Panel 1: Warholian World: The Factory Years 2-3:30pm

The Factory was both site and symbol of the alternative culture's disdain for the bourgeois ethic, from work to sex to control of consciousness-a sanctified space where leisure and pleasure reigned.
- Sally Banes, Greenwich Village 1963

I don't think anybody ever had a studio like the Factory. There were political people, radicals, people in the arts, disaffected millionaires, collectors, hustlers, hookers. It became a giant theater.
-Emile de Antonio

Everyone who was anybody wanted to be part of it, the Factory, Andy Warhol's legendary studio in New York City. It became the focus for the active art scene and soon enough, famous people-Jack Kerouac, Jane Fonda, Judy Garland, and the Rolling Stones to name a few-began dropping by this hot spot. With the help of the eccentric and artistically talented circle that surrounded him, Warhol could feel the heartbeat of what was going on in the world.

This panel will include artists of the Warhol circle, others who were influenced by the Factory phenomenon, as well as cultural commentators who will share their experiences and perspectives about the Factory years. Panelists include:

Victor Bockris is the author of seven books that star or feature Andy Warhol including: Warhol: The Biography, Transformer: The Lou Reed Story, What's Welsh for Zen: The Autobiography of John Cale, and Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story. He is writing a memoir of his years at the Factory, 1977-1983, and making a series of photo tapestries featuring Warhol's meetings with Muhammad Ali, William Burroughs and Mick Jagger.

Vincent Fremont worked for Andy Warhol from 1969 until Warhol's death in February 1987. He was the Vice-President of Andy Warhol Enterprises and the Executive Manager of the Andy Warhol studio. In the 1970s and 1980s, Fremont produced and developed video, television, and film projects, including Andy Warhol's TV, and Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes. Vincent and his wife Shelly Dunn Fremont made the award-winning documentary entitled Pie In the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story about "Superstar" Brigid Polk.

Jane Holzer, otherwise known as "Baby Jane Holzer," is one of Warhol's original factory "Superstars." Holzer appeared in several Screen Tests, as well as Warhol's films Camp, Couch, The Thirteen Most Beautiful Girls, and Soap Opera. Based in New York, she is now an art collector and real estate developer.

Jonas Mekas is the godfather of American avant-garde filmmaking, or the New American Cinema, as he dubbed it in the late 1950' s. Curator, writer, filmmaker and the founder of Anthology Film Archives, the Filmmakers' Cooperative and Film Culture magazine, Mekas helped shape the public image of avant-garde filmmaking in America, as well as profoundly influenced its self-identity.

Steven Watson, a cultural historian, also worked for nineteen years as the staff psychologist of a community mental health clinic. His books include Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant-Garde and The Birth of the Beat Generation. Watson also produced and directed Prepare for Saints, a documentary about Four Saints in Three Acts. His book, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties, will be published in October 2003, and he is currently working on a documentary about the same subject.

Panel 2: The Legacy of Warhol
4:30-6PM

Few people have seen my films or paintings, but perhaps those few will become more aware of living by being made to think about themselves. People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it gets away too quick. - Andy Warhol

It has been repeatedly said that Andy Warhol transformed how we view and value our lives and world. His career shaped not only the underground scene of drugs, sex, and punk rock, but also the worlds of big business, politics, show business, and the rich and famous. He used art as a way of bringing ideas and trends to the masses, which afterwards seemed so obvious that it was surprising that so few saw it in the first place. Warhol's life was controversial, always in the spotlight. Looking back, what has been his lasting legacy?

Join artists, scholars, and cultural critics, as they come together to address the cultural revolution begun by Warhol that changed the face of America and to discuss how contemporary artists continue to be influenced by his work today. Panelists include:

Wayne Koestenbaum is the author of five books of prose, including a biography of Andy Warhol, and three books of poetry. His book, The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. He is a Professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center, and, this year, he is a Visiting Professor in the painting department of the Yale School of Art.

Thomas Sokolowski is Director of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. He was on the editorial board of the publication Art + Text and was F/X Television's arts correspondent. While Director of New York University's Grey Art Gallery, he mounted Success is a Job in New York: The Early Art and Business of Andy Warhol, which toured Europe and the U.S. Its exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art marked the first time Warhol had a one-person show in Pittsburgh, his birthplace.

Amy Taubin is a contributing editor to Film Comment and Sight and Sound and the author of Taxi Driver in the BFI's Classic Film Books series. During the 1960s she was an actress, playing leading roles in Broadway and Off-Broadway. She also appeared in avant-garde films by Michael Snow, Jonas Mekas, and Andy Warhol. She teaches at the School of Visual Arts.

Check this website for updates.