Kate Horsfield Busting the Tube: A Brief History of Video Art Source: Feedback: The Video Data Bank Catalog of Video Art 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 narratives 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 art history, 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 television set 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, Sony 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 videotape 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