Beyond the Dream Syndicate Tony Conrad and the Arts After Cage (a "minor" History)

Tony Conrad has significantly influenced cultural developments from minimalism tounderground film, "concept art," postmodern appropriation, and the most sophisticated rockand roll. Creator of the "structural" film, The Flicker, collaborator on Jack Smith'sFlaming Creatures and Normal Love, follower of Henry Flynt's radical anti-art, member of the Theatreof Eternal Music and the first incarnation of The Velvet Underground, and early associate of MikeKelley, Tony Oursler, and Cindy Sherman, Conrad has eluded canonic histories. Yet Beyond the DreamSyndicate does not claim Conrad as a major but under-recognized figure. Neither monograph nor socialhistory, the book takes Conrad's collaborative interactions as a guiding thread by which toinvestigate the contiguous networks and discursive interconnections in 1960s art. Such an approachsimultaneously illuminates and estranges current understandings of the period, redrawing the mapacross medium and stylistic boundaries to reveal a constitutive hybridization at the base of thedecade's artistic development. This exploration of Conrad and his milieu goes beyond thepresentation of a relatively overlooked oeuvre to chart multiple, contestatory regimes of powersimultaneously in play during the pivotal moment of the 1960s. From the sovereign authority invokedby Young's music, to the "paranoiac" politics of Flynt, to the immanent control modeled byConrad's films, each avant-garde project examined reveals an investment within a particularstructure of power and resistance, providing a glimpse into the diversity of the artistic andpolitical stakes that continue to define our time.Branden W. Joseph is Professor of Modern andContemporary Art in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and aneditor of the journal Grey Room (MIT Press). He is the author of Random Order: Robert Rauschenbergand the Neo-Avant-Garde (MIT Press, 2003.)