Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness is the first retrospective of Christopher Williams’s 35-year career as one of the most influential cinephilic artists working in photography. That exhibition’s title is taken from a line in a documentary by Jean-Luc Godard, in which an amateur filmmaker compares his daily job as a factory worker with his hobby of editing his films of the Swiss countryside by calling it “the production line of happiness.”
In conjunction with the exhibition, and as part of MoMA’s Carte Blanche screening series, Williams has curated a program of experimental films. Organized around the themes of Tenderness, Entertainment, Economy, Exchange, Enjoyment, Concentration, and Choreography, the program features films by Bruce Conner, Tony Conrad, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Harun Farocki, Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, Joris Ivens, Peter Kubelka, and Andy Warhol, among others.
Organized by Christopher Williams and Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator, with Lucy Gallun, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography.
Prints courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix; Les Films du Juedi; Morgan Fisher; Icarus Films; Janus Films; Leisure Time Features, Rialto Pictures; Estate Peter Roehr and Mehdi Choukari, Berlin; Ed Ruscha and Gagosian Gallery; and Swank Motion Pictures, Inc. With thanks to Isa Cucinotta at Film Society Lincoln Center.
