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.
  There is a crudeness to How's Tricks, Benglis's first venture into narrative fiction. No attempt is made to hide the mechanics of making the tape. At one point, while Benglis and [Stanton] Kaye argue about the tape they are making of [...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: media analysis, performance, video history |
“A good example of Baldessari’s deadpan irreverence is the 1971 black-and-white video entitled I Am Making Art, in which he moves different parts of his body slightly while saying, after each move, ‘I am making art.’ The statement, he...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: performance, video history |
Jonas intercuts scenes of the Nova Scotia countryside with images of a studio set-up reminiscent of a di Chirico painting. The soundtrack includes both music and spoken excerpts from a journal Jonas kept while travelling in Nova Scotia. I...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: landscape, performance, video history |
“‘I will not make any more boring art,’ John Baldessari wrote over and over again in a work done in 1971. The impulse for the piece, he says, came from dissatisfaction with the ‘fallout of minimalism,’ but its implications are far greater. It is...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: humor, performance, video history |
Using the image processor as it was intended as a performance instrument, Icron exploits the processor’s real-time capabilities: the image and soundtrack were generated through simultaneous improvisation, although the color was added...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: chicago art, image processing, music, video history |
Skip Sweeney was an early and proficient experimenter with video feedback. A feedback loop is produced by pointing a camera at the monitor to which it is cabled. Infinite patterns and variations of feedback can be derived from manipulating the...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: image processing, video history |
In Search of the Castle is an optical journey that combines Steina’s abstraction of real images and Woody’s digital effects. Taped from a car passing through the flat landscape of New Mexico, computer effects create an interesting play...
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: image processing, landscape, video history |
Shot in December 1969, this video documents a live performance by the Incredible String Band at the Fillmore East, NYC. Beginning with footage of people waiting in line at the doors before the show begins, the video goes on to record the...
Collection: Videofreex Archive, Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: documentation, history, music, music video, performance |
This program features a selection of pre-recorded segments from five three-hour long live broadcasts made during the Democratic National Convention in New York City in 1976. It includes interviews with politicians and members of the media, as...
Collection: Videofreex Archive, Early Video Art, Single Titles Tags: activism, documentation, film or videomaking, history, politics |
