Whitney Biennial
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1~)~3~I ~'1~1-IIiIII :l 1311 :~I~Ili~l. The American Federation of Arts Film/Video Program The 1989 Whitney Biennial film and video The program of films is complemented by generated by the increasingly active movement selections offer dramatic evidence of the media single-channel videotapes-documentary, nar- of artists between the two media. Equally arts' vital position in contemporary American rative, and abstract image-processed works- significant is the impact on these historically culture. Driven by neither the art marketplace which deal with issues related to film and the distinct forms ofthe changing technologies of nor the commercial television and motion other arts yet are uniquely determined by the information processing and communication . picture industries, these works articulate aes- electronic medium and its conduits of distribu- Moreover, the selection seeks to acknowledge thetic, theoretical, and ideological propositions tion and exhibition. Such works continue a the multiplicity of cultures which informs crucial to our modernist and postmodernist practice that dates to the early 1960s, when recent developments in American independent concepts of representation and interpretation . artists first appropriated the technology of film and video art. The privileging of traditional television within a culture that was reexamining art forms is being challenged today as art is This year's Biennial presents short and feature- the material basis and definitions of art and art introduced into the public sphere through the length within the genres of narrative, films making. Created for the television set, video media of our time . The challenge of this and documentary, animation, and the avant-garde . art posits a radical alternative to broadcast future biennials is to chart and interpret these Such independent cinema-personal, poetic, television and proposes to build a sophisticated changes within an expanding media culture. and oppositional-continues a rich vanguard video culture for the late twentieth century. tradition begun nearly one hundred years ago John G . Hanhardt when the first moving images were recorded The 1989 Biennial has as one of its subtexts the Curator, Film and Video on celluloid . growing dialogue between film and video Whitney Museum of American Art PROGRAM 1(89 minutes) PROGRAM 4 (57 minutes) Incidence of Catastrophe Gary Hill Born to be Sold: Martha Rosier Reads Ritual Clowns 1988, 44 min., color the Strange Case of Baby S M Victor Masayesva, Jr. Martha Rosler 1988, 18 min., color PROGRAM 7 (76 minutes) 1988, 35 min., color Lilith Production Notes: Fast Food for Steina Vasulka Joyride'" Thought 1987, 9 min., color Tony Oursler and Constance Dejong 1988, 17 min., color Jason Simon Living with the Living Theater 1987, 28 min., color Nam June Paik with Betsy Connors and Paul Hitchcock Trilogy: Vertigo, Psycho, Torn Out of the Mouth of Babes Garrin Curtain Sherry Millner and Ernest Larsen 1988, 30 min., color Rea Tajin 1987, 26 min., color 1987, 15 min., color PROGRAM S (96 minutes) Under a Malicious Sky Hans Breder PROGRAM 2 (57 minutes) Inside Life Outside 1988, 10 min., color Blues for Piggy Sachiko Hamada and Scott Sinker John Arvanites 1988, 57 min., color Peggy and Fred in Kansas Leslie Thornton 1987, 12 min., color Belchite-South Bronx: A Trans- 1987, 11 mm., color India Time Historical, Trans-Cultural Landscape Ken Feingold Francesc Torres Peggy and Fred and Pete 1987, 45 min., color 1987, 39 min., color Leslie Thornton 1988, 23 min., color PROGRAM 3 (69 minutes) PROGRAM 6 (81 minutes) All videotapes are 3/4' NTSC U-matic videocassettes . Motorist Art of Memory Chip Lord Woody Vasulka 1989, 69 min., color 1987, 37 min., color PROGRAM I Sherry Millner employs film and video to PROGRAM 3 create imaginative works whose central strat- Born to be Sold: Martha Rosier Reads Motorist egy is the exposure and interpretation of the Baby S M by Chip Lord. 1989, 69 min., color the Strange Case of complex ideological forces at play in American Martha Rosier and Paper Tiger Television . by lives. She enlists economic analysis and theory Chip Lord, a founding member of the West 1988, 35 min., color to tackle tough issues that too often lie hidden Coast artists' collective Ant Farm, has been Feminism has been one of the most powerful from view and to reveal how they affect us . engaged in issues of American popular culture theoretical and ideological discourses to since Ant Farm's celebrated satirical expose of In OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES, Millner emerge in the past two decades . Within the television (MEDIA BURN, 1975) and of the and her collaborator, novelist Ernest Larsen, fields of cultural and media studies, it has media representation of the assassination of reflect on the power of language and establish become an effective tool for understanding the John F Kennedy (THE ETERNAL FRAME, a metaphor for the acquisition of language as a patriarchal forces that control the major media 1976). Since the breakup of the group, Lord form of domination . By extending their appro- and other dominant forms of cultural produc- has created a series of videotapes and installa- priation of popular media to video graphic tion. Many media artists use the critical meth- tions which examine the iconography of Amer- techniques, such as animating words over ods of feminism to fashion images that question ican lifestyles. images of President Reagan, they literally apply the ideological foundations of mechanical re- another layer of analysis to the visual and Lord's latest videotape, MOTORIST, tells the production and increasingly appropriate tele- linguistic discourses that obscure the ideological story of the sale of a 1950s Thunderbird to a vision to deconstruct the meaning of the forces of power and control in our culture. young Japanese investor in American memo- narratives of news and information. rabilia. The narrative follows the seller as he BORN TO BE SOLD : MARTHA ROSLER PROGRAM 2 drives the antique American "dream car" from San READS THE STRANGE CASE OF BABY S M Blues for Piggy through the Western landscape Francisco to Los Angeles . En route, the story is Martha Roster's most ambitious work to date by John Arvanites . 1987, 12 min., color and represents a return to her earlier perfor- mixes personal reminiscences with 1960s ad- mance-based videotapes, such as SEMIOTICS John Arvanites' early videotapes are dis- vertisements for what were then the latest OF THE KITCHEN (1975), in which she tinguished by their conceptual strategies, par- Detroit fantasies of consumption. Lord effec- performed and mimed the attitudes and roles ticularly by the use of black and white tively weaves a bittersweet commentary on forced upon women by society. In this new videotape and minimal camera movement and the American industrial dream as expressed in work, produced in collaboration with the editing to record through direct observation its disposable car culture . The tape ends with Paper Tiger Television collective, an alternative the changes in our perceptions of objects, such the car's new owner driving through down- media group that makes videotapes for public- as an ice box, and processes, such as the town Tokyo, an ironic comment on the access cable television, Rosier fuses her interest movement of sand . BLUES FOR PIGGY joins fetishization of the past as a means to create in the politics of information and representa- his earlier minimalist strategies with a sequenc- renewable myths and consumer objects for a tion with an examination of the roles imposed ing of contrasting imagery that conjures up contemporary global capitalism . on the surrogate mother in the Baby M case . narrative links. The individual shots in BLUES The result is a witty and highly sophisticated FOR PIGGY were all taken in the vicinity of PROGRAM 4 the artist's Los Angeles home and evoke an analysis of television and print media and the Ritual Clowns oblique but powerful reflection of the southern impact of this case on biological and ideological by Victor Masayesva, Jr. 1988. 18 min ., color definitions of woman as mother and wife . California landscape . In one such sequence, a burning house, shown backwards, is juxtaposed The art and culture of Native Americans have Production Notes: Fast Food for with a shot of a reptile staring languidly out at held a precarious position within mainstream Thought the world around it. Contrast also occurs European-American culture, Existing on the by Jason Simon. 1987, 28 min., color within a single take, as in a shot of a mural margins of media institutions, the Native Amer- depicting an ideal landscape of grazing animals ican has usually been seen as an exotic other Since the early years of video art, artists have that covers the wall of a slaughterhouse. In or vanquished opponent within the myths of made television commercials a topic in their BLUES FOR PIGGY images of destruction popular culture . The appropriation by Native work, often incorporating actual commercials amid bucolic suburban vistas convey the disor- Americans of the tools of these same media into their analyses of television advertising to der and irony that coexist in our daily lives. institutions has resulted in the establishment of fashion an aesthetic and political discourse on communication links via television and a India Time both the nature of the mass media in our society. of cultural production that by Ken Feingold . 1987, 45 min ., color sustained body Just as Hans Haacke and others have made provides the Indian community with new forms political and economic forces the subject of The work of Ken Feingold has situated itself in of expression and the means to preserve its their art, media artists have often directly the spaces between the authoritative images of past and interpret the future . appropriated material from programming in television and the artist's own image-making .