Now
1973 | 00:11:45 | United States | English | Color | Mono | 4:3 | Video
Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles
Tags: Feminism, Performance, Video History
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Throughout the video, Benglis asks "Now?" and "Do you wish to direct me?" and repeats commands like "Start the camera" and "I said start recording." As in On Screen, she makes faces and sounds in reply to the images on a monitor; at one point she appears to kiss herself. The word "now", used as both question and command, focuses attention on the deceptive "real" time of video, and reveals the structure underlying her presence in the video. Her first color tape, Benglis experiments with the effect of unnatural color, turning up the levels until the colors are high and artificial—which diffuses the idea of video as an impartial or "direct" medium. This title was in the original Castelli-Sonnabend video art collection.
This title is also available on I Say I Am: Program 2.


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