nicholas gamso

Tra la 🍒

I filed this report on the CCA collapse and soul-sucking digital capitalism—San Francisco in the 21st century. With gratitude to my wonderful editors at @art_monthly_uk , especially @chriskbmccormack . Also to serious arts journalists like Sarah Hotchkiss, who writes about the harm these events have caused. ❤️ 🌁 😇

Real Life, with the Millennium Film Journal — Sunday 1/18 - 7:30pm - at @2220arts - Filmforum 50, program 5! With filmmakers Michael Robinson @mr.michaelrobinson , Elise Rasmussen @eliseseye , Kate Lain @katemakesfilms , and co-curator Nicholas Gamso @gamzoid in person Over the last half-century, the Millennium Film Journal has charted seismic transformations in the way we create and look at moving pictures—from 16mm celluloid to magnetic videotape to digital “content creation,” and now the strange new world of AI-generated deepfakes and simulations… Real Life—the latest edition of MFJ—is a study of this diachronic gray zone, and the Journal joins with Los Angeles Filmforum in showcasing a handful of works discussed in its pages, along with others we admire.

year’s end ✨🤞🥂

John Berger’s favorite of his books, A Seventh Man reads today as a prescient work when seen against the startling images from Lesvos, Lampedusa, the US southern border, the Rafaḥ crossing. Yet, writes Nicholas Gamso, this collaboration with photographer Jean Mohr is also of a piece with experimental art of its own era. Read at the link in bio. #nicholasgamso #johnberger #jeanmohr versobooks @gamzoid @versobooks Image: “Turkish workers being medically examined by German doctors, Istanbul.” Photograph in John Berger, A Seventh Man: A Book of Images and Words about the Experience of Migrant Workers in Europe. © Jean Mohr.

♥️ beyond grateful for my partner & best friend (& fellow virgo): Andrew ♥️

A beautiful edition of the Millennium Film Journal, designed by Shona Masarin, devoted to the experiences of grief, longing, and dedication 🌱 … featuring Sofia Theodore-Pierce’s tender and arresting artist pages … … Ali Jaffery’s report on the movement for Palestine at the New York Counter Film Festival … … Irmgard Emmelhainz’s study of pathfinding and recovery in the political films of Sara Eliassen … … Lynne Sachs’ moving recollections of Narcisa Hirsch and Gunvor Nelson … … and many other brilliant, provocative contributions from the global moving image community. 🖤🖤🖤 @millennium_film_journal @shonamasarin @s_t_p___ @sara_red_eliassen @gardiemmel @ali.i.j @thenycff @lynnesachs1

The films made by François Pain at La Borde psychiatric clinic—alongside Félix Guattari, among others—offer a more nuanced, more compelling, and ultimately more useful history of a much-mythologised experiment than the conventional hagiographies, writes Nicholas Gamso. Read at the link in bio. #nicholasgamso #françoispain #joanlosangeles @gamzoid @joanlosangeles [1] View of François Pain’s “Psychiatry is what Psychiatrists do” at JOAN, Los Angeles, 2025. Detail of various archival materials. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy of JOAN, Los Angeles. Photo by Evan Walsh. [2] François Pain, Institutional Psychotherapy as one of the fine arts…, 2025. Digitized movie from HI8, Betacam, and U-matic, 24:20 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and New Galerie, Paris. Photo by Evan Walsh.

Something I wrote about artifice, labor, old Hollywood, the phenomenology of the soundstage. Also how awful AI looks and feels, and how empty. Told by way of John Divola’s amazing collection of pre-Code continuity photographs. 🎬 Thank you, Tom Lawson and Vivian Chang of East of Borneo. And thanks, John, for sharing your time. 🙏 Image: controlled blast, somewhere in LA, probably. Part of John’s suite ’Arrangements’ (2016). Link in bio. @eastofborneo @divola @galleryluisotti

2024, adieu 🎈

🌸🌺🌼 . . a moving image piece I made for @wattisarts on the occasion of the gallery's relocation, and in response to the exhibit ‘Hervé Guibert: This & More’ . . the text is excerpted from Guibert’s journals, translated by Nathanaël and read aloud by a dear friend, Line El Dirini . . footage is Super 8, filmed here and there, in Oakland and San Francisco, with lots of flowers and open windows and some postcards I've kept . . watch the full piece and read an accompanying essay by clicking on the link in my bio . . ❤️

"In the Continuous Present . . ." A new/old essay by Marjorie Gamso, dancer, choreographer, writer, filmmaker, who died in 2011. In an introduction, I ask what inspired these strange recollections, referencing Marjorie's friendship with ingenious choreographer Jimmy Waring and a spate of personal crises—flight from an abusive husband, worsening health, dashed ambitions. 🖤 The essay is published in a special double-issue of Movement Research Performance Journal, edited so generously by Josh Lubin-Levy and dazzlingly un-designed by Sean Yendrys and Björn Giesecke, with photos by the great dance photographer Tom Brazil (c/o his partner Tim Armstrong) and Marjorie’s close friend Karen Robbins. Thanks to my own friends at Lost & Found, who gave me a small grant to pursue this project 10+ years ago, and the many people who joined me in attempting to decode Marjorie’s writing. Also the NYPL’s Performing Arts Library, where you can read and watch Marjorie’s works. Grab a copy of the journal (buy one if you can) at MR’s Monday night performances at Judson—or click on the link in my bio. Photo: Marjorie, by Tom Brazil, 1978. ✨ @performancejournal_mr @movementresearch @jlubinlevy @cunypoetics @nypl_pla @jeromerobbinsdancedivision