Dewey Crumpler and Saidiya Hartman
Artists on Writers | Writers on Artists
Sun Worshippers
Linda Yablonsky around Athens and Hydra
Frank Bowling
Frank Bowling on color, the sublime, and painting paradox
WORKLINES
Michael Dango on the art of Igshaan Adams
Point Blank
The gun and the readymade
Bah Lumbung
Kristian Vistrup Madsen at Documenta 15
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}
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PRINT January 1982
THE UNCANNY RESURRECTIONS OF “AMERICA IS WAITING”
Scott Cook
This week the editors recall Scott Cook’s essay on Bruce Conner’s film America Is Waiting (1981), which was published in the magazine in January 1982.
Taking its title from the David Byrne–Brian Eno song on their 1981 album, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Conner’s America Is Waiting is composed of footage taken from newsreels, movies, television commercials, and educational films—productions that each capture something of America’s idea of itself. Cook calls Conner’s films, which are often made of found materials, “resurrections.” “There is something about them that is both ghoulish and uncanny,”