This volume gathers many of the best known writers on the avant-garde from three continents to write on the cinema of Ken Jacobs, who -- with Jonas Mekas -- is arguably the most important living experimental filmmaker. Jacobs is perhaps best known for his extraordinary, dual-projector Nervous System performances, but his vast output includes shadow plays, multimedia performance films, videos, and, for the last twenty years, the perception-expanding Nervous Magic Lantern. Though he is included in the Whitney Museums list of the hundred greatest artists of the twentieth century, and his film Tom, Tom, The Pipers Son (1969-71) was recently added to the Library of Congress national film registry, there is little scholarly material on Jacobs which is readily available to researchers. Contributors include major scholars like David E. James, Branden W. Joseph, Scott MacDonald, Tony Pipolo, and Nicole Brenez. Shorter essays by internationally renowned artists who have been influenced by Jacobs include Richard Foreman, Art Spiegelman, Jonas Mekas, Phil Solomon, and Lewis Klahr.
