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Cable TV's Failed Utopian Vision: an Interview with Dara Birnbaum

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Cable TV's Failed Utopian Vision: an Interview with Dara Birnbaum ISSUE 9 CHILDHOOD WINTER 2002/03 Cable TV's Failed Utopian Vision: An Interview with Dara Birnbaum NICOLÁS GUAGNINI AND DARA BIRNBAUM When Sony released its first portable video cam​era, the Portapak, in 1968, the three M's—McLuhan, Marcuse, and marijuana—determined the political fr​amework of America's young intelligentsia. The first generation of video artists mapped and defined a utopian territory, voiced​ in the influential magazine Radical Software. The titles of tw​o books written by cont​rib​utors to Radical Software are enough to sample the ideologica​l scope​ that a technological adv​ent he​lped to foster: Paul Ryan's Birth and Death and Cybernation: Cybernetics of the Sacred (1972) and Michael Shamberg's Guerrilla Television (1971). The communitarian use of video paralleled th​e development ​of cable television. Control of the means of production, copyright, and distribution blur​red the frontiers between activism, local news fo​recasting, and art­making. Media artist Dara Birnbaum witnessed this process unfold as she defined her own practice. Nicolás Guagnini met Birnbaum to discuss some of the entangled sociopolitical and artistic issues of the 1970s and early 1980s. Dara Birnbaum, still from Pop­Pop Video, 1980. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix In early video pieces, one structure repeatedly appears: camera/body/monitor. It started as an interrogation of the self and moved more towards playing with the audience and defining social spaces in pieces like Wipe Cycle (1969) by Ira Schneider and Frank Gillette, or in Dan Graham's works between 1973 and 1978. How did that development come about? From my own experience, I felt that early on there were two distinct developments evident. The one you first mentioned, camera/body/monitor, is best seen in the early tapes by Bruce Nauman or Vito Acconci. They were coming out of what became known as "body art" but also from a projection of an inner psychological state. But there was also another area of development, which was to create alternative forms to broadcast television. Here the concern was with relationships to and through the community, or a much more social "self." Both fields overlapped. With regard to the self and the body, many works were developed in the isolation of the artist's studio, such as Bruce Nauman's 1968 Stamping in the Studio, where he inverted the camera so that to the viewer he appears to be walking on the ceiling. Even though he repeatedly stamps in a rhythmic, almost primitive pattern, he is not really participating in any social or communal rite. He remains individualized in his own studio. Acconci's Centers (1971) has the artist pointing at his own image on the video monitor, attempting to keep his finger in the center of the screen. He was pointing away from himself and to an outside viewer. In that work he introduces another aspect of video: using the video monitor as a mirror. The work also begins to take advantage of the self­reflexive potential of video by becoming more aware of the psychology of interpersonal relationships. Other artists, like Dan Graham, were producing works where this social awareness was evident, but they expanded this initial awareness by also providing for a way that the viewer could interact with their work, such as Graham's numerous delayed feedback/mirror installations. Wipe Cycle incorporated the viewer's image into delayed feedback loops. In Wipe Cycle, again the importance was that the audience became participants by directly affecting the work and thus the viewer was no longer passive. Gillette and Schneider wanted to emphasize the process involved in a work. They were both members of Raindance Corporation, an alternative media collective that published Radical Software. The technical device that prompted the explosion of video art was the Sony Portapak, and the theoretical framework was coming from Radical Software. Feedback was one of the main topics. Among the writers for Radical Software was Paul Ryan, who came up with topological models for feedback, quite influential in the works of Graham. Another of Ryan's concerns was the application of those models to education. What was the relationship between education and the community concerns you mention in the early video groups? What the Portapak brought in was a high level of self­awareness. In 1965 Nam June Paik bought some of the first consumer video equipment on the American market. In the following years, there were so many art pieces that came out of literally "living with the Portapak." There was a sense of amazement towards that apparatus that, unlike film, could reveal oneself in real time, or in slightly delayed time. Many pieces were diaristic and confined to a secure or isolated environment. The ones I am thinking about deal with being within one's home space. There was not really an extension outward. Think about Nauman's "anti­gravitational" pieces, like walking on the ceiling; all these types of work were structured in an interiorized safeness. That is different from the methodology that Ryan applied. He seemed much more interested in pedagogical models and collective usages for video. Alternative television was trying to reach out, to permeate society. In addition, artists were discussing the portability of video, for example when Allan Sekula made reference to a group of workmen on strike—how they utilized a Portapak powered with car batteries, which allowed them to both record spokesmen's statements as well as to play them back again directly to the strikers who were assembled. That was more like agitprop. The most interesting experiment with education that I remember was done by students of the Irvine school system in California who were able to be tutored through open cable channels which linked different schools in the area. David Ross presented this at the Long Beach Museum of Art. It seemed natural to those students, who were then in high school, or grade school, to utilize the video systems like a telephone. Which other writers of Radical Software were influential, and how did the magazine circulate? The first issue of Radical Software came out in 1970 through the Raindance Corporation, which was run by Ira Schneider. Beryl Korot and Paul Ryan were also very involved. I remember that the first issue presented a proposal for a paperless society and an interview with Buckminster Fuller. The main thrust of Radical Software was that there should be an alternative to broadcast television, that television has the capacity of being a responsive medium and a valuable social tool. This approach was completely different from how broadcast television was being used. Also, there was the feeling that television should be open to all. Thus, the magazine would also frequently detail hardware information, along with listing what were then considered counterculture videotapes. As early as 1926, Bertolt Brecht proposed that the radio should step out of the supply business and organize its listeners as suppliers. Each new technology brings its own democratizing promise, and the Portapak did so as well. I don't think so. The Portapak was somewhat of a cast­off of the industry, and it was fortunate that there was someone out there to grab it. It was basically developed for electronic newsgathering. It is well known that in America everything gets old before its time. The Portapak promised nothing in and of itself. It was almost a "throw­away" from the industry and was taken up by people who had the insight to see its critical potential. For example, early on in Los Angeles, Michael Asher and his students at Cal Arts saw the opportunity to gather this portable equipment and use it in ways other than how the industry was using it. It was also utilized by Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno of the Downtown Community Television Center (DCTV) in Lower Manhattan to give a voice to a community and events that may have never been covered by television. There was also the collective Top Value Television (TVTV), whose well­known work Four More Years covered the 1972 Republican Convention. That work was one of the first documentaries to be shot entirely on portable video equipment. Later on, when Sony saw the broader appeal of the Portapak with its multiple applications, they intensified their marketing of it for home and individual use. They even ran many commercial ads showing how even a beautiful­ looking young woman could carry and use this equipment without being encumbered. It is clear at this point how the Portapak promoted a sense of self­ awareness that was not completely divorced from the basic levels of identification that showbiz quickly commodifies. Did it help to create any type of community? What you are looking at is the intersection of a moment in time in which there was a proliferation of available equipment and a lot of communities looking for an alternative lifestyle. The usage of all electronic equipment was also being redefined. Composer Peter Gordon talked about the portable audio tape recorder as a folk instrument. Some video makers consciously or unconsciously used their equipment in the same way. Groups like Videofreex at the end of the 1960s joined together in order to provide alternative models of television. Feedback was utilized, formally, as an alternative to the previous types of light shows at rock concerts. The attempt was to create a bioelectrical sphere. It was the amazement of being stoned through technology, and this also provided a sense of community. Video was easy, and easygoing. You could pass around the camera as you passed around a joint. It was also light enough so that women could lift it.
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