Early Video Art
Early Video Art is a collection of over 200 titles that are central to an understanding of the historical development of video art. This collection includes, but is not limited to, many titles from the original Castelli-Sonnabend collection, the first and most prominent collection of video art assembled in the United States. All of the work in this collection was produced between 1968 and 1980. These works represent important examples of the first experiments in video art, and include conceptual and feminist performances recorded on video, experiments with the video signal, and "guerilla" documentaries representing a counter-cultural view of the historical events of the 1960s and 70s. Many of these tapes represent a desire for a radically redefined television experience that is centered on the innovative, the personal, the political and the non-commercial.
  When I look for the lightning, it never strikes. When I look away, it does. Filmed inside a car, this tape focuses on observation of natural phenomena, presenting the obverse of the "If a tree falls in the woods..." conundrum. Does observation...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: environment, video history |
The seemingly groundless debate as to whether a river is "riley" or "roily" can be interpreted as an example of language's descriptive failure. A shouting match over how to describe the river has no effect; the face of nature continues unchanged...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: environment, language, video history |
Originally part of a larger sculptural installation using prospector's tools, this tape reenacts the search for "Olga," a miner's wife who disappeared on her honeymoon in 1936. As Paul and Marlene Kos call out, "Olga... Olga...", the camera scans...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: death and dying, environment, family, landscape, performance, sculpture |
Taking its title from the sea nymphs in Homer’s Odyssey—the treacherous spirits whose sweet voices lured sailors to their death upon the rocks—Sirens presents four hallucinatory scenes, visual puns authored by a mischievous...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: literature, mental landscape, myth, photography, video history |
A two-headed calf died when one head atrophied. It became a trophy that the artist used as a source for this 16mm film transferred to video.
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: animals, conceptual art, experimental film |
In this early black and white, reel-to-reel video, small game traps are set to catch the rain.
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: conceptual art, environment |
“The 1972 Women’s Video Festival [at the Kitchen] opened with an award-winning short by Steina Vasulka. Featuring close-ups of her mouth twitching and grimacing in accompaniment to the Beatles’s ‘Let It Be.’ Somewhere behind its humor and satire...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: music, performance, video history |
"We buried ten Cadillacs in a row alongside Interstate 40 (the old Route 66), just west of Amarillo, Texas; each car represented a model change in the evolution of the tail fin. This was clearly a sculptural act, but with a minimal amount of...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: activism, media analysis, video history, visual art |
Irreverent yet poignant, The Eternal Frame is a re-enactment of the assassination of John F. Kennedy as seen in the famous Zapruder film. This home movie was immediately confiscated by the FBI yet found its way into the visual...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: activism, history, media analysis, performance, politics, video history |
