Warhol’s Chelsea Girls ran twelve random-ordered unedited reels two at a time

Evidence

If Blonde on Blonde was LP as novel, The Chelsea Girls was a movie structured like an LP. A series of discrete dramatic vignettes, Warhol’s definitive film was purportedly set in various rooms of the Chelsea Hotel, with each garrulous superstar given a thirty-three-minute reel in which to perform. Twelve unedited reels were screened, originally in a random order, two reels at a time, side by side (but only one with sound). — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 919

Categorization

• XREF: The random-order screening format is a concrete instance of the ‘ignorable art form’ condition in the reader’s thesis — a format that refuses conventional attention and can be entered and left freely.