Intellectual Properties
Creator:
Adams, JohnContributor(s):
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Camera: Peter MacLauren, Ken Slater, John Adams. Sound: Ted Evans, Ken Winokur. Music: Ken Field, Ken Winokur. Editors: Terry Bracey, John Adams. With: Jon Bewley, Amy Kaczur, Danny Mydlak, John Adams, Louise Rogers, Joy Nicholson, Marc Maislen, Don Burgie, Hazel Dormer, Jane Gillooly, Ken Winokur, Bonnie Donohue.
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This work is part of the rewind archive.
Duration: 60 mins
Year: 1985
Original formats:1" SMPTE Type C
Media types:Video
Funding source: Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities
Technical details: Shot on 16mm film edit on 1" video
Adams’ strategy of simultaneously constructing and deconstructing a narrative text finds its most accomplished expression in Intellectual Properties. Shot on 16mm film in Boston and Newcastle, England, this six-part fiction is an ironic, stylized discourse on representation, reproduction, production and reality. “The theme is power, as related to politics, economics, mass media, advertising, modern myth, art and business, money and personality; illustrated by means of jokes, stories and anecdotes, both autobiographical and observational,” writes Adams. Deftly manipulating the cinematic and media codes of narrative fiction, he tells a meta-story of contemporary art and life. Tales of John Wayne, Rolls Royces and filmmaking are linked by a lecture on copyright. Formally structured on the concept that sound qualifies image, each segment uses a different anecdotal soundtrack to recontextualize recurring visual material, until the narratives converge in the final sequence. – Electronic Arts Intermix
Essay in framework: “The Essayistic in Film and Video” Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) March and April 1989.pdf here.
The Relationship of Picture, Copy and Reality: Article on “Video in the Cinema” screenings being shown in The Abaton, written by Lothar Kurzawa, TAZ Hamburg, 22nd May 1986.pdf here.
Tynside Cinema Present Intellectual Properties, A Film on Video by John Adams: Poster for Projects U.K. Newcastle Media Workshops Tynside Cinema screening of Intellectual Properties, Newcastle-Upon Tyne.pdf here.
Photograph of negatives from the video Intellectual Properties 1985.pdf here.
World Wide Video Festival 1986: programme cuttings by Simon Biggs and Mediamatic Den Haag and Bonn 1986.pdf here.
Electronic Arts Intermix Catalogue: Piece written about John Adams and his video works.pdf here.
‘9-14 September 1986 Den Haag Programma Krant’ – Programme of events, includes information on works by John Adams, Rose Garrard and Stephen Partridge.pdf here
John Adamsí Intellectual Properties details from directory, Independent Media Magazine 1986. pdf here
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