Man Ray (1890–1976), a photographer, painter, and member of the New York Dada scene, took this photograph of Marcel Duchamp’s unfinished work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, also called The Large Glass (1915–23). In it, he captured dust formations on a glass surface divided by delicate lines of lead wire. After the photograph was taken, Duchamp (1887–1968) wiped the surface almost entirely clean, leaving a section covered with dust before he affixed the permanent glass plate. What Dust Breeding and Zen for Film share, beyond dust, is an emphasis on process. Duchamp fixed and finished his work with the simple gesture of wiping away most of the dust and stopping its further accumulation. This was preceded and accompanied by an act of “conservation” in which the whole dust layer was recorded by Man Ray. In Zen for Film, Paik’s film leader requires a similar determination: deciding how many times it can pass through the projector while still retaining its character and before the accumulation of random traces makes it entirely unreadable as a clear projection. —HH

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Photography in the Fine Arts Gift, 1969 (69.521). © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY. © Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2015. © Succession Marcel Duchamp / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2015.