Tape Freak
Co-presented with Electronic Arts Intermix
Buy TICKETS
Friday, July 29th, 2005
8:30 - Live music by Blarvuster
9:00 - Go back to the dystopian dawn of video in the EAI time machine.
On the lawn at Automotive High School
50 Bedford Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Dress warmly (it's cooler when you're sitting still).
In the event of rain the show is indoors at the same location.
Tape Freak
In the years leading up to the cataclysmic decade we fondly refer to as "the 80s," there was unrest amongst the first TV generation. Raised by the idiot box, the young discontents of the late 70s were the first to grow up simultaneously disgusted by and irredeemably obsessed with television. When Sony introduced the first camcorders, a small legion of newly empowered artists, intellectuals, and generally stoked individuals began experimenting with DIY television and guerilla programming. The best of them pushed the medium as far as it would go, outside the comfort zone of good taste, beyond their grand-daddy's distinctions of hi and low culture—toward video that was decadent, at times offensive, and unlike anything anyone had seen before.
In our sunny entertainment capital, Los Angeles-based artist Chris Burden laid down his own cash, paying an astronomical sum for a blip of advertising time on broadcast television. It was worth it to him to insert a characteristically bizarre and powerful documentation of avant garde performance art in the usual evening lineup. "I didn't really care if people liked what they saw, or even understood it," Burden says of his project, "I was just glad that 250,000 people had seen it and they were probably disturbed." Burden's ten-second spot is just one of several pioneering examples of video warfare that EAI and Rooftop Films have brought together for a special screening.
As video grew wings, sparse documentation gave way to florid flights of fancy and an outbreak of decadent visual effects that will forever remain the most lasting legacy of the 80s. The next TV generations were sure to emerge—electrified, dignified, maybe a little fried—but definitely ready for the bright future ahead.
Co-presented by Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), one of the leading nonprofit resources for video art and interactive media. Please visit www.eai.org for further information (and more details below).
THE FILMS:
Documentation of Selected Works (Chris Burden / 1971-75 / 24:00)
Chris Burden's provocative, often shocking conceptual performance pieces of the early 1970s retain their raw and confrontational force in these dramatic visual records, shot on Super-8, 16mm film, and half-inch video. Excerpted from the original 34-minute piece.
Mr. Dead & Mrs. Free (Squat Theatre / 1982 / 4:00)
A brief glimpse of the wild cultural cross-pollination that was a given for this legendary performance group. Excerpted from the original 90-minute piece.
Post-Video (Douglas Davis / 1981 / 12:00)
Selections from Davis' brilliant and unique late 70s meta-TV programs. Excerpted from the original 90-minute piece.
Folk Music & Documentary (Seth Price / 2004 / 6:00)
"Both folk music and documentary are traditional 'Left' art forms--or, let's say, the popular-culture Left in America, as opposed to the more aristocratic Trotskyist Left (wait for laughter)." Ø S. Price
Heartbeat (Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn / 1982 / 4:03) Big Electric Cat (Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn in collaboration with Dean Winkler / 1982 / 5:12)
Early experimentations with image-processing using computer graphic and Paintbox systems produce what the artist Sanborn terms a "seamless and effortless trip through psychedelic techniques..."
Artbreak, MTV Networks, Inc. (Dara Birnbaum / 1987 / 0:30)
Produced for an Artbreak segment on MTV Network, this dynamic "thirty-second spot" presents an abbreviated history of animation according to the representation of women, from the cell imagery of Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell series to the contemporary digital effects of television.
Lost in the Pictures (Max Almy / 1985 / 4:06)
In this contemporary "day in the life" of an average computer programmer, Almy depicts the dissolution of social dichotomies—public/private, labor/leisure, reality/fantasy—through TV's reception in a culture spellbound by its images.
Neo Geo: An American Purchase (Peter Callas / 1989 / 9:17)
Callas' dark vision of cultural memory is inscribed with symbols of violence, money, war, and jingoistic bravado.
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is a leading nonprofit resource for video art and interactive media. Founded in 1971, EAI's core program is the distribution and preservation of a major collection of new and historical media works by artists. EAI also offers educational services, viewing access, exhibitions and public programs. The Online Catalogue is a comprehensive resource on the 175 artists and 3,000 works in the EAI collection. The searchable database includes artists' biographies, QuickTime excerpts, research materials, artists' Web projects, and online ordering.
