surveying the- ,< first ' decade Vdeo Art and Alternative Media in the United States OCTOkFR 23-NOVEMBER 23 1997 SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART " PHYLLIS WATTIS THEATER SCREENINGS AT 1 PM AND 3 PM ON FRIDAYS AND SUNDAYS LECTURE AND SERIES PREMIERE BY KATE HORSFIELD , DIRECTOR OF VIDEO DATA BANK THURSDAY " OCT. 23 7 p.m . This survey is a compilation of videotapes Video art and alternative-media production The recovery of that period through a historical that chart artists' experimentation with a new were developed by artists in the late 1960s and survey is, in part, an effort to link the cultural artmaking medium . Exploring the first ten years early 1970s as a form of public dialogue about insights and strategies of portable video's first of artists' application of video to their experience new cultural forms and access to communica- decade with those of the present. Attention to and expression, the series gives today's museum tions technology. A fundamental idea held by this the video projects of the late 1960s and 1970s audience the extraordinary opportunity to view first generation of video artists was that in order is timely in view of the advent of international sixteen hours o' essential work by artists whose to have a critical relationship with a televisual media hardware and software expansion and innovations, insights, and accomplishments society you must primarily participate televisually. new decentralized multimedia networks . The established new fields of social, technological, Inspired by the availability of the portapak (a democratic use of these tools can only be real- and artistic inquiry. portable video recorder and camera), at a time ized with considerable efforts toward widespread when culture was widely acknowledged as polit- media literacy, a necessary extension of basic Organized into eight programs, this presentation ical terrain, vldeomakers sought to radically reading and writing skills . includes an enormous volume of work that reconfigure art and communications structures, examines the genres of various independent Such an education for media-cultural fluency and to invigorate their respective communities' movements. Video's impact on the history of art must encompass access to and experience with capacities for informational and participatory and telecommunications is significant. production tools and an understanding of the feedback. Artists and independent producers Addressing the importance of ensuring the interpretive structures of moving-image media integrated production, exhibition, distribution, longevity of video artworks in the public record, "literatures"-video, film, sound, digital multi- transmission, audience feedback, and media each videotape included in the series has been media, television, the Internet-that have been education into their work, and they invited the restored by a conservation program that was produced to date . It is necessary to be wary of participation of individuals as artists, critics, inaugurated in 1986 at Video Data Bank to the emancipatory claims of new technologies, as scientists, citizens, and educators, creating a vital prevent the loss of significant works due to the well as of the liberal notion that the access to alternative infrastructure . decay inherent in the electronic tape material . production alone will bring about critical partici- In a period that advocated for expanded pation . However, the early 1970s participatory The program and accompanying notes were consciousness and a critical reassessment of affirmation of an alternative media practice assembled by Video Data Bank, a distribution, institutional authority, artists employed various merits examination in order to reconsider the production, and education archive at the School techniques of feedback from a newly accessible efforts of that earlier generation to initiate new of the Art Institute of Chicago. We wish to electronic time-based medium ; they experi- forms of cultural exchange, and to share the extend thanks to Kate Horsfield, director of mented with the fundamental structures of a authority of technologically intensive cultural Video Data Bank and executive producer of this new image language made available through production with diverse audiences and local series ; series curator Christine Hill ; consulting electronic materials; women producers asserted communities. In supporting the production of a editor for resources and texts Deirdre Boyle; and a gender-based subjectivity, and both women vital, multi-vocal, and accessible contemporary project coordinator Maria Troy . and men transgressed viewers' assumptions of media culture, artists and educators must The series is generously funded by the Susan the television medium primarily through perfor- continue to examine the cultural issues negoti- Wildberg Morgenstein Fund and by mance-based work ; and artists enlisted video in ated by past bodies of work and to determine Contemporary Extension, an auxiliary of an expansive documentary exploration of the who has the training and access to increasingly SFMOMA . vernacular, as well as in investigations of social sophisticated tools and how the work produced institutions . The first decade of video art and can reach diverse audiences on a broader scale Special thanks to Kate Horsfield, Mindy Faber, communications was characterized by a negotia- than has been accomplished to date . and the staff at Video Data Bank. Surveying the tion of authority with viewers through ongoing First Decade is produced with the assistance of efforts to guarantee broad access to production, CHRISTINE HILL, CURATOR OF SFMOMA curatorial assistant Suzanne Feld, and SURVEYING THE FIRSTDECADE: and the recognition of the audience as a subjec- Carol Nakaso, media arts program coordinator. VIDEO ARTAND ALTERNATIVEMEDIA tive participant in the work and as a social IN THE UNITED STATES. partner in sustaining cultural scenes . ROBERT R. RILEY, CURATOR OF MEDIA ARTS i I i i i i i i i i i I i i i i i i i i I I i i i i i i i i i i i Program 7 Program 2 Program 3 Explorations of Presence, Investigations of the Approaching Narrative Performance, and Audience Phenomenal World "There Are Problems to Be Solved" PerformerlAudiencelMirror (1975) Black and White Tapes (1970-75) The Red Tapes Part 11(1976) Two Dogs and Ball, Used Car Salesman, Stamping in the Studio (1968) Out of Body Travel (1976) Dog Biscuit in Glass Jar (1972) Double Vision (1971) The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd Baldessari Sings LeWitt (1972) (1972-75) Boomerang (1974) Undertone (1972) Island Song (1976) The coup has been successful . We have Vertical Roll (1972) to give the masses visual evidence-proof Cycles of 3s and 7s, (1976) (1975) we are here to stay... they associate culture My Father Children's Tapes (1974) The with obsolete buildings. Exchange (1973) Soundings (1979) -VITO ACCONCI. THE RED TAPES 1975 Vito Acconci in his 10-Point Plan for Video Lightning (1976) maps out four possible strategies for video medi- I am personally happiest when I am forced to Sweet Light (1977) ated performance and the resulting audience solve a problem. The aggression on stage has to relationships : "build myself up : viewer as A delayed audio feedback system (two tape do with that . I want the performer and the believer" (referring to Undertone), "tear myself recorders, earphones) was set up in a television performance to give the audience the feeling away : viewer as witness" (Air Time), "take you in : studio.. This system established a distance that there are problems to be solved . And I've viewer as partner" (Theme Song), between the apprehension and the comprehen- made the solution available, somehow. "give myself over : viewer as surrogate" sion of language as words split, delayed, -RICHARD FOREMAN. INTERVIEWED BY ERIC BOGOSIAN IN BOMB (Command Performance). mirrored, and returned . Thoughts were partially (SPRING 1994) being formulated, comprehended, and vocalized. -IRA SCHNEIDER AND BERYL KOROT EDS, VIDEO ART, 1976 The reiteration presented a revolving, involuting The works in this program establish inventive Artists in this program investigate perceptual experience, because parts of the works coming formal structures for epic storytelling and processes and strategies of performance using back in on themselves stimulated a new direc- staging unpredictable performances . Audiences the video monitor as a real-time "feedback" tion for thoughts .. This unit of discourse will be unsettled-by the buzzers that repeatedly mirror, a time-based device for recording and examines and reveals the structural framework interrupt Foreman's meticulously staged theater reflection, and a theater of intimacy. Dynamics of of the system . The comprehension and func- in a box, by Acconcl's emphatic "cut it out! cut it presence and informational feedback formed tional significance of the act in context was out!" (stage directions, or part of the confronta- through video recording and editing are pursued being exposed in the mind of the investigator. tive dialogue he performs?), and by Carel and intimate disclosures to videographer as models or opportunities for studying -FROM A DESCRIPTION OF BOOMERANG BY RICHARD SERRA IN VIDEO ART Ferd's (inter)personal exchanges as well as formal IRA SCHNEIDER AND BERYL KOROT EDE 1976 Ginsberg . The viewer must draw his or her own paradigms. In most or this work focus is on the conclusions from these curious communications construction of a relationship with the audience, Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, artists that rupture