Esperanza Collado on Tony Conrad

"Dear Tony,

Thank you for dematerializing art, and particularly for dematerializing film.
Thank you for reminding us that cinema is much more (and, in fact, much less) than a series of images.
Thank you for giving us a film that can be watched with closed eyes.
Thank you for bathing our bodies with light in the dark theatre.
Thank you for demonstrating that the body is not necessarily an obstacle for cinema to reach thought.
Thank you for tickling our nervous system.
Thank you for revealing the architectures of projection and perception, and for opening up for us new possibilities of exploration in that direction.
Thank you for showing us that conceptual art can be full of healthy absurdity.
Thank you for making us see colours where there were only black and white frames.
Thank you for giving us the longest movie in the history of film, with a duration of 3 years: “The Yellow Movies”.
Thank you for showing us that cinema can take multiple forms outside of its standard apparatus.
Thank you for your great sense of humour and for cooking, baking, electrocuting, etc film live.
Thanks for sharing your work and illuminating our lives.
You can never die because you are in all of us."

- Esperanza Collado