Community Video Report (Autumn 1974)

arts: 11, Earl Dotter, courtesy “PeopleS Appalachia” Miners in both U.S. and Wales participated in a video exchange project. [MINERS, from page 10] 1 do not know what response the tapes will bring in America. But.no matter what the outcome there, the process itself has established a beginning bond between mining communities to whom the opportunity to share experiences is usually denied. Hopefully, that bond will have the chance to grown through further exchanges sponsored by the respective unions, by the respective unions, by foundations, or by other groups. But, again, the words of South Wales miners say what must be said about this particular effort. After seeing an edited version to which I had requested criticisms, Dough Thomas of Gwmturch expressed his appreciation for the “contribution of coming Long Beach Plan Will Tie from the States and showing what's happening in the States and in return showing what's happening in Wales. That to me is the important point of all these films—not to contradict what we’ve seen or to say what’s missing, but the message the film states—the way to achieve unity inside our mining communities. . .With all due respects, we hope that the small contribution of the videotape going back will help our American friends.” This article is excerpted from Mountain © Review. : John Gaventa, a Rhodes Scholar in Political Science, has conducted a tax evaluation of East Tennessee Coal companies for the Vanderbilt Student Health Coalition. Museum, Video, Gable t TV eae The city of Long Beach is fae many other small cities with oosh run pndersubscrnes i inately: the city franchise hana ob seailiaes that there are many things that cable should be doing in this city that it is not. The system is small, serving 5,000 households (about 20,000 people) in a city of over 300,000 whose edges melt right into the rest of the Los Angeles metro community. Though this reduces the effectiveness of the system, it does make it a potentially fine system in which to produce an experimental -model. ; A new museum is being built for the city of Long Beach, designed by I. M. Pei. The feature of this museum, that will make it significantly different from other new museums being built, is that a full television facility will be constructed right into the heart of it. The museum will use this facility in order to become a head-end into the cable system, and will be responsible for a complete channel of programming. This programming will be seen as one of the museum’s primary functions, equal to the function that the museum now engages in. contextiialized time will be available to artists or groups of artists. Their presentation of ideas need not be limited by structures traditionally imposed by either experimental television stations associated with broadcast facilities or experimental television centers whose work is oriented toward high tech equipment. Eventually, they plan to have a full color studio and a post-production facility which will be open and free to any artists working in the area. They hope to have the free postproduction facility operative long before they move into the new-building. One of the real pressing needs in Southern California is a facility in which artists can edit and duplicate their work. David Ross, former curator of video at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, is now Deputy Director for Program Development and Television. The next issue of the Video Report, will feature an article by David Ross on the museum and the integration of video in the design. Florence video group opens ist U.S. show On January 12th 1975, a video show, ‘American Artists in Florence: Europeans in Florence,’ will open at the Long Beach Museum of Art in California. This exhibition, ‘an anthology of works produced in Florence at Art/Tapes/22, provides not only the first comparative exhibition of video work by European and American contemporaries, but will also allow a view of the kind of video works that are emerging from this far-sighted Italian video production center. The development of video as art work has had quite a distinct development both in Europe and America. While much of the work produced on both continents has sprung from the roots of conceptual art (i.e. an interest in linguistic theory, the influence of the social sciences, later developments of various neodada schools such as Fluxus), the European approach to the medium bears a marked difference from the American work in many ways. The differences are based partially on the differences in television environments, and partially on the artists’ particuiar inclinations towards the medium itself. Art/tapes/22 is a video tape production facility in Florence, Italy that has been in operation fora year and a half. They specialize in art tape production. They have a complete 4” studio, with a special effects generator, portapak, 4” cassette machines, and a |” editing unit. In Europe they distribute videotapes from American galleries (Castelli, Sonnabend, Steffanotty...) and directly for individual artists. In addition to video, they are planning to expand to other media. A Video-Magazine is also in the works. They recently started broadcasting some of their work on a private TV channel in Florence. For information on booking this show please contact David A. Ross, Deputy Director for Program Development and Television, Long Beach Museum of Art, 2300 East Ocean Boulevard, Long Beach, California 90803. we a museum channel, video: art will be | Arts Notices Video at San Francisco Arts Festival Video took the old-line San Francisco Arts Festival by storm for the first time as a rash of video-art events were staged for a four-day run in September. . It all took place in the “Mobius Video Pavilion”, an outdoor affair in Civic Center, where other traditional arts were also displayed. Co-ordinated by Bonnie Miller and Michele McCoskey of Public Eye, and Jim Shugart of Videoglyph, the event is best described in Bonnie’s words: It started out slowly, with Wednesday being only black and white with facilities to play two different tapes on five monitors. By Thursday we had scrounged the color cassette and monitor, so that gave us the capability of three differént tapes at once. The booth was about 20’ by 35’ so there was room for people to walk around and glimpse things, like paintings or graba milk carton that we had available and sit down. By Friday, the tempo had picked up. Wednesday the School of Holography had put three moving holograms on display in our booth and by Friday the news had spread about video and holograms in our Pavilion (besides, it was warm in our space, the fog rarely lifted for the festival this year). So Friday afternoon and evening Bruce Hurn from Videospace in Berkeley brought two decks and a couple of camera for live, time-delay feedback, so people got to see themselves as they entered the booth. Pretty flashy, I'd say. Saturday was the VIDEO JAM. Outrageous, actually. Richard Harkness, who is also with Marin Community Video, brought all the equipment he could from Marin and City College. Seven people helped him set up seven VTRs and six cameras. He was doing time-delay through six monitors at a time, vertical portraits, with one camera on the feet-knees, one on thie sae so we got all the music and stuff, » and it made great live video for the internal viewing . . . then In addition, On Saturday another group called Music Music taped live performances and Project Artaud’s MOO PROD brought their colorizer and wizard to do live colorizing . then took Polaroid snaps of the color portraits . . . pretty neat. So we had about ten camears and decks and neat stuff, generating almost enough energy to run the equipment without plugging it in—we did blow the fuses twice on Saturday. Among the prize-winners were Ant Farm (for “Cadillac Ranch”), Willie Walker (“The World of Willie Walker”), and Larry Paul (“617742130”). Write: The Public Eve, P.O. Box 99402, San Francisco, California 94109. Rochester publication features video Afterimage is a 10-issue-per-year publication of the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, N.Y., that provides a wealth of current information about visual studies and media like photography, film and video. It includes a handy round-up of exhibits, lectures, screenings and events, as well as longer articles. “Electronic Ceremonies in Rochester” is an article by Laddy Kite in the October 1974 issue that describes a music-video performance called “Polyfusion” staged by Survival Arts Media and Central Maine Power Music Co. Subscriptions are available by joining the Workshop for $10/ year. Membership also includes book discounts and invitations to special events. Write: Visual Studies Workshop, 4 Elton Street, Rochester, NY 14607. New York Film Archives Offers Video Anthology Film Archives is now offering extensive video screenings on a regular basis, in addition to a full schedule of films at their NYC theatre. With support from the NY and National Arts Endowments, the Archives offers an amazing array of the latest film and video artists—the stuff that’s called “experimental” when it’s listed in the papers. For a copy of their impressive schedule for NovDec, write: 80 Wooster St., NY 10012 or call:212-226-0010. the, bor 0» pod. one on the head . . . we were e166 Fight Next to all the entertainment on Video Art 1975 From January 17-24, 1975, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., will host, Video Art 1975. The event is being sponsored by the Smithsonian Resident Associates, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and a grant from the National Endowment from the Arts. For the week that the show is on, two video programs will be shown continuously. One is ‘Video: The New Wave’, which provides an overview of experimental work being done with video. The second program will be a two hour show of works by Ed Emshwiller, Hermine Freed, Frank Gillette, the Vasulkas and other well-known video artists. The speaker schedule is: Fri Jan 17 8 pm Frank Gillette; Sat. Jan. 18 4 pm — F. M. Esfandiary (global communications); Sun. Jan. 19 1:30 pm — Hermine Freed, 4 pm — Ed Emshwiller. The Washington Community Video Center will do a video environment on Sat. Jan. 18, 10-4. For more information write or call: Smithsonian Resident Associates, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560. Phone: 202/381-5157. Michael Day is coordinating the program. Open Encounter on Video On Dec. 4-5, the Center of Art and Communication, from Argentina, will organize an international “Open Encounter on Video” at the theatre of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England. This encounter aims at increasing cooperation between European and American (North and South) video people. It includes speakers from Europe and the Americas and screenings of videotapes. The event will be repeated on Feb. 20-22 in Paris. These two encounters will establish the__ basis for VIDEO 75: The International Festi val, to be held in Buenos Aires in the fall of 1975. _ based in A ing on artists and. video i in Spanish and Rnglish, For more information write: CAYC, Elpidio Gonzalez 4070, Buenos Aires, Argentina. AVALANCHE Newspaper A special issue of AVALANCHE magazine came out in May/June 1974. Like the magazine, the newspaper is artists talking or writing about their work. The focus of this issue is on a series of events presented at 112 Green St., N. Y.C. as the Video Performance exhibition on nine successive evenings last January °74. Participants in the evenings and this issue of Avalance include: Vito Acconci, Robert Bell, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Ulrike Rosenbach, Dennis Oppenheim, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Willoughby Sharp, and William Sharp. The’ shift from the strict 2-D plane to a more 3-D interactive relation with video, places video in theatre. This magazine is an excellent print aftermath of these Video Performance evenings. For copies of this publication write: AVALANCHE NEWSPAPER, 93 Grand St., New York, N.Y. 10013. Gallery & Museum Notes: Schroeder Gallery, 270 Sutter St., San Francisco, Calif. This gallery opened Aug. 30 and is dedicated to the ‘presentation of video art.” The opening show were the videographics of The Center of Art, and Comp lication is. ‘ Gary Schroeder. ‘Video Works’ by Joel Wm. Hermann opened in November. The gallery is operated by Robert Siegel and Gary H. Schroeder. The iaeda Museum of Art has a new curator of video, Richard Simmons. For information on their program write: 407 James St., Syracuse, N.Y. 13203. 3 * * * The Bulletin for Film and Video is an excellent source of information on activities, publications, etc. in film and video. To subscribe: 80 Wooster St. N.Y.C. 10012. Arts Notices Send notices of video events, & works and information on video in museums, etc. Arts Editor, CVR, P.O. Box 21068, Washington, D.C. Contributions are welcome. Deadline for next issue is: January 6, 1975. it 2s