# Paul Clipson

Paul Clipson (1965 – February 3, 2018) was an American experimental filmmaker and projectionist based in San Francisco. He is best known for his collaborations with musicians, such as Grouper and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Clipson's work usually took the shape of "hyper-imposed improvisations" edited live while his musical collaborators performed. Only later would he go back to edit a performance into a film.

## Early life

Clipson was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Scottish designer Ann Gemmell Clipson and professor of architecture Colin Clipson. He grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan and moved to San Francisco in the 1990s.

## Career

In 1995 Clipson filmed his friend and performance artist Adam Heavenrich publicly improvising in San Francisco. The footage was captured on Super 8 film and largely edited in-camera. This resulted in BUCKY, a series of two-minute-long short films releasing over the next few years.
Clipson's work often took the shape of collaborations with musicians and sound artists. Inspired by musicians' "freedom to create on a whim", he used Super 8 and 16mm projectors to layer his film footage in a live environment. This type of work started in 2003 when Clipson began composing the visuals for the live performances of Cantu-Ledesma's band Tarentel. The two had been friends and colleagues since Clipson hired Cantu-Ledesma to work at the SFMOMA in 2002. They discussed the ways music and film can work together and started performing together. Three years later Clipson officially joined Tarentel as their full-time visual artist.
Clipson has been working as head projectionist and AV manager at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art since around 2000. In 2014 Clipson released REEL, a book composed of drawn and written notes from 1999 up to 2013 composed by Clipson for his colleagues at the museum. The book was published by LAND AND SEA.
In 2015 Clipson collaborated with Harris on an experimental feature-length film called Hypnosis Display. The movie was a commission for Leeds Opera North. For the music Harris employed field recordings and cassette tapes.
In a 2017 Interview, Clipson details his creative process. He usually records footage without a purpose in mind to later use it in live collaborations with musicians, calling these sessions "hyper-imposed improvisations". Clipson goes on to describe his short films as "crystallizations of particular sections of footage I’ve become close to".
Paul Clipson died on February 3rd 2018.

## Influence

In a 2017 interview, Clipson names American filmmaker Bruce Baillie as an influence. A 2018 obituary written by personal friend Max Goldberg and archived by SFMOMA shines a spotlight on Clispon's knowledge of film history. Goldberg goes on to mention the many influences on Clipson: Baillie, Otto Preminger, Chantal Akerman, Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, Orson Welles, Frank Stauffacher, Saul Bass and Elia Kazan, among many others.
Zabriskie Point by Michelangelo Antonioni is one of Clipson's favorite movies.

## Reception

Otie Wheeler, writing for MUBI Notebook, calls Clipson "an experimental, lyrical filmmaker in the tradition of Stan Brakhage".
Clipson's death has been mourned by many artists worldwide, but especially in the local bay area scene. Scott Barley called Clipson an "inspiration" and an "unsung luminary of the moving image". In an obituary, William Basinski was quoted saying "He is brilliant. I adored his work the minute I saw it." "It was at times quite remarkable how he could uncover through his visual medium things that I never would have heard in my own music," says Sarah Davachi. Another collaborator, Gregg Kowalsky, noted that Clipson's excitement was palpable to all of his collaborators.

## Filmography

| Year | Title | Notes |
| 1996 | BUCKY 1 | |
| 1996 | BUCKY 2 | |
| 1998 | BUCKY 3 | |
| 1998 | BUCKY 4 | |
| 1999 | BUCKY 5 | |
| 2004 | Bump Past Cut Up Through Windows | Music by Tarentel |
| 2004 | Big Black Square | Music by Tarentel |
| 2004 | Put It On The Ground | Music by Tarentel |
| 2005 | Two Suns | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2006 | Earthlight | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2006 | Over Water | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2006 | Watercolor Night Montage No. 7 | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2006 | The Lights and Perfections | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2006 | Constellations | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2007 | Passageways | Music by Tarentel |
| 2007 | Corridors | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2007 | Sun Place | Music by Tarentel |
| 2007 | Echo Park | Music by Tarentel |
| 2007 | Tuolumne | Music by Tarentel |
| 2007 | The Phantom Harp | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2007 | Bend Sinister | Music by Metal Rouge |
| 2008 | Within Mirrors | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2008–2009 | Sphinx On The Seine | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2009 | Chrorus | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2009–2012 | Origin | Music by Che Chen |
| 2010 | Union | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2010 | Light From The Mesa | Music by Barn Owl |
| 2011 | Compound Eyes No.1 | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2011 | Odonata (Compound Eyes No.2) | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2011 | Diptera and Lepidoptera (Compound Eyes No.3) | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2011 | Araneae (Compound Eyes No.4) | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2011 | Caridea and Ichthyes (Compound Eyes No.5) | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2012 | Speaking Corpse | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2012 | Another Void | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2012 | The Crystal Text | Music by Young Moon |
| 2012 | Absteigend | Music by Evan Caminiti |
| 2012 | Landscapes Dissolves | Music by Alex Cobb |
| 2013 | Other States | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2013 | Difficult Loves | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2013 | Bright Mirror | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2013–2014 | Light Year | Music by Tashi Wada |
| 2014 | Transparent Things | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2014 | La Paloma | Music by Austin Cesear |
| 2014 | Hypnosis Display | Music and sound by Liz Harris |
| 2014 | Pulsars e Quasars | Music by Arp |
| 2014 | The Liquid Casket / Wilderness Of Mirrors | Music by Lawrence English |
| 2014 | Made Of Air | Music by Grouper |
| 2014 | Trajections | Music by Arp |
| 2014 | Love After Love | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2015 | Come On | Music by Ilyas Ahmed |
| 2015 | Distorting With A Shadow | Music by Alex Cobb |
| 2015 | Lighthouse | Music by King Midas Sound and Fennesz |
| 2016 | Fell on My Face | Music by Young Moon |
| 2016 | Feeler | Music by Sarah Davachi |
| 2016 | Love's Refrain | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2016 | Headache | Music by Grouper |
| 2017 | Cruel Optimism | Music by Lawrence English |
| 2017 | Spectral Ascension | Music by Byron Westbrook |
| 2017 | Total Fiction | Music by Shinya Sugimoto and Jeremy Young |
| 2017 | Tenderness | Music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma |
| 2017 | at hand | Music by Sarah Davachi |
| 2017 | Black Field | Music by Zachary Watkins |