Skip to main content

Animation 1

Keith Sonnier

1973 00:13:52 United StatesEnglishColorMono4:3Video

Description

With the Watergate hearings as a backdrop, quotes from various newspapers and magazines--including the story of Robert Smithson's death in a plane crash--build a picture of the confusing and tragic events of July 1973. Sonnier uses appropriated footage and reproduced newspaper clippings to create a richly layered video that attempts to sort out the truth from the available information. Sonnier's instructions to the computer operator reference the making of the video, and thereby create a self-conscious, limiting frame.

This title was in the original Castelli-Sonnabend video art collection. 

About Keith Sonnier

Having worked extensively in neon sculpture, Keith Sonnier introduced video to his work in the 1970s as a representation of a medium working with and against itself. Sonnier began experimenting with the formal properties of computer-generated video by using a Scanimate computer, and his work exploits feedback, amplification, and transmitted light’s tactile quality. As an artist who embraced technology, Sonnier’s work challenges artistic conventions and opens new channels of communication at the cutting edge of technology.