. "Toward An Anthropological Pol- bert. Native Americans on Film and of Symbolic Form." Gross. 85- Video, Vol. 2. New York Museum of itics FROM PORTAPAK TO CAMCORDER: A BRIEF the American Indian, 1988. 107. Adair. Through Na- HISTORY OF GUERRILLA TELEVISION Willmot, Eric. Out of the Silent Land. Worth, Sol, and John Task Force on Aboriginal vaho Eyes . Bloomington: Indiana UP, Camberra: DEIRDRE BOYLE and Islanders Broadcasting Commission 1972. and AGPS, 1985. Worth, Sol, and Larry Gross. "Symbolic the Winston, Brian. "The Tradition of Strategies ." Gross. 134-47. Victim in Griersonian Documentary." Cinema." Young, Colin. "Observational portapak half-inch video equipment when it became Gross, Katz, and Ruby. 34-57. Ed. Nearly 30 years since the video Principles of Visual Anthropology television' available in 1965, and with it he made Sol. Review of YouAre On Indian launched an independent Worth, Paul Hockings. The Hague: Mouton, States, a new Bum, one of the first "street tapes." His Land. American Anthropologist 74.4 movement in the United 1975. 65-80. has taken up interviews with the winos and derelicts on (1972): 1029-31. generation of video activists the video camcorder as a tool, a weapon, New York's skid row were edited before and a witness. Although the rhetoric of electronic editing became possible. guerrilla television2 may seem dated to- Rough, unstructured, and episodic, Bum day, its utopian goal of using video to was characteristic of early video. challenge the information infrastructure in America is more timely than ever and at last practicable. Today's video activism is Street Tapes the fulfillment of a radical 1960s dream of making "people's television ." "Street tapes" were not necessarily made on the street. In 1968, with the arrival of the first truly portable video rigs (the half- Portapak), video The 1960s: Underground Video inch, reel-to-reel CV freaks could hang out with drug-tripping hippies, sexually liberated commune Corporation decided to In 1965 the Sony dwellers, cross-country wanderers, and its first major effort at marketing launch yippie rebels, capturing spontaneous ma- video equipment in the United consumer terial literally on their doorsteps. During auspicious moment for the de- States-an the summer of 1968 Frank Gillette taped a video. The role of the artist but of portable five-hour documentary of street life on St. and alienated hero was as individualist Mark's Place in New York City, unofficial being eclipsed by a resurgence of interest of the Eastern hippie com- and as headquarters in the artist's social responsibility, munity (Yalkut) . Gillette was one of a en- art became politically and socially number of artists, journalists, actors, film- between art and gaged, the distinctions makers, and students who were drawn to (Ross). At first communication blurred video. They were "the progeny of the between video there were few distinctions Baby Boom, a generation at home with nearly everyone artists and activists, and technology-the Bomb and the cathode- . Les Levine was made documentary tapes ray tube, ready to make imaginative use of have access to one of the first artists to the communications media to convey their messages of change" (Armstrong 20-21). Deirdre Boyle is a senior faculty member in the Graduate Media Studies Program at the New Turning the limits of their technology into School for Social Research in New York. She is videomakers in- the author of Vdeo Classics (Onyx, 1986) and a virtue, underground Guerrilla Television Revisited (Oxford UP, vented a distinctive style unique to the forthcoming). She will be a Fulbright Scholar at medium. Some pioneers used surveillance Moscow University during the fall. of 1992. cameras and became adept at "free- Copyright ® 1992 by D. Boyle handing" a camera because there was no 67 1992) JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 44 .1-2 (Spring-Summer 1992) JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 44 .1-2 (Spring-Summer 66 The 1970s: Alternative TV role, producing under- ised to show America what the 1960S with their dance played a key viewfinder (Teasdale). Tripods, chief information source youth and culture rebellion was really hand-held flu- ground video's The 1970s ushered in a new era of alterna- fixed viewpoints, were out; networking tool, Radical about. Nearly everyonewith a portapak in unique ability to and national CBS tive video. The underground became an idity was in. Video's by Beryl Korot and Phyl- New York worked on the show, but moment with instant Software (edited hopes on above-ground media phenomenon as mag- capitalize on the In addition, Raindance concentrated its resources and real-time monitoring of lis Gershuny). Abbie azine articles on the "alternative-media playback and contributed to a cultural data the Videofreex, who interviewed the era's emphasis on members conspiracy trial, guerrillas" appeared in mainstream peri- events also suited videotapes from which they col- Hoffman at the Chicago 9 product." Process art, earth bank of Hampton on tape odicals like Newsweek and New York "process, not fashioned "Media Primers,"' got Black Panther Fred art, and performance art lectively murdered, and cap- Magazine . When federal rules mandated art, conceptual of interviews, street tapes, and days before he was deemphasis on the final work collages alternative life and hot tub local origination programming and public all shared a television excerpts that explored tured scenes of emphasis on how it came to be. off-air along the California coast. access channels for most cable systems, and an nature of television and portable vid- enlightenment utopian absence of electronic editing equip- the executives eventually rejected the cable seemed to promise a new, The eo's potential as a medium for criticism CBS functioning ment-which discouraged shaping a tape 90-minute show, later titled "Subject to era of democratic information, and analysis . alternative to the Com- into a finished "product"-further en- Change," euphemisticallly finding it as a decentralized development of a "process" (Videofreex; West). mercially-driven broadcast medium . couraged the of hours of documentary tapes "ahead of its time" . Hundreds video aesthetic shot by underground groups, tapes were of media in mod- Left polemics and the drama of Aware of the centrality video shooting styles were as on New way television shapes real- The new AV format portapak appeared in The early political confrontation as well as video ern life, of the influenced by meditation tech- consciousness, video pioneers 1970, conforming to a new international much erotica. Video offered an opportunity to ity and For the like t'ai chi and drug-induced access to mass media. Arro- standard for half-inch videotape. niques, challenge television's authority, to replace tried to gain manufac- epiphanies, as they were by existing tech- naive, they learned the hard way first time, tapes made with one often negative images of youthful protest gant and could be Aspiring to the "minimal pres- television had no intention of relin- turer's portable video equipment nology. and rebellion with the counterculture's that manufacturer's of an "absorber" of information, its power. They would have to played back on competing ence" own values and televisual reality. quishing this boost com- videomakers like Paul Ryan believed in look elsewhere for funding sources and equipment. Not only did scene to happen, trying not for theirwork, petition among video manufacturers and waiting for the outside the video scene found broader distribution outlets directing events. The fact Observers A. J. Liebling's accelerate the development, of portable to shape it by guilty of inconsistent technical forced to take seriously was relatively cheap and early tapes of the press is video, it also facilitated the exchange of that videotape Critics faulted underground video observation, "Freedom laissez-faire work as feasi- quality. those who own one." tapes, which would become even more reusable made frequently infantile, but they also guaranteed only to desirable. for being widespread once the 3/4-inch U-maticcas- ble as it was it for carrying an immediacy rare praised project marked a turning sette became available in 1972. The new Establishment TV (Aaron). The under- The "Now" video groups appeared in underground discovered its AV format, with an eyepiece that allowed Underground response to such criticism was to point as the the United States, but New ground's rebellious days were over. instant playback in the camera, prolifer- throughout concede there was a loss'-in technical freewheeling served as the hub of the 1960s come for an information ated across the country as more and more York City quality when compared to broadcast. Hol- The time had underground scene. Prominent early by theorists like people began to explore the medium . video had also been fixated on glossy revolution. Influenced included the Videofreex, Peo- lywood McLuhan and Buckminster collectives productions until the French "New Marshall ple's Video Theater, Global Village, and cre- Fuller, artist-activists began to plot their Wave" filmmakers in the early 1960s video was inau- Raindance Corporation. The Videofreex of utopian program to change the structure of Government funding for ated a demand for the grainy quality State Council on was the movement's preeminent produc- information in America. In the pages of gurated by the New York cinema veritd, jump-cuts, and hand-held "all-for-one" group, acting as its technological and Radical Software and in the alternative the Arts in 1970. With it, the tion camera shots. Like the vhrite filmmakers activity- aesthetic innovator; People's Video The- were movement's 1971 manifesto, Guerrilla camaraderie of early video 10 years before them, video pioneers down in the ater used live and taped feedback of em- Television, they outlined their plan to de- which had begun to break inventing a new style, and they expected dollars the year be- battled community groups as a catalyst for radical centralize television so that the medium scramble for CBS the to dazzle the networks with their into an all-out social change; Global Village initiated get sto- could be made by as well as for the people.