Selections

SELECTIONS FROM “SURVEYING THE FIRST DECADE”

Part 1: Sept. 21 | 3:30pm | The Hideout (downstairs theater)
Part 2: Sept. 22 | 12pm | The Hideout (downstairs theater)

Surveying the First Decade: Video Art and Alternative Media in the United States: 1965–1980 is the first collection of its kind, gathering seventy-two classic videotapes by artists and activists that display the passion, values and commitment of the early video pioneers as they launched a new medium for personal, artistic and political expression. The collection was originally released in 1996, but the themes are still relevant to the national debate over information policy, media access, media literacy, and the public. Documenting artistic and community-based strategies for media advocacy and experimentation, Surveying the First Decade fosters greater understanding of how communication technology can be directed towards democratic rather than solely commercial ends, and used to express alternative aesthetic, social and political ideas. The project aims to encourage further scholarship, debate and understanding of the first era of alternative media. The project has involved extensive historical research and archival preservation of rare videoworks plus dozens of interviews and consultations with experts, scholars and historians in the field. Christine Hill, former video curator at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, New York, is the curator of the project.

It is generally agreed that the history of single-channel video began in 1965 when Nam June Paik purchased one of the first portable video record and playback decks (Porta-paks), made available to the consumer market by the Sony Corporation. Released into the social upheaval of the late 1960s, at a moment when the counterculture was fiercely challenging the power of the "mainstream" and its institutions—such as the family, the church, the government, and especially television—the availability of this equipment was an auspicious event. The Porta-pak provided a convenient mechanism for artistic experimentation on one hand, and for recording significant events of importance to the counterculture on the other. As a consequence, video art began with two parallel objectives: artists used video as a medium of creative experimentation and personal expression; and activists used it as a "verité" method of recording people, events and social perspectives often excluded from mainstream television productions.

Two programs have been selected from Surveying the First Decade for presentation at Cinematexas. Each represents important works from the two main strands of video. Program One is a selection of experimental works produced by artists using video for four purposes important to the era: documenting conceptual performance pieces (Acconci, Baldessari, Nauman and Wegman), experimenting with aspects of video imaging technology (Dan Sandin, Joan Jonas and Steina), critiquing mainstream television (Richard Serra and Dara Birnbaum), and presenting feminist critiques of media (Joan Jonas and Hermine Freed).

Program Two is a selection of video "verité" and documentary video produced by video collectives that were more concerned with issues of activism and enlarging the concept of participatory democracy than artistic experimentation. This program includes documentation of seminal events such as the first Women's Liberation March and the first Gay Pride March, both recorded in New York City in 1970 by the Peoples Video Theater. Also included is a recording of Queen Mother Moore speaking at Greenhaven Prison by the Peoples Communication Network. This tape is a classic example of how video could reach out to specific communities with diverse (and often controversial) viewpoints typically excluded from mainstream media. The last tape in this program is the classic Four More Years, produced by the TVTV Collective at the Republican National Convention in 1972. This tape uses subversive "point of view" reporting to expose the humorous aspects of the Young Republicans and the two daughters of President Richard Nixon. Four More Years is exemplary of an era in which the portable camera could go anywhere without arousing suspicion of the authorities, an era in which artists and activists freely used the camera to invent and reflect on art, media and the structures of power that control our lives and our culture.

PROGRAM 1: EXPERIEMENTAL VIDEO
trt 69:00

CONCEPTUAL PERFORMANCE:

Stamping in the Studio (excerpt) | 5:00 | Bruce Nauman
From an inverted position, high above the floor, the camera records Nauman’s trek back-and-forth and across the studio creating a metaphor for the effort needed to prepare the
studio for artistic exploration.
video still

Undertone (excerpt) | 10:00 | Vito Acconci
In this now infamous tape, exemplary of Acconci's early transgressive performance style, the artist sits at a table and relates his masturbatory fantasy about a girl who rubs his legs under the table.

Selected Works | 8:00 | William Wegman
Sketches and shorts by William Wegman and his dogs, Man Ray and Fay Ray.

Baldessari Sings Lewitt| 4:00 | John Baldessari
Seated and holding a sheaf of papers, Baldessari makes art less serious by proceeding to sing each of Sol Lewitt's thirty-five sentences outlining the perimeters of conceptual art to a different pop tune, after the model of Ella Fitzgerald Sings Cole Porter.

FEMINIST ANALYSIS:

Vertical Roll (excerpt) | 10:00 | Joan Jonas
In this well-known early tape, Jonas manipulates the vertical control of the monitor then rescans the image to create the sense of grossly disturbed physical space, which metaphorically prevents the viewer (usually male) from eroticizing the female body.

Art Herstory (excerpt) | 10:00 | Hermine Freed
Freed restages different art movements with herself taking the central role in numerous paintings, providing a comment on the absence of women in art history.

Signal Manipulation | 5 minute romp | 5:00 | Dan Sandin
The routing of the camera signal through several basic modules of the IP, produces a "primitive" vocabulary of the effects specific to video imaging.

Switch! Monitor! Drift! | 4:00 | Steina
One of a series of "machine visions" constructed by Steina in the 70s.

MEDIA CRITIQUE:

Television Delivers People | 6:00 | Richard Serra
A seminal critique of mainstream television as an instrument of social control asserting itself subtly on the public through “entertainments,” for the benefit of those in power–corporations that maintain and profit from the status quo while reducing viewers to consumers.

TECHNOLOGY / TRANSFORMATION:

Wonder Woman | 7:00 | Dara Birnbaum
One of the first artists to appropriate TV footage as a strategy to critically reposition the texts of television, Birnbaum examines the production of television's fantasy spectacle in relation to ideological constructions of women and power in this seminal video.

PROGRAM 2: VIDEO VERITÉ + DOCUMENTARY VIDEO
trt: 84:00

Mayday Real Time | 4:00 | David Cort/Videofreex
As a verité documentation of the May 1, 1971 demonstration against the Vietnam War staged in Washington, D.C., Mayday Realtime presents a largely unedited flow of events from the point of view of street-participants.

Participation (excerpt) | 6:00 | Woody + Steina Vasulka
Excerpts from Participation featuring an anonymous R&B group led by a young, charismatic singer, a pulsing light show projection at the Fillmore East, and a scene from off-Broadway drag theater.

SELECTED TAPES: WOMEN:

Selected Tapes: Women's Lib March; Gay Pride March | 8:00 | Peoples Video Theater
PVT's use of video typically involved carrying portapaks in the streets of New York City to document public actions then using the footage as social feedback by screening it in a loft in downtown Manhattan where they conducted video communal discussions and polls about what had been shot.

Queen Mother Moore Speech at Greenwich Prison (excerpt) | 6:00 | Peoples Communication Network
Two years after the riots at Attica, New York, a community day was organized at Greenhaven federal prison in Connecticut. Queen Mother Moore was invited to speak by Think Tank, a prisoners' group that coordinated efforts with the African-American community outside the prison walls to fight racism and poverty. This footage is a prime example of the reach of the portapak into communities often omitted from representation in televisual discourse.

Four More Years | 60:00 | TVTV
TVTV's inside view of the 1972 Republican National Convention made broadcast history. While network cameras focused on the orchestrated renomination of Richard Nixon, TVTV's guerilla television activists turned their cameras on the cocktail parties, hype and hoopla that accompanied the show.