'This Isn't Charlie Rose': the Making of on Art and Artists and the Politics
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Faye Gleisser ‘This isn’t Charlie Rose’: The Making of On Art and Artists and the Politics of Information Distribution In 1974, the young and aspiring Chicago- art educational value, and the tapes’ ability ing and exposing political or provocative based artists Lyn Blumenthal and Kate to preserve the aesthetics of 1970s grass- material. According to a citation from The Horsfield began videotaping informal inter- roots culture, much work remains to be Nation in 1869, “the ‘interview,’ as at pres- views with women artists. In the years that done with respect to assessing the lasting ent managed, is generally the joint product followed, as both Blumenthal and Horsfield political implications of the collection as a of some humbug of a hack politician and completed MFA degrees at the School of whole, and the various types of information another humbug of a newspaper reporter.”4 the Art Institute and established the Video (beyond the biographical) embedded within Data Bank (VDB) there in 1976, the two the act of its distribution. This essay argues Today, the standard definition of the “inter- continued to collaboratively videotape in- for a different approach to On Art and Art- view” builds from this journalistic sensibility terviews, formalizing the interview series ists, one that delves into the social and po- by placing emphasis not on the experience under the name On Art and Artists (OAA). litical mechanics of the “artist interview”—as of seeing one another on a personal level, By 1982, when New Examiner writer Hedy an object and form integral to the history of but rather, on the accrual of data and its Weiss reviewed the holdings of the VDB, art—and the historically specific stakes of management. Reflective of this develop- she described the OAA collection as the Horsfield and Blumenthal’s distribution of ment, Merriam-Webster’s contemporary very “heart” of the archive.1 Today, among the tapes to universities, museum libraries, dictionary definition of the interview reads the VDB’s extensive collection of historical and art festivals in the 1970s and 1980s. In as such: the interview is “a meeting at which box set compilations and new video art, On what follows, I argue that the videotaping of information is obtained from a person, a Art and Artists continues on as the major artist interviews during this early period of report or reproduction of information so legacy forged by its two co-founders. Com- the VDB’s development was itself a unique obtained,” or, in a more specific context of prised of over 400 videotaped interviews and important act, contributing to the instru- business, is “a formal consultation usually to and artist-made video portraits, featuring mentalization of artistic labor as a vehicle for evaluate qualifications (as of a prospective a range of internationally renowned artists, ethical engagement, as well as the redefini- student or employee).”5 critics, architects, theorists, and art collec- tion of “information” that occurred in the late tors, the OAA collection persists as one of 20th century. While the interview as a historical object has the most unassuming yet vast archives of long been a central component of the art non-print artist dialogues in existence today.2 Defined in the early 1500s as a formal meet- historical record, consideration of the art- ing or face-to-face encounter, the meaning ist interview, as a particular type within the Although scholars and critics over the years of the word “interview” originated from the larger categorization of the genre, remains have remarked upon the collection’s rich French expression entrevue, and more spe- understudied. In the scholarship that does cifically from the verb s’entrevoir—to see or discuss the artist interview directly, authors 1 Hedy Weiss, “From the Horse’s Mouth: A Look at the visit one another.3 By the late 19th century, tend to focus on the circulation of printed Video Data Bank,” New Examiner (November 1982): 10. the term had become associated with the transcripts and texts, leaving out the medi- 2 For an excellent overview of the various formats of tapes included in the OAA collection please visit http:// journalistic practice of interviewing, in the vdb.org/oaa or refer to Kate Horsfield’s introduction to sense that the exchange was one of glean- 4 The Nation, January 28, 1869. Quoted in “interview” the collection in Feedback: The Video Data Bank Cata- in online etymology dictionary. Accessed June 2014. log of Video Art and Artist Interviews ed. Kate Horsfield 5 “Interview,” Merriam-Webster, Inc. Online Dictionary. and Lucas Hildebrand (Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univer- 3 The Nation, January 28, 1869. Quoted in “interview” Accessed June 2014. http://i.word.com/idictionary/ sity Press, 2006). in online etymology dictionary. Accessed June 2014. interview. 02 um of video altogether and its impact on the catalyzed the initiation of On Art And Artists reductive packaging of subjecthood. Al- process of data translation. In spite of this forty years ago. All are fundamentally tied to though the television series Charlie Rose, oversight, Iwona Blazwick’s essay, “An Anat- the question of how to share information in a talk show in which executive producer omy of the Interview,” printed as an introduc- ways that confront the uneven planes of ac- Rose interviews leaders, activists, and ath- tory essay to Talking Art: Interviews with cess. The privileging of certain figures, and letes among others, would have been con- Artists Since 1976 (2007), accounts for the the mobilization of networks that reinforce sidered somewhat radical in relation to the direct impact of new communications tech- these hierarchies of knowledge production standards set by 1970s television, it stays nologies, such as the Internet, upon the art- are, in short, the underpinnings of the poli- close, nonetheless, to a formal structure in a ist interview in more recent years.6 tics of distribution. controlled studio environment. Although, as Blazwick explains, the artist I. The Information Era and the Stakes The early OAA tapes were low-tech, half- interview has for centuries shaped the art of the “Artist Interview” in the 1970s inch open reel, unedited, and produced historical canon, dating back to Giorgio Va- using a Sony Portapak system.10 Upon its sari’s sixteenth-century Lives of the Most Horsfield and Blumenthal’s cultivation of a 1965 invention, the machine expanded the Excellent Painters, Sculptures, and Archi- video archive of artist interviews in the ‘70s potential for amateur documentation of ev- tects, she asserts that the proliferation of and ‘80s, which recorded a marginalized eryday encounters in non-official spaces. the artist interview in the late 20th and 21st group of radical thinkers, and developed a Horsfield and Blumenthal traveled to New centuries is a pointed “manifestation of our new way of sharing information, offers in- Mexico, New York and California, and re- ever-expanding capacity to translate the sight into the larger social implications of corded interviews inside artist studios, temporal into the material, the private into information management, and the responsi- apartments, and offices, thereby framing do- the public, and the individual into the icon.”7 bility inherent within the politics of data col- mestic spaces, otherwise deemed private, For Blazwick, as for many others, the blur- lecting and distribution. as part of the public sphere of information. ring of such distinctions occurs as a result Because of the informal setting and gritti- of information acceleration unfolding from In a charming but brief “How-To” video pro- ness of the tapes, the OAA provided visual the digital era of documentation at the end duced for VDB staff in 2004, in anticipation information that differed considerably from of the 20th century, an event making signifi- of her upcoming retirement in 2006, Hors- formats of artist interviews on television and cant impact on the role and purpose of artis- field offers strategies for presenting the “art- in polished, glossy magazines. The close-up tic production. In relation to this heightened ist interview” as a legible and accessible shots emphasized vulnerability of the sub- sense of connectivity and the proliferation of form. With her musical Southern twang, she ject, radically undoing the flattened veneer images world-wide, Tom Holert also explains faces the viewfinder, which she, for many of the packaged talk show. In stark con- in his 2013 Artforum essay titled, “The years, focused on others. She speaks of trast to the perfect studio shot, the range of Burden of Proof,” that indeed, “now is the practical things, such as microphone adjust- close-ups, and off-centered, poetic refram- time” in contemporary art practice and art ment during OAA interviews, as well as how ing of the body was readily legible as a ges- discourse when, “responsibility [itself] might her move to Chicago from Texas, while in her ture intended to critique television’s stylized be reframed as a heuristic and performative twenties, informed her own trajectory as an packaging of celebrity status, and who (and notion—an arena of indeterminacy, of pos- artist. Clearly at ease, Horsfield’s expertise who was not) then considered talk-worthy. sible experimentation,” if we are to address attests to her experience as director of the Black and white promotional cards, pro- the transformation of processing visual and VDB, a position she held singularly for two duced by the VDB in the mid-‘80s, show- textual information in an era of global visual decades following the untimely passing of case the OAA’s signature aesthetic through culture.8 The concerns raised by scholars Blumenthal in 1988. She carefully empha- selected stills from the OAA tapes made in like Blazwick and Holert in relation to tech- sizes, however, for future VDB interviewers, the following decade.