Mitch Corber

Mitch Corber is a New York City neo-Beat poet, an eccentric performance artist, and no wave videographer known for his rapid whimsically comical montage and collage style. He has been associated with Collaborative Projects, Inc. Colab and is creator-director of cable TV long-running weekly series Poetry Thin Air in New York City and its on-line poetry/video archive. He has worked closely with ABC No Rio,Colab TV and the MWF Video Club and his audio art (often musique concrète collages) have been published on Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine three times. He is a recipient of a NY Foundation for the Arts Fellowship grant (1987) in the field of emerging artforms.

Corber graduated from UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in 1971 and shortly thereafter moved to New York City's Lower East Side, became influenced by the slide show performances and films of Jack Smith, and became an early member of Colab. Corber contributed to All Color News, Just Another Asshole and X Magazine.

During this period he became known as a performance artist with his Corber/Jolson Goes to Harlem performance. Riding the subway in blackface, Corber sang My Mammy crouched on one knee in true Al Jolson style. Lines include, "I'd walk a million miles For one of your smiles, My Mammy!"

He also appeared in James Nares's 1978 well-known no wave 82-minute color Super-8 film entitled Rome 78. The narrative is about the Roman emperor Caligula now set in a shabby 1978 downtown Manhattan apartment. As such, it proposes an analogy between ancient Rome and modern America as cultural empires. Despite its large cast in period costumes, the work is never made out to be a serious undertaking, with actors who interject scenes with self-conscious laughter, and deliver seemingly improvised lines with over the top bravado. The work also features No Wave Cinema regular Lydia Lunch of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks along with artist David McDermott of McDermott & McGough as Caligula, James Chance, John Lurie, Eric Mitchell as a Roman general, Judy Rifka, Jim Sutcliffe, Lance Loud, Patti Astor, Anya Phillips as the Queen of Sheba and Kristian Hoffman, among others.

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