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Fall 1985 Video: The Reflexive Medillm Gllest Editor: Sara Hornbacher
Bart Robbett,
Backyard Earth Station, 1984.
Published by
the College
Art Association
ofAmerica
Art Journal
By Sara H ombacher
t has been my intention as Guest tainment, and its audience relationship effects and mediated environments.
Iart'sEditor to suggest the scope of video
brief history and to isolate particu-
as well. Buchloh promotes a theoretical
discourse relative to these through the
Video embraces the very paradox of
pluralist qualities (access and diffusion)
lar theoretical issues, without recourse rather comprehensive discussion of the with the modernist trope, and tools, of
to a totalizing principle. The eleven arti- work of four major video artists. He technological progress.
cles and reviews that constitute this posits a post-avant-garde practice that is Video, inextricably bound to techno-
issue serve to distinguish a number of reflective of the critical authority in logical changes, carries with it the prior-
possible methods of analysis and styles images themselves, recognizing that ity of advancement, represented in the
of discourse, and Barbara London's "Se- there is no neutral information or tech- search for better equipment, better
lected Chronology" is included to assist nology and insisting on an artistic prac- image resolution, and ever more effi-
further historical research of this twen- tice that informs its audience concerning cient compositional control. Not long
ty-year period (1963-83). As artist/ the ease with which cultural authority after Nam June Paik distorted television
editor, I have adopted a personal style of is molded into the realm of objective physically by placing an external mag-
appropriation, assuming or annexing the reality. net on the surface of the screen, the first
persuasions necessary to the project of Electra: Electricity and Electronics portable video equipment was marketed
introducing this first Art Journal issue in 20th-Century Art. a massive exhibi- in the United States by SONY/Japan.
devoted to video. This approach utilizes tion at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Lucinda Furlong tracks the historical
a montage of the fragment, the direct Ville de Paris in 1984, is critically exam- development of a genre called "image-
quotation of the authors I have chosen, ined through its catalogue by Katherine processed video" that claims Paik as one
and an enactment of style in the post- Dieckmann, who applies a definitive of its foremost influences. "Challenging
modern spirit. view of postmodernism's task. Following the institution of television in the late
In the opening paragraph of his Electra's survey of technological devel- 1960s also meant creating images that
article, Benjamin Buchloh observes this opment and art historical periods rela- looked different from standard TV."
period concisely with regard to the tive to electricity, as outlined by the Thus, image processing grew out of an
development of video and its relation- exhibition organizer and catalogue es- intensive period of experimentation; it
ship to contemporary theory: sayist Frank Popper, Dieckmann sum- was at once a modernist exploration of
marizes, "The history of electrical the basic properties of the medium and a
The usage of video technology in subversion of the technology transmit-
inventions in art can be interpreted as a
artistic practice since the mid six- ting Vietnam into our living rooms.
series of impulses towards the creation
ties has undergone rapid and dras-
of an image-producing tool, towards vid- During the seventies video became insti-
tic changes. This makes it a partic-
eo." The appearance of new inventions tutionalized as media centers were orga-
ularly significant topic for the
in the period from 1880 to 1918- nized and funded primarily through
study of the shifts to which art in
general has been subjected since particularly mechanics, optics, and, state and federal agencies, and univer-
the conclusion of post-Minimal finally, electricity---<:orresponded to the sity art and humanities departments
and Conceptual art, the context development of modern aesthetics, expanded curriculum and faculty to pro-
within which video production which ultimately gave rise to parallel mote this new cultural form. These insti-
established itself firmly as a valid philosophic ideas leading to changes in tutional systems of support permitted a
practice of representation-produc- perception. That we are again witness- few persevering pioneers to carve out
tion. ing dramatic dialectical shifts is evident personalized territories where image-
in the very notion of postmodernism. As processing tools were developed and uti-
It is clear that these changes concern the cultural experience becomes increas- lized as a means towards understanding
affiliation of art practice with other dis- ingly synthetic and simulated, contem- the structural properties of the elec-
courses (film, television, advertising), porary culture is obsessed with video- tronic image. With the advent of the
the conditions of its institutional con- as form, as technology, as consumable microchip in the mid seventies, video
artists who aligned themselves with the nology enabling that language to so although it is being suppressed; the
modernist project to put forward the operate. In "The Passion for Perceiving: intelligence to recognize it, although it is
new electronic medium as the message Expanded Forms of Film and Video being covered up; the judgment to
were (despite the anarchist content of Art," John Hanhardt traces the histori- choose those in whose hands it becomes
much of their work) seen as perpetua- cal precedents for video practice, partic- effective;the cunning to spread it among
tors of the previous institutionalized art ularly video installations, to indepen- them."
forms by most members of the alterna- dent cinema. Citing Christian Metz's In Tropics of Discourse, Hayden
tive television movement. Reflecting the The Imaginary Signifier as title source, White suggests that "post-criticism"
political turmoil of the sixties and early Hanhardt addresses the specific specta- (-modernist, -structuralist) is consti-
seventies, Deirdre Boyle elucidates the tor participation in four museum instal- tuted precisely by the application of the
split that occurred, dividing the video lations-two involving film and two devicesof modernist art to critical repre-
artists and video documentarians into involving video-to point to the dif- sentations; furthermore, that the princi-
two camps. For both, video offered the fering strategies employed to engage the pal device taken over by the critics and
dream of creating something new, of viewer in the text of the work. theorists is the compositional pair col-
staking out a claim to a virgin territory. Recent analysis of the "enunciative lage/montage. Collins and Milazzo,
Although there was a distinctly formal- apparatus" of visual representation increasingly noted for their dense style
ized strategy in the deconstruction of the from a feminist perspective reveals the of scrutiny of contemporary art, culture,
television set as material object and the designatory ability of media to construct and aesthetics, have contributed "The
re-presentation of the TV signal as gender identification. Marita Sturken's New Sleep: Stasis and the Image-Bound
material, perhaps the more transgres- reviewof Revising Romance: New Fem- Environment," a paraliterary decon-
sive behavior of this period was inist Video, a video exhibition distrib- struction of the instrumentality of sev-
embraced by the guerrilla television uted by the American Federation of eral video artists' works within the
movement, which sought to challenge Arts, discusses the construction of the context of mapping a more inclusive
the more public, information-based "subject" within the text. Curated by theoretical practice of artistic practice.
technology-broadcast television. Both Lynn Podheiser, this show broaches the As Rosalind Krauss has noted, postmod-
spheres of activity were "molded by the issue of romance-a subject associated ernist practice is not defined in relation
insights of Marshall McLuhan, Buck- primarily with women-and asks, in to a given medium, but rather in relation
minster Fuller, Norbert Wiener, and effect, "What are the psychological, to the logical operations on a set of
Teilhard de Chardin." Subject to the political, and aesthetic consequences of cultural terms. Collins and Milazzo's
wider cultural effects of the encroaching popular ideals of eternal passion and collaborative practice dissolves the line
conservatism of the late seventies, transcendent love?" Sturken suggests traditionally drawn between creative
including changes in government fund- that these videotapes represent the first and critical forms.
ing patterns, the demise of guerrilla stage of intervention in the continuing As the nexus for global cultural dis-
television served as an indicator of the project to "identify the structure of the semination, video is the site of myriad
sociological changes occurring in this opposition's hierarchy and its inherent problematics. Barbara London has writ-
country. To a great extent, the intellec- vocabulary" in order to replace it. Fur- ten that "like printmaking, photogra-
tual and physical energy of this commu- thermore, although Revising Romance phy, and film, video has artistic and
nal enterprise has now been transmuted has a specific topic, it is an admirable commercial applications" and that
into the theoretical discourse of the attempt to isolate this topic within the "both approaches utilize the same tele-
eighties-urgent given the incursion of panoply of issues relevant to it. communications technology, but reach
pluralist kitsch. A postmodernism of In Pure War, Paul Virilio states that audiences of different magnitude." That
reaction is more entrenched than a post- the problem is not to use technology but ever greater numbers of the art-school
modernism of resistance. to realize that one is used by it. The educated are engaged professionally in
Un/Necessary Image is a volume of some cultural sector of commerce rela-
t would be difficult to conceive of works by artists dealing reflexively with tive to advertising, television, and enter-
Itheory-structuralism
postmodernism without continental
and poststructur-
the content and meaning of public infor- tainment is obvious in the eighties.
mation, with the "public image" gener- Indicative of the epistemological break
alism, in particular-as a strategy of ated by mass media, advertising, and occurring is the MOMA programming
deconstruction to rewrite modernism's communications systems. Originally of video exhibitions that include artists
universal techniques in terms of "syn- planned as an exhibition at M.LT., it who have successfully utilized a digested
By Katherine Dieckmann
Every technology produces, provokes. programs a (reflection as nostalgia). Today they are ernism arose from the fallout, dragging
specific accident. I-Paul Virilio
decidedly melancholic, evoking the its forefather along with a prefix that
Machination and Modernism inauguration of a great machine age acknowledges an awkward relationship
Confronted with the machine-crazed whosedemise we have by now witnessed to its past. The sense of contradistinc-
tunnel vision of his Futurist cohorts- and documented. Jean Tinguelv's self- tion built into that term points to its
particularly Marinetti, who pledged fer- destructing machine, Hommage a New chief feature: a willingnessto reconceive
vently to replace the romantic moon as York, transformed the Museum of linear history in favor of a belief in
poetic muse with a new goddess, Electra Modern Art's polite sculpture garden discontinuity. In that reconceiving, the
or electricity-Umberto Boccioni into a site of Hegelian inverse creation artwork's impermeability and self-con-
painted his States of Mind triptych in in 1960. Out of annihilation, the effort tainment under modernism could be
1911 as a corrective to pro-electrical to hit degree zero, came a brief but penetrated by exterior forces-politics,
fever. Those Who Stay, The Farewells, intense coalescing of mechanical-lumi- ideology, even other artworks. Art is
and Those Who Go were Boccioni's nescent-kinetic interests in art, which interpreted as a process of information
titles for three stages of existence in an burnt themselves out, side by side with rather than as a logical development of
age of increased speed and a correspond- the modernism that had prompted them, individual works. Postmodernism chal-
ing frenzy in science and art. The first by the end of the decade. The Museum lenged conventional art history-its
moment in this study of progressive of Modern Art held a requiem for the structure of orderly sequences of stylis-
movement, Those Who Stay, depicts theme in 1968-The Machine as Seen tic action and reaction and its privileg-
full figures inclined slightly to the right, at the End of the Mechanical Age- ing of the object.3
ready to take off, but imprisoned in bold which, like Boccioni, bemoaned a loss of The prevailing beliefs of postmod-
vertical bars of paint. The Farewells is a innocence. In his foreword to the cata- ernism are difficult to situate in relation
quasi-Cubist swirl with semifigurative logue for the show, its curator K. G. to technology and the myth of progress
shapes encircling the broken image of a Pontus Hulten wrote: "the mechanical as it has been phrased under modernism
moving train: an agitation in process. machine-which can most easily be The case of technology and art lends
And in Those Who Go, the aesthetic of defined as an imitation of our muscles- itself easily to dualisms: reason versus
turbulence is realized: the vertical shafts is losing its dominating position among inspiration, logic versus the irrational,
of Those Who Stay metamorphose into the tools of mankind; while electronic the intellect versus passion. The cliches
hyper diagonals; the full figures are now and chemical devices-which imitate associated with artmaking-that it is an
faces, rushing up and practically out of the processes of the brain and nervous outpouring of the creative, the uncon-
the right side of the frame, as though in system-are becoming increasingly trolled, the spontaneous, harnessed
too much of a hurry to wait for their important. ,,2 through form--counter the conventions
bodies to catch up. The machine's unplanned obsoles- of the scientific process, which involve
Boccioni's triptych represents the cence and the possibility for nonhuman formal mastery of a different sort, an
sequential movement so crucial to the replication-not just imitation-of cog- attempt to make empirical reality
Futurists in the wake of Muybridge and nitive processes coincided with and per- "knowable" through a tidy program of
Lumiere; but more important, it haps encouraged the "closure" of mod- investigation, experimentation, and con-
attempts to express the emotional or ernism in the late 1960s and early clusion. When artists take on the con-
psychical states attached to the first 1970s. The unlikely pair of Pop Art and cerns and tools of science, it is sup-
great rush of technological fervor. The Minimalism together drove artmaking posedly to "humanize" this process.
triptych provides a metaphor for atti- into a corner of disengagement (one as With regard to technology itself,
tudes to "the new." Perhaps these pose, the other as absence); the height- there is a healthy polemicof pro and con
images seemed reactionary at the time, ened kineticism of the sixties has agi- attitudes towards tools, which are
a longing to "wait a while" and reflect tated itself into a standstill. Postmod- assembled by hand but invariably tend
late sixties and early seventies; large- its value through culture. The investiga- essays on "special subjects" (art and
scale attempts to situate technology's tion into the consequence of develop- industry, the importance of Japan,
relationship to art practice have been ment-the Heideggerian inquiry into music and digitalization, etc.). The
practically nonexistent. the nature of technology-is deterred by Electra presentation provides a textbook
Meanwhile technology advances out- the artworks. synposis of inventions and "isms" with
side the art world with its characteristic Electra-both the show and its which to enclose the current of efec-
stealth. We cannot see these changes. accompanying catalogue, which is now tricity-of power---eoursing through
Our hearts beat a little faster, our eyes our sole means of experiencing it-has modern (and into postmodern) times.
blink a bit more rapidly, as an unsur- received no attention in the English- These movements are accounted for
passed period of invention profoundly language art press: a bizarre case of without developed references to events
alters our conventional time-space con- continental divide in this, the glorious like world wars. Even the critical curato-
tinuum.' Scientific developments, which age of telecommunication. Actually, the rial breakmark of 1945 fails to be expli-
always pointed towards "the future," silence seems fitting considering the cated as a point where fascination with
tend now to encourage a kind of intensi- show's carefully cloaked isolationist machine art had to face its connection
fied present. "Instantaneousness" en- stance. Despite a contemporary focus with war making (where the machine's
croaches on daily life in the form of the and an effort, as its curator Frank Pop- main function became the production of
computer, which gathers random and per puts it, to show how works are war). This progressive militarism has
distant information and absorbs it into a "situated in relationship to others, espe- reached the crisis point explored in Pure
heightened present with the turn of a cially with regard to present-day debate War. That such political and economic
switch. "Duration," says Paul Virilio in on Avant Garde, Post-Modernism, and forces are obfuscated in traditional art
his dialogue with Sylvere Lotringer, the relations between art, science, tech- history is nothing new. But to unify art
Pure War. "is the last commodity" (p. nology and society."! Electra protects and science (science as technology)
28). The machine art of the sixties, with its artworks from questioning by allying requires greater attention to socioeco-
its naive utopianism and equally naive them to science, characterizing them as nomic and political repercussions. A
critique of futural faith, is not just obso- specifically modernist tendencies that pixel is not a paintbrush. A monitor, a
lete-it's antediluvian. The terms of develop according to an internal logic. digital photograph, an electronic score
scientific progress have changed so Popper (who organized the influential are products of a multinational industry
extremely that positivism is increasingly Kunst-Licht-Kunst show at the Stede- that also manufactures the devices that
untenable. The war industry perfects its lijk Van Abbe Museum in 1966) states help man decide whether or not to push
techniques of delivering an absolute that he and his fellow curators, all of the button-or push it for him." These
instantaneousness, the nuclear bomb. them French, decided that "the exhibi- tools exist within a milieu of political-
Time and speed face new pressures as a tion should not offer a didactic, linear military decision making. Electra's
cultural desire for the instantaneous path," but work via "a number of dis- bluntly utopian presentation is a dis-
(exemplified by the omnipresent com- tinctive recollections of the recent past" turbing document of our times-art his-
puter) makes immediacy the key plea- (p. 24). This position seems a nod to the torical and otherwise. Boccioni's warn-
sure; it comes as no surprise that prevailing poststructuralist mood, both ings from the beginning of this century
nuclear-weapons experts term a mega- within the culture that gave us Derrida, remain pertinent. A faith in the forward,
tonnage explosion the "orgasmic Lacan, and Foucault and within certain in speed. sent the heads whirling out of
whump."" We must remember Martin branches of art criticism. his picture plane in the third part of the
Heidegger's call, made more than Still, it's just that, a nod, for somehow States of Mind triptych.
twenty years ago, to unmask the mean- these "recollections" fall into a straight-
ing of technology, which is never "neu- forward progression. There are a few Electra History or the Birth of Video
tral."? The art world is not exempt from acknowledged aberrations within the The history of electrical inventions in art
this task. field of artistic development; neon, for can be interpreted as a series of impulses
example, has remained constant in form towards the creation of an image-
The Case of"Electra" but varied in its uses from the mid producing tool, towards video. It is use-
The massive exhibition Electra: Elec- forties to the present. Electra charts a ful first to get a sense of the kind of video
tricity and Electronics in 20th-Century model of rational development, a work exhibited in Electra. then go back
Art at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la method of reading urged by the exten- and look at specific prototypes and his-
Ville de Paris in 1984 is crucial to this sive chronology that prefaces the book torical tendencies that may show how
which reflect the surrounding world in Vorticism made. Under the guidance tricity's socioeconomic and political
painting. The manual picture is sup- of Wyndham Lewis from approximate- functions (keeping one eye trained on
pressed by the painterly possibilities of ly 1913 to 1920, the Vorticists drew the art world), but most want to delimit
light projection.?" This pictorial rejec- pointed affinities between love of the the subject to detailed technical expla-
tion of representation in favor of the machine and the war making that coin- nations. Rigaud claims an ideal fusion of
foregrounding of light is not unlike cided directly with their period of pro- art practice and corporate patronage in
many contemporary uses of the video duction. In fact, Popper does not men- his "Art and Industry: A New Relation-
monitor as a luminous "space." Male- tion World War I in detail, except to ship"-not surprising in light of Elec-
vich attempted to make an invisible refer vaguely to "realist reactions" in tra's sponsorship. The possibility of
property (light) visible, but artworks the twenties and thirties. IS pressure from supporting industries who
that do not clearly and obviously address Popper's 1900-45 segment frames the have vested interests in making their
the question of discernible advance are mighty "isms" of the early part of the products look good goes unmentioned."
passed over by Popper. century. The "Medium Domination" It is up to Balibar to point to the prob-
Marcel Duchamp and the Dadaists period of 1945-70 is far more resistant lem of power, literal power, when she
reacted to the very blindness Popper to such periodizing; Popper character- describes electricity as always, invisibly,
embodies in their attack on what was izes it simply as a time when "art was in something. Never is it just a thing "in
fast becoming "modernism" in art- increasingly becoming a social phenom- itself." Further, it is a uniquely market-
Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism-by enon" (p. 32). He separates works into able medium. Thomas Edison, who rose
critiquing the cult of the forward and "nco-Constructivist" and "neo-Dad- from isolated inventor to president of his
positive. Duchamp's "works"-the aist" trends, borrowing from a conven- own corporation, General Electric, of-
ready-mades, the pre-Op sculptural tional separation of "rational" and fers a case history of "the triumph of
image-producers such as Rotary Demi- "irrational" developments. Various col- science, electricity and ... Free Trade."
sphere (Precision Optics), 1925-made lectives arose internationally: some bor- There is a "flaw" in his tale of pioneer-
up the concrete side of Dada's interroga- rowed from Constructivist-kinetic im- ing inventionism, warns Balibar: "Noth-
tion of the ethic of the modern. The pulses (Gutai in Japan and Grav in ing could now stop the irresistible rise of
other and less apparent side of a Paris, for instance) and some from Dad- American companies and the entire
Duchampian aesthetic is its treatment aist positions (Fluxes, Zero, and Nul are world would come under their sway.
of movement. As Octavio Paz has examples). Chile in 1973 offers a good example."!"
observed, "Right from the start Du- The 1945-70 period also witnessed Edison's bulb has come to stand for
champ set up a vertigo of delay in oppo- both increased attention to environ- ingenuity incarnate (the Idea flashing
sition to the vertigo of acceleration.... mental art and inventions such as the over the head of a just-stricken thinker in
Duchamp's pictures are ... the reverse laser and hologram. And this is the time comic strips) as well as a mythic "light
of speed.':" Duchamp's delays allowed of what Popper calls "early electronic that will shine on all." Electricity con-
movement to be analyzed, to become plastic expressions" (the work of Paik, notes an ideal of free transit. Pierre Gau-
duration (Virilio's "last commodity"). Wolf Vostell, Nicolas Schoffer, Piotr dibert disturbs Electra's unimpeded flow
Not least of Duchamp's influence on Kowalski, Tsai, among others), which of positivismand echoes Balibar when he
video, especially Paikian video, is his prefigure video in their shift from observes in a round-table discussion (tit-
challenge to rapid time and absorption; strictly mechanical uses of light and led "Technology and the Respect for
interest in stasis, repetition, and movement to the incorporation of elec- Diversity") that "There is at once an
response-rather than the object-pro- tronics, which will dominate the seven- imperialist and therefore terrorist superi-
vides the basis for much video work, ties and eighties. We hear nothing sub- ority imposed by colonialism, the neo-
which is why the work is often charged stantive about Pop art, Minimalism, colonialism of multinational companies
with being unendurably dull. Conceptual art, or even the light show and a seduction by the Western way of
Dadaism, unlike Constructivism, con- spectacles of the sixties-again the life." Refreshing as this sentiment is
cerned itself with the effects of elec- omissions are those which fit uneasily among the myopic positions of Electra,
tricity rather than with its use in objects. into a dominant modernist stance. Even neither Gaudibert nor his discussants
Surrealists such as Ernst, Matta, and worse is the fact that Popper expand on the problem of technological
Wols, Popper contends, used electric entirely neglects the birth of television in production as an instrument in the
iconography to similarly subjective the fifties. This particular invention is, oppression of the third world at the hands
ends: to explore electricity's relationship of course, of enormous significance both of the corporate West. Instead they daw-
(especially music), "The Overloaded perfect example of a vanguard art prac- exists in a viewing system of projection,
Culture." Our culture is "overloaded" tice co-opted by the mass media through and involves the viewer in a closed,
because, Fabre says, technological de- film, music video, and advertisements definite space but an open-ended period
velopments have infested our "dream- and quickly doomed to looking and of time, the "electronic space" creates a
producing" industries (music, film, sounding "dated"). But her enthusiasm situation where "Escape into the object
fashion); the Surrealist recognition of leads her to declare: "Electronics and or the other is rendered impossible in
affinities between electricity and the media will no longer be agents of stan- physical terms.... The medium com-
unconscious is trenchant as leisure activ- dardization and centralized power municates on a mental and psychologi-
ity is increasingly dominated by elec- structures, besottedly inducing passive cal level rather than by a direct physical
tronic modes of pleasure. Circuitry reception of their message through interaction.?" When audiences com-
infuses the realm of relaxation as much mindless attention and an automatic plain of the boredom of watching art
as it does the spheres of work and brainwash, but rather the efficient video, they are often articulating an
industry. spokesman of human diversity."?' Ad- unwillingness or inability to shift their
Several of the participants in Gaudi- vanced media can indeed disperse infor- perceptual habits, to "let go" and enter
bert's panel realize the leveling effects mation across continents and, when a tape's temporal and imagistic struc-
of a world-wide technoscape (a Venturi- accessible, encourage a wide-ranging ture. Because it reveals itself through
esque perception of Las Vegas becoming participation-and, as in the hip-hop time, a video work alters the notion of a
Times Square becoming Tokyo), but case, can oversell information until it synthesized, unified appraisal of a sin-
Fabre gives this erasure of architectural becomes no more than white noise. This gular object. And the medium itself
differencefar greater attention. She also ideal of dispersal-essentially a post- defies conventional ideas of objec-
does Popper one better by elucidating modern ideal of access .and diffusion, thood-a key postmodernist qualifica-
the decades of technology's progressive which is (ironically) transmitted tion. Video is dispersible, making it so
dominance. She tells of tripsters' fasci- through media of the most sophisticated annoying to those who want to sequester
nation with electrokinesis and the spec- modernity---can be interrogated more art as original and private. It is repro-
tacular light show in the sixties, of their rigorously. In his In the Shadow of the ducible on a mass, relatively inexpensive
delight in experience in excess. Pop art Silent Majorities, Jean Baudrillard scale. It plays in more than one place. It
under the sway of Andy Warhol (the stresses that we exist within a surplus of can cheapen the cost of admission.
man who once claimed to want to be a tele-information that is, at bottom, Video's interdisciplinary development
machine) pushed distanced cool to its meaningless. The postmodern goal of lends it another postmodern feature.
limits. In the seventies, experiments pluralism, where a position of meaning Many artists came to the field out of
with "fixation, atonality, repetition, is ideally open to anyone, finds a con- others-painting, sculpture, filmmak-
emptiness and silence" tempered the vincing critique in Baudrillard's conten- ing, writing, music, broadcast televi-
extremes of the preceding decade (a tion that multiple voices, when sounded sion, engineering, mathematics-and
historical relationship not unlike that of through technological media, are essen- brought to its initial growth a breadth of
Dadaist revisions of early modernist tially silent." Thus, even Fabre's admir- interests inherently opposed to the her-
trends). This absorption with stasis, able effort to inject a postmodernist meticism and separatism often asso-
Fabre notes, has been replaced today by orientation into Electra falls short in the ciated with modernism, and often
an obsessionwith speed. The widespread final analysis-owing mainly to the spe- pointed to as a factor in its demise.
revival of painting under the aegis of cific nature of technology. Video is an accommodating form. It
neo-Expressionism (which idealizes allows for personal-performance art: the
rapid creation) has urged the commod- Electra, Video, lind the Postmodem artist in the studio turns on a camera
ifying tendencies of the international art Video embraces this very paradox of and performs to his or her own image
market to new extremes. Fabre speaks pluralist qualities with the modernist broadcast simultaneously on a moni-
of the difficulty "for people in general trope and tools of technological pro- tor-video is, as Rosalind Krauss has
and young people in particular, to agree gress. The institutions of the art world observed, a narcissistic form." Video
to postpone satisfaction of our human have never known quite what to do with artists can invoke minimal prototypes of
rights, of our pleasure, even of our secret video, and it's no wonder. After twenty blank space and abstraction, using the
wishes as we did in the past under the years video still lacks a solidly indepen- monitor as a screen of light (taking us
name of the sacrosanct rationality prin- dent criticism," a situation largely back to Malevich), or, conversely,
medium (Vito Acconci, Peter Campus, the supposition that rationality (the pro-
Video tapes do play in limos and
Joan Jonas, Beryl Korot, and William gress of science and modernity) equals
swimming pools, but 1984 happened "light. ,,28
Wegman) cited experimentation and
also to be the year when the "small
quick results as reasons to try video. All
screen" took on an added home-enter-
but Jonas gave it up around 1978 when a Digitalization Simulation, and the
tainment dimension. The number of
great wave of technological advances Knowing Image
occurred." The initial appeal came from American households owning VCRs-
plugging in a machine and getting an home video cassette players-jumped Science and technology came from
image. Wegman likened his attraction nearly 100 percent from 1983 to 1984. man's questions about Nature. It
to a fondness for Polaroids: push a but- Twenty percent of all TV-owning house- was from this revealed knowledge
holds now have one." Right from the about the riddle of Nature that
ton and get ready-made art. This pre-
start television has been charged with technology was produced. Since
high-tech affinity for the instantaneous
fracturing its audience and causing iso- then-for about a century now-
occurred when speed of production had
lation (the vision of each American fam- the riddle of science and technol-
seemingly little consequence outside the ily cloistered in its living room slavishly
ogy has tended by its development
workspace. The tapes shown in Electra workshiping The Machine, zombie
pick up just where this idiosyncratic to replace the riddle of Nature.
eyed), but the VCR revolution has cre- And there are no scientists or tech-
period of play left off; since all date
ated an industrialization of the home nicians to answer this riddle. More
post-1980, there is no representation of industry, expanding our sense of the
early stages of video work. This makes than that, there aren't any because
word "video." The either jor dichotomy they refuse. because the scientists
sense in light of the fact that the pan- of television-video art no longer suffices.
and engineers, claiming to know,
elists complained vehemently that the Films (narratives) are selected by VCR
equipment they had used with a sense of don't allow anyone to inquire into
owners, rented or purchased, and played the nature of technology. And so
spontaneity had become a demand on video. Filmgoing is no longer exclu-
rather than a freedom. Increasingly the riddle of technology becomes
sively an "in-the-dark" proposition, and more fearsome, or at least as fear-
computers were combined with simple video's oppositional presentation of a
camera-monitor set-ups. The tools en- some, as the riddle of Nature.
-Virilio, p. 34
croached on image making as they viewing situation that could be entered
or departed at will has been weakened
increasingly dictated the scope of the In the digital imagery section of Electra.
(though museum screenings of tapes which includes digitalization in video
work. have long fostered devotion in the dark
The crucial point about Electra is and still images, Edmond Couchot
that this complication of the medium is and a lack of viewer mobility). adopts a supremely pragmatic voice,
Genres blend: subscribers pay to see
completely masked by an all-consuming even when describing processes that
support for progress in tools. Dominique advertisements set to music in the form have, as we shall see, unsettling possibil-
Belloir makes the situation perfectly of MTV (and we remember Rigaud's ities. Couchot demystifies various com-
call for art and commerce to join hands).
clear: Music video usurps every jolting camera puter functions in layman's---or lay art
Thanks to the extreme versatility and cutting strategy invented by a historian's-terms:
of video diffusion equipment (a French New Wave director, making the The three-dimensional synthesis
simple screen and video-tape rec- abrupt segue a narcotic rather than a image is an almost infinite poten-
order to go with it), it is possible to shock in a vulgarization of editing. Col- tial of images, never visible in their
watch video tapes in the most orization, long the domain of video art, entirety. It no longer represents
unlikely places, comfortably in- is a standard aesthetic ploy on MTV. the object on a projection plane, it
stalled in the back seat of a 4 Film directors such as William Fried- simulates it in its totality. It corre-
Horse Power (intimist drive-in kin, Brian DePalma, and even, it is sponds to a way of perceiving and
devised one day at Bourges by rumored, Federico Fellini direct videos. considering space-a topology-
Liegon-Ligeonnet), underwater at A reciprocal appropriation occurs be- which no longer has anything to do
the bottom of a swimming pool or tween technology and the art world. with traditional optic techniques
else lying on the sand of a beach in Artists take what technology can give to (photo, cinema, television). Digi-
Normandy where the Allies satisfy formal or expressive needs; com- tal three-dimensional synthesis in-
landed forty years ago.... For mercialized industry takes up avant- troduced a new visual order into
nuclear scare movies that depict man's impo- free the "energy" of the mass in order to
tence when faced with circuitry gone beserk. fabricate the "social."
10 Program notes to the video section of "Electra- In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities . . . Or
Video," in Electra (cited n. 8), pp. 373, 376. the End of the Social, trans. Paul Foss, Paul
11 Virilio (cited n. 1, p. 84) speaks of rapid Patton, and John Johnston, New York, Semio-
transportation as generating its own specific text(e), Foreign Agents Series, 1983, pp. 24-25.
light. Inverting Futurist affirmation, he states: All further citations appear in the text.
22 David Antin has described two stabs at a video
All speed illuminates. The low speed of
discourse as follows:one is "a kind of enthusias-
Victor Hugo's train, the relatively high
tic welcoming prose peppered with fragments
speeds of the Concorde or the very high
of communication theory and McLuhanesque
speeds of televised projection are elec-
media talk," the other "a rather nervous
tronic or thermodynamic light-ther-
attempt to locate the 'unique properties of the
modynamic light in the case of the train,
medium,' " also known as "the formalist rap"
light of the reactor in the Concorde and
(to which one could add "the modernist tact").
electronic light in television. When one
"Video: The Distinctive Features of the
is on a jet or on a train, one sees the
Medium," Video Art. Philadelphia, Institute of
world in a different light, so to speak.
Contemporary Art, 1975, p. 57.
It's not a problem of light source, but of
relation to the world. The world flown 23 Mona da Vinci, "Video: The Art of Observable
over is a world produced by speed. It's a Dreams," New Artists Video. ed, Gregory
representation. We come back to Battcock, New York, 1978, p. 18.
Schopenhauer's pessimism, the world as
representation, but this time as repre- 24 Rosalind Krauss, "Video: The Aesthetics of
Narcissism," New Artists Video (cited n. 23),
sentation of speed.
pp.43-64.
12 See: Joshua C. Taylor, "The Futurist Goal,
25 This panel was sponsored by Anthology Film
The Futurist Achievement," Major European
Archives and held at Millenium Film Work-
Art Movements: 1900-1945, ed. Patricia E.
shop in New York City on November 29, 1984.
Kaplan and Susan Manso, New York, 1977,
The moderator for the panel, titled "Reel to
pp.164-92.
Reel: The Early 70s," was Davidson Gigliotti.
13 Willoughby Sharp, "Luminism and Kinet-
26 "Electra-Video," Electra (cited n. 8), p. 366.
icism," Minimal Art. ed. Gregory Battcock,
New York, 1968, p. 323. Sharp provides a 27 Kenneth Turam, "The Art of Revolution,"
thorough pre-video overview of luminist and Rolling Stone (December 20, 1984-January 3,
kineticist trends. 1985), p. 75.
14 Octavio Paz, "Marcel Duchamp, Or, The Cas- 28 Jiirgen Habermas has situated a break in the
tle of Purity," Major European Art Move- historical meaning of modernism in the
ments (cited n. 12), pp. 354-55. Enlightenment, when "the modern" came to
mean less a countering relationship to the past
15 For a study of the return to figuration and
than an ideal of futurity. The connotation of a
representation from abstraction in painting
rational "light" became focused on the forward
between the wars, see: Benjamin H.D. Buch-
as "the idea of being 'modern' by looking back
loh, "Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regres-
to the ancients changed with the belief, inspired
sion," October, 16 (Spring 1981). by modern science, in the infinite advance
16 Electra (cited n. 8). pp. 116-22. The inhibi- toward social and moral betterment" ("Moder-
tions of sponsorship seem connected to Elec- nity-An Incomplete Project," The Anti-Aes-
tra's positivism and Popper's conciliatory thetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal
stance. Foster, Port Townsend, Wash., 1983, pp. 3-
15).
17 "Light and Electricity: Electrons and Pho-
tons," ibid., pp. 128-29.
By Ann-Sargent Wooster
ideo art is a hybrid adapting and ogy. Moreover, they are alienated by its in contrast to painting and sculpture.
V sharing the aesthetics, content, and
history of the visual arts, literature,
radical, art-for-art's-sake content fea-
turing personal material, abstraction,
demands too much time in viewing.
Although the medium has some of the
music, film, and-most recently-the and disjunctive narrative for its own properties of collage and the arrange-
computer. It brings together ideas about sake. Television critics generally see ment of monitors in installations does
how to construct a story and how to video art as using a language totally have certain sculptural properties, videc
structure experience, fragmentation, different from that of broadcast televi- art has less in common with painting
disjunction, and chance based on avant- sion and outside their province even and sculpture than it does with film 01
garde ideas developed over the last 100 when video art is broadcast-such as the performance. After condemning videc
years. Yet for all its historical prece- recent productions of independent video art for being narcissistic and boring, art
dents and for all the varieties of criti- on WNET, New Television, Alive From critics shifted their focus away from
cism to which it is open, video art has Off Center and Independent Focus- video and began to treat it as invisible.
proved opaque not only to its critics but and do not write about it. Video artists themselves have con-
also to its practitioners, who frequently In its early years (1968-74), video art tributed to the murkiness of critical
do not understand the origins of the was treated as an outgrowth of the discourse. In the early years, artist-
structures they share. In reply to a state- visual arts, largely because many of its generated publications such as Radicai
ment by Frank Gillette at the 1974 practitioners had crossed over from tra- Software. Video Art, The New Televi-
Open Circuits Conference, Robert Pin- ditional art forms. Furthermore, the sion. and others abounded with artists'
cus-Witten said: "It is not a medium to early single-channel tapes and multi- statements on their own work and the
which the humankind you are so con- channel installations were usually nature and potential of the medium.
scious of has access; it's an exceptionally shown in art galleries and museums. These writings stressed video's capacity
inaccessible medium." I More than ten Videomakers, such as video's chief for expanding consciousness and enfran-
years have passed since that time, but a polemicist Nam June Paik, contributed chising those disenfranchised by broad-
critical model for video has not yet been to the identification of video with paint- cast television. They saw television ide-
constructed. ing and sculpture by asserting that it alistically: a magic totem capable of
Because it shares the technology and was the art form of the future: "as generating Marshall McLuhan's Global
look of broadcast television, video art collage technique replaced oil paint, so Village, and in their hands bringing
has been frequently treated as an aber- the cathode-ray tube will replace can- peace on earth. Others, who came tc
rant outgrowth of that medium. But to vas." He added that the synthesizer video from kinetic art and Experiments
see video art primarily in the context of made it possible to shape the TV screen in Art and Technology (E.AT.), cele-
television is to exacerbate the confusion brated their hands-on involvement with
as precisely as Leonardo
that already surrounds it. A complex its technology in the Spaghetti City
as freely as Picasso
mixture of factors explain video art's Video Manual and other publications.
as colorfully as Renoir
continuing lack of clarity. Those who As a group, the early video artists saw
as profoundly as Mondrian
scorn television as a mass-culture video art as a way of reinvesting a
as violently as Pollock and
medium without any redeeming aes- technological art form with a spiritual
as lyrically as Jasper Johns'
thetic or intellectual qualities dismiss aura and rarely placed their work in a
video art in the same breath with the Although art critics found themselves historical context, often implying in
Dukes of Hazard. To television aficion- responsible for writing about video art their writing a lack of connection with
ados, on the other hand, video art is along with other time- and perfor- previous art forms. As three-quarter-
"poor" television not living up to general mance-based art forms in the early sev- inch color tapes and lower-cost editing
expectations of the medium because of enties, they were never wholly comfort- systems replaced the early, crude
its comparatively impoverished technol- able with any of these mediums. Video, black-and-white portable s~stems, the
1
'~treet chant? Or simply a collection of editing to intensify the moment such as meaning of hearing, are juxtaposed,
Images, a bouquet of pretty pictures? If in Dara Birnbaum's Wonder Woman modifying and muddying the meaning
la videotape is like language, what is the and Damnation of Faust, where fast of each.
By John G. Hanhardt
The picture, certainly is in my eye. But I am not in interpretation in the visual and literary Art-an appropriation of the television
the picture. arts-with their attention to a variety of as an icon, to be destroyed and trans-
-Jacques Lacan' texts and visual-art traditions---can con- formed, by such artists as Wolf Vostell
tribute to a better understanding of the and Nam June Paik.
he spectator in the movie theater cinematic experience when it is seen as The development of the portable vid-
T and the reader of the novel are no
longer seen as passive receivers but as, in
an enlarged discourse composed of a
variety of texts and viewing experi-
eotape recorder and player by the Sony
Corporation released the medium from
fact, engaged in the active production of ences. its studio confines; it became a new
meaning. Contemporary theories of The problem of contemporary film image-making tool in the hands of art-
interpretation are approaching an un- theory-its exclusive preoccupation ists. One of the experimental forms that
derstanding of the reception of the aes- with the normative theatrical film pro- shaped video art was the installation,
thetic text as a complex hermeneutic of duction and viewing experience-fig- which took video out of the customary
multivalent readings centered within the ures also in the writing of video's history single-channel television and gallery-
psychology of the reader and the social and theory. The terms "video" and viewing format and posited it as a sculp-
institution of discourse production. "television" identify two different forms tural/ installation/environmental me-
The title for this paper, "The Passion of the medium. Television is the broad- dium. It is this work that will be briefly
for Perceiving," is taken from one of the cast mode of the medium, which histori- reviewed here as we begin to contrast
key works of recent film theory, Chris- cally has been defined by -the commer- film and video installations and to
tian Metz's The Imaginary Signifier? cial networks. Video traditionally explore the differing strategies they use
The role of the spectator holds a central identifies the independent producer and to engage the viewer in the text of the
place in Metz's elaboration of a semiotic artist creating tapes for telecast outside work. This comparison reflects the dia-
analysis of the formation of the cinema commercial television. logue that is emerging between film and
as text and social institution. Metz's Television began as an industry whose video artists who are joining these media
psychoanalytic inquiry into the roots of developments, through patents, eco- through a conscious reevaluation of the
the cinematic discourse posits that the nomic consolidation, and communica- traditional forms and strategies of film
psychology of the spectator is formed tions law, were quickly subsumed into a and video causing a rethinking of sculp-
through the group experience of film monopolistic commercial broadcast in- ture, installation, and performance.
viewing in the theater and the individu- dustry. Similarly, film emerged in the
al's interaction with the film's formal nineteenth century as a phenomenon of ideo as installation has expressed a
construct of narrative tropes. Metz thus
enlarges the cinematic discourse by bas-
individual investors and entrepreneurs
joining the recording ability of film and
V conscious rejection of single-chan-
nel television viewing within the home.
ing his semiotic method not exclusively photography to its narrative potential as Video installations employ a variety of
on linguistic models but on Freudian a popular art form. These protonarrative formal strategies and technological
and Lacanian psychoanalysis as well. forms were explored before the rapid properties of the medium: multichannel
One of the problems with Metz's consolidation of cinematic practice into and monitor displays of videotapes
approach, as with film theory in general, the monopolistic entertainment industry where the monitor as a physical object is
is that it is given over exclusively to a established at the beginning of the twen- marked within a wall structure, as in
cinema shaped by narrative and repre- tieth century. Since the highly capital- Mary Lucier's Ohio at Giverny (1983);
sentational concerns. Metz's reading of ized corporate structure of broadcast or the placing of monitors in various
film is conditioned by the dominant television did not avail itself of indepen- expressive configurations, as in Ira
codes of the classical cinema and its dent production, its history does not Schneider's Time Zones (1980); or the
conventions of viewing. But the avant- parallel that of the experimentation and juxtaposition of monitors with other
garde film has evolved its own separate individual innovation of nineteenth-cen- materials, as in Francese Torres's instal-
history, allied to the movements of tury film. But in the early 1960s, there lation The Head of the Dragon (1981).
modernism. The developing theories of did emerge-out of Fluxus and Pop Common to these works is the use of the
FIll/1985 215
as fragments of the body are revealed of the picture and fuses with the eye of
and disappear. the camera-projector-monitor. The
Buky Schwartz's Yellow Triangle spectator is in an active dialogue with
(1979) (Fig. 4) employs the camera and the text, seeing it not as a closed code
acknowledges the two-dimensional but as an engaging phenomenological
properties of the video image, which experience. These film and video instal-
flattens the space surveyed by the cam- lations can be seen as models or meta-
era's lens. In this project, one of phors for the relationship of the reader-
Schwartz's video construction series, a viewer to text: they exemplify the
camera is located near the gallery ceil- aesthetic text as a presence in an active
ing and is directed into the gallery space and reciprocal dialogue between the art-
in which the artist has painted a yellow ist and viewer.
triangular pattern on the floor and
walls, which is seen as a triangle on the Notes
monitor. It is only on the monitor that I Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Con-
the painted surfaces can be seen as a cepts of Psycho-Analysis, ed. Jacques-Alain
yellow triangle, and that only when the Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan, New York. 1978,
viewer is in the image itself. Here p.96.
Schwartz has created the illusion on the 2 Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier,
Downloaded by [TCU Texas Christian University] at 17:10 30 January 2015
monitor's screen of a sculptural object, a trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben
yellow triangle, that is only perceivable Brewster, and Alfred Guzzetti, Bloomington,
on the monitor's screen constructed Indiana, 1982.
from the point of view of the camera. 3 Re-Visions: Projects and Proposals in Film
The spectator is one with the picture as and Video, April 19-May 13, 1979, was the
he or she looks at the monitor and stands Whitney Museum's first large-scale film- and
within the triangle. video-installation exhibition. The exhibition
In both Mem and Yellow Triangle occupied the Museum's entire third floor and
the artists manipulate points of view comprised the work of three film artists (Wil-
through the camera and position of the liam Anastasi, Morgan Fisher, Michael Snow)
spectator in an active exploration of the and three video artists (Bill Beirne, Buky
image and space in which the work is Schwartz, Bob Watts in collaboration with
sited. The painterly surface on Cam- David Behrman and Bob Diamond).
pus's projected image and the sculptural
presence of Schwartz's triangle are cre- John G. Hanhardt is Curator of Film
ated by a medium in which the viewer and Video at the Whitney Museum of
takes an active role in perceiving the American Art.
work.
By Benjamin H. D. Buck/ok
he usage of video technology in but ion of the high-art avant-garde-the television, and thus reach new au-
T artistic practice since the mid six-
ties has undergone rapid and drastic
museum and the gallery-and an even
uneasier one with the customers of this
diences. The promise of video technol-
ogy seemed to be a progressive transfor-
changes. This makes it a particularly distribution system, the private collec- mation both of the traditional fetishistic
significant topic for the study of the tors. It seems that many of the poten- production and reception apparatus of
shifts to which art in general has been tially most progressive features of the the high-art institution and of the quasi-
subjected since the conclusion of post- medium have by now turned out to be a totalitarian conditions of the conscious-
Minimal and Conceptual art, the con- trap for the artists who find themselves ness industry in television, advertising,
text within which video production caught between the vigorous reaffirma- and movie production. This promise
established itself firmly as a valid prac- tion of traditional values and techniques continued the legacy of modernism's
tice of representation-production. These in the worlds of high-art and institu- attachment to technology as an inevi-
changes concern not only the affiliations tional television and an attitude of tably liberating force, the naively opti-
of art practice with other discourses increasing certainty that culture, con- mistic assumption-which had already
(film, television, advertising) but also sumption, and ideology are congruent. distorted Walter Benjamin's famous
the conditions of its institutional con- Although recent developments in the "Reproduction" essay and the work of
tainment (video's implicit and explicit art world have proven the optimistic the most important artists of the twen-
claim to lead the way out of the vicious assumptions of the video artists of the ties-that media technology could in-
circle of gallery and museum institution late sixties and early seventies wrong on duce changes inside a sociopolitical
straight into the mythical public sphere each account and have thus effectively framework without addressing the spe-
of broadcast television) as well as its transformed their claims into myths, it cific interests and conditions of the indi-
audience relationship (opening and still seems necessary to recall these viduals within the political and eco-
broadening audiences, addressing very claims that were once made for video nomic ordering system.
specific audiences at the site and the technology and its usage in order to Typical of the technocratic idealists
moment of their conditions and needs). recognize the industrial pressures that who fostered the cult of the gadget in the
As in the first instances of the usages video art has faced since then. First, it field ofvideo art is Nam June Paik, who
of film technology by artists (Leger, appeared at the time that video technol- became the role model for contemporary
Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy), video tech- ogy would be a powerful weapon to video artists. Another typical figure of
nology was originally employed by art- assist language, photography, and film the late sixties-and equally a heroic
ists parallel to their continuing work in in the gradual dismantling of the tradi- pioneer of video art-was Gerry Schum,
painting and sculpture or conceptual tional modes of cultural production, who initiated the first gallery that was
practices (for example, such major video breaking down their hegemony and false exclusively committed to video art and
artists of the sixties as Vito Acconci, claim for an organic and auratic aes- that was supposed to serve the fine-arts
Dan Graham, Bruce Nauman, and thetic quality, dismantling the domi- collector and the museum institution on
Lawrence Weiner). Since then, how- nance of the fetishizing practices of the one hand and, on the other, as a
ever, the usage of video technology has painting and sculpture. studio and producer of artists' video
become the central production tool for a The second assumption was that elec- works to be supplied to television sta-
younger generation of artists, many of tronically generated iconic imagery not tions for broadcasting: Needless to say,
whom have had no background in the only would replace the inherently retro- neither of Schum's heroic and quixotic
traditional academic disciplines of art at grade aesthetics of a craft-and-skill- commitments were successful-in spite
all but come directly out of film- and oriented production with its implied of his exceptional conviction and profes-
television studies or other fields such as exclusivity and elitist domination of the sional devotion to the project.
the dramatic arts or even architecture. field of culture but would also-by the With regard to the traditional high-
Therefore, video artists have generally mere fact of its technology-establish a art apparatus and its distribution sys-
maintained an uneasy relationship with relationship with the dominant and tem, the project failed because private
the institutions of reception and distri- dominating practice of mass culture, collectors could not be convinced that a
viewing of video work. Ultimately, some easily be as expensive as that of a two- tape not only referred to the ideological
major institutions even developed de- hour feature movie or a public lecture by affiliation of the technology but also
partments for the collection and curato- an artist in an educational institution. explicitly addressed a non-high-art au-
rial administration of video work. Yet Those who were involved in produc- dience, since it was intended for broad-
the institutions were soon to find out not tion in the sixties seem to have been cast television and it "spoke" to the
only that the new technology presented unaware that video technology required television public rather than to' the
considerable problems of operation and and generated its own syntax and vocab- museum or gallery public.
maintenance but also that the silent ulary and that the practices of mass-
perpetuity of painting and sculpture in cultural institutions and high-cultural t some point the history of the
the galleries attracted growing au-
diences, who in turn seemed to be rather
conventions were not so easily inte-
grated. Often the results of artists'
A relationship between the tradi-
tional high-art avant-garde and the new
disturbed by the presence of the televi- involvement with the technique of video video technology will have to be written.
sion set in the museum. After all, the were rather peculiar hybrids that could It will be surprising how many of the
pilgrimage to the object of high art was just as easily have been produced with same grotesque features and problems
not being made in order to be reminded traditional film equipment. Only those that marked photography's encounter
of the barbarism of everyday life in the artists who, like Dan Graham, Bruce with the high-art institutions in the nine-
home and on the screen. Nauman, and Richard Serra, were teenth century-the pretenses and disa-
Institutions of mass culture tempo- explicitly involved in a phenomenologi- vowels, the mimicry and disguises-
rarily made a liberal opening in the cal analysis of the viewers' relationship were also at work in the interrelation-
sixties for adventurers like Schum when to the sculptural construct and to the ship of video technology and its artistic
his tapes by artists were in fact admitted surrounding architectural container practitioners.
for broadcasting on several occasions. were successful in employing video tech- One of the key figures in the develop-
The most appropriate was probably the nology in its most essential and specific ment of post-Minimal video art is Dan
proposal by the Dutch artist Jan Dibbets capacities of simultaneous recording Graham, who has employed video tech-
to broadcast a prerecorded image of a and reproduction, feedback of image nology since the late 1960s for the con-
fireplace on network television for sev- and sound, duration and delay of tempo- struction of sculptural situations. The
eral minutes. Inevitably, the institu- ral experience in the context of a sculp- term "situational aesthetics" was used
tional managers found out that these tural installation. Although these artists at that time with various meanings, but
artists' ideas about television did not were acutely aware of the unique and it could be applied to Graham's work to
really agree with theirs or those of their specific qualities of video technology for describe the multiplicity of its focus,
audiences, let alone those of their adver- the purposes of their sculptural investi- dealing with the particular conditions of
tising patrons. The best that could be gations, they deliberately ignored alto- the site of the sculptural construction in
hoped for at that time was a mutual gether the technology's origin and con- terms of architectural space at the same
exchange of tokenism between the insti- tainment in the mass-cultural industry time as with the psychological space
tutions of high and low culture and the of television. This was only a typical generated by the interaction of the
myths that this would generate: that instance of the modernists' assumption viewers with the construction itself, the
high culture was committing itself- that their perceptual and aesthetic behavior-space of audience and
once again-radically to the formation investigation takes place in a socially performers.'
and technology of mass-cultural repre- and politically neutral field-the virtual Graham acknowledged his historical
sentation and that the mass-cultural space of art-and is all the more aston- debt to the sculptors of Minimal art and
institution was liberal and civilized ishing since the founder of video prac- the post-Minimal work explicitly; for
enough to support the isolated and ailing tice in art, Nam June Paik, since 1965 the usage of video it was particularly in
high-art practices. The contradictions had always emphasized the interdepen- the work of Bruce Nauman that Gra-
inherent in these myths were particu- dence of the institutions of television and ham had recognized the technology's
larly evident on the level of video distri- the avant-garde. Unfortunately, how- peculiar and specific capacity to
bution and reception. While the com- ever, that interdependence was never heighten an audience's sense of the phe-
mercial galleries of the sixties were subjected to a critical analysis, and Paik nomenological interdependence of spa-
attempting to make artists' tapes attrac- never addressed the political implica- tial, temporal, material, and perceptual
tive as items for traditional collectors tions of the ideological apparatus of elements that constituted in their total-
(hoping perhaps that a new collector's television. This accounts for the fact ity the phenomenon that had been tradi-
218 Art Jour"al
tionally referred to as "sculpture." ham-but to act out two opposing view- filled radical potential, its relevance for
Thus, video technology provided the points on issues of community concern. contemporary thinking, which attempts
most accurate means for a true self- By feeding the opposing positions to avoid these concerns. The most perti-
reflexivity of spatial conditions and tem- through permutations (each adversary nent and striking feature of the work is
poral processes as required by advanced assumes alternatingly the other's posi- once again its media optimism and its
contemporary definition of the sculptu- tion), the community is encouraged to belief that access to public broadcast
ral experience. respond and engage in an active mode of television will be only a matter of time
At the same time, video technology participation in the viewing and receiv- and proper organization and that the
also provided the means for a different ing process of television. Although this instrument of television could then be
kind of self-reflexivity: the reflection of work is clearly marked by the utopian turned around from being the most pow-
internal psychological and behavioral thinking of the late sixties (in its media erful social institution of manipulation
processes, be it those of the author or optimism and in its naivete towards the and control to becoming an instrument
those of the audience. Against the apparatus of mass culture and the pow- of self-determination, two-way commu-
legacy of a formalist ban on subject ers that control it), it is also an outstand- nication, exchange, and learning.
matter and subjectivity (as Greenberg ing example of a video work in which the The second historical feature of the
had demanded, it had to be "avoided three dimensions of video art and its work is its abstract relationship to its
like the plague") artists like Vito unique and specific potentials are most audience. It is certainly one of the most
Acconci and Joan Jonas in the late six- clearly integrated. Whereas Acconci advanced works with regard to reflec-
ties employed video for the recording concentrated on video's potential for tions on audience conditions, but, para-
and transmission of psychological con- feedback and mirror reflection and its doxically, it is also one of the most
tent and subject matter, almost as if psychological implications of self-reflec- limited. The assumption that a televi-
Downloaded by [George Washington University] at 12:52 21 February 2015
they wanted to resist not only that for- tion, introspection, and the exemplary sion audience would be interested
malist legacy but also the restriction to a acting out of the imaginary worlds of enough to submit itself willingly to a
pure phenomenological neutrality of self-projection and identification and radical procedure of deconstruction and
behavior that Minimal art had at least Nauman restricted his installations to defamiliarization during its evening
admitted back into the discussion of abstract formal and perceptual experi- dosage of news mythology in order to
aesthetic practice and experience. ments that excluded psychological sub- recognize its own condition of ideologi-
The impermanence of many of the ject matter beyond that of the psychol- cal containment follows the century-old
installations by Nauman, Acconci, Gra- ogy of perception of time and space, delusion of modernist enlightenment
ham, and Jonas and the inevitably "dra- Graham clearly opts from the very that aesthetic constructs have only to
matic" qualities of an analytical beginning for video's sociopolitical po- confront audiences with the perceptual
approach to behavior processes led tential in every respect. On the level of and cognitive means of penetrating the
numerous critics to the discovery of a the reflection of spatiotemporal phe- layers of ideological mythification that
distinctly "theatrical" quality in the nomena, Graham's works are conceived mask the social and political conditions
work of these artists, presumably a "the- of as the containers of social interaction, of everyday life to make them rediscover
ater of the conceptual" and of narcissis- never as pure sculptural constructs or the underlying reality and to initiate the
tic self-reflection." This misapprehen- aestheticized domains of neutrality and transition from the isolation of passive
sion originated in Michael Fried's mis- purity as they emerge at the same time high-cultural consumption to an aes-
reading of the insistence of Minimal at the West coast in post-Minimal sculp- thetics of instrumentality and active
artists on incorporating a phenomeno- ture. On the level of individual or inter- change. This modernist notion that the
logical reflection on audience participa- personal psychological reflection, Gra- avant-garde could break down the isola-
tion in terms of a traditional theatrical ham emphasizes the dependence of tion of high bourgeois culture and its
performance. Emphasis on the contin- individual psychic formations on social institutionalization by introducing au-
gency and contiguity of the perceptual and political conditions rather than diences to mass-cultural subject matter
construct (with which Robert Morris, treating them as separate phenomena in an unmediated form-and that this
in, for example, his Mirrored Cubes of that occur in a space of behavior and would engage the audiences of mass
1964, had initiated a critique of the intrapsychic reality disconnected from culture and disengage the bourgeois
modernist notion of the autonomous the conditions of reality. Finally, and audiences' claim to exclusive access to
space of sculpture) forms also the basis most important for the subject of our cultural knowledge and experience-
of the video work produced by these discussion, Graham introduces the so- was certainly still conditioning Gra-
artists in the late sixties and early cial institution of the language forma- ham's attempts in the early seventies to
seventies. tion and of the technology that he reflect upon audience conditions in his
Unlike that of Nauman or Acconci, employs directly into the conception of video work for television broadcast. As
however, Graham's work from the very his projects and underlines within the Bertolt Brecht struggling with precisely
beginning explicitly reflects on the con- video work its intricate and inevitable those problems in the thirties had
dition that all video practice qua tech- correlation with broadcast television. argued, the "truth not only had to be
nique is originating and ultimately con- beautiful, but also entertaining."
tained in the dominant mass-cultural he most complex and advanced In his most recent video work Dan
discourse of television. This would be
best evidenced in a work from 1971,
T work of this kind was produced by
Dan Graham in collaboration with Dara
Graham seems to have altered his strat-
egies altogether, and it seems that the
Project for a Local Cable TV,S where Birnbaum in 1978: Local Television reflections that initiated the changes
one of Graham's typical experiments to News Program Analysis for Public engage in precisely those questions.
survey and record the dynamics and Access Cable Television." It is crucial First of all, and quite remarkably dif-
mechanics of an exchange between two both to recall the implications of this ferent, Graham's recent video work is no
individuals is linked to the community work in order to understand the changes longer an installation project but "sim-
audience via cable network. The two that have occurred in current video ply" a pre-produced videotar; entitled
individuals in this particular case have practice (particularly in that of Graham Rock My Religion (Fig. 1). Although
been instructed not to act out internal- and Birnbaum) and to clarify its by-now this transition from situational sculpture
ized modes of social role behavior-as in historical qualities in order to criticize installations to scripted and produced
so many other earlier works of Gra- its limitations and to underline its unful- videotape with predefined subject mat-
abandonment of the modernist insis- the contribution of the black working consumption.
tence on the material presence of an class and its musicians or reflecting on Despite the manifest shortcomings of
aesthetic construct (the facture of the its cultural contribution in the context of Graham's Rock My Religion. the phe-
painting, the sculptural objecthood) in its role as the traditionally exploited and nomena of mass culture are .here
favor of a system of representations that oppressed proletarian class of American approached for the first time from a
defines itself already by its distribution society. In the contemporary part of high-cultural vantage point that is radi-
form as a reproduced and reproducible Graham's analysis this historical omis- cally different from the traditional atti-
entity in a universe of technically repro- sion has its equivalent in the total oblit- tude of appropriation and quotation
duced imagery (a step that all video eration of the basis of Rock and Roll in (Fig. 2). This attitude has been most
artists make) is the denial of the exclu- the apparatus of the culture industry. adequately described by Thomas Crow
sive validity of any unique artistic con- Although Graham's main argument- in a recent essay as a continuous process
struct and the particular places reserved that contemporary mass-cultural prac- of extraction, exploitation, and commer-
for these objects (museums, galleries, tices have inherited and transformed the cial redistribution." Mass-cultural phe-
alternative spaces). Rather it opts for an functions of the religious practices in nomena are extracted by the vanguard
aesthetic product that is multiple and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century from their context in order to inject
diversified in its distribution and exhibi- America-is striking and convincing ailing avant-garde representational sys-
tion contexts, that shifts its audiences at .(perhaps not all that new and original as tems with a new air of radicality while
least potentially, and, most crucially, the author may believe) and certainly initiating a process of control and con-
that addresses existing systems and provides the basis for a study of the tainment. Once absorbed into high cul-
mechanisms of representation, and that history of the functions and formations ture, the newly legitimized and legitim-
is not attempting to conjure up in social of ideology, in particular the increase of izing mass-cultural practices can then
reality the individual instance of a irrationality under the rigid regimenta- be disseminated once again on the mar-
"work" or an aesthetic solution.
Yet what the work gains in universal-
ity and potential audience access by
inserting itself into the mass-cultural
totality of floating representations, it
loses in material specificity and contex-
tual concreteness, the sources from
which avant-garde high culture in
modernism had traditionally drawn its
capacity of resistance. These problem-
atic qualities are inherent in Graham's
new video work as well. Although his
subject matter is clearly a mass-cultural
topic-the historical interrelationship of
religious deviance, sexual abstinence,
and the origins of ecstatic musical prac-
tices in nineteenth-century America as
the sources for contemporary Rock and
Roll music-his approach and handling
of the material is clearly marked by the
individuality of an artist as author, and
we are confronted with a highly subjec-
tive reading of a history that may tell us
more about present-day circumstances
than about its historical material. The Fig. 2 Jim Morrison, The Doors, still from Dan Graham, Rock My Religion.
idiosyncratic and eclectic compilation of 1983.
It seems, to put it polemicalIy, that if this moment the unproblematic, con- impact of her own work and its far-
given a chance, Birnbaum would con- tinued hegemony of the high-cultural ranging potential as well as the inherent
sider it an honor to redesign and produce tradition (its subject matter, its produc- possibilitiesof contemporary video prac-
in a more aestheticalIy satisfying style a tion procedures, its distribution form, its tice in general: to produce a language of
few spots or a few snippets for MTV's reception processes, its audiences, and critique and resistance, to represent the
growing supermarket of industrial mus- its institutions). This seems to be the interests of audiences subjected to the
ic. Only at first glance does Faust in its only artistic strategy available to insti- totalitarianism of the television indus-
apparent commitment to high-cultural tute artistic production in a position and try, and to interfere within the elusive
subject matter of the bourgeois past a discourse of power (as opposed to one isolationism of high-cultural privileges.
(after alI, that is the subject of Goethe's of marginality, institutional-not to
Faust: the rise and formation of the mention market-neglect, inefficacy, he questions of audience address
bourgeois personality) oppose that liqui-
dation of the qualitative differences
and isolation from the mainstream of
cultural support).
T and audience specificity, but most
of alI the question of enlarging the scope
between aesthetic practice and cultural Birnbaum's earlier work deserves of a public that is approached in the
industry. On closer reading--or re- credit for having approached the dialec- essentialIy public medium ofvideo, were
peated viewing-the originally unfa- tic between the barbarism of mass cul- recently developed further in a colIabo-
thomable reference to the Faust legend ture and the autocratic elitism of high rative work that Jenny Holzer organized
(which is, as actual subject, alI but culture, a dialectic that has marked the on the occasion of the 1984 presidential
absent from the tape) as well as the entire history of modernism and reflects elections. I should say from the start
incoherent and incomprehensible junc- the essential problem of bourgeois class that although I think that this project
tion of the Faust subject with late- society's division of labor, but it is-at tackled these questions more success-
nineteenth-century japonisme become least on the grounds of this tape- fulIy than any other contemporary video
clearer. (Once again the paraphrase of becoming obvious where her orientation work that I am aware of, it also deliv-
that phenomenon is so vague that it is will lead her work. Admittedly, the tape ered the proof that a resolution of these
not even clear whether Birnbaum actu- has been declared to be the "prologue" problems is not to be achieved by aes-
ally refers to the Japanese woodcut for a long work consisting of several thetic or technological means alone.
designs and their spatial and graphic parts, and it may be premature to judge Holzer's project certainly took the claim
ordering systems themselves in order to it. But since it has been shown as an of many video artists seriously: to
construct a striking antecedent for her independent unit of the Faust project by engage in a dialogue with a public that is
own graphic and spatial structuring of Birnbaum on many occasions, one must not a public of gallery-going specialists
the video image by means of new editing assume that it represents the author's focusing on the questions of a special-
technology or whether she actually ideas and strategies adequately on its ized industry of high culture. Holzer for
wants to establish a reference to the own. Her ideas seem far from any this purpose organized the rental and
reception of these techniques in late- attempt to counteract the desublimation instalIation of a large truck designed to
nineteenth-century French Postimpres- by the mass-cultural formations by display messages on a thirty-foot video
sionist and Symbolist art and to relate insisting on the historical potential of screen (a Mitsubishi screen comparable
her own current artistic practice to that bourgeois culture as a bastion against to those being instalIed in basebalI sta-
history and the japonisme tradition.) the destruction of individuality (an atti- diums to give viewers instant close-ups,
In the same manner that The Damna- tude that many artists have developed as slow motions, and replays of the action).
tion of Faust orients itself in its deploy- a practice of resistance, most convinc- This Sign on a Truck." as Holzer
ment of advanced technology to the suc- ingly the films of Daniele Huillet and entitled the project, was instalIed on two
cessful entry into the institution of Jean-Marie Straub or, in the visual different days in two different central
television (if as nothing else, then at art's, the work of Marcel Broodthaers). locations in midtown and downtown
least as a source of examples of a stylish But this resistance demands more than Manhattan before Election Day, dis-
and sophisticated usage of technology the simplistic propping of contemporary playing more than thirty prerecorded
that the mindless managers of the indus- practice with fragments from the history messages and images by artists and
try are always eager to pick up from of high culture-more than using the authors as welI as direct interviews that
artists in order to glamorize their per- rubble of high-cultural history as barri- Holzer and her collaborators had con-
petual repetition of the same), it orients cades for the defense of class interest ducted in the street, asking passersby
Itself-in its pretense to high-cultural and privileges-incorporated in the out- about their political concerns and opin-
By Deirdre Boyle
ideo pioneers didn't use covered video artists and the video documentar- ers banded together into media groups;
V wagons; they built media vans for
their cross-country journeys colonizing
ists. The reasons for this fissure were it was an era for collective action and
complex, involving the competition for communal living, when pooling equip-
the vast wasteland of American televi- funding and exhibition, a changing ment, energy, and ideas made more than
sion. It was the late sixties, and Sony's political and cultural climate, and a good sense. But for kids raised on "The
introduction of the half-inch video Port- certain disdain for nonfiction work as Mickey Mouse Club"---charter mem-
apak in the United States was like a less creative that "art"-an attitude bers of Howdy Doody's Peanut Gal-
media version of the Land Grant Act, also found in the worlds of film, photog- lery-belonging to a media gang also
inspiring a heterogeneous mass of raphy, and literature. But in video's conferred membership in an extended
American hippies, avant-garde artists, early years, guerrilla television em- family that unconsciously imitated the
student-intellectuals, lost souls, budding braced art as documentary and stressed television models of their youth. Some
feminists, militant blacks, flower chil- innovation, alternative approaches, and admitted they were attracted by the
dren, and jaded journalists to take to the a critical relationship to Television. imagined "outlaw" status of belonging
streets, if not the road, Portapak in Just as the invention of movable type to a video collective, less dangerous than
hand, to stake out the new territory of in the fifteenth century made books por- being a member of the Dalton gang-or
alternative television. table and private, video did the same for the Weather Underground-and proba-
In those early days anyone with a the televised image; and just as the bly more glamorous. As video collectives
Portapak was called a "video artist." development of offset printing launched sprouted up all over the country, the
Practitioners of the new medium moved the alternative-press movement in the media gave them considerable play-
freely within the worlds of conceptual, sixties, video's advent launched an alter- predictably focusing on groups in New
performance, and imagist art as well as native television movement in the seven- York City like People's Video Theater,
of the documentary. Skip Sweeney of ties. Guerrilla television was actually the Videofreex, Global Village, and
Video Free America, once called the part of that larger alternative media tide Raindance-in magazines like Time,
"King of Video Feedback," also de- which swept over the country during the Newsweek, TV Guide, New York, and
signed video environments for avant- sixties, affecting radio, newspapers, The New Yorker. They celebrated the
garde theater (A CjDC. Kaddish) and magazines, publishing, as well as the exploits of the video pioneers in mythic
collaborated with Arthur Ginsberg on a fine and performing arts. Molded by the terms curiously reminiscent of the open-
fascinating multimonitor documentary insights of Marshall McLuhan, Buck- ing narrations of TV Westerns. Here's
portrait of the lives of a porn queen and minster Fuller, Norbert Wiener, and an example from a 1970 Newsweek
her bisexual, drug-addict husband, The Teilhard de Chardin, influenced by the article:
Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd. style of New Journalism forged by Tom Television in the U.S. often resem-
Although some artists arrived at video Wolfe and Hunter Thompson, and bles a drowsy giant, sluggishly
having already established reputations inspired by the content of the agonizing repeating itself in both form and
in painting, sculpture, or music, many issues of the day, video guerrillas set out content season after season. But
video pioneers came with no formal art to "tell it like it is"-not from the lofty, out on TV's fringe, where the
training, attracted to the medium "objective" viewpoint of TV cameras viewers thus far are few, a group
because it had neither history nor hier- poised to survey an event but from of bold experimenters are engaged
archy nor strictures, because one was within the crowd, subjective and in nothing less than an attempt to
free to try anything and everything, involved. transform the medium. During the
whether it was interviewing a street bum past few years, television has
(one of the first such tapes was made by Video Gangs developed a significant avant-
artist Les Levine in 1965) or exploring For baby boomers who had grown up on garde, a pioneering corps to match
the infinite variety of a feedback image. TV, having the tools to make your own the press's underground, the cine-
Gradually, two camps emerged: the was heady stuff. Most early videomak- ma's verite. the theater's off-off-
your own forms. Stated in terms that lence between angry blacks and whites TVTV's first production crew. Sham-
in Harlem. These gritty, black-and- berg got a commitment from two cable
evoke the characteristic American rest-
lessness, boldness, vision, and enterprise white tapes were generally edited in the stations and raised $15,000 to do two,
that pioneered the West-part adoles- camera, since editing was as yet a primi- hour-long tapes. The first, a video scrap-
cent arrogance and part courage and tive matter of cut-and-paste or else a book of the Democratic Convention ti-
imagination---one discovers a funda- maddeningly imprecise backspace tled The World's Largest TV Studio,
mental American ethos behind this radi- method of cuing scenes for "crash" ed- played on cable and would have been the
cal media movement. its. The technological limitations of last of TVTV were it not for an unprece-
early video equipment were merely dented review in the New York Times
Guerrilla Television Defined incorporated in the style, thus "real- by its TV critic John O'Connor, who
The term "guerrilla televison" came time video"-whether criticized for pronounced it "distinctive and valu-
being boring and inept or praised for its able.,,4 With that validation, Shamberg
from the 1971 book of the same title by
Michael Shamberg.! This manifesto fidelity to the cinema verite ethic-was was able to raise more money and hold
outlined a technological radicalism that in fact an aesthetic largely dictated by the cable companies to their agreement,
claimed that commercial television,with the equipment. Video pioneers of neces- going on to cover the Republican Con-
its mass audiences, was a conditioning sity were adept at making a virtue of vention the following month. Four More
agent rather than a source of enlighten- their limitations. Real-time video be- Years was the result; it is one of TVTV's
ment. Video offered the means to "de- came a conscious style praised for being best works, demonstrating the hall-
centralize" television so that a honest in presenting an unreconstructed marks of their iconoclastic, intimate
Whitmanesque democracy of ideas, reality and opposed to conventional tele- New Journalism style.
opinions, and cultural expressions- vision "reality," with its quick, highly Unlike the Democrats in 1972,
made both by and for the people-could edited scenes and narration-whether chaotic and diffuse, the Republicans
then be "narrowcast" on cable televi- stand-up or voice-over-by a typically had a clear, if uninspired, scenario to
sion. Sham berg, a former Time corre- white, male figure of authority. When reelect Richard Nixon. Instead of point-
spondent, had discovered that video was electronic editing and color video ing their cameras at the podium,
a medium more potent than print while became available later, the aesthetic TVTV's crew of nineteen threaded their
reporting on the historic "TV as a Crea- adapted to the changing technology, but way through delegate caucuses, Young
tive Medium" show at the Howard Wise these fundamental stylistic expectations Republican rallies, cocktail parties,
Gallery in 1969. Banding together with laid down in video's primitive past lin- antiwar demonstrations, and the frenzy
Frank Gillette, Paul Ryan, and Ira gered on through the decade. What of the convention floor. Capturing the
Schneider (three of the artists in the these early works may have lacked in hysteria of political zealots, they focused
show), among others, they formed Rain- technical polish or visual sophistication on the sharp differences between the
dance Corporation, video's self-pro- they frequently made up for in sheer Young Voters for Nixon and the Viet-
energy and raw immediacy of content nam Vets Against the War, all the while
claimed think-tank equivalent to the matter. entertaining viewers with the foibles of
Rand Corporation. Raindance produced politicians, press, and camp followers
several volumes of a magazine called Enter TVTV alike. One Republican organizer's re-
Radical Software, the video under- With cable's rise in the early seventies mark to her staff, "The balloons alone
ground's bible, gossip sheet, and chief came a new stage in guerrilla television's will give us the fun we need," epitomizes
networking tool during the early seven- growth. The prospect of using cable to the zany, real-life comedy TVTV cap-
ties. It was in the pages of Radical reach larger audiences and create an tured on tape.
Software and Guerrilla Television that alternative to network TV proved a cat- Interviewed on the quality of conven-
a radical media philosophy was articu- alytic agent. Video groups sprang up tion coverage are press personalities
lated, but it was in the documentary across the country, from rural Appala- whose off-the-cuff remarks ("I'm not a
tapes, which were first shown closed- chia to wealthy Marin County, even to big fan of advocacy reporting."-Dan
circuit, then cablecast, and finally cities like New Orleans where it would Rather; "What's news? Things that
broadcast, that guerrilla television was be years before cable was ever laid. happen."-Herb Kaplow; "Introspec-
practiced and revised. TVTV, guerrilla television's most me- tion isn't good for a journalist."-Wal-
diagenic and controversial group, was ter Cronkite) culminate with Roger
a distinctive American ritual. meant scooping their competitors, but thetically seeking stability and guidance
the 1960 network ban on airing indepen- in the guru's fold. Neon light, glitter,
Forging a Distinctive Style dently produced news and public-affairs and rock music furnished by the guru's
In forging their distinctive style, TVTV productions remained in force, and any brother (a rotund rip-off of Elvis Pres-
avoided voice-overs like the plague; they small-format tapes broadcast were ley) on a Las Vegas-styled stage was the
experimented with graphics, using cam- usually excerpted and narrated by net- unlikely backdrop for the guru's satsang
paign buttons to punctuate the tape and work commentators, beyond the edito- or preaching to his followers. Outside,
give it a certain thematic unity ; and they rial reach of their makers. angry arguments between premies and
deployed a wide-angle lens, which dis- The introduction of the stand-alone Hare Krishna followers and one bible-
torted faces as editorial commentary. time-base corrector in 1973, a black box spouting militant fundamentalist ex-
The fish-eye look, used at first out of that stabilized helical scan tapes and posed the undercurrent of violence,
practical necessity, since the Portapak made them broadcastable, changed repression, and control in any extremist
lens often didn't let in enough light and everything. It was finally possible for religion. TVTV cleverly played off two
went out of focus in many shooting small-format video to become a stable sixties radicals against each other. Hav-
situations, became a TVTV signature, television production medium, which ing traded in his role of countercultural
which led to later charges of exploitation paved the way not only for guerrilla political leader for that of spokesman for
of unsuspecting subjects. But in the television to reach the masses but also an improbable religion, Rennie Davis
beginning, it was all new and fresh and for the rise of ENG and, eventually, sings the guru's praises as Abbie Hoff-
exciting. The critics pronounced that all-video television production. Given man, one of guerrilla TV's Superstars,
TVTV had covered the conventions bet- TVTV's unprecedented success with watches Davis on tape and comments on
ter than network TV news, proving-that Four More Years, it was only logical his former colleague's arrogance and
the alternative media could beat the that they produce the first half-inch skills as a propagandist (Fig. 1). "It's
networks at their own game and for the video documentary for airing on na- different saying you've found God than
money CBS spent on coffee. tional public television. saying you know his address and credit
Although the networks had ENG The tape was Lord of the Universe, card number," Hoffman quips, empha-
(electronic news gathering) units at the and its subject was the fifteen-year-old sizing the grasping side of this so-called
convention, the contrast was striking. guru Maharaj Ji . Millenium '73, a gath- religion.
Only a beefy cameraman could with- ering of the guru's faded flower children Much in evidence is TVTV's creative
stand the enormous apparatus, includ- followers, was scheduled for the Hous- use of graphics, live music, and wide-
ing scuba-style backpack to transport ton Astrodome, which the guru prom- angle lens shots. As always there is
so-called portable television cameras. ised would levitate at the close (like the humor leavening what was for TVTV a
Fully equipped, they looked more like Yippies at the Pentagon in '67, the guru tragic situation. At one point, our Bos-
moon men than media makers. Com- knew how to create a media event). Elon ton guide to the "gurunoids" innocently
pared with this, the lightweight, black- Soltes, whose brother-in-law was a remarks, "I don't know whether it's the
and-white Portapak and recorder in the would-be believer, followed him with air conditioning, but you can really feel
hands of slim Nancy Cain of the Video- Portapak from Boston to Houston while something." The humor is a black
freex looked like a child 's toy, which was other TVTV crew members gathered in humor, rife with an irony that danger-
part of the charm since no one took Houston to tape the mahatmas and the ously borders on mockery but is checked
seriously these low-tech hippies. In vid- "prernies" (followers), getting em- by an underlying compassion for the
eo's early days, many didn 't believe the broiled in what was to be the most desperation of lost souls. At home in the
tape was rolling because it didn't make successful TVTV tape but also the most world of spectacle and carnival, ever
the whirring sound of the TV film cam- shattering for its makers. Fearful of agile in debunking power seekers,
eras, and much unguarded dialogue was mind control and violence (a prankish TVTV admirably succeeded in produc-
captured because the medium was new reporter had been brained by a guru ing a document of the times that
and unfamiliar. bodyguard not long before) and stricken remains a classic.
by the sight of so many of their own
Television Enters the Picture generation lost and foundering in the Film's Hidden Impact
Thus established, TVTV went on to arms of this spiritual Svengali, TVTV Paul Goldsmith, a well-known l6mm
make their next "event" tape, but now determined to expose the sham and get verite cameraman, had joined TVTV
his next venture. He bought the rights to Gone was the intimate, amiable camera- Independents with Beta and VHS
the Neal and Carolyn Cassidy story and person-interviewer style, which was a equipment have been documenting the
produced the film Heartbeat. Although hallmark of alternative video. Increas- struggles in Central America. Lost amid
it was a box-office flop, he had the ingly, video documentaries began look- the home-video boom, a new generation
conviction to go on. In 1983, two films ing more and more like "television" doc- of video guerrillas may be in training
later, he produced the Academy Award umentaries, with stand-up reporters and yet.
nominee The Big Chill. a reunion film slide-lecture approaches that skimmed McLuhan's reductionist view that
about a group of late-sixties hippies who over an issue and took no stance. "the medium is the message" was
meet at the funeral of one of their own Where one could see the impact of embraced and then rejected by the first
and reflect on how they've changed and guerrilla television was in its parody: video guerrillas, who asserted that con-
been affected by "the big chill." sincere documentaries about ordinary tent did matter; finding a new form and
Although the film was based on its people had been absorbed and trans- a better means of distributing diverse
director-writer Larry Kasdan's friends, formed into mock-u-entertainments like opinions was the problem. That problem
it could have been about TVTV. "Real People" and "That's Incredible!" is still with us. How a new wave of video
The video verite of the 1976 award- guerrillas will resolve it and carryon
Changing Times winning The Police Tapes, by Alan and that legacy, human and imperfect as it
The fact that TVTV changed along with Susan Raymond, had become the tem- may be, should prove to be interesting
their times should come as no surprise. plate for the popular TV series "Hill and unexpected. More than guerrilla
TVTV wasn't the only group to pull Street Blues." In the sixties, Rain- television's future may depend on it.
apart during the late seventies. The dance's Paul Ryan proclaimed, "VT is Notes
media revolutionaries were growing not TV,"s but by the eighties, VT was This article, which has appeared in slightly dif-
older and changing-assuming respon- TV. ferent form in Transmission. edited by Peter
sibilities for marriages, homes, and fam- Today, in an era of creeping conserva- O'Agostino (Tanam Press, 1985), and in Sight-
ilies-living in a different world from tism, the ideals of guerrilla television are lines (Fall 1984), is excerpted from a study of the
the one that had once celebrated the more in need of champions than in its same name supported by a grant from the New
brash goals and idealistic dreams of heyday when it was easier to stand up York State Council on the Arts and a Guggenheim
guerrilla television. The promise that for democractic media that would tell it Fellowship.
cable TV would serve as a democratic like it is for ordinary people living in 1 "Television's Avant-Garde," Newsweek. Feb.
alternative to corporately owned televi- late-twentieth-century America. Few 9,1970.
sion was betrayed by federal deregula- have come along to take up the chal-
tion and footloose franchise agreements. lenge of guerrilla television's more radi- 2 Michael Shamberg and Raindance Corpora-
Public television's early support for cal and innovative past. Although the tion, Guerrilla Television. New York, 1971.
experimental documentary and artistic collectives with names like rock 3 Interview with Michael Shamberg, Oct. 19,
work in video slowed to a virtual halt- groups-Amazing Grace, April Video, 1983.
the sad demise of WNET's TV Lab is a and the Underground Vegetables-have
4 John E. O'Connor, "TV: A 'Scrapbook' of the
recent instance. And funding sources long since disappeared, many notable Oemocratic Convention," The New York
that had once lavished support and pioneers continue to keep alive their Times. Aug. 17, 1972.
enthusiasm on guerrilla TV groups now ideals, some working in public-access
turned a cold shoulder, preferring to cable, like DeeDee Halleck (of Paper 5 "Feedback," Radical Software. Vol. I No.1
support individuals rather than groups Tiger Television), or from within the (1970).
and work that stressed art and experi- networks, like Ann Volkes (an editor at
mentation rather than controversy and CBS News) and Greg Pratt (a docu- Deirdre Boyle teaches Media Studies
community. mentary-video producer for a network at the New School for Social Research
Once the possibility of reaching a affiliate in Minneapolis), or as indepen- and Fordham University College at
mass audience opened up, the very dent journalists, like Jon Alpert (a free- Lincoln Center. She is afrequent
nature of guerrilla television changed. lance correspondent for NBC's "Today contributor to film and video journals
No longer out to create an alternative to Show") and Skip Blumberg (whose por- and the author ofVideo Classics: A
television, guerrilla TV was competing traits of Double Dutch jumpers and Guide to Video Art and Documentary
on the same airwaves for viewers and Eskimo athletes still appear on public Tapes (Oryx Press, 1986).
By Lucinda Furlong
ideo wallpaper ... special effects people who use these tools such charac-
V . .. computer art ... high-tech
video ... image synthesis ... image
terizations are superficial and belie the
range of concerns that fall within the
shuny that until 1974 was the mouth-
piece of the movement:
Power is no longer expressed in
manipulation ... image processing- image-processing umbrella.
land, labor, and capital, but by
these are some of the terms that have Although the label is conceptually
access to information and the
been used to describe a type of video and technically inadequate, it seems to means of disseminate it. As long as
produced by artists who have been have stuck for lack of a better one to
experimenting since the late 1960s with the most powerful tools (not weap-
describe what has become, in effect, a
ons) remain in the hands of those
electronic imaging tools. None of these separate aesthetic genre. But the catego- who would hoard them, no alter-
terms are particularly useful: they are ries that now divide video-docu-
too general or too specific, or they fall native cultural vision can succeed.
mentary, image processing, perfor-
prey to the kind of value judgments and Unless we design and implement
mance, and installation-were virtually
myths associated with "mindless," "im- alternate information structures
nonexistent at its beginnings; then all
personal" technology. which transcend and reconfigure
forms of video functioned homoge-
the existing ones, other alternative
Even the most common term, "image neously as an expression of the activism
processing," is problematic. Whereas in systems and life styles will be no
of the 1960s-as the alternative televi-
more than products of the existing
commercial television that term usually sion movement. As Steina Vasulka has
refers to signal-processing methods such processes.... Our species will sur-
recalled: vive neither by totally rejecting
as time base correction, in the video-art
world it has become at once a genre and You have to understand those nor unconditionally embracing
early years, they were so unbeliev- technology-but by humanizing
a catchall phrase for every technical
process in the book. "Image processing" ably intense.... This was the it; by allowing people access to the
encompasses the synthesis and manipu- " '60s revolution." We didn't have informational tools they need to
lation of the video signal in a way that the division in the early times. We shape and reassert control over
all knew we were interested in their lives.'
often changes the image quite drastical-
ly. It includes not only altering camera- different things, like video synthe- The rejection of commercial televi-
generated images through processes sis and electronic video, which was sion did not manifest itself in direct
such as colorizing, keying, switching, definitely different from commu- social action alone. Low-cost portable
fading, and sequencing but combining nity access-type video, but we video equipment was no new that using
those operations on synthesized-that didn't see ourselves in opposite it for any purpose at all was considered
is, cameraless-imagery as well. It has camps. We were all struggling radical. As part of a new kind of "media
come to refer to everything from the together and we were all using the ecology," video environments (the pre-
most basic analog-processing techniques same tools. I cursor of the video installation) were
to sophisticated digital-computer graph- created. Some were interactive situa-
ics and effects. ohanna Gill has observed that the tions designed to expose and circumvent
And yet despite the term's breadth,
"image processing" conjures up a num-
Jto change,
desire to use communications tools
quite literally, the world took
the one-way delivery of commercial tele-
vision. Others-inspired both by Mar-
ber of very specific-often pejorative- a number of forms-the most direct shall McLuhan and by Norbert Wien-
stereotypes: densely layered "psychedel- being to work with community and er's work in cybernetics-reflected
ic" images composed of soft, undulating oppositional political groups.' The goals these thinkers' correlations between
forms in which highly saturated colors of the alternative media groups were electronic circuitry and the workings of
give a painterly effect, or geometric articulated in the first issue of Radical the human nervous system. The idealism
abstractions that undergo a series of Software. the publication founded in in Juan Downey's article "Technology
visual permutations. To many of the 1970 by Beryl Korot and Phyllis Ger- and Beyond" is typical of what David
standard TV. Thus, "image processing" bad art they produced. Their art laboration in 1970 is touted as the
as we now know it grew out of an was deficient precisely because it "first,"? a few people were working on
intensive period of experimentation that was linked to and perpetuated the specialized video equipment earlier than
for some, in a vague way, was seen outmoded cliches of Modernist or at least contemporaneously with
visually to subvert the system that Pictorialism-a vocabulary of Lis- Paik. For instance, in 1969, Eric Si~gel
brought the Vietnam War home every sajous patterns-swirling oscilla- modified a color TV set so that images
night. There were other motives, of tions endemic to electronic art- were distorted and colored; he then built
course: the swirling colors and distorted synthesized to the most familiar a separate device capable of colorizing a
forms conjured up the experiences asso- expressionist color plays and sur- black-and-white video image. And
ciated with hallucinogenic drugs, sug- realist juxtapositions of deep vista Stephen Beck, who completed his Beck
gesting that "new realities" could be or anatomical disembodiment and Direct Video Synthesizer No. 1 in 1970,
electronically synthesized. S discontinuity. . .. The important actually began working on a prototype
Perhaps the most interesting attitude, work, then, of the first generation in 1968. In addition, Dan Sandin com-
though, in light of what was going on in was the very creation of the tool, pleted in 1973 what he called an "image
the art world at the time, was the con- the video synthesizer.' processor," a video version of a Moog
nection made between image processing Pincus- Witten's comments are im- audio synthesizer. Bill Etra and Steve
and the modernist credo of exploring the portant not only because he pinpoints Rutt later built the Rutt-Etra Scan Pro-
basic properties of the medium. This one reason why this work was rejected cessor, a device that can manipulate the
treatment of the electronic signal as a but because he acknowledges the impor- video image as it is displayed on a video
plastic medium, a material with inher- tant role that designers and builders monitor.
ent properties that can be isolated, is played in developing relatively low-cost As Ken Marsh pointed out in Inde-
central to the development of what equipment. Prior to the introduction of pendent Video. a technical how-to book
became the image-processing aesthetic. consumer video products, the design of of the period, these early devices oper-
There are many examples of this funda- video equipment was geared towards ated on two basic principles: "the use of
mentally formalist characterization, broadcasting and industry. Much of the electrical signals rather than light as the
which, I think, provided a way to lend equipment now taken for granted- source of the information to be dis-
modernist credentials to an art form color cameras and lightweight Porta- played; and the extensive intermixing of
that was having a difficult time gaining paks, for example-were either unavail- signals in order to display a totally new
acceptance-critical attention, fund- able or unaffordable for most people. It image."!"
ing, marketability-by traditional art was even more difficult to acquire the Compared with the technical stan-
institutions. devices associated with image process- dards of television these devices were
For example, in December 1971 the ing-keyers, colorizers, mixers, and syri- quite crude: because the parameters of
Whitney Museum of American Art's thesizers. What's more. that equipment the video signal were difficult to control,
first video exhibition, assembled by the was usually more suitable for producing it was impossible to predict exactly how
late film curator David Bienstock, con- special effects than for artists' experi- the resulting image would look. Further-
sisted almost entirely of image-pro- ments. Since it was rare to find both more, most of these tapes could never
cessed tapes. In the program notes, artist and engineer in one person, artists have been broadcast owing to their tech- I.
Bienstock wrote: found themselves seeking out equipment nical inferiority. But this was not crucial i
It was decided .,. to limit the designers who, in one way or another, to most people at that time; most impor- I
program to tapes which focus on were mavericks within the electronics tant was a design approach that
the ability of videotape to create industry. As Woody Vasulka recalled in afforded the artist flexibility. Unlike I
The high priests of technology use Fig. 1 Dan Sandin and the Sandin development of low-cost specialized vid-
unwieldy systems to perpetuate Image Processor, University of Illinois
cybercrud-the art of using com- eo-processing equipment and the estab-
at Chicago Circle , Chicago, Ill., 1978. lishment of artist-in-residencies. As a
puters to put things over on people.
wished to make his or her own. After he result , over the past fourteen years a
This mentality can be countered
by bringing to people systems that completed the Image Processor in 1973, number of people withelectronics back-
are easily learned and used- he began to document the inner work- grounds have built various devices for
"habitable" systems. I I ings of the machine with Phil Morton, the Center and for themselves, under the
an artist who had established the video tutelage of the designer David Jones.
Sandin was doing graduate work in program at the Art Institute of Chicago. Recently , more sophisticated digital
physics at the University of Wisconsin Sandin and Morton spent more than a machines have been incorporated that
at Madison (earning an M.S. in 1967) year redrawing the plans and making up have expanded the system's imaging
when he realized he "wasn't being a a parts list for a kit that would be capabilities. IS
good physicist anymore." While produc- comprehensible to someone with only a The idea behind the development of
ing color slides for light shows, it rudimentary knowledge of electronics. the equipment was to have devices that
occurred to him that those kinds of Since then, at least twenty-five Sandin could be connected in several ways so
images could be produced electronical- Image Processors have been built, that different kinds of images could be
ly. While doing the light shows, he mostly by artists, many of whom have created, manipulated, and combined.
became familiar with the Moog 2 audio been based at one time or another in The system has thus been refined from a
synthesizer, and, about 1968, began Chicago. 13 technically crude configuration that
thinking about what the visual equiva- Whereas Dan Sandin thinks in terms could not produce a recordable output to
lent of the Moog might be. It took of "habitable systems" designed to be one that now produces a signal stable
several years to bring his ideas to frui- easily used by artists, Ralph Hocking enough to conform to commercial tech-
tion, for despite his training, Sandin still conceives of the equipment built under nical standards.
had to teach himself electronic design. his auspices as "thinking machines ." Hocking's idea of " thinking" ma-
In the meantime, he became a faculty Despite the fact that Hocking's back- chines has to do with the way that
member at the University of Illinois ground is in art rather than science, he Hocking and Miller intend people to use
Circle Campus in Chicago, teaching and Sandin have much in common. Both their equipment, as well as their con-
kinetic art and interactive sculpture." have been committed to the idea that ception of the artist. In contrast to com-
For Sandin, the basic idea was to artists should be able to work with video mercial production facilities, there is no
make an affordable instrument (pres- technology much the same way as a pressure to make a final product. At the
ently about $4,000-$5,000) that would painter works with his or her materials Center (Figs. 1 and 3) artists can hole
combine many functions in one tool- in isolation in a studio. In this sense, up for short periods of time and immerse
i.e., keying, fading, colorizing (Fig. 1). they both adhere to very traditional themselves in their work. The process of
Like audio synthesizers, it would also be models of artmaking. experimentation is most important. Also
patch-programmable: how the different Hocking, a cinema professor at the in contrast to most film and video pro-
functions were combined depended on State University of New York at Bing- duction, which is collective, production
how an artist wanted to use it. Conse- hamton, founded the Community Cen- of tapes is seen as an isolated activity.
quently , the Image Processor was set up ter for Television Production in 1970. It is this conception of the artist and
as a series of stacked metal boxes that The Centergrew out of a video program artmaking that has contributed most of
can be reconfigured with cables to per- he'd been running at the university since the direction of image processing as a
form sequences of functions on incoming 1969. Hocking, a potter, sculptor, and formalist enterprise. As Sherry Miller,
signals. photographer, became interested in Assistant Director of the Center, has
Sandin wanted to make a device that video after meeting Paik in New York described it:
not only would be easy to use but could City at the Bonino Gallery Show in Electronic image processing uses
be distributed relatively inexpensively. 1968. Shortly after his arrival in Bing- as art-making material those
So he rejected the idea of marketing the hamton, he began to buy video equip- properties inherent in the medium
device commercially, choosing instead ment, and set up a program called Stu- of video. Artists work at a funda-
to give the plans away to anyone who dent Experiments in Television. mental level with various parame-
example, frequency , amplitude, or increasingly complex combinations cally instantaneously-in contrast to the
phase, which actually define the (Fig. 4). These were the kinds of tapes . kind of computer imag ing in which a
resulting image and sound." that-with their colorful swirls of program is entered and one must wait
abstract imagery-were dismissed by minutes, or hours, depending on the
ocking and Miller are not alone in
H their support of technological ex-
perimentation with all the ensuing for-
many critics because they looked like a program's complexity , for the computer
moving version of modern abstract to perform the operation.
painting, which was then becoming
malist implications. In fact, Woody and unfashionable. For the Vasulkas, how- he work of these members of the
Steina Vasulka are probably the best-
known practitioners of this kind of vid-
ever, their work was based on various T first generation of video artists dif-
manifestations of electromagnetic en- fered quite markedly from the slick
eo. Since 1969, the Vasulkas' interest ergy rather than on abstract art. "special effects" of the industry. The
has been in understanding the inner They began to think of these manifes- equipment they built, the facilities
workings of video as a kind of electronic tations as a kind of language, and their established, and work produced have
phenomenon. As Woody Vasulka has work with video hardware as a "dia- served both as models and points
stated: "There is a certain behavior of logue with the tool and the image, so we of departure for those who came
the electronic image that is unique. . . . would not preconceive an image sepa- afterward.
It's liquid, it's shapeable, it's clay, it's an rately, make a conscious model of it, and
art material, it exists independently."17 then try to match it. We would rather Notes
Video's plasticity was explored by many make a tool and dialogue with it. "18 This article is adapted from two articles originally
artists, but the Vasulkas took a fairly Throughout the 1970s, the Vasulkas published in Afterimage in 1983. Since they were
didactic and conceptual approach. They produced an enormous body of work written, owing to a number of factors, more artists
were fascinated by the fact that the designed to reveal the inner workings of routinely use image-processing techniques, result-
video image is constructed from elec- video. In 1976, the began work with ing in tapes than can only be loosely defined as
trical energy organized as voltages and Jeffrey Schier on a digital video system "image processing." Less descriptive, the term has
frequencies-a temporal event. that would allow a computer to perform become virtually obsolete. Some of the ramifica-
Initially, they selected two properties various operations on two video images tions of these developments are elaborated in
peculiar to video. The first had to do by using mathematical logic functions. "Getting High Tech: The 'New ' Television," The
with the fact that both audio and video Depending on which logic function is Independent. Vol. 8, No.2 (March 1985), pp.
are composed of electronic wave forms. 14-16.
operating, the numerical codes-and
Since sound can be used to generate hence the images-can be combined in I Quoted in Lucinda Furlong, "Notes toward a
video, and vice versa, one of the first different but absolutely predictable History of Image-Processed Video: Eric Siegel,
pieces of equipment they bought was an ways. Such combinations revealed the Stephen Beck, Dan Sandin, Steve Rutt, Bill
audio synthesizer. Many of their early system's inner structure and also consti- and Louise Etra," Afterimage. Vol. II, Nos.
tapes illustrate this relationship of sound tuted what Woody Vasulka called a I & 2 (Summer 1983), p. 35. Although the
and image-one type of signal deter- "syntax." various groups and individuals considered
mines the form of the other. themselves part of one "movement," their goals
Their second interest entailed the What was surprising to me was to proved to be quite contrad ictory in practice . In
construction of the video frame . Because find that the table of logic func- New York, the differences began to rigidify
timing pulses control the stability of the tions can be interpreted as a table when the New York State Council on the Arts
video raster to create the "normal" of syntaxes... . Because the logic (NYSCA) started funding video in 1970-71 ,
image we are accustomed to seeing, functions are abstract, they can be and applicants felt compelled to formalize their
viewers rarely realize-unless the TV applied to anything. That means interests . Because the Council could not then
they become unified language, (and cannot now) award funds directly to indi-
set breaks-that the video image is viduals, there was a scramble to form nonprofit
actually a frameless continuum. outside of anyone discipline."
organizations in order to benefit from available
Although the Vasulkas had initially What was important about this device funding.
focused on these two basic areas, they was its capacity for performing various
began to expand their repertoire of complex operations-zooming, multipli- 2 Johanna Gill, Video: State of the Art. New
effects by commissioning various people cation of the image, keying, etc.-in York, Rockefeller Foundation, 1976, quoted in
to build specialized video equipment. "real time." This made it possible for a ibid.
Between 1971 and 1974 they made video signal to be digitally processed as
Fa/ll985 237
Pressure Points:
Video in the Public Sphere
Downloaded by [Stony Brook University] at 08:37 11 January 2015
By Martha Gever
The Medium Video art is fundamentally dif- tions," a society peacefully reformed
The medium, of course, is television. But ferent from broadcast television into "reality communities, defined not
not television. Titles of two events that and has been since its inception. by geography but by consciousness, ide-
christened video as an art-WGBH's Where broadcast television ad- ology, and desire.:"
The Medium Is the Medium and the Conversant with the latest hard- and
dresses a mass audience, video art
exhibition TV as a Creative Medium. software, Youngblood subscribes to a
is intensely personal-a reflection
both in 1969 1-cryptically announce the type of determinism that treats technol-
of individual passions and
distinction between video art/television ogy as natural, thus evolving according
consciousness.
and mass communications/television. to natural laws. Certainly, a number of
-Kathy Huffman"
Thus divorced, "the medium" of video videomakers and early supporters of
art becomes identified as material- The object of each of these statements is video as countertelevision were similarly
electronic circuitry, cathode rays, pho- to distance video art and mass media in attracted to optimistic projections for
tons, phosphors, and the like-not "the order to privilege the former. democratic culture resulting from the
media," understood as the entire com- In the same catalogue, Gene Young- proliferation of electronic communica-
plex of television and film industries as blood, known for his championing of tions technologies, but their prophecies
well as commercial publications. For electronic experimentation in the late of improved social conditions, foretold
some prominent makers and promoters sixties and early seventies, takes a more by Marshall McLuhan and others," have
of video art, this split is absolute, but extreme position: failed to materialize. Indeed, a very dif-
their defense of truly separate spheres It is apparent that video art is not ferent scenario from McLuhan's "global
for art and commercial culture, sharing village" or Youngblood's "reality com-
television art. ... Art is a process
only a technological bond, is rarely of exploration and inquiry. Its sub- munities" has been elaborated and
explained, just flatly asserted. ject is human potential for aes- analyzed by those who study the ever-
To take a recent example: three cura- thetic perception.... Art is always expanding global communications
tors writing three consecutive essays in non-communicative; its aim is to networks and the uses of advanced elec-
the catalogue for a major touring show, produce non-standard observers. tronics, designed to serve the needs of
The Second Link.' begin on this note: military and corporate powers." One
For Youngblood, the idea that video art critic of theories that posit technology-
The medium of video/television, "belongs on television" is contradictory, as-cause, Raymond Williams, correctly
coupled with the computer, will not an uncommon notion perhaps, but identifies McLuhan's work as "a partic-
come to playa paramount role in soon to be disproved: "Personal vision is
our world, but video art will be ular culmination of an aesthetic theory,
not public vision; art is not the stuff of which became, negatively, a social theo-
able to win no bigger place than mass communications." This statement ry: a development and elaboration 01
that which art has always held up may be empirically accurate, but, nev- formalism."? And formulas for social
to now: a refuge in which sensibil- ertheless, Youngblood refuses to grapple amelioration emanating from advanced
ity and genius take on their aes- with the various kinds of video work
thetic form. technology have become increasingly
produced, simply dismissing these as difficult to sustain; as of the mid eight-
Dorine Mignor' immature art. Ignoring prevailing eco- ies, we live with sophisticated surveil·
Like printmaking, photography, nomic and political conditions, he pre- lance techniques, data bases shared b)
and film, video has artistic and scribes "counter definitions of reality" police departments and the FBI, the
commercial applications. Both ap- achieved, ideally, through a marriage of concentration of communications capi-
plications utilize the same telecom- video and computer technology. Herald- tal in the hands of transnational corpo-
munications technology, but reach ing once again the "Communications rations, budgets for "Star Wars" weap-
audiences of different magnitude. Revolution" on the horizon, he predicts onry, and so forth. Recognizing the dead
-Barbara London" "an inversion of existing social rela- end of electronic salvation, video-an
Ross was employed there as assistant tives-to use video as a tool for "performance-based," and "image proc-
director. He is now director of the ICA, social change. At the same time, essing." Curiously, the ICA show
and the recent debut of the ICA as a video artists began producing tapes excluded image-processed work be-
showcase for video art is not incidental. and installations designed to ex- cause, in the curator's words, "In many
(Before his residency at Long Beach, plore the medium's potential for ways the electronically produced video-
Ross was video curator at the Everson new aesthetic discourses. graphics belong more to kinetic art and
Museum in Syracuse, New York, which, -John Hanhardt" sculptural experimentation in the pre-
during his tenure, gained a reputation Common to these verifications of the ceding decade-the 60s." This disclaim-
for its video exhibits and videotape col- artistic merits of the work screened is an er, however, recognizes the category as
lection.) The video department at ambivalence concerning the social com- such, and the ICA catalogue texts
MOMA dates from 1974; given that ponent of some video. The most explicit describing each tape repeat the "narra-
museum's prestige as an arbiter of mod- acknowledgment is Hanhardt's, but the tive," "perception," "performance"
ern art, video programs there neces- catchwords. IS
survey he compiled omits primary
sarily carry weight. Located, like examples of the political video practices Formal cubbyholes like these become
MOMA, in the world's central art mar- mentioned in his text. The "social functional labels, establishing video's
ketplace, the Whitney maintains a high change" and "social issues" noted in modern-art pedigree. Although Western
profile as a video-art venue. Unlike these introductory sentences cannot be avant-garde cultural traditions can pro-
MOMA and Long Beach, however, the overlooked by the curator-historians, vide insights into many of the video
Whitney does not collect videotapes, but but the curatorial writing and tape projects exhibited as historical sign-
since 1973 video art has been included in selections quickly leave extra-aesthetic posts," several branches of the family
its influential Biennial Exhibitions, and contingencies aside." The only excep- tree had to be pruned so that they could
in 1982 its film and video department tion can be found in the MOMA pro- be proclaimed the only tradition. But
was able to mount the most ambitious gram, which included four social docu- even these limited, often redundant,
video show ever-the Nam June Paik mentaries of a total of fifty-three tapes. selections of tapes consistently beg the
retrospective. This exhibition achieved (Andy Mann's One-Eyed Bum. de- question of formal primacy. Many art-
unprecedented notice in the art press scribed as a "personal documentary," ists use this form for its mass communi-
and the mass media." and the 420- was exhibited at the Whitney and at the cations connotations or possibilities.
monitor extravaganza is now cited by ICA; Long Beach and MOMA put Television, the foremost producer of
video cognoscenti as a landmark event. Antonio Muntadas's documentary me- contemporary cultural consciousness,
Indeed, it was. Video art was admitted dia critique, Between the Lines. in their the leveler of social experience and
to full status in the ranks of modern art, programs.) information, can, in theory, also carry
a master was acclaimed, and a master- The near invisibility of documentary the products of alternative or opposi-
piece-Paik's V-ramid installation- forms and topical political content in tional cultures that exist beyond the art
was added to the Whitney's collection. II these shows may not seem particularly world. Or television's ideological struc-
Once again, the assertion of valid tures, conventions, and strategies can be
shocking, considering the social position
aesthetic credentials for a form that revealed through references to or frus-
represented by art museums, but the
might be seen as tainted by mass media trations of mass-media idioms. Granted,
neglect of the considerable contribution
pervades the curatorial statements that the most abstract video art and many
of documentary videomakers during the
describe the museum versions of video video installations seem best suited to
period encompassed creates severe his-
history: the rarefied, supposedly neutral environ-
torical distortions. Excised from these
ment of art museums'? and formalist
As video art emerged in the wake official accounts is that significant por-
interpretations. But this work, too, is
of conceptual art, it clearly tion of video work which tells of specific
historically entangled with overtly criti-
reflected many of the social and (and continuing) social struggles, and
cal, political video, as any slice of video
aesthetic issues of the period as thus the varied work of many Black,
history in the early seventies will indi-
well as specific issues relative to Latino, Asian American, Indian, and
cate; during the early part of the decade,
this new art form. women videomakers who chose docu-
many videomakers made street tapes,
-David Ross" mentary forms and techniques. Presum-
fiddled with electronics, built installa-
ably, work based on the experience of
tions, recorded artists' performances,
Fall 1985 239
and so forth. In other words, artists who Television Delivers People-to adver- ing the sixties and early seventies, th
chose video/television take on the social tisers." Certain exceptions exist, such as pattern of conformity to PBS format
function of the medium as well as its Home Box Office and other cable sub- becomes significant. The deciding facto
machinery. No matter how often the scription services, which, as the HBO here is audience.
litanies of "properties of the medium" or name indicates, replicate a box-office One major source for documentar-
"new art forms" are recited, no matter income structure. Public television, of production money was stabilized whei
how consistently the specter of mass course, must scramble for government the Ford Foundation and the Nationa
media is disavowed, much of what's appropriations, corporate underwriting Endowment for the Arts jointly estab
included in the museum histories of vid- (a variant of commercial advertising), lished the Independent Documentar-
eo---as well as what's left out -proves and individual donations to stay on the Fund at WNET's TV Lab in 1977. Thi~
the inadequacy of video history con- air. To make a persuasive case to fund supplemented the artist-in-resi
ceived as art history. patrons, public TV, too, must claim a dence program already in place at tha
respectable audience share. station for videomakers working in al
The Audience Despite prophecies of increased diver- styles. Established in 1972 with grant:
Antitelevision, countertelevision, non- sity of program formats and contents from the New York State Council on the
television, alternative television-the accompanying the advent of each new Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation
negation proves the link between art- distribution technology and marketing the TV Lab provided the primary broad
video and television-video." After all, scheme-s-cable, satellites, discs, home cast outlet for video art through the
the medium is television-not a bunch VCRs-the commercial networks still series VTR: Video Tape Review, whicl
of wires and silicon chips but a social rule the television world. The enor- aired from 1975 through 1977. Earlie
structure, a cultural condition. There- mously lucrative broadcast industry in 1977, the Rockefeller Foundation hac
Downloaded by [Stony Brook University] at 08:37 11 January 2015
fore, the circulation of video work, dominated by the big three networks set up other experimental television cen·
neglected in discussions about artists' commands the big numbers while other ters at KQED in San Francisco anc
self-expression, sensibility, and van- television systems compete for a few WaBH in Boston." All these facilities
guard consciousness, constitutes a nec- slices of the profit pie. In this risky offered artists access to sophisticatec
essary term in any conceptualization of business, fueled by sales-to advertisers equipment not available elsewhere (anc
video production and reception. Even in targeting demographically defined that few individuals could afford tc
the formalist camp, the audience groups of people-program choices own) and the hope of reaching a large
figures. rarely exceed predictable boundaries, public. The subsequent demise of these
To return to the three condensed and permissible forms necessarily but- labs can be attributed to the Rockefeller
credos quoted at the beginning of this tress a social order that generates more Foundation's withdrawal and the indif-
essay, the contrast between mass-media sales. Videomakers interested in distri- ference of station executives." (AI·
popularity and the small, select, special- bution outside the art world must persis- though WNET continued to receive
ized audience for video art is repeatedly tently search for aberrations in the NYSCA dollars for several years after
identified as a major distinguishing industry. the Rockefeller's defunding, the station
characteristic. Youngblood's idealized, Since the television premiere of video refused to supply the necessary match-
"non-standard observers" also come to art-the WaBH experiment in 1969- ing funds, and the TV lab folded in late
mind. In an ostensibly democratic soci- public television has provided the 1983.) Without government and foun-
ety, where public cultural resources meager broadcast opportunities granted dation support, few public television sta-
could, in theory, be allocated on the to independently produced video. As a tions have demonstrated willingness to
basis of statistics-to benefit the largest result of collective lobbying, indepen- finance or show nondocumentary video.
number of people-these statements dent documentaries receive regular, if Indeed, what corporate underwriter
might be read as arguments to support limited, time and some funding from the wants to display its logo on programs
nonPOEulist (antipopulist, to Douglas Public Broadcasting Service and the watched by a sparse, hardly upscale
Davis ) culture. But talk about video Corporation for Public Broadcasting. audience?
audiences usually sounds a bit defensive; Opportunities ebb and flow depending So far, the easiest route for getting
echoes of Nielsen ratings can be heard on the political climate, which affects video on television without interference
when video viewers are discussed. In the the welfare of the public system and the from program executives or protection
museum economy, some kind of au- interests of its administrators. Predict- from some quirky station-employed pro-
dience for this work must be identified ably, during the Reapan years the situa- ducer has been paved by activists who
in order to satisfy exhibition funders, tion has worsened.' Nevertheless, the relentlessly pressure city governments to
but consistent references to audiences influence of public television on docu- guarantee public access to cable televi-
by video programmers confirm that even mentary video can still be detected in sion. Although the makers of what are
the most esoteric video presupposes prevalent styles, and even in the length now proclaimed video classics in the
communication. Just as audience consti- of tapes; most documentaries run museum versions of video history were
tutes one of the principal terms of televi- exactly twenty-seven or fifty-eight min- often people already working in other
sion (not that the audience decides utes, most are finely crafted, and most art forms, their Portapak comrades-
what's on, but the audience must be avoid partisan politics. In other words, some practicing artists, some not-took
captured, captivated), video entails most are tailored for national PBS their decks and cameras to the streets.
reception as much as individual creativ- broadcast. Interventions of this kind are There developed collectives, workshops,
ity and program design. always negotiated and mediated, expen- equipment loan programs, and socially
Rudimentary knowledge about televi- sive to make, constrained by standards engaged projects concerned with the
sion economics has permeated our social and conventions designed to replicate use, distribution, and ownership of tele-
vocabulary. The term "Nielsen ratings" the status quo. In a country where the vision, invoking and experimenting with
can be invoked as metaphor without social-documentary tradition includes ideas about democratic media. Rem-
further explanation. For television, the the work of left-wing groups like the nants of the public-service concept of
operative formula was neatly summa- Workers' Film and Photo League and mass media-as contrasted with the
rized in the title of Richard Serra and Frontier Films as well as the numerous commodity-consumer construct now
Carlota Schoolman's 1973 videotape radical films and videotapes made dur- firmly established in the U.S.-are pre-
24 1984 saw the demise of the CPB-sponsored New York, 1964, p. 52.
Independent Documentary Fund at WNET-
34 E.g., in "Nam June Paik's Videotapes," in John
TV. Two CPB-funded, PBS documentary
Hanhardt, ed., Nam June Paik, New York,
series, "Matters of Life and Death" and "Crisis
Whitney Museum of American Art, 1982,
to Crisis," likewise expired during the first
David Ross links Paik with Brecht in order to
Reagan term.
claim Paik as a radical artist.
25 A list of Rockefeller outlays for video up to
35 Peter Burger, Theory of the Avant Garde.
1974 can be found in Howard Klein, "The Rise
Minneapolis, 1984, pp. 88-89. On the following
of the Televisualists," The New Television: A
page, Burger makes a pertinent point: "[T]he
Public/Private Art. Cambridge, Mass., 1977,
social effect of a work of art cannot simply be
pp. 168-69.
gauged by considering the work itself but that
26 Although the public-TV experimental labs its effect is decisively determined by the institu-
brought income to the stations (since artists tion within which the work 'functions.' "
were required to spend grant money allocated
through these programs at the stations) and Martha Gever edits The Independent
despite favorable critical response to many of Film and Video Monthly, published by
the projects accomplished at these centers, the the Association ofIndependent Video
stations never integrated these programs into and Filmmakers.
their operations. One plausible explanation for
this is that PBS stations have resisted support-
ing truly independent projects that don't con-
form to established formats, even when these
are reasonably successful.
27 In October 1984 Congress enacted HR. 4103, a
compromise version of Senate cable legislation
(S. 66) passed during the previous session.
Cable operators are now able to obtain relief
from requirements for access channels and rate
regulations for leased channels. Also, the role
of for the public in the franchising process has
been curtailed.
28 Attempts to market limited editions of video-
tapes through galleries or art auctions have
been uniformly disastrous, and tape rentals and
sales by art dealers have proved unprofitable.
29 In contrast with painting and sculpture, or even
photography, video attracts few private
patrons; video programs within museums are
primarily creatures of public patronage.
30 At the 1983 conference of the National
Alliance of Media Arts Centers, Brian O'Do-
herty, the NEA Media Program director, told
assembled media center administrators, "Every
board of a media center needs to have the
leading banker in the community, the leading
lawyer, the leading real estate broker, influen-
tial politicians.... You need to love your fun-
Gretchen Bender: Total artists such as Lichtenstein, Schnabel, virtually pornographic in the sheer num-
Effect-Neutralization and the and Haring) are self-reflexively ren- ber and visibility of distantiated rela-
Psychedelic Concept dered into information bits . which are tions it generates, which order the per-
-Gretchen Bender's psychedelic hyper- then subjected meta-critically to a the- ception and transcendence of structure
appropriated image-bound environ- ory of interference. the patterns of (itself), negating in the final analysis the
ment-comprising visual, computer- which are subsequently transformed "fascisms" of superstructural behavior-
generated, and video work-asserts a into psychedelic abstraction. Through ism, and issuing ultimately latent or
disparate instrumentality in the aesthet- the technological devices and various abstract signs without directives or spe-
ics of neutralized signs. The strategy materials of photo-mechanical repro- cific instructions. In the video Reality
situates Concept itself in the context of duction-such as video synthetical ab- Fever (1983), Bender superimposes
the New Content, endowing the effects stracts, computer and TV stills, and static (cliche) art images over moving
with the power of theoretical scrutiny . photo-silkscreened enamel on sign tin- programmed (generic) TV imagery. In
in this regard, Bender's media-deter- and the arrangements of the resultant superimposing the two (or more) art and
mined work indicates a neo-conceptual images into a calculated disarray of media-derived systems and their codi-
vector in the discourse regarding interferential patterns, the neutraliza- fied meanings, she achieves a kind of
abstraction and technology (photo- tion of signifying functions is, in a sense, higher (feverish) theatrical abstract
mechanical reproduction). intensified to produce the effect of a neutrality which is attendant upon
-Although the militant, overriding computer-generated stridence (a kind of neither system in the end. This proce-
hysterical semiotics), which brackets dure of systemic interferences reveals
concern in Bender's work seems-given
the aestheticized reality that operates as surprising abstract continuities within
~ch show titles as Change Your Art and the passage of these short-circuited
Public Vision. and their subversive fer- a support structure for the normative
Spectacle. images and codes whose meta-negative
vor-to underscore ironically the moral effects produce a powerful, synthetic
imperative hidden in part of this strat- -The first zone of psychic energy in sensation which perdures in conscious-
egy (that is, in the ideological dimension Bender's work involves a bold technolog- ness as psychedelic conceptualism.
or aggressive anti-proprietary values ical appropriation of images from post-
innate to the act of appropriation), the recent art and media in the exemplifying -In the third zone of psychic energy,
work actually distributes itself primarily service of a hyper-neutralizing effect this expansive or Zeitgeist-like sensa-
into three inter-related zones of psychic that is electric in distinction and abso- tion in Bender's work---operative in
passion: information. interference. and lute in its capacity to willfully access the such video works as Wild Dead II (Fig.
abstraction. In Bender's project, whole overload and, in some ways, actually 6) and Dumping Core (Fig. 7)-mani-
aesthetical systems (belonging to real- exceed it by analytically dismantling fests itself categorically in the concept's
ity-incorporated or reality-complicit and ultimately subsuming the dominant abstract (rather than structural) rela-
signic totalities into transcendental bits tion to psyche. Where we are forced, as
of abstract information, which can then we are in Bender, to think more
be arranged into a disparate paradigm abstractly, to perceive the structural
of neutral systemic bits-"arrange- patterns that govern the images, and to
ments" that remain [Louise] Lawler- transcend structural awareness itself
like, however, in their telling facticity. through the conceptual effect of neutral
(Peter Nagy's xerox time-lines also interferences, we are no longer domi-
participate radically in this strategy nated by the aestheticized content of the
[Fig.5).} image.
-In the second zone, this paradigm and -In Bender's image-bound environ-
its model run interference patterns over ment, we are moving from the subver-
the image-content, such that the hyper- sive manipulation of images and their
information of the pseudo-Gesamt- counter-subversive neutralization to the
Fig. 4 Lily Lack, from Sheila. 1984 kunstwerk produces meta-negative con- trans-neutralization of signs.
(Barbara Israel and Lily Lack in ceptual patterns. This new content (or -It is within this paradigm of neutral
photograph). manifest concept) in Bender's work is distinctions-magnified by the irony of
.'~!l
... .
l l GtJl
1, ..1 -' _ 51
M.&,. ..."
=--,."..... I "~
'. 'MIOI
("",.U
, to IN1,
-
...'.
.--.
Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 19:52 13 January 2015
the New Scrutiny-that cause and cau- -It's like trying to measure a sphere
this mode of psychedelic abstraction in
sality itself undergo the abstract nega- Bender's work which facilitates con- with a straight-edge.
tions generated by the acute temporality cept's trans-neutralized relation to -In Sara Hornbacher's work, you
of hyper-referential content whereby world (or direct) content and the experience the rational mediation of
psyche (or the New Mind) informs con- abstract content of the psyche. images optically as a kind of static dis-
cept with a pure (discausal) or psyche-
delic array of effectuations. These -These three zones of psychic energy in
psychical expansions afford the sharp, Bender's work constitute the abstract
constructive irony and abstract visibility vector and critical motivation of psy-
of concept's strident neutrality as in chedelic conceptualism in the aesthetics
Mid-Effect Hold (Fig. 8) and Untitled of neutralized signs whose perverse visi-
(from The Pleasure is Back series, bility effectively complicates Ian Wil-
1982) (Fig. 9), even while they enact the son's (recent) classical formulation (in
most attenuated structural negations (as Artforum [February 1984]) of "non-
in the Mullican/Salle juxtaposition in visual abstraction" while simulta-
Mid-Effect Hold), or they effect the neously challenging the agon of individ-
widest, most comprehensive infra-envi- ual temporality that characterizes the Fig. 7 Gretchen Bender, from
ronmental distribution of sensory con- originary aesthetics of cult painting and Dumping Core. 1984-85, AT &T off
tent as in Wild Dead III (Fig. 10), or cult expressionism in the various media. TV, multi-monitor, multi-channel
again, in Reality Fever. Ultimately, it is Within this para-zone of the Spectacle, performance, at The Kitchen.
Fig. 8 Gretchen Bender, Mid-Effect Hold, 1983, color photo Fig. 9 Gretchen Bender, Untitled (from The Pleasure is
and enamel silkscreen on sign tin, 53 x 59". Back series), 1982, photo silkscreen on sign tin, 6 x 7'.
Gallery Nature Morte. Gallery Nature Morte .
figuration of light. It becomes a kind of
trapdoor to perception.
-Hornbacher's work-and the most
effective video in general-is like the
stuff between the TV stations.
-In this situation, facts sort of become
the reified actuality of the categories
you construct. An American Sequence
(Fig. 11) literally brackets the narrative
charge of these facts.
-As such, the images are really acute,
even as they are placed at the behest of a
kind of systematic break within their
semantic value. They function like the
"silverware" of temporality itself, and
when you arrive at the center of this vast
articulation, you get the feeling that you
have been finally stopped.
-You begin to feel this optical guilt,
and you become convinced that gravity
is something like a static emergency.
-You mean it is as if Hornbacher has
located your habit, and then broken it. Fig. 10 Gretchen Bender, from Wild Dead Ill. 1984-85: "Glitter," from Japanese
computer demo reel; "eagle," from Warhol's Endangered Species series; "white
-And you come up with the idea- cross," from Apple computer graphics program; CBS logo, computer generated off
onto-technocratic delusion-maybe that TV; b & w abstract, programmed off a 3D animating computer-distortion of x,
meaning asserts the secret charm of that y, and z axis.
negation.
-The op breakdown is not about any-
thing that is weak or deliberate in the
image.
Fal/1985 247
Fig. 11 Sara Hornbacher, An American Sequence. still from 7-minute video.
-In Hornbacher, the crisis in nega- -So the habit is replaced by Hypothe- -You get that feeling when you look.
Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 19:52 13 January 2015
tion circulates within the economy of sis-hypothesis construed by the senses the cuts in Nichols 's Hysteria (Fig. U :
assertion. as the electric(al) spirituality of a New or the wave-structure in Two Peopt
-I suppose we're talking about optical kitchen appliance. (Fig. 13) or the serial arbitration in
habits. -Hornbacher's work summarizes the Day in the Life OJ(l982).
visual tautology involved in perception . -The typography of structural neg~
-Style is the religion of the super-
It's something like the need to wear tion in Nichols yields a kind of a tran-
incomprehensible.
sunglasses while you run as fast as you scendental stasis .
-I was also thinking about the moral can in the dark.
habits endemic to video, and the strange -Something like a random gain in th
neo-hurnanistic formalism to which it Paul Nichols: Transcendental Stasis Downfall.
has always ultimately succumbed. -We all want to be winners. -Auspicious mania.
-A kind of technological "Right," -It's the transcendental mode. -I'd call it looking good on your waf,'
which is categorically expelled from out.
Hornbacher's work. -The distribution is pretty interest-
ing-very American-game shows and Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo
-It is the formalism of correct positions assassinations. have worked collaboratively since
inhabited by the fauna and flora of /982. They are the publishers oj
-The cultural cliches and appropriated
technology that must bear the pressure Effects: Magazine for New Art Theory
ad elements in Paul Nichols's work set
of an intentionally artificial dialectic in and the American editors of
her work. up a kind of cartoonish synthesis-an
image-bound environment-that en- Kunstforum [Cologne]. Collins and
-Scrutiny is the optical style implicit in ables us to look at the apparently arbi- Milazzo have curated shows at Nature
a disparate instrumentality. trary nature of the transcendental. Morte, International with Monument.
CashfNewhouse, White Columns.
-Sa what you get in Hornbacher is the -So Nichols's work examines the struc- Tibor De Nagy. Diane Brown . and
generic deprivation of images, and, at ture of idealism, its hysterical content Margo Leavin Gallery (in Los
the same time, the feeling that the and categorical facade. Angeles). among others. They are
Overload has been articulated by the currently preparing shows at S .L.
-Now it's like saying that the structure
negations effected through this
of idealism is out of control, or looks Simpson Gallery in Toronto. American
instrumentality.
something like the crisis topography in Fine Arts Co. in New York . and Lia
-In Hornbacher, Concept is catching catastrophe theory. Rumma Gallery in Naples. Italy.
up to content, and this prevents the
-So that must mean that there are such
instrumentality from becoming an
things as transcendental catastrophes
empty formalism .
that possess very specific topographies.
Fig. 12 Paul Nichols, Hysteria. 1984. Fig. 13 Paul Nichols, Two People. 1983.
By Barbara London
Downloaded by [George Washington University] at 20:00 03 February 2015
1963
Exhibitions/Events
New York. Television De-Coli/age by
WolfVostell, Smolin Gallery. First U.S.
environmental installation using a tele-
vision set.
1964
Television/Productions
Boston. Jazz Images, WGBH-TV .
Producer, Fred Barzyk. Five short
-isualizations of music for broadcast;
me of the first attempts at experimental
television.
1965
Exhibitions/Events
New York . Electronic Art by Nam June
Paik, Galeria Bonino. Artist's first gal-
lery exhibition in U.S.
New Cinema Festival I (Expanded
Cinema Festival), The Film-Makers
Cinematheque. Organized by John
Brockman. Festival explores uses of
mixed-media projection, including vid-
eo, sound, and light experiments.
966
xhibitions/Events
ew York. 9 Evenings: Theater and
ngineering, 69th Regiment Armory.
rganized by Billy Kliiver. Mixed-
edia performance events with collabo-
ation between ten artists and forty
ngineers. Video projection used in ,.
orks of Alex Hay, Robert Rauschen-
rg, David Tudor, Robert Whitman.
elma Last Year by Ken Dewey, New Bruce Nauman, Live Taped Video Corridor, 1969-70. Installation at the Whitney
ork Film Festival at Lincoln Center, Museum, New York.
~
i10 T. Farnsworth Video Obelisk by
kip Sweeney, Intersection Theater,
ultichannel video installation.
altham. Mass. Vision and Television,
kose Art Museum, Brandeis University.
brganized by Russell Connor. Works by
frank Gillette, Ted Kraynik, Les
levine, Eugene Mattingly, Nam June
'faik (with Charlotte Moorman), John
~
eillY and Rudi Stern, Paul Ryan, Ira
chneider, Eric Siegel, Aldo Tambel-
ini, Jud Yalkut, USCO/Intermedia,
ideofreex, Joe Weintraub.
~
rganiZatiOnS
inghamton, N.Y. Experimental Televi-
ion Center. Originally Community
Center for Television Production. Pro-
duction/post-production center empha-
sizing synthesized and computer-gener- Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider. Wipe Cycle. 1969. Insta llation in Tt/ as a
ated imagery. Directors, Ralph Hocking Creative Medium. Howard Wise Gallery. ew York .
and Sherry Miller. In 1979 moves to
Owego, N.Y.
\1enlo Park, Calif. Media Access Cen-
ter, Portola Institute. Alternative televi-
I,ion resource emphasizing community
lind high school video programs. Origi-
'ral members: Pat Crowley, Richard
Kletter, Allen Rucker, Shelley Surpin.
Ends 1972.
i~ew York. Creative Artists Public Ser-
'lice (CAPS) awards fellowships in vid-
~.
Art (MOCA). Alternative museum cre- Siegel, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Vid- duction divisions.
ated for performance and multimedia eofreex. New OreIeans. New Orleans Video
art. Founded by Tom Marioni. Electronic Art III by Nam June Paik Access Center (NO VAC). Founded'
Video Free America. Video production and Shuya Abe with Charlotte Moor- through VISTA to provide video access'
group with post-production and screen- man, Galeria Bonino. Exhibition with to low-income community. Becomes
ing programs. Founded by Arthur Gins- Paik-Abe synthesizer. production center with access. •
berg, Skip Sweeney. Directors: Joanne Installation works by Vito Acconci, Bill Syracuse, N.Y. Everson Museum estab-'
Kelly, Skip Sweeney. Beckley, Terry Fox, William Wegman lishes first video department in a major
Syracuse, N.Y. Synapse Video Center at 93 Grand Street. Organized by Wil- museum, under direction of James Hari-
(formerly University Community Union loughby Sharp. thas. Video curators include David
Video). Video production and post-pro- Projects: Keith Sonnier, The Museum Ross, Richard Simmons. Department
duction center. Directors include Lance of Modern Art. Environmental video closes 1981.
Wisniewski, Henry Baker. Closes 1980. installation. Beginning of "Projects" Washington, D.C. National Endowment
exhibition program. for the Arts initiates Public Media Pro-
Television/Productions gram. Directors include Chloe Aaron,
A Special Videotape Show, Whitney
Boston. Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe Museum of American Art. New Ameri- Brian O'Doherty. In 1977 becomes
develop Paik/Abe synthesizer while can Filmmakers Series. Organized by Media Arts Program.
artists-in-residence at WGBH-TV. David Bienstock. Videotapes by Isaac Washington, D.C. Fifty independent
Violence Sonata by Stan VanDerBeek, Abrams, Shridhar Bapat, Stephen Beck, producers from numerous video collec-
WGBH-TV. Live broadcast perfor- John Randolph Carter, Douglas Davis, tives join together to videotape Mayday
mance with videotape, film, and partici- Dimitri Devyatkin, Ed Emshwiller, anti- Vietnam War demonstration. Their
pation of studio and phone-in audience Richard Felciano, Carol Herzer, Joanne videotapes of political speeches and
on theme of violence. Kyger, Richard Lowenberg, Alwin organizations, riots, arrests, and events
New York. Eric Siegel builds Electronic Nikolais, Nam June Paik (with Char- are collectively edited at the Videofreex
Video Synthesizer with financial assis- lotte Moorman), Charles Phillips, Terry Prince Street studio, New York.
tance from Howard Wise. Riley, Eric Siegel, Skip Sweeney, Aldo
San Francisco. Stephen Beck builds Tambellini, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Organizations
Direct Video Synthesizer I, funded in WGBH-TV, Robert Zagone. Chicago. Videopolis. Video/resource
part by the National Endowment for the Ten Video Performances, Finch College teaching center. Founded by Anda
Arts. Museum of Contemporary Art. Orga- Korsts. Closes 1978.
nized by Elayne Varian. Works by Vito Ithaca, N.Y. Ithaca Video Projects.
Publications Acconci, Peter Campus, Douglas Davis, Organization for promotion of elec-
FUm and Video Makers Travel Sheet Dan Graham, Alex Hay, Bruce Nau- tronic communication. Director, Phillip
(Pittsburgh: Museum of Art, Carnegie man, Claes Oldenburg, Nam June Paik, Mallory Jones.
Institute). Monthly listing of artists' Robert Rauschenberg, Steve Reich, Lanesville, N.Y. Media Bus. Founded
appearances, new works, events. Eric Siegel, Simone Whitman. by the Videofreex. Media center begins'
Radical Software (New York: Rain- Perception. Group of artists interested producing "Lanesville TV," weekly pro-
dance Foundation). Alternative video in alternative uses of video, explore gram about the community that is the '
magazine and information channel for video programming in conjunction with first low-power television (LPTV) sta-:
distribution and exchange of video Electronic Intermix. Founded by Eric tion. In 1979 Media Bus moves to
works. Published 1970-74, vols. 1-2. Siegel and Steina and Woody Vasulka. Woodstock and operates a post-produc-i
Coeditors, Phyllis Gershuny and Beryl Subsequent members: Juan Downey, tion facility, distribution and consulting:
Korot. Publishers, Ira Schneider and Frank Gillette, Beryl Korot, Andy services, and produces programming fori
Michael Shamberg. Mann, Ira Schneider. Disbands 1973. cable. Current members: Nancy Cain,1
Expanded Cinema by Gene Youngblood T. P. Video Space Troupe. Experimental Tobe Carey, Bart Friedman. 1
(New York: E. P. Dutton). First publi- workshop exploring two-way video. New York. Alternate Media Centers
cation to cover video art. Founded by Shirley Clarke. Original School of the Arts, New York Uni-I
members include Wendy Clarke, Bruce versity. Funded by the John and Mary]
sionals to produce public-access pro- Dan Gr ah am , TV Ca meral Monitor Per form an ce, j ova Scotia College of Art a nd
gramming. Founded by Thea Sklover. Design. Hal ifax, 1970.
Director of Programming, Lee Fergu-
son. Ends 1976.
Television/Productions
Boston. Video Variations, WGBH-TV.
Collaboration between Boston Sym-
phony Orchestra and artists Jackie
Cassen, Russell Connor, Douglas Davis,
Constantine Manos, Nam June Paik,
James Seawright, Stan VanDerBeek,
Tsai Wen- Ying. Produced by Fred
Barzyk.
New York. Artists' Television Work-
shop, WNET-TV. Established through
efforts of Jackie Cassen, Russell Con-
nor, Nam June Paik, with initial grant
from New York State Council on the
Arts to support experimental projects by
independents.
New York City mandates public access
as part of its cable franchise.
Providence, R.I. Satellite program of the
National Center for Experiments in
Television (NCET) established by Brice
Howard at Rhode Island School of
Design; also at Southern Methodist
University, Dallas, and Southern Illinois
University, Edwardsville. Vito Acconci, Remote Control, 1971.
Washington, D.C. Electronic Hokka-
dim I by Douglas Davis, Corcoran Gal-
lery of Art, and WTOP-TV. Live broad-
cast piece with two-way communication
via telephone.
Publications
Guerrilla Television by Michael Sham-
berg and Raindance Corporation (New
York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston).
Manual of alternative television with
graphics by Ant Farm.
1972
Exhibitions /Events
Minneapolis. First Annual National •
Video Festival, Minneapolis College of Panel of the First Annual National Video Festival, Minneapolis College of Art and
Art and Design and Walker Art Center. Design and Walker Art Center, 1972 (Left to Right: Gene Youngblood, George
Stoney, Nam June Paik, Russell Connor. Tom Drysdale).
Fall 1985 253
Organized by Tom Drysdale. Consists Rochester, N.Y. Portable Channel. ton, Carol Brandenburg. Founded with
of workshops, screenings, panel discus- Video resource center with workshops, grants from the Rockefeller Foundation
sion. Participants include Peter Cam- visiting artists series, equipment access, and New York State Council on the
pus, Russell Connor, Ed Emshwiller, productions. Directors include Bonnie Arts. First year initiates artist-in-resi-
Nam June Paik, Barbara Rose, Ira Klein, Sanford Rockowitz, John Came- dence program with Shirley Clarke,
Schneider, George Stoney, Aldo Tam- lio, Robert Shea, Tim Kelly. Douglas Davis, Ed Emshwiller, Nam
bellini, Gene Youngblood. St. Louis. Double Helix. Media Center June Paik.
New York. Peter Campus, Bykert with production and post-production San Francisco. Electronic Notebooks by
Gallery. One-man show with video facilities, audio/video workshops. Stephen Beck, KQED-TV. Series of
installations. San Francisco. Optic Nerve. Docu- tapes produced with Bill Gwin, Don
First Women's Video Festival, The mentary production collective produc- Hallock, Warner Jepson, Bill Roarty,
Kitchen at Mercer Arts Center. Orga- ing political and social documentaries. Willard Rosenquist.
nized by Susan Milano. Includes work Original members include Lynn Adler, Washington, D.C. The Federal Commu-
by Jackie Cassen, Maxi Cohen, Yoko Jules Backus, Jim Mayer, Sherrie nications Commission (FCC) requires
Maruyama, Susan Milano, Queer Blue Rabinowitz, John Rogers, Mya Shone. that all cable franchises have at least
Light Video, Keiko Tsuno, Steina and Disbands 1979. one public-access channel.
Woody Vasulka, Women's Video Col- Top Value Television (TVTV). Indepen-
lective; and dance/video performance dent documentary production group Publications
by Judith Scott, Elsa Tambellini. forms to provide alternative coverage of Between Paradigms: The Mood and Its
Downloaded by [George Washington University] at 20:00 03 February 2015
Ninth Annual New York Avant-Garde the Democratic and Republican conven- Purpose by Frank Gillette (New York:
Festival, Alexander Hamilton Hudson tions in Miami; the first use of half-inch Gordon and Breach).
Riverboat. Director, Charlotte Moor- videotape on broadcast television. Origi- Print (New York: RC Publications).
man. Includes special video projects by nal production by Hudson Marquez, Special video issue. Guest editor, Robert
over fifteen artists. Allen Rucker, Michael Shamberg, Tom de Havilland. Contributors: Fred
Santa Clara, Calif. First St. Jude Invi- Weinberg, Megan Williams, and mem- Barzyk, Rudi Bass, Rose DeNeue, Ber-
tational of Video Art, de Saisset Gallery bers of Ant Farm, Raindance, and nard Owett, Sheldon Satin, Michael
and Art Museum, University of Santa Videofreex collectives. Other members Shamberg.
Clara. Organized by David Ross. Works of TVTV include Wendy Apple, Mi-
by John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, chael Couzens, Paul Goldsmith, Betsy 1973
George Bolling, Douglas Davis, Taka Guignon, Stanton Kaye, Anda Korsts, Exhibitions/Events
Iimura, Videofreex, William Wegman. Andy Mann, Elon Soltes. Disbands Los Angeles. William Wegman. Los
Syracuse, N.Y. Douglas Davis: An 1977. Angeles County Museum of Art. Exhi-
Exhibition Inside and Outside the Woodstock, N.Y. Woodstock Commu- bition of drawings and tapes.
Museum, Everson Museum of Art, with nity Video. Production center and New York. International Computer Arts
WCNY-TV. An exhibition with live resource for community video. Initiates Festival, The Kitchen at Mercer Arts
telecast, "Talk Out!" local cable programming. Begins Art- Center. Organized by Dimitri Devyat-
Nam June Paik, Everson Museum of ists' TV Lab, which movesto Rhinebeck kin. Includes music, poetry, film, video.
Art. Tapes, installations, and perfor- in 1976. From 1975 to 1977 presents The Irish Tapes by John Reilly and
mance, with Charlotte Moorman. Woodstock Video Expovision, a festival Stefan Moore, The Kitchen at Mercer
of New York State artists. Founded by Arts Center. Installation with three
Organizations Ken Marsh. Members include Barbara channels and twelve monitors.
Buffalo, N.Y. Media Study/Buffalo. Buckner, Bob Dacy, Gary Hill, Steven
Kolpan, Elaine Milosh. Ends 1978. 1973 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney
Center for videotape production and Museum of American Art. First inclu-
exhibition. President, Gerald O'Grady; Television/Productions sion of video in Biennial exhibition.
Video/Electronic Arts Curator, John Includes videotapes by seven artists and
Minkowsky. Boston. Music Image Workshop,
WGBH-TV. Project by Ron Hays using installation by Peter Campus.
New York. Castelli-Sonnabend Video- Paik-Abe synthesizer to produce tapes Tenth New York Avant-Garde Festival,
tapes and Films. Videotape distribution relating to music and video imagery. Grand Central Station. Director, Char-
service. Founded by Leo Castelli and lotte Moorman. Includes special video
Ileana Sonnabend. Directors include The Very First On-the-Air Half-Inch projects by over seventeen artists.
Joyce Nereaux, Patricia Brundage. Videotape Festival Ever: People Televi-
sion, WGBH-TV. Produced by Henry Syracuse, N.Y. Circuit: A Video Invita-
Downtown Community Television Cen- Becton with Fred Barzyk, Dorothy tional, Everson Museum of Art.
ter (DCTV). Educational and produc- Chiesa. Live studio event including Curated by David Ross. Traveling exhi-
tion organization. Founded by Jon home viewer call-ins, tape screenings, bition of videotapes by over sixty-five
Alpert, Keiko Tsuno. and interviews with artists, engineers, artists. Travels to Henry Gallery,
Fiji Corday Productions. Organization business people, educators, students. University of Washington, Seattle;
to assist artists' production. Founded by Chicago. Dan Sandin builds Image Pro- Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum,
Carlota Schoolman. cessor, and eventually, with Phil Mor- Bloomfield Hills, Mich.; Kolnischer
Survival Arts Media. Video collective ton, makes plans available to artists. Kunstverein, Cologne, West Germany;
emphasizing community education and New York. Scape-mates by Ed Em- Greenville County Museum of Art,
health programs, programs on artists shwiller, the Television Laboratory at Greenville, S.C.; and in 1974, Museum
and artistic processes, and multimedia WNET/Thirteen. Videotape with com- of Fine Arts, Boston.
shows. Members include Gail Edwards, plex mixing of live actors and computer Frank Gillette: Video Process and
Howard Gudstadt, Molly Hughes, graphics. Meta-Process, Everson Museum of Art.
Ben Levine, Danny Luciano, Richard Videotapes and installations.
Malone. The Television Laboratory at WNET/
Thirteen. Directors include David Lox-
museum educators and cura- ciation of independent producers and Eric Cameron, Russell Connor, Her-
tors, cable and educational television individuals. Begins publishing The Inde- mine Freed, Dan Graham, Shigeko
producers, artists and art critics from pendent on media issues. In 1975 estab- Kubota, Bob and Ingrid Wiegand.
U.S., Canada, Latin America, Europe, lishes The Foundation for Independent Cybernetics ofthe Sacred by Paul Ryan
Japan. Video and Film (FIVF) as an educa- (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/
Projects: Video, The Museum of Mod- tional organization. Doubleday).
ern Art. Curator, Barbara London. Anna Canepa Video Distribution (origi Independent Video, A Complete Guide
Beginning of continuing series of video nally Video Distribution, Inc.). Distri- to the Physics, Operation, and Applica-
exhibitions. Program expands with bution service of artists' tapes. tion of the New Television for the Stu-
funding from the Rockefeller Founda- The Kitchen Center for Video, Music dent, Artist, and for Community TV by
tion in 1976. and Dance (formerly The Electronic Ken Marsh (San Francisco: Straight
Video Performance, 112 Green Street. Kitchen) relocates to Broome Street and Arrow Books).
Video performances by Vito Acconci, begins daytime exhibition program. The Prime Time Survey by Top Value
Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Dennis Inaugural show includes videotapes and Television (TVTV). Report on status of
Oppenheim, Ulrike Rosenbach, Richard three video installations by Bill Viola. video and its directions.
Serra with Robert Bell, Willough- Providence, R.I. Electron Movers. Video
by Sharp, Keith Sonnier, William art collective with gallery space, equip- 1975
Wegman. ment resources, workshops, and visiting Exhibitions/Events
Syracuse. Videa 'n' Videology: Nam artist series. Founded by Dennis Hlyn- Dallas. The Eternal Frame by T. R.
June Paik; 1959-73, Everson Museum sky, Robert Jungels, Laurie McDonald, Uthco and Ant Farm. Reenactment of
of Art. Curator, David Ross. Retrospec- Alan Powell. In 1975 Ed Tannenbaum John F. Kennedy assassination for vid-
tive of artist's videotapes, with catalog joins. Disbands 1980. eotape. Presented as installation at Long
edited by Judson Rosebush. San Francisco. La Mamelle. Artists' Beach Museum of Art in 1976.
Video and the Museum, Everson Mu- space for video, audio, and marginal Long Beach, Calif. Southland Video
seum of Art. Organized by David Ross. works. Directors, Carl Loeffler and Anthology, Long Beach Museum of Art.
Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Nancy Frank. Extended series of five exhibitions by
Conference with workshops for curators Seattle. and/or. Space for multimedia California artists.
and administrators on the role of video exhibitions, productions, performance Americans in Florence, Europeans in
in the museum. Concurrent exhibitions: art. In 1979 establishes 911, Video Florence, Long Beach Museum of Art.
Peter Campus, Closed Circuit Video; Library. In 1981 media program Organized by Maria Gloria Bicocchi
Juan Downey, Video Trans Americas becomes Focal Point Media Center. and David Ross. Traveling exhibition
De-Briefing Pyramid (a video/dance Founded by Ann Focke, Robert Garner, with videotapes produced by Art/
performance with Carmen Beuchat); Ken Leback. Video Curators, Norie Tapes/22, Florence.
Andy Mann, Video Matrix; and Ira Sa to, Heather Oakson.
Schneider, Manhattan Is an Island. New York. First Annual Video Docu-
Television/Productions mentary Festival, initiated by Video
Washington, D.C. Art Now 74: A Cele- Study Center of Global Village.
bration of the American Arts, John F. Boston. New Television Workshop,
Kennedy Center for the Performing WGBH-TV. Established with grant 1975 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney
Arts. Includes twenty-three videotapes. from the Rockefeller Foundation and Museum of American Art. Includes
through the efforts of David Atwood, work by eighteen video artists.
Organizations Fred Barzyk, Dorothy Chiesa, Ron Projected Video, Whitney Museum of
Bayville, N.Y. Inter-Media Art Center Hays, Rich Hauser, Olivia Tappan. American Art. Projected videotapes by
(IMAC). Multipurpose production fa- Director, Fred Barzyk. Producers in- William Adler and John Margolies,
cility with post-production workshops clude Dorothy Chiesa, Susan Dowling, John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Peter
and exhibitions. Director, Michael Nancy Mason Hauser, Olivia Tappan. Campus, Douglas Davis, Bill Etra, Her-
Rothbard. Video: The New Wave, WGBH-TV. mine Freed, Shigeko Kubota, Nam June
Long Beach, Calif. Long Beach Museum Program of video artists, including Paik, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier,
of Art begins video exhibition program David Atwood, Stephen Beck, Peter Steina and Woody Vasulka, William
and collection of videotapes. Video cura- Campus, Douglas Davis, Ed Emshwill- Wegman.
by Jon Rubin and Susan Woll. Directors Video Art: An Anthology (New York: with grants from the Ford Foundation
include Michelle Schofield and Tom Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich). Edi- and the National Endowment for the
Wylie. tors, Beryl Korot and Ira Schneider. Arts to stimulate the production of inde-
Chicago. Video Data Bank, School of First anthology of video criticism and pendent documentaries.
the Art Institute of Chicago. Distribu- statements by video artists. New York and San Francisco. Send/
tion and resource center for videotapes Video: State of the Art by Joanna Gill Receive Satellite Network. Coordina-
on artists and video art. Director, Lyn (New York: The Rockefeller Founda- tors Liza Bear and Keith Sonnier with
Blumenthal. tion). Report on video activity in the support from the Public Interest Satel-
New York. Asian Cine-Vision. Media United States. lite Association (PISA) and NASA.
center in Chinatown producing Asian- Two-way satellite transmission between
American program series and program-
1977 New York and San Francisco with
ming for Chinese Cable Television. Organizations simultaneous performances. Partici-
Conducts workshops, media and pro- Atlanta. Image Film/Video Center (In- pants, in San Francisco: Margaret
duction services, and operates an Asian- dependent Media Artists of Georgia, Fischer, Terry Fox, Brad Gibbs, Sharon
American Media Archive. In 1982 Etc., Inc.). Media center with screen- Grace, Carl Loeffler, Richard Lowen-
begins Asian-American International ings, workshops, and equipment access. berg, Alan Scarritt. In New York: Liza
Video Festival. Director, Peter Chow. Begins the Atlanta Independent Film Bear, Richard Landry, Nancy Lewis,
Donnell Library Center. New York and Video Festival (now the Atlanta Richard Peck, Betsy Sussler, Wil-
Public Library, establishes collection of Film and Video Festival), an annual loughby Sharp, Paul Shavelson, Duff
videotapes. Founded by William Sloan. international showcase. Directors in- Schweiniger, Keith Sonnier.
Video librarians have included Mary clude Gayla Jamison, Anna Marie Pier- Publications
Feldstein, Michael Miller, Michael Git- simoni, Marsha Rifkin.
The New Television: A Public/Private
lin, Lishin Yu. Houston. Southwest Alternative Media Art. (Cambridge, Mass. and London:
Franklin Furnace. Alternative space Project (SWAMP). Originally asso- The MIT Press). Manifesto including
with archive, bibliography, exhibition, ciated with the Rice Media Center at essays from the Open Circuits Confer-
performance programs, including video. Rice University. Media center with edu- ence at The Museum of Modern Art,
Director, Martha Wilson. cation program, lecture series, produc- New York, in 1974.
tion and post-production technical assis-
New American Filmmaker Series,
Whitney Museum of American Art.
tance. Conducts Southwest Film and 1978
Video Tour, artist-in-residence pro-
Continuing exhibition of independent
gram, and annual Texpo film and video
Exhibitions/Events
film expands to include video art. Buffalo. Vasulka: Steina-Machine Vi-
festival. Produces local PBS series, "The
Director, John Hanhardt. sion, Woody-Description, Albright-
Territory." Directors include Ed Hugetz
Pittsburgh. Independent Film and and Tom Sims. Knox Gallery. Curator, Linda L.
Video Preview Network, Pittsburgh Cathcart. Exhibition of tapes and
New York. Locus Communications.
Filmmakers. Program of organized pre- installations.
Equipment access center with work-
view screenings of films and videotapes New York. Aransas, Axis ofObservation
shops, technical production services,
around the country. Founded by Sally by Frank Gillette, The Kitchen. Travels
cable programming, screenings. Found-
Dixon and Robert Haller. Ends 1980. to Contemporary Arts Museum, Hous-
ing Executive Director, Gerry Pallor.
San Francisco. Bay Area Video Coali- ton; University Art Museum, Berkeley;
Port Washington, N.Y. Port Washing-
tion founded with grant from the and Academy of Fine Arts, Washing-
ton Library begins visiting artists pro-
Rockefeller Foundation. Production/ ton, D.C. Acquisitioned by University
gram with exhibitions and presenta-
post-production center with workshops Art Museum.
tions. Head of Media Services, Lillian
and exhibitions. Founding Director, Video Viewpoints, The Museum of
Katz.
Gail Waldron. Director, Morrie War- Modern Art. Beginning of yearly lecture
shawski. Television/Productions series by independent videomakers.
Buffalo, N.Y. Steina and Woody Va- Pittsburgh. National Media Alliance of
Television/Productions sulka and Jeffrey Schier begin work on Media Arts Centers (NAMAC) holds
Los Angeles. Video Art. Los Angeles the Digital Image Articulator, a digital first conference. Hosted by Pittsburgh
Theta Cable, Long Beach Cablevision, computer-imaging device. Filmmakers.
258 Art Journal
Redington Beach, Fla. Chinsegut Film!
Video Conference. Founded by Charles
Lyman and Peter Melaragno. Confer-
ence with presentations to promote
interchange among invited participants
and film- and videomakers.
Venice, Calif. Video night by Some Seri-
ous Business. Weekly video screening
series.
Organizations
Chicago. Chicago Editing Center. Pro-
duction/post-production facility with
education and exhibition programs. In
1980 becomes Center for New Televi-
sion. Directors include Cynthia Neal,
Joyce Bollinger.
Television/Productions
Downloaded by [George Washington University] at 20:00 03 February 2015
resources and promote the work of the 1980 Winter Games. Videotapes by Skip Rabinowitz. Live interactive satellite
independent video community. Includes Blumberg, Kit Fitzgerald and John San- project between Los Angeles and New
programming, exhibition, production, born, Nam June Paik. Installations by York.
distribution. Directors include Jadkie Wendy Clarke, Frank Gillette, Ira Minneapolis-St. Paul. Minnesota Land-
Kain, Robin White. Schneider, Buky Schwartz. scapes, KTCA-TV. Project Director,
P.S. I begins video exhibition program Long Beach, Calif. California Video, Peter Bradley. Series of videotapes on
with emphasis on installations. Video Long Beach Museum of Art. Curator, Minnesota for broadcast. Works by
Curator, Bob Harris. Kathy Huffman. Works by Max Almy, Skip Blumberg, James Byrne, Steve
Dan Boord, Ante Boznich, John Cald- Christiansen, Davidson Gigliotti, Frank
Television/Productions well, Alba Cane, Helen DeMichiel, Gohlke, Cynthia Neal, Steina.
New York. Communications Update. Tony Labat, Pier Marton, Tony Ours-
Center for New Art Activities. Origi- ler, Jan Peacock, Patti Podesta, Joe 1981
nally the WARC (World Administra- ReesjTarget Video, Nina Salerno, Ilene Exhibitions/Events
tive Radio Conference) Report. Artists Segalove, Starr Sutherland, "Captain" New York. First National Latin Film
series for cable dealing with political Bruce Walker, Bruce and Norman and Video Festival, El Museo del
and communications issues. Original Yonemoto. Barrio.
producers: Liza Bear, Rolf Brand, New York. Love Tapes in New York by 1981 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney
Michael McClard, Willoughby Sharp. Wendy Clarke. Live interactive installa- Museum of American Art. Installations
In 1983 becomes Cast Iron TV and tion and tapes exhibited at the World by Frank Gillette and Buky Schwartz.
programming diversifies. Producer, Trade Center with selections shown on Stay Tuned, The New Museum. Orga-
Liza Bear. cable television and WNETjThirteen. nized by Ned Rifkin. Exhibition juxta-
Non-Fiction Television, WNETjThir- Television] Society j Art, The Kitchen. poses artists' work in video with work in
teen. Broadcast series for Independent Organized by Ron Clark and Mary other media. Includes Robert Cum-
Documentary Fund. MacArthur. Colloquium presented by ming, Brian Eno, Charles Frazier,
Public Interest Video Network. Execu- The Kitchen and the American Film Donald Lipski, Howardena Pindell,
tive Producer, Kim Spencer. Senior Edi- Institute. Participants include Benjamin Judy Rifka, Allen Ruppersberg, Irvin
tor, Nick DeMartino. Independent pro- Buchloh, Julianne Burton, Nick De- Tepper.
duction company financed by the Urban Martino, Stephen Heath, Fredric Jame- Video Classics, Bronx Museum of the
Scientific and Educational Research son, Rosalind Krauss, Mark Nash, Rob- Arts. Curator, RoseLee Goldberg. In-
(USER) presents live satellite coverage ert Sklar, Martha RosIer, Herbert stallations by Vito Acconci, Dan Gra-
of an antinuclear demonstration in Schiller, Allan Sekula, Peter Wollen. ham, Shigeko Kubota, Rita Myers,
Washington, D.C., on the Public Broad- San Francisco. First Annual San Fran- Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim,
casting System (PBS). First time PBS cisco Video Festival. Director, Steve Nam June Paik.
carries a live public affairs program Agetstein. Assistant Director, Wendy Rochester, N.Y. From the Academy to
whose editorial content was determined Garfield. Begin publishing Video 80 as the Avant-Garde, Visual Studies Work-
by an organization outside its system. festival catalog. Now called SEND and shop. Curator, Richard Simmons. Trav-
San Francisco. Producedfor Television, published as a quarterly. eling exhibition with videotapes by Juan
La Mamelle and KTSF-TV. Live broad- Yonkers, N.Y. Alternative Spaces, Hud- Downey, Howard Fried, Frank Gillette,
cast of performance art. Works by Chris son River Museum. Series of exhibitions Davidson Gigliotti, Tony Labat, Les
Burden, Lynn Hershman and Rea Bal- employing Museum's planetarium. In- Levine. Travels to Center for Art Tapes,
dridge, Chip Lord and Phil Garner, Bar- cludes video installations by Mary Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Center for
bara Smith. Lucier, Francese Torres. New Television, Chicago.
Publications Organizations Washington, D.C. National Video Fes-
New Orleans. Survival Information tival, American Film Institute. Sponsor,
Video-Architecture- Television: Writing Sony Corporation. Festival producer,
on Video and Video Works by Dan Television, NOV AC. Installation in
local Welfare Office with social issues Larry Kirkman; festival director, James
Graham (Halifax, Nova Scotia and Hindman. Installation by Nam June
New York: The Press of the Nova Scotia programming run on a repeating cycle.
St. Paul. Jerome Foundation expands to Paik.
of the medium as art, and David Antin's "Fernseh Galerie" in the early seventies, them as celebrations of the aesthetics of
"The Essential Characteristics of the artists who worked with video in the light, perception, and transition, and
Medium" (1976) is a classic exploration context of performance, environmental Kathy Huffman, curator of the Contem-
of the fundamentals and implications of art, and Arte Povera. porary Artists' Television Fund in Bos-
the young medium. The three American As a survey of a specific moment in ton, offers incisive comments on the
essays are marked by a kind of optimism the history of video in America and 1983 tape Reasons for Knocking at an
for the subversive potential of the new Germany-when video was first being Empty House. But most of the cata-
medium that rings somewhat naive from used by visual artists as a continuation logue's descriptions of the tapes and
the perspective of the more cynical cli- of investigations that evolved from Min- installations were written by the artist
mate of the eighties. Revealingly, the imal and Conceptual Art-Kunst und himself. Likewise, one of the catalogue's
essays by the Europeans-Vittorio Al- Video is an important document. From most informative segments is Deirdre
liata, Rene Berger, and Friedrich Heu- the vantage point of the altered land- Boyle's interview with Viola, in which he
bach-do not continue this discourse scape of the video-art scene in the eight- proves himself equally conversant with
into the next decade. Instead, each dis- ies, the editors' approach towards an Jung and the Little Rascals and offers
cusses an aspect of video within an art- international history of the medium thoughts on the dichotomy between
world context: Alliata, in "Tradition seems to reflect a specifically European technology and art. The section of the
und Videodamonie" (1982), addresses perspective. catalogue devoted to the artist's own
the tradition of the cult of images and anecdotes and short essays again com-
symbols in art history and its relation to ill Viola, one of the youngest of the bines humor and philosophy to clarify
video, while Berger's "Videokunst oder
die Kilnstlerische Herausforderung der
B American artists included in Kunst
und Video's "pioneer generation," not
the complex references underlying his
work. Typically, Viola strikes a knowing
Electronik" (1982) deals with video's only has continued to work in video but balance between the arcane and the
role and future with an art audience and has emerged internationally as one of accessible; his discourse on ritual, spiri-
the art market. Nam June Paik, in the most accomplished masters of the tualism, and tribalism is countered by a
"Vom Pferd zu Christo" (1981), con- medium. A veteran of an American TV- story of an undergraduate encounter
tributes philosophical anecdotes that inspired childhood who is also a knowl- with a magnetic-tape degausser at Syra-
serve to illustrate his theories of commu- edgeable student of Eastern philosophy cuse University. The catalogue con-
nications and video. Although these and religion, Viola places equal empha- cludes with a complete videography and
essays do reflect the disparity between sis on the "video" and the "art" in his biography of the artist and a list of
the early American "video/TV" theory work, and thereby seems to encompass his exhibitions, installations, and
and the Euroepan art historical ap- both an American and a European aes- publications.
proach, one misses a discussion of the thetic. Viola's work falls outside the
work within a broader scope of contem- postmodern discourse of much Ameri- ne of the first exhibitions in North
poraryart.
In a foreword to Kunst und Video, the
can video and within a more internation-
al, modernist tradition. His works do not
O America to signal the incipient
growth of a more international perspec-
editors describe the artists selected for usually address specific cultural refer- tive of video art was organized by Lorne
inclusion as the "most important artists ences or language; rather, they address Falk at the Walter Phillips Gallery in
of the pioneer generation." Indeed, of personal, often archetypal referents and Banff in 1983. Entitled The Second
the sixty-one artists represented here, create a visual, perceptual, and ulti- Link, a reference to the Linked Ring
more than one third did not produce mately allegorical language from the Society's encouragement of photogra-
vidoetapes after 1979. But by limiting raw materials (time, light) of the phy as an art form in nineteenth-century
the selection to the "pioneer genera- medium. England, the exhibition was part of a
tion," the authors have compiled an On the occasion of his first European project that comprised an international
anthology of international video art that one-man show, which featured two orig- tour of thirty videotapes selected by six
omits such important artists as the inal installations and an exhibition of his guest curators from Canada, the United
American Dara Birnbaum and the Ger- later tape work (1977-83), the Musee States, Great Britain, and Europe, a
man Klaus vom Bruch, both of whom d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris pub- lecture series, and a publication. The
began working with video in the late lished a catalogue that falls somewhere resulting catalogue/anthology, The
seventies. Approximately two thirds of between an artist's journal and a formal Second Link: Viewpoints on Video in
the artists included in this survey are monograph of the artist and his work. the Eighties. is an impressive survey
Americans, with most of the remainder Viola is an articulate and engaging com- that isolates the pertinent issues inform-
from German-speaking countries. For municator, and the editors of the cata- ing the field of artists' video in the
videoas a public medium existing within and the symbolic landscapes of James recent narrative work curated by Bar-
a television context-a dichotomy that Byrne's Swan Songs. Dorine Mignot has bara London, and a selection entitled
suggests an identity crisis heightened by chosen five works from five European "Cultural Impressions," curated by
the economic and technological shifts in countries, but, considering this limited Marita Sturken.
the past several years. Although the number, her selection includes impor- The festival's organizers, James
jargon differs, the essayists' concerns tant works by major international artists Hindman and Jackie Kain, have com-
are similar: Falk speaks of a "private who have gained considerable attention piled an unusually broad overview of
aesthetic" versus a "public aesthetic"; abroad but who have not been widely international developments in television
Gene Youngblood of a "personal vision" seen in America. Klaus vom Bruch's and television-related art, but rather
versus a "public vision"; Carl Loeffler of Propellarband, in which personal iden- than concentrating on the "uneasy rela-
"video art" and "television art"; Kathy tity and national history collide in tionship" that characterized The Sec-
Huffman of "personal video" versus re-edited archival World War II film ond Link, they focus on positive models
"broadcast television"; while Sandy footage, Marina Abramovic/Ulay's for the convergence of television and if
Nairne isolates the "body" as the focus symbolic study of time and culture. City not art per se, at least an alternative
of seventies video art, as opposed to of Angels; and the Belgian Joelle de la vision. The catalogue repeatedly allows
"television" as the focus of video in the Casiniere's layering of song, written for cultural comparisons of these models
eighties. These essays reveal the anxious text, sign language, and image in Gri- by juxtaposing descriptions or essays on
climate of a field in transition from the moire Magnetique-each of these in- particular programs from various coun-
pioneering climate of the seventies to the formed by a specific historic and cul- tries; for example, under the heading
more complex economic structure and tural context-allow for fascinating "Arts Magazines," one finds material
conservative market of this decade, par- comparisons with the more familiar ref- on the "Alter Image" series from
ticularly in the United States and erences of the American work. Such England, the "Dis/Patches" series on
Canada. Several of the essayists (includ- comparisons and juxtapositions, even The Learning Channel in the United
ing Huffman and Youngblood) point when culled from such specific curato- States, and the magazine-format pro-
out that artists' access to television is rial perspectives, underscore the value ofgram "There is a Video-cassette in My
still severely limited and call for a reaf- exhibitions that acknowledge an inter- Soup" from Belgium. Likewise, under
firmation of video's personal vision, national presence, by allowing the the heading "Public Television: Politics,
while Loeffler posits an optimistic viewer to draw conclusions from a much Fiction, and Fantasy," important works
future for artists on television. Despite broader source. As such, The Second made in conjunction with a public televi-
opposing viewpoints, clearly the opera- Link is a significant step towards a more sion station, such as Michael Klier's
tive issue here is what Huffman sophisticated approach to the issues that ZDF production Der Riese, are pre-
describes as "the uneasy relationship define this period in the history of sented in the company of works made in
between video art and commercial tele- the field, and to the artists and works similar situations in England, Hungary,
visionin the environment of today's rest- that are emerging from this second the United States, and Yugoslavia.
less viewer." In addressing their tape generation. Should the dominance of television pro-
selections, most of the guest curators- ductions be seen as a sign of conserva-
who include Sandy Nairne of the Insti- he Second Link had been conceived tism on the part of the festival, the
tute of Contemporary Art, London, Bar-
bara London of The Museum of Modern
T as a forum for current thought on inclusion of an interview of the British
art and video and thus drew on an social theoretician Raymond Williams
Art, New York, Brian McNevin and international selection as a reflection of by Colin McCabe, Peter Broderick's
Peggy Gale from Canada, and Dorine contemporary discourse in the field. But essay "Point-Counterpoint: Controversy
Mignot of the Stedelijk Museum, it is both surprising and revealing that by Television" on advocacy television,
Amsterdam-suggest that artists' video the fourth National Video Festival, pre- and Julianne Burton and Karen Ranuc-
must acknowledge the dual aspects of sented by the American Film Institute ci's presentation "Nicaragua and EI
the medium. in September 1984, would concentrate Salvador: Art and Activism, Urgency
Although the artists and tapes so heavily on what its Executive and Ethics" indicates that the organiz-
selected for the exhibition can hardly Director, James Hindman, refers to as ers have deliberately attempted to pres-
represent a definitive survey of recent the "internationalization process" in ent television in a social context. Finally,
video, these works do effectively reflect video. in the section "Image and Sound: Col-
certain prevailing tendencies in work by Although the 1984 festival included a laborations," the catalogue touches on
young Americans, Canadians, and, to a large selection of artists' tapes from an area that has immense implications
lesser degree here, Europeans. Each of Europe, Japan, and Great Britain, the both for the television industry and for
Although the relation of promotional broader discourse of contemporary art. American and European histories of
music clips and artists' videotapes is an The Luminous Image is both a cata- the video medium are also developed
issue that needs to be addressed in logue of the exhibition and a compila- here. Jean-Paul Trefois briefly covers
depth, this catalogue's brief coverage of tion of essays by nine authors from the highlights of the evolution of video as art
artist/musician collaborations at least United States, Belgium, France, The in Europe, while John Hanhardt formu-
hints at the possibility of alternatives to Netherlands, and England. Unlike most lates an insightful history of video instal-
the consumer ideology and cliched writing on the medium, the essays here lation, not only isolating important
visual language that has become the do not address theories of communica- events and artists but also charting the
currency of most music clips. tion but, in keeping with the concerns of formal and conceptual developments
Besides the volume and range of ideas video installation, initiate formal and that led to the transformation of televi-
and programming it addresses, this cat- historical analyses of video as an art sion in postmodern art. His history of
alogue should be distinguished from medium rooted in visual art and cine- installation begins with Paik and ends
most similar ventures for its ability to matic traditions. Indeed, in her intro- with Birnbaum, concluding that video
stand as more than a document or arti- duction, Dorine Mignot establishes the has had and will continue to have a
fact from the event itself. In its attempt relation of video to art history by draw- revolutionary impact on twentieth-cen-
to present a viable convergence of art ing parallels between the formal and tury art historical conventions. In his
and television on an international scale, conceptual concerns of artists through- historical notes, David Ross also focuses
the catalogue for the 1984 National out the centuries-for example, light, his comments on Paik and Birnbaum,
Video Festival is an important publica- personal history, time-and those of the discovering in these two artists the ulti-
tion in its own right. artists featured in the exhibition. Cara- mate deconstruction of the American
vaggio and Rembrandt are evoked as television image and the American tele-
n marked contrast to the premise of precursors to Mary Lucier and Nan vision experience. In Ross's view, Paik
Iwhichthe AFI National Video Festival,
identified video as a tool for cul-
Hoover; Kiefer and Cucchi as sharing
themes with Marcel Odenbach and
and Birnbaum share a unique under-
standing of the television image as cul-
tural communications---either in the Francese Torres. In his essay "Video tural artifact, and Paik himself discusses
form of broadcast television or in the and Visual Arts," Wim Beeren takes the cultural impact of live, interactive
form of closed-circuit, private transmis- this analogy to a rather simplistic satellite art as experienced in his global
sion-a recent major exhibition at the extreme by comparing video's formal media event, Good Morning, Mr.
Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam places characteristics to those of painting, Orwell.
video firmly within the historical tradi- sculpture, and graphics, and finally The second half of The Luminous
tions of the visual arts, and thus within declaring, "I am prepared to regard Image deals directly with the artists'
the domain of the art institution. The video as art when like art ... it concen- installations. Each artist is represented
1984 exhibition, The Luminous Image, trates on colour, line, three-dimensional by color or black-and-white photo-
featured twenty-two artists from ten form and their possible interrelation- graphs of previous installations or
countries working in the video format ships" (which would seem to exclude related tapes; sketches or notes on the
most closely wedded to the conventions most of the pieces in the exhibition). works in progress; statements by the
of modern art history: installation. With Also drawing parallels between video artists on the formal or conceptual
its relationship to sculpture, painting, and other art forms, David Hall dis- underpinnings of the installations; es-
and architecture, installation provides cusses the problematic situation of says by critics and writers on the specific
video with the objectness that it other- video-art education and criticism. works, several of which are particularly
wise lacks and thus obscures the Other essayists take a more theoreti- effective, such as Raymond Bellour's
medium's association with broadcast cal approach. It is revealing to note that, eloquent comments on Thierry Kunt-
television, allowing a completely dif- where other publications mentioned zel's Nostos II and Constance de Jong
ferent set of formal and theoretical above probed the "uneasy relationship" on Tony Oursler's L7-L5. Surprisingly,
directives to operate. The Stedelijk exhi- between video and television, here the these pages, bristling with color, energy,
bition, curated by Dorine Mignot, was uneasy relationship between video and and a sense of concepts and works being
unprecedented in offering such a collec- art is seen to be equally complex. For formulated, capture some of the spirit of
tion of major, original installations- example, Vito Acconci's lucid analysis controlled chaos that typified the actual
seventeen were premiered at this exhibi- of video's function explores the dichot- exhibition. These pages constitute one of
tion-at one museum, an event that not omy between the "television box" as the most fascinating sections of The
only will have an influence on the study sculpture and as television, and implies Luminous Image; the various and often
and exhibition of installation but will that video installation is an art form in conflicting aesthetics that inform the
from European sources. In addition, the The UnfNecessary Image is a crossover how her actions and political expression
catalogue closes with a series of small, publication. Originally proposed as an became dominated by government/cor-
black-and-white photographs of the exhibition around communication mod- porate and media structures. Her
actual installations as they appeared at els and emerging technologies held at response is interesting:
the Stedelijk. Unfortunately, after the the Hayden Corridor Gallery at MIT, it
While everyone at the Diablo
colorful and densely informative impact evolved into a book by various artists
Blockade Encampment was at a
of the previous artists' pages, these "concerned with 'the public image' gen-
consensus meeting, Sandra Ko-
dimly lit, documentary photographs erated by mass media advertising and
ponen had an idea that we two
come as something of a disappointment, communication systems," as stated in
became very excited about: Every-
inadvertently giving the impression that the preface.
one should quietly pack up and
the exhibition was ascetic and dark in It is interesting to consider why this
leave the camp in the middle of the
execution, instead of the eclectic, noisy, exhibition took on the form of a pub-
night. Just go home without
and spirited array that is reflected in lished anthology. In their preface, Peter
explanation.
the rest of this otherwise excellent pub- D' Agostino and Antonio M untadas
In retrospect, I believe in this
lication. The Luminous Image. both explain that the title alludes to an exist-
position even more. There would
as exhibition and catalogue, was a ing dichotomy between public and per-
still be the "Media Corral," the
landmark. sonal significance, "insofar as the mean-
helicopters of television crews and
ing of the public image ultimately
highway patrol flying overhead,
ach of the publications mentioned depends on the context in which it is
E above offers a specific view of the
history or current issues vital to artists'
presented." The works chosen deal with
the content and meaning of public infor-
the power lines of P.G. & E. hiss-
ing and zinging next to the empty
camp site ... the dozens and doz-
video, which in most cases is determined mation. The artists have appropriated
ens of waiting buses ready to cart
by the prevailing cultural context. The and recontextualized recognizable in-
away the protestors, the build up
plurality of views is an indication of the formation in order to analyze and com-
of police forces.... The whole
importance of a continued "internation- ment on its reading within the context of
world would be waiting by the
alization" of the field, in terms of theory mass culture.
television sets and watching the
and of the work itself. As the Americans The Un/Necessary Image constructs
newsstands for the latest "con-
and Europeans further the process of a paradigm of issues critical to our time.
frontation," and we would simply
cross-fertilization (and internationally The twenty-one artists touch on a num-
slip away (p. 29).
accessible publications are crucial to ber of themes, but ideas about time,
that process), we may see a development context, and the absence of dialogue in As has been stated elsewhere, "The
of an ongoing critical dialogue that our society recur in almost all their totality of the culture industry has put
addresses the opposing contexts of art contributions. The layout suggests the an end to [expression. It is] exclusively
and television. look of corporate reports, museum cata- concerned with effects: it crushes insu-
logues, and other high-brow publica- bordination and makes them [expres-
Note tions. The editors have striven to sions] subserve the formula which
This article was written in 1984. arrange the contents as a response to replaces the work.'?
those sorts of publications. In imitating There are many artists who currently
them, they critique their content and use techniques like those in The Unf
Lori Zippay is Director of Electronic their form. Necessary Image. They appropriate
Arts Intermix. a media arts center in There are works by Reese Williams, images or statements from the public
New York City. Erika Rothenberg, Les Levine, Dan domain and reconstruct and recontex-
Graham, Chip Lord, Richard Kriesche, tualize them. They juxtapose language
Victor Burgin, General Idea, Hal Fisch- to image, or image to image; or they cut
er, Catalina Parra, Judy Malloy, Judith right through them, leaving a visual
Barry, and Peter D'Agostino in addition ensemble with the cuts still there. They
to those discussed below. They have take on social issues or address nontradi-
produced essays and photocollage as- tional "art" subjects. All this is made in
semblages and in many ways have the face of a public language that speaks
expanded and invented new expository without reference, without memory,
forms to analyze the public image. without a past and that is so opaque that
These take the form of cut-ups, abridg- it gives forth only its own presence. They
this type of analysis, the artists crack the is inescapably the present. There is no
passage. It is a tableau in which even relationship between corporations and
public surface of the images and free
language loses meaning, for there is no the arts. In his essay on Haacke, David
their social meanings.
Craven writes:
Robert Morgan analyzes the Hyatt grammar to move sense: "Into the
Regency Corporation's manipulation of Future/the future/for tomorrow /L'ave- To consider Haacke's On Social
its advertising image following the trag- nir." Ivekevic and Muntadas point to a Grease simply mounted journal-
edy of 1981, when one of the structural present of which the media and the ism is to be unduly naive about an
supports in its Kansas City hotel broke public image are both guardian and art exhibit's lack of neutrality....
away and caused the deaths of 113 prisoner. Haacke creates a cool non-art so
people, and injuries to 186. From the Representation in advertising is a seemingly insubstantial that the
time of the accident to the hotel's re- case in which style or context or both aura of it becomes the center of
opening, Hyatt developed an advertising overrun content. John Brumfield's essay focus-and, more importantly, of
campaign with specific imagery to offset "What Do You Know When You Know controversy.
the bad press resulting from the mishap. a Picture?" picks up the historic, philo-
As such, Haacke deftly uses what
Morgan focuses on the type of imagery sophic, and aesthetic threads surround- the nihilistic Dadaists merely tried
used to achieve the desired public- ing visual meaning:
to negate. The result is a negative
relations results during this campaign. All visual imagery is ... inextrica- dialectic whereby Haacke affirms
Joan Rabascall examines the way bly tied to an informing, limiting, the process of artistic enshrine-
that advertising in the press presents the or conditioning referent. ... ment, though only in order to
computer today. His images reassess
[T]here is always something-and debunk it. In On Social Grease.
and reassemble the information that often a lot implicitly referential in Haacke uses remarks about art he
normally forms the content of the maga-
the structure of the image.... did not utter, without any overt
zines and publications bearing the look
... insofar, as any representation comments of his own, in an aes-
The UnfNecessary Image imitates. is tied to the history of the object it thetic realm he has not made.
They become a structural critique of
represents, there arises an imme- Thus, the art world has been faced
such media. In interpreting images from diate question as to how much of with the irony of appropriating its
magazines and newspaper ads, Rabas-
the object's history is required for modes of art appropriation, even
call notes that office work and the office an understanding of the signifi- while proclaiming art's purity-its
are suddenly depicted as well organized,
cance of the pictoral system (p. distance from all else (p. 21).
clean, and efficient; that the miraculous 13).
use of the computer today has achieved In Craven's view, corporate patronage
this result and guarantees a revolution- Brumfield also raises questions about becomes appropriation of the arts: "Cor-
ized office tomorrow; and that this office how composition and style affect mean- porate patronage makes the artist an
seemingly springs from the computer's ing and about how meaning is limited indentured master-a servant of the
possession of some supernatural spirit, when it is transmitted only through corporate system, he is master only of
outside any human action or control. iconography: his art. Ironically, it is in conceding to
The absence of time in advertising is As I've remarked elsewhere, we this conformity, that many artists feel
fascinating. Advertising time is always can't do much more than make a most free. Able to create 'independent-
the present, even when the ad is nostal- pallid and random sense from such ly,' these artists ignore the dependence
gic. There is neither past nor future. The "familiar" paintings as Brueghel's into which corporate money helps force
UnlNecessary Image begins with Sonja Landscape with the Fall of Icarus them" (p. 24).
Ivekovic's "Universal Man/Universal unless we happen to have access to Quoting Bertolt Brecht, Haacke de-
Society" and concludes with Antonio at least a modestly specialized fines the role of a committed artist as:
Muntadas's "Selling the Future." These body of knowledge ... the identity "the courage to write the truth,
visual essays are about the media's of individual figures; their socio- although it is being suppressed; the
negation of time. Ivekovic takes Leonar- logical status ... before we can intelligence to recognize it, although it is
do's Mona Lisa and a Renaissance even begin to properly see Brue- being covered up; the judgment to
engraving of an arsenal. By juxtaposing ghel's painting ... or for that mat- choose those in whose hands it becomes
them, she arouses feelings of eroticism ter any other image system, whose effective; the cunning to spread it among
and of war, and by enlarging them, she components derive their meaning them" (p. 25).4 This view should be
cific isolated genre risks a reduction of uncomfortably close range before the
Revising Romance: New the work and a denial of its diversity. camera, which assumes the place of her
Yet, with the emergence of feminism as television set. Sniffling and blowing her
Feminist Video an issue explored by video artists, femi- nose, she bemoans a failed romance.
There has been recent discussion of the nist video art has become a topic for Dialogue from soap operas she is watch-
role feminist theory has played in the exhibition and, as such, subject to classi- ing on TV is juxtaposed to her attempts
demise of modernism. In a provocative fication as a genre. to perform certain domestic duties such
essay, the art critic Craig Owens draws Revising Romance: New Feminist as cleaning the bathroom and mending a
a parallel between postmodern theory Video is a traveling exhibition organized pair of pants. The paralysis effectively
and such tenets of feminism as the ques- by the American Federation of Arts portrayed by Keppel is offset by her
tioning of monolithic theoretical dis- (AFA) in cooperation with the Institute undercurrent of humor-s-comic inter-
course and of preestablished systems of of Contemporary Art, Boston, and plays of her inner dialogue and the
representation.' Defining postmoder- curated by Linda Podheiser, now teach- soaps-and her deliberate overdrarnati-
nism as "a crisis of cultural authority, ing at Harvard, and Bob Riley, video zation. Although the tape reads more as
specifically of the authority vested in curator at the Institute of Contempo- a personal catharsis than as a commen-
Western European culture and its insti- rary Art in Boston. Predicated on the tary on romance, Keppel effectively por-
tutions," Owens writes that "women's premise that there is a particular femi- trays the influence of television soaps'
insistence on difference and incommen- nist message, or aesthetic (although sentimentality on her own emotions.
surability may not only be compatible allowing that this aesthetic can be male An audio subtext of daytime televi-
with, but also an instance of postmodern as well as female), the AFA show bro- sion is also used in Ann-Sargent Woos-
thought. Postmodern thought is no aches the issue of romance-a subject ter's House as a backdrop to the realities
longer binary thought." To be welcomed associated, of course, primarily with of housework. Wooster combines spoken
into the postmodern dialogue may be a women-asking "What are the psycho- text on the sociology and mythology of
mixed blessing, but Owen's image of the logical, political and aesthetic conse- housewives and the domestic domain,
toppling of a monolithic culture and the quences of popular ideals of eternal pas- ranging in tone from anger to poetics,
roles that feminist theory and women's sion and transcendent love?" These vid- with scenes of a pair of hands roughly
art have played in that demise is a eotapes analyze traditional sexual roles performing housework either on minia-
powerful one, especially when one con- and address the use of romance in popu- ture dolls or in a real-life setting-
siders the immense and difficult task of lar culture to exploit women's dissatis- feeding a baby doll, washing dishes,
redefining traditional cultural views of faction with themselves and their bod- cutting up vegetables, arranging things.
the sexes. ies. However, they tend to parody Like Keppel, Wooster has shot her tape
In whatever theoretical contexts we romance rather than propose any alter- in a claustrophobic style, and she under-
choose to define this issue, it is apparent native to the consumer culture brand. scores it with visual metaphor and
that the role of feminists-and here I Perhaps they represent the first stage of voyeuristic references. Ultimately,
am dealing specifically with women art- a revisionist perspective: first identify though, it centers on her commentary,
ists-has been that of cultural revision- the structure of the opposition's hierar- which emphasizes "the way in which
ists. It is those outside the dominant chy and its inherent vocabulary, then girls are socialized and directed towards
culture who raise the issues and ques- attempt to subvert it. housework through emulating their
tions that have been suppressed ex- Revising Romance is an admirable mothers." In its didactic nature, this
pressly in order for that culture to sur- attempt to isolate one topic within a tape stands out in the exhibition as
vive intact. Thus, such issues as the multitude of issues relevant to women stylistically representative of earlier
media representation of women, the working in video. It is also a risky information-oriented feminist works,
confining aspects of the domestic cul- attempt to construct a very specific such as the videotapes of Martha RosIer.
tural domain, the roles of sexual victims premise out of a broad group of tapes. Wooster's tape straddles the fence of
and perpetrators, and the struggle of Here the issue of women as cultural narrative and theory.
women to change well-entrenched dis- revisionists is centered very specifically Barbara Broughel goes beyond the
criminatory social values-topics that on the realm of narrative. Podheiser rather straightforward style of Keppel
are often ignored, apparently because writes in the introduction to the accom- and Wooster in Lesson I: Trouble in
they are threatening to men-have been panying brochure that "all of the works Paradise to create a disjointed yet fasci-
tunately, this style gets increasingly narration, is close to the tradition of while the singsong sound track that
more irritating as the tape progresses, stand-up comedy and carries with it that characterizes Condit's work chants
undermining the intelligent and original genre's quality of self-mockery, making "Tell us about Barbie and Ken and how
images Broughel constructs. Neverthe- its qualification in this show as feminist their friendship never ends ..."
less, this disintegrated look stands in an uneasy one. Possibly in Michigan takes these
sharp contrast to the slick, focused The stylistic simplicity of these tapes thorny issues even further with two
look of television that Broughel is decon- is contrasted with the complexity of women who "have two things in com-
structing. Bruce and Norman Yonemoto's Vault, mon-violence and perfume." The tape
In the second of her tapes, Lesson II: a well-crafted piece that interweaves an begins in a shopping mall, where the two
The Frigid Heiress, exhibited in the advertising-image romance with cliched women tryout perfumes and are pur-
"Revisionist Romance" program, old movie scenes. The Yonemotos, who sued by a man who alternately bears the
Broughel examines the use of eroticism depart in this work from their usual head of a wolf, rabbit, or frog. When he
and romance to sell products, defining soap-opera format to create a nonlinear, follows one of the women home, they
"commercial advertising [as] the Ro- disjunctive romance, are here at their band together and kill him, eventually
mance genre's most recent and most best when deciphering rather than imi- making him into their evening meal in a
available formal manifestation." Add- tating the soap-opera/melodrama styles reverse fairy tale that often alludes to
ing elements of plot intrigue and juxta- of television and movies. They combine childhood fantasies of Little Red Riding
posing the "real" thing-shots of erec- classic juxtapositions like flashbacks Hood and The Three Little Pigs. Con-
tions and dramatic blood stains-to the and hackneyed scenes of romance (the dit's imagery is vivid and unusual-the
fake eroticism of perfume and liquor young couple embracing in the great two women dance with a series of men
ads, Broughel constructs a conniving outdoors) with Bufiuelian kinds of non with animal heads in a nightmarish
character who trys to "trap her man" in sequiturs, using two exceptionally party scene, and superimpositions of
a kind of Cosmopolitan-magazine des- wooden actors to play out a star-crossed deathlike imagery weave all kinds of
peration. Once again, the "lesson" of the Texas romance of a cowboy/artist and a allusions to the relationship of sex and
title is a play on words-the lessons, or cellist who pole-vaults. Their revamped death and the roles of victim and perpe-
"morals," of advertisements and wom- Freudian symbols (she pole-vaults her trator. Her heroines are hardly role
en's self-improvement magazines, as way out of the romance to a new job, and models-both evoke vapidness and
well as the lessons each heroine should he is left standing next to--you guessed eroticism (they eat their prey while
have learned from the tape. it-a phallic oil rig), humorous mimicry naked), and Condit never lets us see
Also classified by the curators as of advertising's use of romance, and either sex as expressly the victims or
"Revisionist Romance," With Love campy style make Vault a sophisticated oppressors; her men are violent, but her
from A to B, by Nancy Buchanan and remake of the standard boy-meets-girl, women "have a habit of making the
Barbara Smith, is a charming, one-shot boy-loses-girl scenario. violence seem like the man's idea." The
sketch that pokes fun at the cliches of As revisionists, women must also con- do-unto-them-as-they-did-unto-us un-
unrequited love. Two hands play out this tend with the issue of their compliance dercurrent of the tape is only mockingly
drama with simple props-a ring, a with the social norms that have allowed angry. The sound track singing "I bite at
glass of wine, flowers-in such a way the patriarchal mechanism of western the hand that feeds me" and images of
that they remain humorous (she does culture to remain intact for so long. This falling buildings and fleeing figures give
her nails while he offers her gifts) yet is a difficult and complex issue, which one an elusive feeling of chaos and con-
poignant. The tight, almost claustro- the curators address in this exhibition fusion, a funny yet unfunny realization
phobic style of this tape-like that of with a program called "The Double that this male/female interaction is
Keppel's and Wooster's-is echoed in Bind." Here, "Romance is treated as a doomed, which ultimately brings a sub-
Ilene Segalove's Why J Got into TVand sadomasochistic exchange, part of a tle and creepy sense of despair into the
Other Stories, a humorous, autobio- larger psycho/social dialectic of power tape.
graphical tape in which we see none of within which the protagonists are unwit- Another work categorized by Pod-
the characters' faces, only their torsos. tingly trapped." Perhaps the most inter- heiser as "Double Bind" is Mother, a
The consistent recurrence of this c1osed- esting example of this mode is the work stylized film-noir detective story by
in stylistic device, apparently uncon- of Cecelia Condit, a video artist from John Knoop and Sharon Hennessey.
trived, is worth noting; are the domestic Ohio who has been noticed recently for The tape is a very smooth, well-acted
world and female introspection of sexual her tape Possibly in Michigan. Condit drama, beautifully framed in black and
To round out this exhibition stylisti- "Our work says that media does affect
cally, the curators conclude it with Elea- the way people see their own personal
nor Antin's The Adventures ofa Nurse,
a performance/paper-doll theater piece
lives, their own love affairs." In fact, in
Revising Romance there seems to be a
Books and
that adheres to the long-drawn-out pace
of extended avant-garde performance
preoccupation with the power of media
and popular culture-advertisements,
Catalogues
(it was made in 1976) rather than to the
television-influenced time frame of the
romance novels, TV soap operas, and so
forth-to shape traditional sexual iden-
Received
other, more recent, tapes. Antin ani- tities. Certainly television and its pop- Adams, Robert, photographs, Summer
mates her narrative in a small enclosed culture companions are the most Nights, New York, Aperture, 1985. Pp.
space while wearing a nurse's uniform influential and pervasive purveyors of 48; 38 ills. $20.
and uses paper dolls for her characters. narrative in our culture, but one won- Andrew, David S., Louis Sullivan and
Her main character, nurse Eleanor, the ders whether the vernacular is really the the Polemics of Modern Architecture:
epitome of the unsuspecting yet compli- only language construct to be examined The Present against the Past, Urbana &
citous victim, is seduced and used by or whether it is merely the most Chicago, University of Illinois Press,
various male characters throughout the obvious. 1985. Pp. xiv + 201; 55 ills. $19.95.
course of the drama and seems to learn Some postmodern theoreticians de-
nothing. As performance, Antin's piece fine the postmodern condition as a loss AtiI, Esin, W.T. Chase, and Paul Jett,
has some interesting qualities-she of narrative's social function, and Craig Islamic Metalwork in the Freer Gallery
mimics each character's voice and Owens elucidates the demise of moder- ofArt, Washington, D.C., Freer Gallery
moves her dolls like a young girl fanta- nism's "master narrative" (a term of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1985.
sizing at play, arousing our voyeuristic defined by Fredric Jameson): "For what Pp. 276; many ills. Paper, $17.50.
tendencies. One can imagine that this made the grands recits of modernity Baas, Jacquelynn, et al., Treasures of
piece might work if seen live, but as a master narratives if not the fact that the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth
sixty-four-minute videotape it has a they were all narratives of mastery, of College, New York, Hudson Hills Press
stifled pace that undermines the kinky- man seeking his telos in the conquest of in assoc. with the Hood Museum of Art,
ness of Antin's performance. The flat- nature? What function did these narra- 1985. Pp. 160; 174 ills. $35.
ness of the video image reduces this tives play other than to legitimize West-
voyeuristic adult play to very difficult Baker, Eric, and Tyler Blik, Trade-
ern man's self-appointed mission of
viewing, and even its vague curatorial transforming the entire planet in his
marks ofthe 20's and 30's, San Francis-
category, "Video Picaresque," suggests co, Chronicle Books, 1985. Pp. 131;
own image?" In this context, the quest
that the curators did not entirely define many ills. Paper, $9.95.
of women artists to revise the presump-
where it fit into their show. tions and hierarchies of narrative takes Balken, Debra Bricker, John Marin's
Revising Romance is ambitious in its on a particular relevance and impor- Berkshire Landscapes, exh. cat., Pitts-
premise. The AFA, which some would tance. As Podheiser writes in her intro- field, Mass., The Berkshire Museum,
regard as representing the uptown art duction, "[The woman artist's] voice or 1985. Pp. 20+; many ills. Paper.
establishment, has distributed other persona literally appears in several
video exhibitions, notably the Whitney Bay, Edna G., Asen: Iron Altars of the
works, and while she may share much Fon People of Benin, exh. cat., Atlanta,
Biennial selections, but this is its first with the heroines and spectators of
serious attempt to showcase feminist Emory University Museum of Art and
Romance, she is preparing a different Archaeology, 1985. Pp. 48; 63 ills., 2 in
videotapes. There are problems with the road: having taken control of her active
show: the tape selection seems unbal- color. $10.
fantasy life, her work of imagination
anced (why have two relatively similar may help redefine Romance for us alt." Bernard, Bruce, ed., Vincent by Himself
videotapes by both Broughel and Condit A Selection of Van Gogh's Paintings
and such a deliberately long piece like Note and Drawings together with Extracts
Antin's in a relatively short-four- This is a revised version of part of an article from His Letters, Boston, Little, Brown
hour-show, or one early work in a entitled "Feminist Video: Reiterating the Differ- and Company (A New York Graphic
program of recent tapes?); nevertheless, ence," published in Afterimage. Vol. 12 No.9 Society Book), 1985. Pp. 327; 240 color
1 it is an intelligent beginning to defin- (April 1985). ills. $40.
Davis, Barbara A., Edward S. Curtis: Gurney, George, Sculpture and the Fed-
the Fine Arts: The Avante-Garde, No.
51), Ann Arbor, Mich., UMI Research The Life and Times ofa Shadow Catch- eral Triangle, Washington, D.C.,
er, San Francisco, Chronicle Books, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985. Pp.
Press, 1985. Pp. 229; 85 ills. $44.95.
1985. Pp. 256; 225 ills. $45. 464; 261 ills. $39.95.
Bush, Martin H., Sculptures by Duane
Denison, Cara D., et aI., Drawings from Hale, Robert Beverly, Master Class in
Hanson, Wichita, Kansas, Edwin A.
the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Figure Drawing, compiled and edited by
Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State
Victor Thaw: Part Il, exh. cat., New Terence Coyle, New York, Watson-
University, 1985. Pp. 128; 117 ills. $25.;
York, Pierpont Morgan Library, 1985. Guptill Publications, 1985. Pp. 144;
paper, $12.95.
Pp. 191; 84 ills. Paper, $24.95. many ills. $24.95.
Castleman, Riva, and Wolfgang Wit-
Dreikausen, Margaret, Aerial Percep- Harlan, Calvin, Vision and Invention:
trock, eds., Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec:
tion: The Earth as Seen from Aircraft An Introduction to Art Fundamentals,
Images of the 1890s, New York,
and Spacecraft and Its Influence on Second Ed., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,
Museum of Modern Art, 1985. Pp. 262;
Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Art Prentice-Hall, 1986. Pp. 214; many ills.
many ills., some color. $60.
Alliance Press, 1985. Pp. 76; many ills. Paper, $25.95.
Cate, Phillip Dennis, and Patricia Eck- $30. Harrington, Kevin, Changing Ideas on
ert Boyer, The Circle of Toulouse-
Lautrec: An Exhibition of the Work of Elsen, Albert E., Rodin's "Thinker" and Architecture in the Encyclopedie,
the Dilemmas of Modern Public Sculp- 1750-1776 (Architecture and Urban
the Artist and of His Close Associates,
ture, New Haven, Yale University Design, No. II), Ann Arbor, Mich.,
exh. cat., New Brunswick, N.J., The
Press, 1985. Pp. 175; 75 ills. $30; paper, UMI Research Press, 195. Pp. 265; no
Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum
$10.95. ills. $42.95.
Rutgers University, 1985. Pp. 203; 218
ills. Paper. Folon, Jean-Michel, Flowers by Giorgio Harris, Neil, and Mattina Roudabush
Morandi, New York, Rizzoli Interna- Norelli, Art, Design, and the Modern
Chadwick, Whitney, Women Artists and
tional Publications, 1985. Pp. 81; 57 Corporation (The Collection of Con-
the Surrealist Movement, Boston, Lit-
ills. tainer Corporation of America), exh.
tle, Brown and Co., 1985. Pp. 256; 220
cat., Washington, D.C., Smithsonian
ills. $39.95. Foster, Hal, Recodings: Art Spectacle, Institution Press, 1985. Pp. 135; 150 ills.
Chambers, Bruce W., American Identi- Cultural Politics, Port Townsend Paper.
ties: Cabinet Card Portraits 1870-1910 Wash., Bay Press, 1985. Pp. 243; man;
ills. Paper, $9.95. Haskell, Barbara, and David Turner,
from the Doan Family Collection, exh.
cat., Minneapolis, University Art Mu-
Georgia O'Keefe: Works on Paper, exh.
Howard N. Fox, A New Romanticism:
cat., Santa Fe, Museum of New Mexico
seum, University of Minnesota, 1985. Sixteen Artists from Italy, exh. cat., Press, 1985. Pp. 102; many ills. Paper.
Pp. 36; 17 ills. Paper. Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institu-
tion, 1985. Pp. 122; 46 ills. Paper. Hess, Jeffrey A., Their Splendid Lega-
Chessex, Pierre, et aI., Images of the
Grand Tour: Louis Ducros, 1748-1810, cy: The First 100 Years ofthe Minneap-
Garver, Thomas H., George Tooker,
exh. cat., Geneva, Editions du Tricorne,
olis Society of Fine Arts, Minneapolis,
New York, Clarkson N. Potter, 1985.
1985. Pp. III; many ills., some color. Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, 1985.
Pp. 144; many ills. $35.
Paper. Pp. 101; many ills.
Gedo, Mary Mathews, ed., Psychoana-
Coyle, Marie, et al., Raymond Mcin- Jackson-Stops, Gervase, ed., The Trea-
Iy~ic Perspectives on Art (Volume I).,
tyre: A New Zealand Painter Auckland sure Houses of Britain: Five Hundred
HIllsdale, N.J., The Analytic Press,
City, New Zealand, Heine~ann Pub-
Years of Private Patronage and Art
1985. Pp. 332; many ills. $29.95.
Collecting, exh. cat., New Haven, Yale
~shers in assoc. with Auckland City Art
Geist, Johann Friedrich, Arcades: The University Press, 1985. Pp. 680; 593
Jallery, 1985. Pp. 112; many ills.
S21.75. History ofa Building Type, Cambridge, ills., most in color. $60; paper, $24.95.
MIT Press, 1985. Pp. 596; 465 ills.
Jones, Stephen, The Eighteenth Century
Craven, George M., How Photography Paper, $25.
(Cambridge Introduction to the History
~orks, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Pren-
Gibbs, Kenneth Turney, Business Archi- of Art), New York & Cambridge, Cam-
Ice- Hall, 1986. Pp. 104; many ills.
t>aper, $10.95.
tectural Imagery in America, 1870- bridge University Press, 1985. Pp. 90;
many ills. $21.95; paper, $8.95.
chum, essays by James Thomas F1exner Pallasmaa, Jubani, ed., Alvar Aalto: Samaltanos, Katia, Apollinaire: Cata-
and photographs by Robert Glenn Ket- Furniture, trans. Michael Wynne-Ellis, lyst for Primitivism, Picabia, and
chum, New York, Aperture, 1985. Pp. et al., Cambridge & London, The MIT Duchamp (Studies in the Avant-Garde,
88; many ills. $25. Press, 1985. Pp. 179; many ills., some No. 45), Ann Arbor, Mich., UMI
Kilinski, Karl II, Classical Myth in color. $25. Research Press, 1984. Pp. xvi + 228; 68
Western Art: Ancient through Modern, ills. $42.95.
Parry, Ellwood C. III, et al., The Voyage
exh. cat., Dallas, Meadows Museum of Life by Thomas Cole: Paintings, Schaaf, Larry J., Sun Gardens: Victo-
and Gallery, Southern Methodist Uni- Drawings, and Prints, exh. cat., Utica, rian Photograms by Anna Atkins, orga-
versity, 1985. Pp. 110; many ills. Paper. N.Y., Museum of Art, Munson-Wil- nized by Hans P. Kraus, Jr., New York,
Lesko, Diane, James Ensor: The Crea- liams-Proctor Institute, 1985. Pp. 70; 72 Aperture, 1985. Pp. 104; many ills.,
tive Years, Princeton, Princeton Univer- ills. Paper. most in color. $30.
sity Press, 1985. Pp. xvi + 175; 123 ills.,
Platt, Susan Noyes, Modernism in the Schulze, Franz (in assoc. with the Mies
8 in color. $47.50. 1920s: Interpretations of Expression- van der Rohe Archive of The Museum
Lister, Raymond, The Paintings of ism to Constructivism (Studies in the of Modern Art), Mies van der Rohe: A
Samuel Palmer. Cambridge, Cam- Fine Arts: Criticism, No. 17), Ann Critical Biography, Chicago & London,
bridge University Press, 1985. Pp. 178; Arbor, Mich., UMI Research Press, University of Chicago Press, 1985. Pp.
75 ills, all color. $29.95. 1985. Pp. x + 153; no ills. $39.95. xxiv + 355; 219 ills. $39.95.
Lucie-Smith, Edward, American Art Pokinski, Deborah Frances, The Devel- Sekler, Eduard F., Josef Hoffmann: The
Now, New York, William Morrow and opment of the American Modern Style Architectural Work (Monograph and
Company, Inc., 1985. Pp. 160; 268 ills., (Studies in the Fine Arts: Architecture, Catalogue of Works). trans Eduard F.
86 in color. $24.95. No.8), Ann Arbor, Mich., UMI Sekler and John Maas, Princeton,
Princeton University Press, 1985. Pp.
Lucie-Smith, Edward, Art of the 1930s: Research Press, 1984. Pp. xvi + 149; 35 543; many ills., some color. $130.
The Age ofAnxiety, New York, Rizzoli, ills. $42.95.
1985. Pp. 264; 152 ills., 50 in color. Raven, Arlene, At Home, exh. cat., Long Shone, Richard, The Charleston Artists:
$35. Beach, Calif., Long Beach Museum of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Their
Art, 1983. Pp. 65; many ills. Paper. Friends, exh. cat., Dallas, Meadows
Lynton, Norbert, et al., Looking into Museum and Gallery, Southern Meth-
Paintings. London & Boston, The Open Rewald, Jobn, ed., Paul Cezanne: Let- odist University, 1984. Pp. 40; 30 ills.
University in assoc. with Faber and ters (Revised & Augmented Edition), Paper.
Faber and Channel 4 Television Co., trans. Semour Hacker, New York,
1985. Pp. 302; 107 ills. Paper, $19.95. Hacker Art Books, 1984. Pp. xiv + 339; Sines, Denise, The Pond: A Book of 49
28 ills. $60. Photographs by John Gossage, New
Mathieu, Pierre-Louis, Gustave Mo- York, Aperture, 1985. Pp. 100; 49 ills.
reau: The Watercolors, New York, Reynolds, Donald Martin, The Nine- $40.
Hudson Hills Press, 1985. Pp. 120; 52 teenth Century (Cambridge Introduc-
ills. $75. tion to the History of Art), New Smagula, Howard, Texas Currents: An
Exhibition Organized by the San Anto-
McParland, Edward, James Gandon: York & Cambridge, Cambridge Uni- nio Art Institute, exh. cat., San Antonio,
Vitruvius Hibernicus (Studies in Archi- versity Press, 1985. Pp. 138; many ills. San Antonio Art Institute, 1985. Pp. 64;
tecture. Volume XXIV), London, A. $21.95; paper, $8.95. many ills. Paper.
Zwemmer, dist, by Abner Schram, Richardson, Brenda, et al., Dr. Claribel
1985. Pp. xvi + 222; 195 ills. $119.50. and Miss Etta: The Cone Collection, Smith, Robert Charles, Basic Graphic
Baltimore, Baltimore Museum of Art, Design, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Pren-
Miller, Judith and Martin, eds., The 1985. Pp. 202; many ills., some color. tice- Hall, 1986. Pp. 164; many ills.
Antiques Directory: Furniture, Boston, Paper. Paper, $24.95.
G.K. Hall, 1985. Pp. 639; many ills.
$55. Riedy, James L., Chicago Sculpture, Spencer, Stephanie, O.G. Rejlander:
Urbana & Chicago, University of Illi- Photography as Art (Studies in Photog-
Myers, Bernard, and Trewin Copple- nois Press, 1985, paper ed. (orig. publ. raphy Series 8), Ann Arbor, Mich.,
stone, eds., The History of Art: Archi- 1981). Pp. 339; many ills. Paper, UMI Research Press, 1985. Pp. xiv +
$12.50. 210; 40 ills. $39.95.
Fall 1985 281
Spike, John T., Aspects of Sculpture: Weber, Eva, Art Deco in America, New Wooden, Howard, American Art of the
The Paul Magriel Collection, exh. cat., York, Exeter Books/A Bison Book, dist. Great Depression: Two Sides of the
Florence, Centro Di, 1985. Pp. 103; 89 by Bookthrift, 1985. Pp. 192; many ills., Coin, exh. cat., Wichita, Kansas,
iUs. Paper. most in color. $14.98. Wichita Art Museum, 1985. Pp. 152;
Sweney, Fredric, Cityscape: The Art of Weidman, Jeffrey, et al., William Rim- 163 ills. Paper.
Painting the Urban Environment (Art mer: A Yankee Michelangelo, exh. cat., Zepp, Norman, and Michael Parke-
and Design Series), Englewood Cliffs, Hanover, N.H., University Press of Taylor, The Second Generation: Four-
N.J. Prentice- Hall, 1985. Pp. 144; many New England, 1985. Pp. 119; 85 ills. teen Saskatchewan "Painters, exh. cat.,
iUs. $23.95; paper, $14.95. Paper, $19.95. Regina, Sask., Norman Mackenzie Art
Tufts, Eleanor, and Juan J. Luna, Luis West, Harvey, and Chris Bruce, Sources Gallery, University of Regina, 1985. Pp.
Melendez: Spanish Still-Life Painter of of Light: Contemporary American Lu- 85; many ills. Paper.
the Eighteenth Century, exh. cat., Dal- minism, exh. cat., Seattle, Henry Art
las, Meadows Museum, Southern, Gallery, University of Washington, Photographic Credits: p.206, The Amer-
Methodist University, 1985. Pp. 133; 1985. Pp. 84; many ills., some color. ican Federation of Arts; p. 207, Fran-
many ills. Paper. Paper. cene Keery; pp. 208, 255 (Paik), 257
(Kubota), Peter Moore; p. 2lJ, K. Heflin;
Wageman, Virginia, ed., Selections Wiedenhoeft, Ronald, Berlin's Housing p. 214 (Fig. 1), Geoffrey Clements;
from the Collection ofMarion and Gus- Revolution: German Reform in the p. 245 (Fig. 2), Kvan Dalla Tana; p. 245
tave Ring, exh. cat., Washington, D.C., 1920s (Architecture and Urban Design,
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