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Kate Horsfield Busting the Tube: A Brief History of

Source: Feedback: The Catalog of and Artist Interviews, 2006

Setting the Stage end of social oppression and his support personal situation of each woman, discuss for all efforts of radical liberation inspired the new feminist literature and strategize on The 1960s was a decade of sweeping young activists to envision a new society what actions could be done to change the social change driven by political confron- based on alternative institutions and modes oppression of women in society. The goal tation and creative and ideological activ- of thought that did not replicate social or was to create a mass movement for social ism inspired by the civil rights movement, economic oppression of minority or other change by helping women understand how the Beat poets, the Vietnam war contro- disenfranchised groups. To drive this social they could alter their positions as objects (of versy, and the rise of a rebellious youth change, Marcuse’s concept called for a male desire) to subjects that could deter- movement stimulated by politics, drugs, more engaged individual personally com- mine their own future. The new subjectivity and rock’n’roll. As the decade progressed, mitted to political ideas that would lead to of the feminist movement demanded that its tension increased between the tradition- change. This individual could become a followers analyze power relations between alist mainstream and the youthful coun- new subject by stepping out of the bland- the genders and how institutional struc- terculture that desired a more open and ness of the 1950s to change his or her tures enforce gender inequality or support egalitarian society. This emerging and very personal consciousness. A change in one’s economic or other forms of gender-biased politicized generation began to emphasize personal consciousness was seen as the exploitation. This critique merged with other critical ideas and means of production that starting point on the path to creating a new anti-establishment ethos of the countercul- could be used to develop a new and more and better society. The concept took sev- ture and other liberation movements that inclusive society, alternative institutions and eral other forms besides political awareness were focused on social change and work- accessible types of cultural production that and activism during this period, including ing towards an expanded democracy that reflected their social values. By establishing using drugs, free love, music, and master- allowed greater equality and participation a new and often oppositional culture based ing Eastern philosophical and disciplinary for all subjects, no matter what their color, on creative, and often low-cost production practices, such as yoga and meditation. All gender, or class. methodologies, they launched new tools were efforts to create mind-altering states and a powerful critique that influences activ- of consciousness to create a new, more Armed with this new sense of subjectivity ists, artists, and documentarians to this day. enlightened self. and political commitment, protests focused on institutions that supported unequal sys- Radical theorists such as Herbert Marcuse Feminist theory also focused on issues of tems of power. Almost all centralized institu- proposed that mass media had direct rela- personal consciousness. This can be seen tions were suspect, particularly the family, tionships to social control and created a in the famous slogan “the personal is the the church, the educational system, and “one-dimensional man” who lived in a bland political,” a perspective that required that corporations. Cultural institutions were also world of conformity and had become too one look inside through consciousness- at the center of critique because they comfortable to engage in ideas that cri- raising to begin the feminist political pro- preserve dominant cultural canons that cre- tiqued or opposed mainstream society in cess. Consciousness-raising was a process ated closed and exclusionary systems of any way that could lead to meaningful social of gathering radical feminists together in power based on standards and histories change.1 Marcuse’s Marxist call for the small groups to study, and analyze the determined by white, male authorities. Meta- 02

that privilege certain points of controlled by the government and corporate of social activists who saw it as “a weapon view, such as those created by religion, liter- monopolies. and a witness” to be used to create new ature, and , were highly critiqued. types of representation that opposed the The goal was to create a new type of cul- While television programming was heavily ubiquitous commercialism of the television tural production and alternative institutions critiqued, Canadian media theorist Marshall industry. to support more egalitarian and pluralistic McLuhan offered a new and creative inter- notions of political and cultural interaction: pretation of how new technologies could In 1970, the Raindance Corporation, a col- transform society. McLuhan outlined a new lective of artists, writers, and radical media The argument was not only about utopian vision for media that emphasized a visionaries who were inspired by McLuhan, producing new form for new content, new relationship between the medium and began publishing Radical Software, a jour- it was also about changing the nature the human senses. This vision imagined nal for the small but rapidly growing com- of the relationship between reader that electronic communications were an munity of videomakers. Presenting the view and literary text, between spectator extension of the human nervous system and that power had shifted to those who control and spectacle, and the changing of operated in a binary kind of progression—as media, Radical Software proposed an alter- this relationship was itself premised technology advances, so does the human native information order, outlining a vision- upon new ways of thinking about the sensory perception needed to receive it. ary combination of technology, art, and the relationship between art (or more This spoke directly to artists, media vision- social sciences to revolutionize the world of generally “representation”) and real- aries, and those in the counterculture that communications. The masthead of Radical ity.2 were already actively experimenting with Software #1 articulates the shift in power: altered states of consciousness: Television was a primary target. Power is no longer measured in land, Rapidly, we approach the final phase labor, or capital, but by access to Throughout the 1950s, television had of the extensions of man–the techno- information and the means to dissem- gained enormous power; more than 85 logical simulation of consciousness, inate it. As long as the most powerful percent of American households owned at when the creative process of know- tools (not weapons) are in the hands least one by the end of the ing will be collectively and corporately of those who would hoard them, no decade. While the masses were increas- extended to the whole of human alternative cultural vision can suc- ingly mesmerized by television’s presence, society, much as we have already ceed. Unless we design and imple- others, particularly intellectuals and media extended our senses and our nerves ment alternate information structures theorists, saw that it reinforced the status by the various media.4 which transcend and reconfigure the quo while simplifying, or omitting altogether, existing ones, other alternate systems representations that did not fit consumer- McLuhan’s ideas placed technology at the and life styles will be no more than ist demographics. Even Newton R. Minow, center of human transformation and empha- products of the existing process.5 Chairman of the FCC, had expressed con- sized that the emerging technology not cerns over the negative effects of formula only would transform consciousness but Having laid out the ideological agenda for based television programming when he also provide a very powerful path to social a new, de-centralized communications sys- described television as “a vast wasteland.” change. tem, Radical Software goes on to identify The issue was how representations on tele- video as the tool to create it: vision not only created a market for prod- In 1965, marketed the first portable ucts but also created social acceptance video recording equipment, providing the Fortunately, however, the trend of and rejection through conformity. Women, means by which artists, activists, and other all technology is towards greater in spite controlling large amounts of money individuals launched an era of alternative access through decreased size and designated for household spending, were media, using television-based technology to cost. Low-cost, easy-to-use, porta- seen as manipulated and controlled by record images of their own choosing. Prior ble systems, may seem images from television; people of color and to this time the government and corporate like “Polaroid home movies” to the others who were not seen by advertisers media giants exclusively controlled all televi- technical perfectionists who broad- to be important in the marketplace were sion production, programming, and broad- cast “situation” comedies and “talk” mostly excluded from any television repre- casting. The new Sony portable camera and shows, but to those of us with as sentations at all. Protesters also criticized recording deck, called the , was few preconceptions as possible they news coverage of the Vietnam war, arguing designed for small business and industrial are the seeds of a responsive, useful that the media could not be trusted because uses but was released precisely in the midst communications system.6 it was biased as part of the conscious- of the political turmoil of the ‘60s. Video ness industry3; the news was packaged immediately captured the attention of artists While television was seen as the central for commercial television programming and who saw its potential as a creative tool and force behind an increasingly consumerist 03

Verticle Roll, , 1972 Stamping in the Studio, , 1968 society, concern over the commodification materials. ’s anti-art events used irony For a brief period in the late ‘60s and early of culture was also affecting the art world. and humor to mock the stature of art his- ‘70s, the handful of early video practitioners Artists rightfully felt the gallery system had tory and art institutions. of the early enthusiastically embraced all the different begun to limit exhibition to only those art- ’60s filled the galleries with replicas of uses of the new medium. Since everyone ists and works that were highly marketable, mass-produced consumerist goods thereby in this small community, artists and activists thereby limiting art to the level of commod- challenging the concept of the “original” in alike, was influenced in some way by the ity. Although mostly limited to , art. Earthworks, made far away in the west- powerful politics of the counterculture, all the highly influential critique of Clement ern deserts and difficult to see firsthand, videomakers had a very optimistic vision of Greenberg also contributed to concern over used the earth itself as material and could how video could be used to affect change the commodification of art by forbidding rarely be seen except in documentary pho- in art and the society at large. the acceptance of any art forms outside tographs. Perform-ances, an emerging art its formalist thesis. This thesis maintained form, were ephemeral presentations often Media activists saw handheld video equip- the purity of painting by centering critical staged only once. The shifting notions of ment as a tool to document a new type discourse on the unique properties of paint- art practice and use of materials occurred of direct-from-the-scene reportage that ing while simultaneously insisting on a com- precisely at the moment in which portable was not manipulated, biased, or reshaped plete separation between art disciplines as video equipment was released into the con- in any way to distort reality. Sometimes well as between popular culture and high sumer market. called “guerilla television” because its prac- art. Driven by a desire to create new types titioners used video in a war-like operation of art that defied both the modernist doc- Early Video Practice against the domination of network televi- trine, as well as the commercialism of the sion, the video verité method used technol- gallery system, artists began working with Immediately after its release, the use of ogy in an unassuming way, going places materials and processes that challenged portable video equipment exploded in many where cameras had never been without these boundaries. This shift in artistic prac- directions simultaneously. It was a brand drawing much attention. The attraction was tice began to destroy the modernist impera- new medium with no history of its own but that video “reversed the process of televi- tive of the gallery-based object and replace with tremendous potential to carry out sev- sion, giving people access to the tools of it with a more ephemeral version of art that eral different cultural and political agendas. production and distribution, giving them emphasized process, critique, or experience Media visionaries like those involved in control over their own images and, by impli- over pure form. Radical Software saw it as a tool to be used cation their own lives.”7 Footage was gath- in establishing a decentralized communica- ered from underground clubs, “live” from These new, post-modernist works also tion system and used to produce alternative the midst of street confrontations, or from blurred the boundaries between high art media content for communicating coun- major events of importance to the counter- and the everyday world. John Cage and tercultural ideas outside the restrictions culture like the Woodstock festival or the his emphasis on the importance of chance of mainstream channels. Artists embraced Chicago Seven trial. The low quality, grainy, lead to the Happenings of the late ’50s. video because it was new, had significant and shaky footage was usually black and Happenings were spontaneous art events undeveloped aesthetic potential, and could white and unedited, which offered a new occurring on the streets, made up of a be used as a medium for personal expres- type of straight-from-the-scene authenticity combination of live and found sion. that challenged the presumed objectivity 04

Baldessari Sings LeWitt, , 1972 Pryings, , 1971 of broadcast television. One video collec- very slowly through the duration of the as a window to the perception of time, tive, Peoples Video Theater, shot events piece—often from boredom to an almost space, and sound or as a mirror to the self, in the streets on video and brought it back reflective meditation kept in motion by the consciousness, or cultural patterns of sub- to a loft in lower Manhattan for instant sound of feet stamping on the floor. The jectivity. It could function as a witness in the playback meant to trigger discussion and piece seems to be addressing the mental surveillance of observer and the observed; “feedback” from the community. This is a preparation the artist goes through upon as a conceptual tool deconstructing lan- micro-example of how video activists used entering the studio. Another prominent early guage, text, or cultural apparatus. Eventually video to increase a sense of participation in piece, Baldessari Sings LeWitt (1972) is a the video signal itself became a site for the televisual process, as well as an attempt humorous tape featuring John Baldessari investigation into the intrinsic properties of to democratically respond to the unfolding singing Sentences on , the the medium. social and political events. widely read text that outlined the perimeters of conceptual art to different popular tunes, Access to advanced equipment was In the artworld, video was initially used as such as “Tea for Two.” extremely rare and most early users of video a handy and low-cost tool to document had to work with a tiny selection of electron- live that had no mobility or Other artists used performance to investi- ic equipment, usually just a black and white permanence, thereby making these forms gate social and power relations between camera and recording deck. Editing equip- transportable and more accessible to audi- individuals or between individuals, audienc- ment was expensive and very difficult to ences beyond the original site of presenta- es, and larger social systems. An example use; an edit could only be made through a tion. These performances were solo pieces is Vito Acconci’s Pryings (1971), a tape of laborious process of rewinding and marking in which the artist performed with few or no a live performance, in which two performers points on each of the two reels tape, then props in front of a single camera. They pre- are engaged in physical conflict—she (Kathy hitting the edit button on the record and sented a variety of conceptual or perceptual Dillon) attempts to keep her eyes closed playback decks simultaneously. Since tapes exercises investigating the body, self, place, while he (Vito Acconci) attempts to pry were so hard to edit, the video art piece or relationship to others and society itself. them open. This represents the continuous was often the same duration as the reel of These performances were based on con- exchange of power between two individu- tape, hence the name “reel-time” and the ceptual art that emphasized process and als, in this case, a man and a woman. No prevalence of 20, 30 and 60 minute pieces. idea over form to analyze texts, language, one wins, and no one loses as the tape Regardless of the limitations of the early and the image. presents the audience with an uncomfort- video equipment, it did have specific char- able exercise in power relations. These early acteristics that were used in creative ways One of the two earliest video pieces in performance pieces employ straightforward and the limitations of the medium often the Video Data Bank collection, Bruce aesthetic strategies without the embellish- became a resource for aesthetic experimen- Nauman’s Stamping in the Studio (1968) ment of any video effects, which were not tation beyond simply recording an event or is an example of early performance work. yet available. performance in front of a camera. Feedback, The artist continuously moves in a circle the endless mirror effect that occurs when outlining the frame of the picture on the Quickly artists saw that the video medium a camera is pointed directly at a monitor monitor for the full 60 minutes of the perfor- rich with possibilities for aesthetic experi- displaying its image, and instant replay are mance. The mindset of the viewer changes mentation that included using the medium unique visual characteristics of video that 05

were available to any artist with a camera, Processor, and and Shuya first video catalog listing works by Bruce monitor, and recording deck.8 These two Abe’s Paik-Abe synthesizer. Nauman, , John Baldessari, effects were commonly used for experi- Lawrence Weiner, , Nancy mentation until later when more complex Working with synthesizers was difficult and Holt, Robert Morris, Vito Acconci, and oth- visualizing equipment became available. somewhat unpredictable, requiring study ers for distribution. The tapes were sold Beyond the interesting visual quality these and practice; therefore, the emphasis was or rented to other galleries, , and effects metaphorically represented aspects on the artists’ process rather than making organizations, thereby expanding the exhibi- of a reconfigured and reciprocal interactiv- tapes for distribution outside the perfor- tion of video to locations beyond the major ity between artist and audience. Instant mance event. Synthesizers were used in art centers of New York and Los Angeles. replay, the capacity to simultaneously watch live performance events in which elaborate what the camera is recording provides an installations of several video processors In 1970, the New York State Council for opportunity for immediate response to the linked to audio synthesizers created oscil- the (NYSCA) became the first state recorded information, and feedback is the lating, abstracted, and often mandala-like council to include video as a category reciprocal loop of participation between images that transported the audience into a in their funding guidelines. They offered the content and the audience. These two radically new sphere of alternative sensory funding for individuals, media arts centers, characteristics were used both to explore experience that paralleled McLuhan’s theory and media projects. The first funding cycle social issues or for purely aesthetic experi- of technology as a means of expanding the accepted all kinds of video works, includ- mentation. Joan Jonas’s Vertical Roll (1972) human senses.9 ing video installations and of is a performance piece re-scanned from performances, processed video art made an image on a monitor on which the verti- Expansion of the New Medium on video synthesizers, and documentary cal roll control was set off kilter. The visual footage from the streets. The availability effect is of an image continuously rolling A seminal launched great of government and foundation funding had vertically out of the frame that deliberately interest in the new medium of video art, an enormous effect on the new medium of interferes with the visual pleasure of watch- TV as a Creative Medium, presented at video. It allowed video artists to see them- ing a woman on camera, yet Jonas creates the Howard Wise Gallery in New York selves as legitimate artists, and the grant a virtual performance that interacts with the City in May 1969. This exhibition lever- money allowed them to continue making unstable televisual signal. aged interest in video while allowing those new works. NYSCA also funded media who were experimenting with the medium centers, setting an example for other arts Some video equipment new to the market to take themselves seriously as artists. councils; soon many new centers sprang in the early ‘70s allowed for more complex The exhibition brought together artists from up across the country. This created a small visualizing effects, such as keying, mixing, a variety of backgrounds—music, paint- but national network of exhibitors for colorizing, layering, and input from multiple ing, performance, kinetic and light sculp- and video. These new non-profit media arts cameras, but access to this technology ture, and electronics—and debuted several centers also offered low-cost access to film remained scarce. Artists who wanted to important video installations, including Nam and video equipment for artists and individu- experiment with controls beyond what was June Paik’s Participation TV and TV Bra for als from local communities. These access commercially available needed to under- Living , Ira Schneider and Frank centers reached out to youth, people of stand engineering. Such artists began to Gillette’s Wipe Cycle, Aldo Tambollini’s color, artists, women, Native Americans, design or modify equipment that could Black Spiral, Eric Seigel’s Einstein, and prisoners, and activists to encourage them utilize deeper parts of the video technology ’s Everyman’s Mobius Strip. The to make media telling their own stories, thus such as scan lines and signal manipula- exhibition accelerated interest in video de-centralizing the existing communication tion. Influenced by the Moog Synthesizer, a as experimental television, and this inter- system by establishing an alternative that modular audio synthesizer that was used in est extended to public television stations focused on broadening representation in clubs by rock bands, these artists worked such as WBGH in Boston, KQED in San media. collaboratively with scientists grounded Francisco, and WNET in , all in electronics to design visualizing tools of which began workshops to support video Simultaneous to the development of the called video synthesizers to alter, control, projects made by artists on the station’s media arts centers, the ’70s was also a and synthesize video signals to produce state-of-the-art television equipment. period of tremendous growth in non-com- abstract and highly colorized images. Many mercial artist-run spaces. Artists spaces different synthesizers, called “image proces- Leo Castelli, the most prominent art dealer were established across the country and sors” were designed and built by artists. of the time, embraced the new medium contributed to a network of approximately Examples are Woody and Steina Vasulka’s as early as the late ’60s. His gallery pur- 300 sites nationwide that made up the art- Digital Image Processor, Stephen Beck’s chased equipment for artists to experiment ists’ space movement. Artists’ spaces were Video Weaver, Dan Sandin’s Sandin Image with video, and the gallery published the also funded by state arts councils, founda- 06

Semiotics of the Kitchen, , 1975 tions, and the National Endowment for the agenda established in Radical Software, New York. And with such a large range of Arts. These non-profit galleries exhibited which promoted a variety of uses of video content and working styles, it was difficult new and non-commercial art forms such as as decentralized and more democratically for the critical apparatus of the art world to performance, installation, conceptual pho- inclusive of marginalized voices and content get a grip on a single set of standards that tography, and video art, forms that had not to reveal the biases and social inequalities governed video as an aesthetic form with yet gained recognition in mainstream gal- of our culture. Video, standing at the edge clear concepts that aligned with other art leries but were of great interest to younger of art, community, individual expression, forms. Many video artists also had ambiva- members of the art world. and mass communications, was uniquely lence towards the art world. Some artists positioned to reveal layers of meaning as preferred to be aligned with filmmakers or Video screenings of new work expanded well as paradoxes and contradictions in the documentarians, others saw themselves as across all types of venues and presented hierarchical constructions in art, media, and emerging television producers. many new opportunities for the exhibition society. Video artists used the strategy of of video art–from museums, galleries, alter- deconstruction to analyze issues of politi- This complexity is described by Marita native art spaces, and media arts centers cal difference in class, race, gender, and Sturken, a prominent writer and critic of to community-based centers. Soon col- sexual orientation. A single video art piece, video: leges and universities began to add video such as Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the and performance studies to the curriculum. Kitchen (1975), could be critiqued through What emerged from this complex set The acceptance of video in the academy numerous different theoretical discourses: of events was not a medium with a helped validate its use among scholars art, performance, feminism, cultural studies, clear set of aesthetic properties and at a moment in which Jacques Derrida’s politics, gender studies, philosophy, and cleanly defined theoretical concepts. theories of media and deconstruction were psychology. Instead, one sees paradox, the para- gaining influence. Derrida’s interest in cul- dox of video’s apparent merging of tural production and interpretation of lin- The cross-disciplinary interpretation of video (hence its negation of) certain cultural guistic systems, signs, and the construction art had clear advantages in terms of its use oppositions—art and technology, tele- of meaning created a use for alternative and value in academia. Although museums vision and art, art and issues of social renditions of cultural subject matter. His included video in exhibitions and often had change, collectives and individual art- theories opened up a dialectical relation- ongoing screening programs for video and ists, the art establishment and anti- ship between the art work and various other film, single channel video art was more establishment strategies, profit and discourses; this, in turn, allowed video to be problematic in the gallery system. For one non-profit worlds, and formalism and seen as another tool for analyzing the avant- thing, video could easily be mass-produced content.10 garde, film theory, psychoanalysis, feminism, and was not an original object like a paint- genre theory, post-, and cul- ing or drawing; therefore, it was hard to sell. Nevertheless, video practitioners continued tural studies from an alternative perspec- Castelli-Sonnabend had already figured this to expand the medium’s visual and concep- tive. Since Derrida’s work had also become out by 1985, when the gallery dispersed tual potential. As time passed, patterns in prominent in the art world, his emphasis its prestigious collection to two non-profit types of work fell into relatively clear genres, on hierarchies and oppositions offered a video organizations, the Video Data Bank and the beginnings of a historical map could new focus for analysis and followed the in Chicago and in be seen. Writers and critics who are inter- 07

ested in work examining social issues have ment in the mass market also had an enor- fighting unfair representations in media but a version of the history of video while the art mous effect on video art, allowing artists to also strove to obtain government funds for world has a different version. Since critical record information directly from television research, access to medication and home writing on video art has been historically to use in their work. Artists were no longer care, and to spread prevention information sporadic and fragmented according to the solely reliant on images made by them- through creative productions. Tom Kalin’s interests of the writer, a uniform and pro- selves with a camera but could take images experimental videotape They are lost to gressive critique does not exist. Nor does a directly from television programming and vision altogether (1989) is an example of standardized history of the medium. advertisements, archival , Hollywood the passion, rage, and commitment often films, or home movies. Appropriation seen in AIDS tapes that eloquently argues The growing attention to media and tech- became a new type of post-modern visual for a compassionate and humane response nology throughout the whole culture meant and textual critique based on uprooting to AIDS without forgoing the gay commu- that more video artists were being hired to images from their original contexts and pro- nity’s passion and sexuality. Ellen Spiro’s teach college courses and more students scribed new meanings determined by the documentary DiAna’s Hair Ego: AIDS Info were studying and producing video art artist. For example, in Kiss the Girls: Make Upfront (1989) features a hair dresser, tapes. Video had become an established Them Cry (1979) uses clips DiAna DiAna, who teaches safe sex from practice and an artist or documentarian from the game show Hollywood Squares her salon in Columbia, South Carolina, in could achieve recognition and funding by to construct an analysis of the coded ges- frustration over the inadequacy of informa- working in video. tures of gender. The ’ close-up facial tion on AIDS prevention. These tapes and expressions, far from neutral and innocent, many others demonstrate how artists and The Second Phase are re-positioned to exemplify the desire activists used video in grassroots cam- of television to achieve states of submis- paigns long before mainstream media even By the 1980s many of the more vision- sion in the viewer. ’s Joan acknowledged that AIDS was a crisis. ary and revolutionary aspects of the video Does Dynasty (1986) is a classic feminist movement had passed. Video was still deconstruction of the popular prime time A natural outgrowth of AIDS activism was considered to be an alternative to broadcast soap opera in which the artist inserts herself a unification of the gay community and the television, but the alternative aspects shift- on screen amidst appropriated images to rise of a new queer cinema. Queer film and ed more to content and subject matter as analyze patriarchal elements of the . video festivals sprang up across the nation artists sought to make their work as visually Tony Cokes’s Black Celebration (1988) and screened all types of work by and authoritative as possible. Video artists of the juxtaposes footage of the riots in the black about gay men, lesbians, and trans-gen- ‘80s had become very interested in master- community of the 1960s with voice-over dered people. One very young videomaker, ing the powerful state-of-the-art technology from the Situationist text The Decline and Sadie Benning, began using video in her and even showing their work on television. Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy teens and went on to produce a very impor- Since more funding was available for video, to interpret rioting as a refusal to participate tant body of work made with a Pixelvision post-production equipment became more in the logical apparatus of capitalism. These camera. Benning’s intimate, diaristic pieces accessible to video artists. Yet, access was tapes are examples of how artists have held a tight focus on her own face and were still very expensive, so several non-profit recycled and combined existing texts to shot in her childhood bedroom. This work organizations–such as the Experimental construct new and critical meanings and to crossed out of the usual boundary lines of Television Center in Owego, New York; the shed light on how media reinforces cultural video art to touch audiences everywhere. Standby Program in New York City; and the ideologies as a means of social control. Benning’s work, while focusing on her Bay Area Video Coalition in San Francisco, emerging lesbian identity, forms a part of a among others–offered discounted rates for Deconstruction of media took on a darker larger genre of works made in the early ‘90s artists. The post-production studio, mostly and more urgent agenda as AIDS began to examine political identity. Recognition used by advertisers and television produc- to sweep through the country in the mid- and the need to establish specific historical tion companies, offered a variety of dazzling ‘80s, infecting and killing huge numbers of and community identities organized around visual effects. An artist typically worked people. Artists joined up with AIDS activ- shared experience as the Other drove with a professional editor for on-line editing ists to fight against rising hysteria caused identity politics, and many important video to achieve broadcast-standard production by ignorance, omission, and misinforma- works made from the perspectives of Asian, values. tion presented in mainstream media. Video Hispanic, black, and urban youth artists. affinity groups such as Damned Interfering Many of the visual strategies in video of Video Artists Television (DIVA TV) docu- Shifting Patterns the ‘80s were based on post-production mented ACT-UP demonstrations, and this technology, such as multiple camera inputs, footage had a leveraging effect that main- The late ‘80s and early ‘90s witnessed an fades and wipes, slow motion, collage tained communication, community support, era of culture wars, battles against the art effects, scrolling text, and animation. The and enthusiasm in the midst of a long and and gay communities lead by right-wing wide availability of VHS recording equip- strenuous battle. Activists were not just politicians. Both artists and non-profit arts 08

organizations were under attack, and the also narrowed the distinctions between film have been relegated to the sideline of the effect was an overwhelming decline in fund- and video and offers tremendous possibili- new definition of “video art.” Yet older works ing for the arts. The funding that did exist ties for the distribution of media in a variety still circulated, and younger artists continue became highly restricted and shifted away of new digital processes and formats. making new single-channel pieces. from individual artists and towards com- munity and youth-oriented projects. Since Redefining Video Video plays a very important cultural role as the non-profit world had always provided a kind of media trickster operating from the the most stable home for single channel As long ago as the early ‘60s, Nam June Paik edge of several different but often overlap- video art, the collection, exhibition, and began exhibiting his modified television sets ping systems of communication: personal preservation of video became more difficult in galleries as the first video installations. expression, the art world, independent cin- to sustain. After almost three decades of Other artists such as , Bruce ema, television, and academic studies. One growth due to government and foundation Nauman, and Vito Acconci created notable of the strengths of video art is that it has support, video artists were entering an era bodies of work in . Several never been absorbed by any one of these in which they would have to struggle to videomakers, such as and Gary systems but remains peripheral to all. Video continue making and exhibiting their work. Hill, who began with single channel video art uses this unique position to function However, during the same period in which shifted to making video installations and as the research and development wing of funding began to decline, other opportu- achieved great success in the gallery sys- media production, as the test market for nities, particularly the advance of digital tem. However, single channel video art was new ideas and working styles in the festival technology, began to energize videomakers mostly overlooked in galleries until around market, as the avant-guard provocatively in new ways. 1995 when dealers introduced a concept speaking out from an alternative perspec- coming from photography and printmak- tive on social and cultural issues, as a town The Sony Video 8 camcorder was released ing, limited editions. Rather than exhibit meeting on the concerns of the commu- into the consumer market in the late ‘80s; single channel video in a monitor, galleries nity, and as an artistic practice encouraging because of its size, high quality picture began to project the work onto the wall or audiences to engage with creative forms of resolution, and low cost, it was the era’s other large surface. By presenting single- or media. equivalent of the Portapak. The Video 8 multi-channel pieces as large-screen pro- camcorder was closely followed by Hi8 jections and calling them limited editions, Video art has achieved its greatest success camcorders that were the same size but video has been re-invented and popularized when it parallels and articulates ideas com- had technically superior image quality due within the gallery system. Limited editions ing out of contemporary cultural, art, and to more lines of resolution. The camcorder also resolved the problem of how to sell political movements. Whether it is AIDS was popular in the consumer market, and so ; they were now bought, sold, col- activism, feminism, anti-war sentiments, rac- newer versions were released almost every lected and auctioned like painting, drawing, ism, global trade, or other emerging issues, 18 months until finally, in 1995, the first photography, and sculpture. Since artists video is a medium engaged in questioning, digital camcorders were marketed. Digital couldn’t simultaneously be single channel stirring up, provoking, engaging, educating, camcorders had superior technology and artists distributing their work in the more inventing, informing, and articulating new image resolution that meant that artists and traditional film/video venues and also sell ideas. While it did not achieve the vision- other independent producers could finally the work as limited editions, this shift called ary dreams of the ’60s by creating a whole make broadcast quality tapes on low-cost for clear distinctions in the work. Gallery art- new society based on egalitarian notions of consumer equipment. ists chose to make work with strict aesthetic democracy, it did present new alternative strategies: repetition, scale, slow-motion, models, offer support and encouragement, Equally important, digital editing software extreme close-up, sound and meditative or forge communal bonds, and dare to speak like Avid and Media 100 and later, Final metaphoric content that speaks from an art- out in the fight against sameness and Cut Pro, began to revolutionize post-pro- based experimental narrative position. This conformity in the midst of a world rapidly duction. Non-linear editing software began work has been very successful in attracting consumed by global media enterprises and to replace older forms of analog on-line larger audiences (and collectors) to video corporate interests. Video presented the equipment used in post-production studios. art. However, the popularity of this new first, small-scale and closed circuit model of The new digital editing software made it type of gallery-based video art attracted how a decentralized media could participate economically possible for artists to edit on new curators, critics, and audiences who in challenging mainstream culture and con- computers rather than in very expensive were largely unfamiliar with the rich but tinues to provide creative, alternative uses post-production suites. This conveniently fragmented history of single-channel video of the medium to this day. collapsed the cost of production/post-pro- art. In an era of decline of funding for duction during a time in which opportunities screening programs, video artists now had for funding were on the decline. Rapidly a choice and could pre-determine markets improving digital technology has energized for their works. Non-gallery based single and streamlined video production; it has channel works made prior to the mid-’90s 09

Notes

1 Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of the Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).

2 Sylvia Harvey, May ‘68 and Film Culture (London: British Film Institute, 1978), p. 56.

3 Consciousness Industry

4 Lucinda Furlong, “Notes Toward a History of Image Processed Video” Afterimage 11:5 (1983). -get McLuhan quote from article

5 Beryl Korot and Phyllis Gershuny, editors, “Masthead,” Radical Software, 1:1, 1970, p. 1.

6 Radical Software,1:1.

7 Radical Software 1:1.

8 See Rosalind Krauss, “Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism,” October 1 (Spring 1976).

9 See Gene Youngblood, (New York: Dutton, 1970).

10 Marita Sturken

11 Dara Birnbaum

Video Data Bank School of the Art T 312.345.3550 Institute of Chicago F 312.541.8073 112 S Michigan Ave [email protected] Chicago, IL 60603 www.vdb.org