This evening I took part in a recreation and reshowing of Andy Warhol’s eight hour epic film, Empire (1964). I wasn’t there for eight hours–who could be on a snowy day in December–, but I was at the Varsity Theatre for about an hour of the showing and the related simultaneous events which included a variety of experimental music performed live in front of Empire (which is silent) and readings from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975).

I read Chapter 9 – Economics from the Philosophy book. It’s very funny Warhol take on money and on being and not being rich ending:

I don’t feel like I get germs when I hold money. Money has a certain kind of amnesty. I feel, when I’m holding money, that the dollar bill has no more germs on it than my hands do. When I pass my hand over money, it becomes perfectly clean to me. I don’t know where it’s been—who’s touched it and with what—but that’s all erased the moment I touch it.

The showing was curated by Rich Cante of UNC’s Interdisciplinary Program in Cinema and the event co-sponsored by the Program in Cinema and the Ackland Art Museum.