter a wide range of Conner’s masterpieces. His foundational 1958 work, A MOVIE, utilizes assemblage techniques to combine clips from Westerns, newsreels of car crashes, and soft-core films, all set to Ottorino Respighi’s “Pines of Rome”. Another legendary meditation, CROSSROADS (1976), features reedited, declassified footage of the 1946 Operation Crossroads underwater atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, accompanied by a haunting score from Patrick Gleeson and Terry Riley.

Conner’s intimate connection between sound and image is further demonstrated in BREAKAWAY (1966) and LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS (1959-1967), which feature music by choreographer Toni Basil and The Beatles, respectively. Additionally, MONGOLOID (1978) and AMERICA IS WAITING (1981) repurposed industrial and educational films to accompany tracks by Devo, as well as Brian Eno and David Byrne, subverting traditional narratives of the American Dream. The exhibition culminates with THREE SCREEN RAY (2006), a late-career revisiting of his 1961 film COSMIC RAY, acting as an explosive, three-screen visual homage to rhythm and blues musician Ray Charles.

Conner’s deep ties to American counterculture—from the 1950s Beat poets to the punk scenes of the 1970s and 80s—infused his work with a biting wit and revolutionary spirit. As noted by the Foundation, his artistic concerns regarding conformity and power are just as vital today as they were when the films were created.

BRUCE CONNER / RECORDING ANGEL will be on view until July 18, 2026. Tickets for admission to the Marciano Art Foundation, located in Los Angeles, are completely free on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information or to reserve tickets, visitors can go to marcianoartfoundation.org.