Presented with the Consortium for the Arts at UC Berkeley.There are artists who owe no great allegiance to any popularized art practice and draw instead on a vast store of personal eccentricity and visionary obsession. When you witness the works of these artists, you see at once an uncompromising inner quest, a raw virtuosity, and a subversive promiscuity with ideas. Their films and videotapes may not align themselves with any particular movement, but that is perhaps their allure and triumph.British artist David Larcher is just such an inspired and deft media maker. Since the late sixties, he has issued forth a series of wildly rambunctious films and videotapes that have a legendary presence in Europe where they are best known. Larcher's creative method is one of constant reinvention and revision. Works like Monkey's Birthday and Ich Tank: Remake 4, Version 5 evolve, submerge, then resurface in numerous forms (for instance, single and twin projection), or exist as part of impossibly ambitious series like the projected eight-part videøvoid. Larcher has been a featured artist at such media festivals as Pandemonium, Videobrasil, and the Bonn Videonale, and is a faculty member at the prestigious Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany. He will spend almost two weeks in residence at PFA and the UC Berkeley campus-his first encounter with the students and Bay Area since his last visit to PFA in 1977. Tuesday February 15, 2000
