Avant-Gardists and the Lure of Pop Music

This chapter provides methods and models for thinking about avant-garde and experimental films and videos that incorporate popular music. It sketches the history of intersections between avant-gardists and popular music. It also provides close readings of works by Kenneth Anger, Bruce Connor, Joseph Cornell, Derek Jarman, Tony Oursler, Pipilotti Rist, Andy Warhol and others. It claims that institutional, formal and cultural constraints not only limit the frequency with which avant-gardists participate with pop musicians and pop music, they also colour the audiovisual relations within the works themselves. Avant-garde films and videos with pop soundtracks emphasise particular kinds of audiovisual relation—relations that differ from sound-image connections in narrative films, YouTube clips, commercials and music videos. It is demonstrated that this experimental subgenre embodies a unique sort of sound-image relation and suggests, finally, that these videos can expand our knowledge of audiovisual relations more broadly.