Experimental filmmaker Paul Clipson passed away last weekend at 53. He was a former member of the San Francisco post-rock outfit Tarantel and worked alongside artists such as Grouper, Lawrence English, and Sarah Davachi, among numerous others. John Twells reflects on a lifetime devoted to artistic creation and sharing.
On Saturday, February 4, 2018, visual artist Paul Clipson passed away unexpectedly at age 53. A celebrated filmmaker, he partnered with countless experimental musicians—among them Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Grouper—and was a perennial fixture in San Francisco’s music and art landscape from the early 2000s onward. Originally from Scotland, Clipson spent his childhood in Ann Arbor, Michigan before relocating to San Francisco in the 1990s, where he worked as a film projectionist at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for the past twenty years.
I first encountered Clipson’s work before meeting him in 2007. A few years earlier, he had put out Two Suns, a DVD collaboration with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma that paired his experimental Super-8 footage with Cantu-Ledesma’s dense, trance-inducing drones. The material was unforgettable—Clipson’s art felt both exploratory and intimately recognizable; his handling of color and light conveyed emotion and personality without tipping into saccharine sentimentality.
Clipson began working with Cantu-Ledesma after hiring him at SFMOMA in 2002. Three years on, he became the in-house visual artist for Tarantel, the experimental post-rock group founded by Cantu-Ledesma with Danny Grody, Jim Redd, and Tony Cross. This role served as a launchpad for Clipson, who then produced work relentlessly; partnerships with Joshua Churchill, Gregg Kowalsky, Barn Owl, Brendan Murray, Sarah Davachi, Lawrence English, and many more ensued. In addition to these collaborative audio-visual projects, Clipson continued to screen his independent films around the globe.
I performed alongside Clipson and Tarantel at a handful of shows in 2007, and the brief time we shared left a deep impression. It wasn't only that his visuals were striking and his dedication inspiring; Clipson was a reserved, insightful person who seldom put down his camera, perpetually capturing delicate moments that many artists would overlook. “With the mechanics of the camera … there’s an instantaneous elation and sense of loss every moment one’s filming that’s unique,” he remarked to MUBI last autumn.
Clipson’s most famous partnership was with Liz Harris, known as Grouper. Harris had previously shared the stage with Clipson for a few one-off live performances and reached out to him after receiving a commission from the UK in 2013. She was originally asked to accompany a silent film but proposed a fresh concept instead, with Clipson creating the visuals. The undertaking was enormous: at the time, Clipson’s films typically ran only 10 to 20 minutes, yet the commission demanded a 75-minute piece. The pair was tasked with producing a film “about the American landscape” and delivered Hypnosis Display, a dreamy collection of 16mm footage in both black-and-white and color that meandered across the United States, sidestepping clichés and dodging nostalgia.
“She has these plates of sound that she’s made, they flow together,” Clipson explained to KQED Arts in 2015. “I have these sections of film, when the two go together, it’s kind of this shaking earthquake.” Set against Harris’s manipulated field recordings, Hypnosis Display is a stunning spectacle—a raw collage of the American terrain brimming with vitality and subtlety. The piece was eventually presented not only in the UK but also in Canada, Australia, Greece, and, appropriately, across the United States.
In his later years, Clipson collaborated with Sarah Davachi on 2016’s ‘Feeler’, with Lawrence English on a film to accompany last year’s Cruel Optimism, and with Shinya Sugimoto and Jeremy Young on ‘Total Fiction’, which featured a live improvised score that the trio toured across Europe. Clipson leaves behind a close family and a vast circle of friends, colleagues, and admirers who are deeply saddened by his loss; a GoFundMe campaign has been launched by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Maxwell August Croy’s Root Strata label to raise money for his memorial.
John Twells serves as FACT’s Managing Editor. Follow him on Twitter.
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