American Documentary Video

American documentary video : subject to change : a video exhibition Co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Museum of Modern Art, guest curator: Deirdre Boyle Date 1988 Publisher American Federation of Arts Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2139 The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists. MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art A w A Video Exhibition Co-organized by The American Federation of Arts and The Museum of Modern Art Guest Curator: Deirdre Boyle MoMA \$oS The Museum ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The American Federation of Arts and The Museum of Mod field. We wish to acknowledge our appreciation to the AFA ern Art have co-organized American Documentary Video: Film/Video Advisory Committee for its invaluable support Subject to Change, the first traveling exhibition devoted during the formative stages of the project. Thanks are also exclusively to the accomplishments of the American docu extended to AFA Film/Video Program staff members Tom mentary video movement, from the introduction of portable Smith, Assistant Director, for his important role in organizing video equipment in 1965 to the present. We owe a special and f undraising for this project, as well as Chuck Vassallofor debt of gratitude to the many videomakers represented in securing video loans, and Bill O'Donnell for coordinating this exhibition for their cooperation and participation. publication of these program notes. The notes benefited It is the intention of this project to give greater exposure to from Steven Schoenfelder and Ruth Santer's handsome the work of our country's most innovative video documen- design and Janet Cutler's insightful editing. Special thanks tarians, through a comprehensive exhibition presented to a go to Lisa Ann Weiss for her negotiation of the contract wide-ranging audience. Following its premiere at The agreements underlying this venture and Alon Salzman for Museum of Modern Art from November 17,1988 to January coordinating production of the exhibition and circulation 10, 1989, American Documentary Video will travel through copies of the show. out the United States and abroad under AFA auspices. We are most grateful to the National Endowment for the We wish to acknowledge, first and foremost, the par Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Sony Corpora ticipation of guest curator Deirdre Boyle, who wrote the tion of America and J. Walter Thompson, USA for their introductory essay and program notes for this publication, generous support of the project, and to the many museums, and selected titles for the traveling exhibition. For over a universities and media arts centers that will be presenting decade, Ms. Boyle has been a leading teacher, critic, and the exhibition in the coming years. scholar in the field of independent video. We are grateful to her for the extraordinary energy and critical acumen she has Mary Lea Bandy brought to this project. Director, Department of Film We would like to express our thanks to Barbara London, The Museum of Modern Art Assistant Curator of Video, Department of Film, The Myrna Smoot Museum of Modern Art, and Sam McElfresh, Film/Video Director Program Director, the American Federation of Arts, who The American Federation of Arts together coordinated the exhibition with enthusiasm and commitment to important and ongoing directions in the The concepts explored by this exhibition could not have Curator of Video, and Mary Lea Bandy, Director of the been developed were it not for the generous support I Department of Film,for their support in mounting this exhibi received to research the history of documentary video, and tion. Following its premiere at the Museum, the exhibition so I wish to express my gratitude to the New York State will travel-in 10-programand 5-program versions-under the Council on the Arts, the Port Washington Public Library, the auspices of the American Federation of Arts. I am grateful to John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Oxford Uni Sam McElfresh of the AFA for his patience and per versity Press, and Yaddo,the Millay Colony for the Arts, and severance in making this tour possible. Special thanks go to the MacDowell Colony.This exhibition was first presented, my lawyers Christopher Hunter and George W. MacDonald, in a somewhat different form, at the Long Beach Museum of Jr. for excel lent advice and service beyond the call. Art and later exhibited in Barcelona at the Institute of North Last but not least, I appreciate the kind cooperation of all American Studies, and I am grateful to Kathy Huffman, the producers and distributors whose tapes are included in Connie Fitzsimons, Antoni Mercader and John Zvereff for this exhibition. their early interest in this work. American Documentary Video: Subject to Change Deirdre Boyle opened November 17,1988 at The Museum of Modern Art, Guest Curator and I am particularly grateful to Barbara London, Assistant This video exhibition and accompanying publications are supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Sony Corporation of America, and J. Walter Thompson, USA. 1 AMERICAN DOCUMENTARY VIDEO SUBJECTTO CHANGE The first portable video equipment arrived in the United and hand-held camera shots. Like the verite filmmakers ten States in 1965, an auspicious moment. During the Sixties the years before them, video pioneers were forging a new style. role of the artist as individualist and alienated hero was With the publication in 1971 of Guerrilla Television by Michael eclipsed by a resurgence of interest in the artist's social Shamberg and Raindance Corporation, the movement responsibility; and as works of art became politically and acquired a label and a manifesto. socially engaged, their aesthetic and communication func Instinctively, these "video guerrillas" knew how to turn the tions blurred. Everyone with a "portapak" was a video art limits of their technology into its virtues. Without editing ist, nearly everyone made documentary tapes. Artists, jour equipment, they developed an unedited, real-time video aes nalists, filmmakers, students, and self-styled members of the thetic: process, not product, was the clarion call. Tri "Now" generation were all attracted to this new medium pods—with their fixed viewpoints-were out; hand-held fluid without history, hierarchy or strictures. ity was in. Since video-unlike film-could be recorded and In the mid-Sixties, video offered seemingly endless pos immediately viewed, producers could replay tapes to their sibilities as a revolutionary tool. Just as the invention of subjects, and this "instant feedback" influenced production movable type in the 15th century made books portable and styles and afforded an enhanced sense of involvement for all. private, so video could do the same for the television image; Video guerrillas were opposed to the authoritarian voice- and just as the development of photocopying and offset of-God narrator (ordained by the first film documentaries printing helped launch the Sixties' alternative press move with sound and later institutionalized by television). Video ment, so video could spark an alternative television documentarists eschewed narration, substituting unconven movement. tional interviewers or snappy graphics to provide context From the outset, most video pioneers adopted a critical without seeming to condescend. Some challenged the so- relationship to broadcast television, determined to use video called objectivity of television's documentary journalism to create an alternative to what they saw as a slickly civilized, (with its superficial "on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand" aesthetically bankrupt, and commercially corrupt medium. balancing of issues), forthrightly proclaiming their view For those who grew up along with TV, video presented an points. Distinguishing themselves from network reporters opportunity to challenge the "boob tube's" authority, to who stood loftily above the crowds for their reports, video replace television's often negative images of youthful protest guerrillas proudly announced they were shooting from and rebellion with their own values and televisual reality. within the crowd, subjective and involved. Influenced by visionaries like Marshall McLuhan and Buck- Video documentarists invented their own hybrid forms, minster Fuller, they plotted a Utopian program to change the borrowing some from New Journalists like Tom Wolfe and structure of information in America. Hunter Thompson, who wrote facts like fiction, and from Hundreds of hours of documentary tapes were shot in the cinema verite filmmakers, who let their cameras roll in the late Sixties and early Seventies by such early video groups as quest for an illusive unmediated reality. Some, like TVTV and the Videofreex, Raindance, Global Village, Optic Nerve, Video Ant Farm, used humor bordering on satire as a method for Free America, and TVTV. Their subjects were varied: tapes on puncturing the puffed-up egos of publicity and power New Left polemics, the drama of political confrontation, alter seekers. Everywhere, a sense of freshness, vigor, and experi native lifestyles, and erotica. Some critics faulted under mentation prevailed as the possibilities for creating new ground video for being frequently infantile but also praised wrinkles in the old documentary form were tested. it for conveying an immediacy rare in establishment TV. During the Seventies, sharp divisions arose between art Observers outside the video scene often found this early ists and documentarists, with each producing work with work guilty of inconsistent technical quality. The under different strategies and aimed at different audiences and ground's response was to concede there was a loss in tech channels of distribution. Federal rules mandating local orig nical quality when compared to broadcast. Hollywood had ination cable programming and public access channels prom also been fixated on glossy productions until the French ised a new era of democratic programming for community "New Wave" filmmakers in the early Sixties created a video producers.

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