3.
VIDEOFREEX: THE ART OF GUERRILLA TELEVISION
ANDREW INGALL
Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
Andrew Ingall
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The exhibition Videofreex: The Art of Guerrilla Television surveys the history and mythology of the Videofreex, a collective of artists, activists, and storytellers who produced and disseminated alternative media in New York City and New York State, as well as in other U.S. communities and abroad, from 1969 to 1978. Taking advantage of the Sony Portapak’s instant playback, lightweight hardware, and relative affordability, the Videofreex pioneered the use of portable video as an emerging medium for creative expression and as a tool to promote greater access to mass communications. The Videofreex established Lanesville TV, the first pirate television station in the United States, located in the Catskill Mountains. Lanesville TV served as a base for media education and training, one of the first media art centers hosting local and international visitors, and a model for producers of independent media during a period of limited options in American broadcasting. The ten core members of the Videofreex, many of whom remain active today as artists, journalists, and media makers, are Skip Blumberg, Nancy Cain, David Cort, Bart Friedman, Davidson Gigliotti, Chuck Kennedy, Mary Curtis Ratcliff, Parry Teasdale, Carol Vontobel, and Ann Woodward.
Screenshots of feedback, n.d. Gelatin silver prints, typewriter ink on paper, and transfer lettering, mounted on paper Courtesy Nancy Cain (Videofreex) Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
Andrew Ingall
Through the display of newly restored videotape excerpts, photography, drawings, prints, ephemera, publications, and historic audiovisual equipment, the exhibition highlights the role of the Videofreex as documenters and broadcasters of counterculture, contributors to exhi-
Videofreex : The Art of Guerrilla Television
bitions of video art and time-based media, and precursors for a new generation of artists utilizing social media and participatory art practices. Looking back almost half a century, these early adopters of new technology—along with other like-minded contemporaries—embraced video’s unique qualities during a period of tremendous social, political, and cultural change in the United States. The immediacy and process-oriented nature of video were considered inherently different from fine art filmmaking and independent, nonfiction film. By the 1960s, film had established a canon of works and a roster of auteurs. In contrast, video was terra incognita as a communications tool and artistic medium. For documentarians and journalist-activists, the instant playback and mobility of portable video provided users with opportunities for greater intimacy and trust with their interview subjects. For visual artists interested in working with the moving image, video allowed freedom from the conventions of cinematic celluloid film. Video was also inexpensive because it eliminated costs associated with film development and printing. Tape could be reused for multiple recordings. And video seemed to offer its users greater accessibility and wider distribution. Those who pioneered video not only distinguished it from film—which had a concurrent and particular history of artistic experimentation in the 1960s and 70s1—but also television.2
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ORIGINS
Origins Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
Andrew Ingall
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Throughout the radical activism and cultural revolutions of the 1960s, a generation critical of the mass media began producing their own outlets for alternative information. Art Kunkin established the Los Angeles Free Press (19641978), regarded as the first underground newspaper published in the United States. Other subversive periodicals followed such as The Berkeley Barb (1965-1980), The East Village Other (1965-1972), and Liberation News Service (1967-1981).3 Similarly, early video makers questioned why television was centralized in three commercial networks, which saturated audiences with wholesome family sitcoms, formulaic variety shows, and a limited flow of local, national, and global news. Rather than passively consume television, the Videofreex and a handful of other alternative media groups and individuals realized they could produce their own.
Ann Woodward Parry Teasdale records Mayday 1971 using a Portapak 35mm slide Courtesy Videofreex.
Origins Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
Andrew Ingall
In addition to being an era of upheaval, the late 1960s was also a time of technological innovation. Perhaps the greatest scientific wonder of 1969 was the Apollo XI landing, observed by an estimated 600 million television viewers. The 1967 debut of the battery-operated Sony CV-2400 “Video Rover” Portapak was less dramatic than a man on the moon, but this electronic communications device was equally groundbreaking for media makers. The Portapak recorded black and white images on ½-inch reel-to-reel magnetic tape, a video format lower in quality than two-inch “quad” (quadruplex), which was the TV-industry standard at that time. Despite its aesthetic limitations,
Videofreex : The Art of Guerrilla Television
the hand-held Portapak videotape recorder (VTR) freed video makers to get out of the studio and onto the streets. In 1969, Parry Teasdale procured early video equipment from Grayson Mattingly, whose company Videoforms produced training videotapes for corporations and federal agencies.4 That summer Teasdale brought his gear to the Woodstock Music Festival to document the events. Among the estimated 400,000 festival attendees he met David Cort, who was carrying a portable VTR and intending to set up a temporary playback system for tapes recorded on site. Rather than focusing their cameras on the concert, Cort and Teasdale worked together to record activity in the festival crowd and share the videos with others on site. For example, one of their tapes includes an interview with a volunteer at a tent station for festivalgoers requiring medical attention. Cradling a lamb in his lap—an image reinforcing his message of non-violence and compassion—the man describes how he takes care of individuals experiencing bad acid trips.5 As Cort continued to interview people at Woodstock, he met the fast-talking Lou Brill who worked in the mailroom at CBS. Brill offered to introduce Cort to his colleague Don West, an ambitious 39-year-old journalist who served as executive assistant to CBS president Frank Stanton. Although he had no experience as a producer, West had proposed a TV pilot in the spring of 1969 to explore youth and coun-
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terculture to replace the controversial, recently canceled program The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. With Brill’s urging, West made an appointment to meet Cort, viewed the Woodstock tapes, and was impressed with their raw energy. Receiving a green light, West hired the Videofreex—originally David Cort, Mary Curtis Ratcliff, and Parry Teasdale— along with additional personnel to produce a pilot presentation that was ultimately named Subject to Change. The Videofreex recruited Chuck Kennedy, an engineer coveted among the emerging video community for his technical knowledge, as well as Davidson Gigliotti, a visual artist with superior carpentry skills. Prior to engaging the Videofreex, West hired Nancy Cain and subsequently Carol Vontobel and Skip Blumberg, who quickly crossed over and joined the ranks of the Videofreex. Bart Friedman and Ann Woodward plugged in to the group after Subject to Change.
Stills from The Whitelake Woodstock Aquarian Exposition, 1969. Image copyright of the artists, courtesy Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org
Origins Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
Andrew Ingall
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SUBJECT TO CHANGE
Subject to Change Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
Andrew Ingall
Videofreex / TheArt Artof ofGuerrilla Guerilla Television : The Television
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The Videofreex and the rest of the Subject to Change team worked on the project with little supervision and a great deal of resources. West generously provided travel funds and equipment. The Videofreex shot hours of footage in New York, California, and Chicago. Rather than editing material for a traditional hour-long pilot presentation, the Videofreex conceived a live, multimedia event. Dispensing with a tripod, the Videofreex held the camera close to interview subjects. They sacrificed a steady camera for intimacy. The most notorious figure to appear in Subject to Change was Yippie co-founder Abbie Hoffman, who was among the defendants of the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, also known as the Chicago Seven. Hoffman was accused of inciting riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. In the video, Hoffman explains to David Cort that the trial is “an action that’s gonna divide the ruling class. Life magazine called it an act of vengeance, not a trial. Time magazine’s already said we’re being railroaded. When you get the mass media like that dividing up and splitting along the different issues and you start to move in. And you say, look, what we really need is a revolution. We want to overthrow the country. We want money, guns, dynamite, lollipops, acid, dope, everything!”6 Through his manipulation of the trial into a media spectacle, Hoffman revealed a wide gap between two sets of generational values. The Videofreex recorded Hoffman’s television interview, capturing his image and words at the peak of his prominence.
Subject to Change Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
Andrew Ingall
Other elements of Subject to Change focused on alternative arts and education. Jugglers Hovey Burgess and Judy Finelli from the Circo dell’Arte troupe reflected the carnivalesque atmosphere generated by Hoffman at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. Pacific High School, an alternative learning community near Palo Alto, demonstrated co-operative government by students, staff, and parents. A rehearsal with Norman Taffel’s 70 Grand Theatre featured performers enacting animal sacrifice and a recitation of verses from the Bible’s last supper. Martin’s Magic Pillow, a collaborative event at San Francisco’s Exploratorium, featured electronic music by composer Martin Bartlett and an inflatable installation designed by the architecture/media collective Ant Farm. While in Chicago, the Videofreex recorded activist Tom Hayden, who alongside Abbie Hoffman, was a defendant in the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. However, when Hayden learned that the footage would be used for a pilot for CBS, he worried that the network would keep the material and use it against the defendants in court. Hayden requested that the Videofreex erase the tapes and the Videofreex obliged. On the same trip, they also recorded a meeting with Fred Hampton, the charismatic, 21-year old deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. Interviewed at the home of philanthropist Lucy Montgomery, Hampton discusses the Party’s hunger and health programs and its ability to renew and perpetuate leadership. The Videofreex pointed
Audience at 98 Prince Street with control room in the background. Still from Subject to Change, 1969. Image copyright of the artists, courtesy Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org
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their camera upwards at Hampton, a wide-angle lens exalting his graceful hands as he emphasized talking points.
The tape took on a special significance when just a few weeks after the recording, Chicago policemen shot Hampton to death in an apartment on December 4, 1969. Historian Deirdre Boyle suggests that Tom Hayden’s paranoia about CBS may have influenced the Videofreex’s caution in showing the Hampton tape to Don West.7 Ultimately the Videofreex were justified in withholding footage from their supervisor, although more for artistic than legal reasons. Over the next few days West took the Videofreex’s footage and produced his own version of the pilot in order to make the show more palatable to his CBS superiors. West’s assembly of material juxtaposed the Hampton videotape with filmed CBS news footage of his funeral, and added a plaintive folk-rock soundtrack and conventional voiceover narration. It epitomized all of the authoritative and manipula-
The Videofreex toured California in an RV as part of their research for Subject to Change. Still from Super-8 film. Courtesy Videofreex.
Subject to Change Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
Andrew Ingall
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Abbie Hoffman in stills from Subject to Change, 1969. Image copyright of the artists, courtesy Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org
tive qualities of commercial television that the Videofreex resisted and rejected.8 West demanded that his rendition replace what the Videofreex were planning to screen. In response, Parry Teasdale threatened to pull the plug on the entire show. West demurred. The Videofreex proceeded with their original edit and format.
Stills from Fred Hampton tape, 1969. Image copyright of the artists, courtesy Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org
On December 17, 1969, fellow “freaks� from the downtown art and video community gathered at a rented SoHo loft on 98 Prince Street for the premiere. While the majority of guests sat on pillows and bleachers in the main studio surrounded by multiple monitors, CBS executives were sequestered in an adjoining loft. Subject to Change Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
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The 90-minute presentation featured six segments channeled through a primitive colorizer designed by artist Eric Siegel and accompanied with live music by several bands including Buzzy Linhart, a rising star in the Greenwich Village folk-rock scene and neighbor of the Videofreex. The impressionistic flow of Subject to Change avoided anything resembling network television reportage. Instead of offering authoritative voiceover, the Videofreex presented verité footage that allowed individuals to tell their own stories.9 At the end of the presentation, the lights came up in the loft. According to historian Deirdre Boyle’s interview transcripts with the Videofreex, memories of what transpired are hazy. In live footage recorded as part of the Subject to Change video, David Cort hands out acetate sheets printed with production credits and asks the audience to raise them for the camera, making participants appear as if holding placards at a political protest. Indeed, the experience agitated network executives. Mike Dann, head of CBS programming, exited the private viewing room and delivered a condescending speech that nonetheless acknowledged that Subject to Change was five years ahead of its time.10
studio and network. Thanks to the largesse of CBS, the Videofreex retained their cutting-edge gear to record, produce, and present more videos at 98 Prince Street. But the dramatic story of Subject to Change did not end with the CBS executives walking out the door of the Videofreex loft. Concerned that the network would relinquish material to the FBI, the Videofreex conducted a mission to repossess the Hampton and Hoffman tapes along with other reels that they considered artistic property. Late at night, Parry Teasdale and Skip Blumberg entered the CBS offices with an empty guitar case and smuggled the tapes out of the corporate edifice known as “Black Rock.” The real work of the Videofreex was about to begin.
CBS fired Don West along with his production team. Subject to Change never aired. The Videofreex may have failed in providing a format suitable for network television, but freed from any illusion of corporate compatibility, they achieved a greater sense of purpose by reinventing themselves as an alternative production
Preface
David A. Ross
Left “Black Rock,” CBS headquarters in New York City Top Donald West, n.d. Gelatin silver print Courtesy Nancy Cain (Videofreex)
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ART SCENE AND ART SEEN
Art Scene and Art Seen Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
Andrew Ingall
Videofreex / TheArt Artof ofGuerrilla Guerilla Television : The Television
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While remaining on the edges of the mainstream art world, video matured over the course of the 1970s thanks to fringe practitioners working in broadcast studios, galleries, and festivals. Philanthropists and arts organizations also played significant roles in the artistic development of video on broadcast television and its dissemination in galleries and theaters. The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation all seeded initiatives. Grant recipients included significant venues in New York City for showcasing video: Global Village, The Kitchen, People’s Video Theater, the New York AvantGarde Festival, and others. Among these video presenters, the Videofreex loft was a vital part
Left The Kitchen, Calendar, 1975 Courtesy The Kitchen Archive, c. 1971 - 1999, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles Top Rose Art Museum Vision & Television: An Exhibition of the Poses Institute of Fine Arts catalog, 1970 Printed book Bottom Global Village Erotic Video Arts Exhibition, 1974 Offset print on paper Courtesy Parry Teasdale and Carol Vontobel (Videofreex)
Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
Andrew Ingall
Videofreex : The Art of Guerrilla Television
of downtown New York’s video ecology, serving as a “video theater” and social space on Friday nights. Members of the collective used the Prince Street loft and later their Hudson Valley live/work space at Maple Tree Farm as studios for producing artistic interventions, single-channel videos, and art installations at galleries, museums, and festivals. Artistic projects of the Videofreex emphasized play and interactivity, and communicated a message of collective empowerment and self-realization in relationship to new technology. (For further information about Videofreex installations, see Daniel Belasco’s essay in this catalog.) One month after Subject to Change, Russell Connor, then working as assistant director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, invited the Videofreex to participate in Vision & Television, the first museum exhibition devoted to video art.11 The inclusion of Videofreex in Vision & Television elevated their status in the art scene, situating them alongside more senior artists including Les Levine, Nam June Paik, and Aldo Tambellini. The Videofreex’s contribution was to document the exhibition, produce tapes, and engage the student population using a Plexi-covered production and playback unit consisting of several cameras and a Kalart Victor projector. Their presence was raucous and playful. Footage captured by the Videofreex at the exhibition includes a recording of Charlotte Moorman performing cello while wearing her iconic TV Bra for Living Sculpture. Designed by her frequent collabora-
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Top Still from Me’s and Youse, 1971. Image copyright of the artists, courtesy Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org Left Still from Oriental Magic Show (with a man in a box and a barbarian), 1973. Image copyright of the artists, courtesy Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org
Art Scene and Art Seen Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
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tor Nam June Paik, the wearable artwork features moving images on a pair of small monitors that respond to sounds from the musical instrument. In another section of tape, Skip Blumberg turns his camera on fellow Videofreex member Mary Curtis Ratcliff as she interacts with Paul Ryan’s Yes/No, an installation intended to expose ambiguous feelings of visitors using time-delayed video, and adds another layer of mediation to the artwork. The Videofreex effectively captured some of the emerging philosophy and theory of video at the exhibition. In footage of a panel discussion moderated by Connor, Frank Gillette cautions artists to be wary of technology and to avoid the pitfalls of format obsolescence. Rather than manipulating hardware, he suggests that artists should concentrate their efforts towards technology’s more conceptual issues such as software and data. He states, “At some point the artist realizes that he cannot affiliate with one given technology. He must treat technology as a whole, as an attitude of mind.”12 In contrast to Gillette’s conceptualism, Videofreex member David Cort brought a process-oriented approach to video from his theater background. When asked by Nam June Paik how he got involved with video, Cort responded plainly while pointing his Portapak at others, “I started because I looked through a camera once and found it very interesting. I thought it was a good move in terms of expressing myself…I thought also because it was so powerful…It’s a lot of fun.” Rather than theorizing, Cort pre-
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ferred to express the real-time qualities of video by demonstration and experiential learning. Midway through the panel, Cort accidentally tumbled into the lobby’s reflective pool near the discussants. But perhaps it was an unconscious stunt to emphasize his point about video’s spontaneity. Back in New York, the Videofreex continued to experiment with the playful and performative qualities of video. A number of Videofreex collaborated with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Shirley Clarke and the Tee Pee Videospace Troupe, which included influential media makers Shridhar Bapat, Wendy Clarke, Shalom Gorewitz, DeeDee Halleck, Andrew Gurian, Susan Milano, and others. Using her studio in the Chelsea Hotel and its rooftop, Clarke facilitated workshops using portable cameras, a custom-made patchboard, and monitors stacked to resemble anthropomorphic totems. For Clarke, the particular qualities of video were better suited than film for efforts to dissolve distinctions between creator and viewer.13 Tee Pee treated television as toy or plaything.
Peter Angelo Simon The Tee Pee Video Space Troupe, 1973 Inkjet print ©Peter Angelo Simon 1973/2014 Videofreex : The Art of Guerrilla Television
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The Videofreex also conducted their own video processing experiments. Produced in 1971, Me’s and Youse utilized a Sony special effects generator (SEG) to combine pairs of Videofreex faces, an analog antecedent of digital morphing. With a soundtrack of The Band’s The Weight played at high speed, the tape shows the Videofreex pulling at their cheeks, rolling their eyes, grimacing, and laughing explosively. The video encapsulates their joyous spirit and expresses an effort to balance collectivity and individuality. Oriental Magic Show (with a man
Left The Kitchen Calendar, April 1974 Offset print on paper Courtesy The Kitchen Archive, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles Left Bottom David Cort The Video Art Transposer proposal, n.d. Color photocopy on paper, ink, leather Courtesy Bart Friedman (Videofreex) Top Skip Blumberg (with Nancy Cain on the monitor) at the Everson Museum of Art, n.d. Color photograph. Courtesy Videofreex
Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
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Videofreex : The Art of Guerrilla Television
Left The Kitchen David Cort with His Friends, Explorations in the Videospace, 1974 Postcard (facsimile) Courtesy The Kitchen Archive, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles 49.184
in a box and a barbarian), from 1973, exploited a mirror effect with disorienting and entertaining results. By reversing the leads on the camera’s pickup tube, aiming a second camera at exactly the same frame, and processing through an SEG, Oriental Magic Show achieved a reverse split screen that allowed users to appear as if “opening a door to an invisible mystery space,” according to Skip Blumberg.14 Using video synthesis, the Videofreex coerced their tools— originally manufactured to operate according to conventional, pre-determined standards— to produce moving images of irreverence, spontaneity, and distortion. The Videofreex were hackers in an analog era.
Ann Woodward Videophones and Videomirrors, 1974. 35mm color slides. Courtesy Videofreex
Art Scene and Art Seen Videofreex: The Art of Guerilla Television
Andrew Ingall
In 1972, WNET, New York City’s public television affiliate, established TV Lab which became an essential studio for artists and engineers like the Videofreex to experiment with sophisticated video processing tools, as well as computers and lasers. Alumni of the residency program included Shirley Clarke, Bill Etra, Gary Hill, Joan Jonas, Steve Rutt, Bill Viola, and William Wegman, along with Videofreex members Skip Blumberg, Bart Friedman, and David Cort. Cort’s TV Lab project in 1974 was to develop Videophones and Videomirrors, a multi-part series of interactive installations. With technical and production support from Videofreex members, Cort exhibited the results of his TV Lab work at The Kitchen as Explorations in the Videospace (1974). This three-part show featured interactive stations demonstrating wipe and mirror effects, chroma key compositing, as
Videofreex : The Art of Guerrilla Television
well as video stills photographed on monitors by Ann Woodward. TV Lab also provided Cort with the resources to initiate the Video Art Transposer (VAT). Described as an “electronic magic mirror,” the VAT allowed viewers to insert their faces and bodies into pre-set images of art historical or fictional characters culled from the Metropolitan Museum of Art collections. By passing his or her hands over a table surface, the user creates a silhouette that reveals and conceals the respective images. Cort’s intention was to connect individuals more deeply with visual art and historical narrative through cognitive and physical processes. Upon receiving commissioning funds from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s education department and post-production support from Electronic Arts Intermix, Cort completed and exhibited the VAT in 1975 and sold it to a private collection. The VAT, along with earlier interactive projects developed by the Videofreex, anticipated experiential, user-generated media design in major art museums today, such as the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gallery One.15 While producing electronic interactive art, the Videofreex also documented live art including a recording of a Yayoi Kusama performance, the opening of a 1971 Yoko Ono retrospective This Is Not Here at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, and Love America or Live (1970), an action by Tosun Bayrak in front of the Videofreex’s building on Prince Street. Turkish-born Bayrak
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Preface
David A. Ross
DeeDee Halleck Explorations in the Videospace, Part 1, installation at The Kitchen, New York, 1974, printed 2014 Silver gelatin print Courtesy DeeDee Halleck Shirley Clarke and Nam June Paik “French kiss” using an interactive installation developed at David Cort’s residency at WNET’s TV Lab.
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earned a reputation as a “shock artist” for his events. With approval from the New York City Police Department, Bayrak covered a block of Prince Street with paper and posted handbills inviting “Exhibitionists, Inhibitionists, Parlor Pinks, Hangmen, Swingers, Equestriennes, Feminists, Chauvinists and Wandering Jews” to the event.16 Wearing a pith helmet and sporting an impressive moustache, Bayrak cuts into the paper revealing raw meat, entrails, and an animal fetus. A live pig and rats scamper across. A crew on the roof pours buckets of animal blood onto two naked performers. The paper-covered street transforms into an action painting. While much of the imagery is disquieting even today, perhaps the most troubling footage recorded by the Videofreex is of the crowd’s violent reaction. A fight breaks out. A man retches on the street. The Videofreex capture the blurring of reality and performance on tape.17
Still from Love America or Live, 1970. Image copyright of the artists, courtesy Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org
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SOCIAL AND POLITICAL MOVEMENTS
Social and Political Movements Preface
Andrew David A.Ingall Ross
Videofreex / TheArt Artof ofGuerrilla Guerilla Television : The Television
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Alongside their artistic activities, the Videofreex documented social and political movements in New York, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Chicago. Their self-appointed role was to serve as the unofficial television network of the counterculture. They videotaped the 1971 Mayday anti-Vietnam War protests in Washington, described by writer L.A. Kauffman as “the largest and most audacious civil disobedience action in American history.” Initiated by Chicago Conspiracy Trial defendant and New Left leader Rennie Davis, the Mayday Tribe called for a decentralized, nonviolent demonstration on May 1-3, 1971. In an effort to shut down the nation’s capital, protesters used “mobile tactics” to stimulate traffic jams and prevent government employees from getting to their jobs. In response, the government deployed 14,000 police, National Guardsmen, and U.S. Marines and aggressively conducted the largest sweep arrest (estimated by some accounts as 13,500) in U.S. history. The Mayday Collective, consisting of student and activist video groups, formed to collect reportage of the event. The Videofreex joined the collective to extend their efforts to document the anti-war movement that began with Subject to Change.19 Recognizing there was little thought to disseminating the material, Chuck Kennedy and Parry Teasdale attempted to set up a playback system and transmitter in DC, but without success. Sometimes the idea of the collective was
Preface
Videofreex : The Art of Guerrilla Television
Mayday Tribe, Tactical Manual, 1971, Ink on bound paper. Courtesy Noreen Banks David A. Ross
more effective than its actuality. After the protests, the Mayday Collective gathered at the Videofreex loft to collaboratively edit the footage. Arguments among the members ensued. In the pages of the video journal Radical Software, an anonymous member criticized the group’s apparent disjointed and individualistic nature: “Except on the level of equipment repair and exchange where there was much sharing, very little resembling collective process occurred before it came time to discuss how the forty hours of tapes should be edited and distributed.”20 Recalling the events differently, Skip Blumberg described, “a plethora of political spirit and camaraderie” as the Mayday Collective broke up into small groups, edited discrete sections, and then combined them as a whole.21 Despite the complicated working conditions, the Mayday Collective’s final edit yielded powerful images that the major networks had omitted in their news coverage. Footage includes dramatic confrontations with club-wielding police (including David Cort receiving a blow while taping), marines leaping from helicopters, protesters fleeing from tear gas, and Davidson Gigliotti’s documentation of his experience in a jail cell with other protesters.22 The edit also features recordings of dynamic speakers including Rennie Davis who criticizes the press, a mother who complains of insufficient government support, and an activist named Chamomile who suggests that straight men critical of transvestites should try on a dress in order to achieve sexual freedom for all. Due to political disagreements among
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those involved with the Mayday Collective, their edit was not widely distributed through alternative video networks.23 The Videofreex, which counted four women among its ten members, recognized the importance of feminism as a social movement. Video itself promised a level playing field across gender because of its novelty as a communications tool. Nancy Cain posits: “If there had not been portable video I don’t think that it would have been possible for women to be equals in the new media. If it had been film, well, film was owned and run by men. It was an established fact that men were the producers and directors and editors and managers in every way and the women were ‘script girls’ and ‘assistants’ and ‘secretaries.’ But it wasn’t film. It was video. And no one knew how to do it. We were all beginners.”24
Left Stills from Mayday 1971, 1971: A policeman strikes David Cort with a club. Courtesy Videofreex Partnership Top Stills from Mayday 1971, 1971: Rennie Davis; a jail cell where Davidson Gigliotti videotaped others arrested by the police Courtesy Videofreex Partnership
Preface
David A. Ross
Videofreex : The Art of Guerrilla Television
In 1970, the Videofreex documented a series of feminist rallies, including a march on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue held in conjunction with the Women’s Strike for Equality, a nationwide demonstration that took place on August 26. Organized by writer and activist Betty Friedan to mark the 50th anniversary of women’s suffrage, the event was described by Time magazine as “the first big demonstration of the Women’s Liberation movement.”25 With a microphone in hand, Chuck Kennedy interviewed participants. He asked, “Why are you marching today?” and a demonstrator responded succinctly with apparently well-rehearsed talking points: “I’m for freedom and equality for ev-
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Preface
David A. Ross
Videofreex : The Art of Guerrilla Television
A policeman prepares to club David Cort in Washington, DC during the Mayday 1971 protests. Courtesy Videofreex
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eryone and the major oppressed group in the United States today is women, if not in the world.” She listed demands: Control over one’s body, including abortion on demand, equal opportunity to higher education and professional advancement, equal pay for equal work, and the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment to apply to women, as well as to people of diverse race, creed, and national origin. The tape also included footage of male counter-demonstrators chanting “Draft women now!” and observers on the sidelines expressing ambivalence towards feminist goals. The Videofreex explored similar feelings of anxiety about gender equality in several videos. In Sybil (1970), Nancy Cain interviews an upside down chin face puppet performed by Carol Vontobel. When asked by Cain about women’s liberation, Sybil claims ignorance (“I guess it’s important…I don’t know too much about it”) and that she does not feel exploited. Despite the fact that she is a puppet, Sybil is an everywoman who represents the majority of American opinion. She is as real as the confident, self-possessed marcher on Fifth Avenue. In Curtis’ Abortion (1970), Mary Curtis Ratcliff describes the step-by-step process of terminating her pregnancy. Since New York was one of only seventeen states where medical professionals provided these services legally and safely, Ratcliff notes that many of the women at her clinic were from other parts of the country. Nancy Cain and Carol Vontobel also share their personal experiences with abortion—some
Videofreex / The Art of Guerrilla Television
Raindance Foundation, “Mayday 1971 Diary”, Radical Software, v. 1 n. 5, 1972, 61. Courtesy Radical Software
botched—thus transforming the tape into a consciousness-raising session and a political act. The beginning of the video includes some revealing moments. After the Videofreex men leave the room, Cain and Ratcliff have the following exchange before proceeding to the abortion “rap”:
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Right Still from Curtis’ Abortion, 1970. Image copyright of the artists, courtesy Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org Bottom Still from Sybil, 1970. Image copyright of the artists, courtesy Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org
Top Still from Women’s Lib Demonstration NYC, 1970. Image copyright of the artists, courtesy Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org Social and Political Videofreex: The ArtMovements of Guerilla Television
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Bottom Stills from Mayday 1971: a United States Marines helicopter lands Courtesy Videofreex Partnership
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been watching myself on tape.
spontaneous, unscripted dialogue among the Videofreex personalize the instruction and layer the information with a sense of authenticity and urgency.
Ratcliff: Really? You don’t think you’re feminine. What’s feminine? Cain: I don’t know. (laughter)
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These personal insights, preserved because of the medium’s real-time qualities, may have otherwise been cut from the video. In fact, the Preface
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While living and working in SoHo, the Videofreex took advantage of New York’s artistic and political activity between 1970 and 1971. However, the city ultimately drained their energy and resources. The high cost of urban living proved difficult to sustain an alternative media production company. New York City’s crowded airwaves made it impossible to disseminate alternative media beyond small theaters and galleries. The Videofreex had spent time in the Catskills while editing Subject to Change, and they decided to return to the region for the next stage of their work.
Left Videofreex and guests on Maple Tree Farm porch, 1971, Gelatin silver print Courtesy Parry Teasdale and Carol Vontobel (Videofreex) Top The Videofreex and their “media buses” at Maple Tree Farm, n.d. Courtesy Videofreex
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Between 1970 and 1971, the New York State Council on the Arts grew its film, literature and TV/media program budget from $65,000 to $1.5 million, providing artists working in television and video with expanded grant opportunities. In their annual report, NYSCA stated, “It is too early to say precisely what the art of video comprises but the Council has been a positive supporter in the search to find out.”27 Noting that NYSCA had a special interest in “video literacy” and reaching populations beyond New York City, the Videofreex crafted a grant proposal to offer mobile workshops in upstate New York. Using the Rochester Museum and Science Center as a fiscal agent and partner, the Videofreex successfully received a $73,500 award to create a “Media Bus” (a van, in fact) serving museums, schools, and community organizations.28 They also used NYSCA funds to identify and train local video makers who ultimately established
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Portable Channel, a media center and equipment rental pool in Rochester.29 Seeking an upstate home and studio to fulfill the NYSCA grant, the Videofreex rented Maple Tree Farm, a 17-room clapboard-sided house in Lanesville, NY. The owners, Sam and Miriam Ginsberg, were a Yiddish-speaking couple who had previously rented the house to summer boarders. Lanesville was a Greene County hamlet with few amenities: a general store, a bar, and poor television reception. A 40-minute drive from Woodstock through the Stony Clove Valley, Lanesville was a world away from the center for hippies and artists—socially, politically, and economically. Shortly after the Mayday edit the Videofreex moved out of the SoHo loft and into Maple Tree Farm where they lived as a collective until 1978. Life at Maple Tree Farm was idyllic for the Videofreex who appreciated the pastoral setting, vegetable garden, and family environment they cultivated with communal meals. Grounded in a strong work ethic, the Videofreex shared a purpose to produce independent, community-based television. Maple Tree Farm was one of the first media art centers in the world. Artists from near and far either paid social visits, participated in productions, or accessed equipment in exchange for a nominal fee or bartered services. Guests included Dave Jones, a video artist who lived in the neighboring hamlet of Chichester and
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“Media Bus is an attempt at organic video network emergence”, Radical Software, v. 1 n. 3, 1971, 4. Courtesy Radical Software Videofreex : The Art of Guerrilla Television
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later established himself as a pre-eminent media art engineer; Raindance’s Beryl Korot and Ira Schneider who spent weekends in nearby Ulster County; Joan Braderman, Shirley Clarke, Maxi Cohen, Shalom Gorewitz, Dan Graham, Red Grooms, DeeDee Halleck, Joan Jonas, experimental theater director Richard Foreman, and numerous other artists who traveled from New York City; and Jack Moore of the Videoheads collective and Carole and Paul Roussopoulos, co-founders of Video Out in Paris, who sojourned from Europe. Maple Tree Farm functioned at times like a country B&B for the media arts community.
Top Ann Woodward Media Van pissing on Network TV, n.d., Pen and ink on paper, 3 5/8 x 4 in. Courtesy Nancy Cain (Videofreex) Left Raindance Foundation, “Feedback: Videofreex/Media Bus at Maple Tree Farm,” Radical Software, v. 1 n. 5, 1972, 60. Courtesy Radical Software
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Incorporating as a non-profit named Media Bus with Skip Blumberg as president, the Videofreex applied their NYSCA grant towards mobile workshops, but concurrently pursued what became the centerpiece for their work as a collective: Lanesville TV, the first illegally built broadcast television station in the United States. In 1972, the Federal Communications Commission began to require cable television to set aside channels for government, educational purposes, and public access. However, at this time cable was nonexistent in a small market like Lanesville. According to Teasdale, “This put us in an awkward position. [The Videofreex] went around the world extolling the virtues of local programming, but we produced none for our own neighbors.”30 The Videofreex took steps to address this gap in community engagement. With the help of a pirate radio operator named Joseph Paul Ferraro,
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Ann Woodward During a winter snowstorm in 1971, the Videofreex set up a 50-foot antenna near Maple Tree Farm in order to receive broadcast signals from New York City. 35mm slide Courtesy Videofreex
they mounted a handmade Channel 3 antenna on the Maple Tree Farm roof and ran a cable from the control room to an amplifier designed by Chuck Kennedy. The heart of Lanesville’s unlicensed, jury-rigged broadcast system was a modulator, purchased with funds Abbie Hoffman gave the Videofreex in exchange for Parry Teasdale’s ghostwritten text on guerrilla broadcasting which appeared in Hoffman’s famous manual for cultural revolution, Steal This Book. The modulator converted audio and video from their VTRs into signals that could be watched on standard TV channels.31 Thus America’s first pirate television station was born. Beginning on March 18, 1972, Lanesville TV aired on Sunday and Wednesday nights at 7 p.m. However, based on time constraints, the Videofreex eventually dropped the Wednesday program and shifted weekly broadcasts from Sunday to Saturday until Lanesville TV went off the air in February 1977. While living and working in New York City, the Videofreex documented their neighbors: avant-garde artists, musicians, and radical activists. Lanesville TV similarly portrayed its neighbors, but with a difference that could only be achieved in a small town. To some degree, those neighbors became co-creators of Lanesville TV as interview subjects, actors, and critics. Providing the Maple Tree Farm telephone number on the screen, the Videofreex encouraged viewers to call in and report on the quality of their TV reception and program content.32
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Raindance Foundation, “Lanesville Television,” Radical Software, v. 2 n. 1, 1972. Courtesy Radical Software
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One of the most popular programs was The Buckaroo Bart Show, an improvisational Saturday morning children’s show starring Videofreex member Bart Friedman as the cowboy hero, a local boy named John Benjamin as sidekick Sheriff John, and Howard Raab, a carpenter and artist who played the role of the inept villain Horrible Howard. Buckaroo Bart made its debut with “Don’t Throw Yer Cans in the Road,” a comedic sketch that doubled as public service announcement for preserving the environment. Bart, John, and Horrible are strolling along a rural lane. When Horrible flings a soda can over his shoulder, Sheriff John and Bart grab him by both arms, force him to pick up the can, and scold him about littering. Invited to contribute to the journal Radical Software, the Videofreex presented a sequence of off-screen photographs and dialogue bubbles, similar to a cartoon strip, from this episode.
The Videofreex recognized the power of traditional television tropes, as seen in Buckaroo Bart and other Lanesville TV programs, as a means to develop an audience. Media theorist Marshall McLuhan specifies in Understanding Media that the television western fosters a DIY ethic among its viewers: “With TV, the western acquired new importance, since its theme is always: ‘Let’s make a town.’ The audience participates in the shaping and processing of a community from meager and unpromising components.”33 McLuhan suggests that audiences more easily contribute their knowledge and experiences to television genres like the western, and thus demonstrate a higher degree of engagement. Despite meager production funds, Lanesville TV expanded the idea of participatory television by asking their audiences for feedback and involving members of the community directly in productions. Another example of Lanesville TV’s dialogical television programming is Harriet (1973). Directed by Nancy Cain, this work of nonfiction starred homemaker Harriet Benjamin, the mother of “Sheriff John.” Over several months, Cain developed a close friendship with Harriet. During regular visits to her nearby trailer, Cain documented Harriet’s daily chores: putting the kids on the school bus, making the bed, and doing laundry. Using intermittent flash-forward edits, Cain records Harriet as she throws a suitcase in the car and declares explosively, “No washing, no ironing, no cooking, nothing. I’m sick of Lanesville. I want to see something different. Good-bye Lanesville. I’ve had seventeen
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John Dominis (b. United States, 1927–2013), Videofreex and neighbors at Lanesville General Store, 1973. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy Parry Teasdale and Carol Vontobel (Videofreex)
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years of it and that’s enough!” Harriet takes off on to the open road, cackles with laughter, and sings Roll Out the Barrel. Cain did not set out to produce a work on women’s empowerment. However, she screened Harriet as part of the Women’s Video Festival. Critic Martha Gever wrote: “Like other feminist artists who have stretched definitions of reality to encompass resistance to accepted and expected female behavior, Cain uses the realistic connotations of documentary to describe actual experience and to indicate dissatisfaction with the status quo.”34 Harriet, who was videotaped in a ver-
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Ann Woodward Rocky Van vs. Frankie “The Fist” Farkle, 1975 35mm slide Courtesy Videofreex
ité style comparable to the work of Alan and Susan Raymond (An American Family, 1973), is a compelling subject for feminists and general audiences alike. Cain bursts two-dimensional stereotypes of low-income people by enabling her protagonist to reveal a rich inner life heretofore concealed.
The Videofreex continued to focus on Lanesville as their primary audience while continuing to distribute tapes using self-produced catalogs and listings in alternative publications such as Radical Software. On two occasions, they reached a larger public television audience for their work in two co-productions with Video and Television Review (VTR), a WNET series that served as a showcase for TV Lab artists-in-residence. Russell Connor, who served as New York State Council on the Arts’ head of TV/Media after leaving the Rose Art Muse-
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um, was the show’s host. In probably America’s smallest TV station (1975), Connor states in an introductory voiceover, “Lanesville TV could be one of the signposts towards a future in which we all will have video cameras.. It certainly is the most neighborly television around.” Indeed, the friendly Videofreex at Lanesville TV inspired a movement of locally produced public-access cable programmers and offered a glimpse into the smartphone-saturated future. During their tenure in Lanesville, the Videofreex produced approximately 258 shows varying in quality both from producer and audience perspectives. Bart Friedman’s phrase, “sometimes peanuts and sometimes shells” aptly describes their output. Friedman originally used the expression when pushing The Lanesville TV Newsbuggy through country roads in the Stony Clove Valley to gather the latest in current events. The Newsbuggy was a baby carriage repurposed to hold a Portapak. Once again, the Videofreex satirized another TV trope: the dramatic, fast-paced “action news” of broadcast journalism that developed in the 1970s. Often the only newsworthy event was a passing car on Route 214 through Stony Clove Valley. In one episode, Friedman learns about the birth of some cows, receives an eyewitness account of a car accident, collects an update from a farmer about his pigs, and records yoga poses demonstrated by a visitor from Brooklyn.
Ann Woodward Rocky Van vs. Frankie “The Fist” Farkle, 1975 35mm slide Courtesy Videofreex
Rocky Van vs. Frankie “The Fist” Farkle (1975), an “epic battle” between two amateur boxers,
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was “the most spirited and accessible of all the Videofreex/Media Bus productions and a model for community programming that works,” according to Parry Teasdale.35 The bout served as a community fundraiser for the HunterTannersville volunteer rescue squad. A mockheroic text scroll introduces the program: “The annals of American myth welcome two new folk heroes who emerge as large as Paul Bunyan, as enduring as Rip Van Winkle…The valorous rescue squad was saved and this videotape is the folk tale.” The Videofreex solicited winner predictions from residents and recorded events leading up to the fight including training and weigh-in. With the presence of the camera, Rocky and Frankie improvised dialogue and assumed personas of mythic proportion. The program anticipated the best of what reality TV offered in succeeding decades—dramatic nonfiction with a cast of everyday folks—and omitted the worst: misleading editing, fabricated storylines, and vulgar celebrification. While living and working collectively in the Catskill Mountains, the Videofreex provided a support system that enabled members to pursue independent projects. For example, Davidson Gigliotti developed a series of multi-monitor artworks responding to the rural landscape. The first was Quaking Aspens (1972), a 19-minute four-channel work shot near Maple Tree Farm. Quaking Aspens features 90-second segments of tape recorded several times a day over a period of one month. The result is a lush,
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painterly study of nature and its formal qualities. Translucent leaves flutter in the wind like birds or twinkling stars. Insects fly, waters rush, and woodpeckers peck. As the camera rests on a group of sturdy tree trunks, a chainsaw buzzes and a voice asks, “This is a Quaking Aspen isn’t it?” The work was exhibited at The Kitchen in a program that also featured Beryl Korot’s Dachau 1974, a multi-channel work that shares a structuralist approach, albeit to very different subject matter. Alongside Korot, Frank Gillette, and Ira Schneider, Gigliotti was among the first video artists to explore the sculptural qualities of multi-channel installation and also one of the first to write critically about it. In Korot and Schneider’s Video Art anthology, Gigliotti wrote, “One of the things that video art has to be is a search for new methods of structuring information. Multi-channel work seems to offer flexibility and precision, both visually and temporally, and so it seems attractive to me.” Gigliotti continued his study of forms in subsequent installations including Hunter Mountain (1973), first exhibited at the New York Avant-Garde Festival in a baggage car at Grand Central Station; The Structure of Dry-Fly Fishing (1973-1974) and Lines and Masses (aka Hunter Mountain Two, 1975), both exhibited at The Kitchen.
Stills from Quaking Aspens, 1972. Courtesy Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research, Shirley Clarke Collection
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Videofreex at Maple Tree Farm. Courtesy of Videofreex
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COMMUNITY EDUCATION
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Education quickly became a critical part of Videofreex practice. They taught each other Portapak production and repair skills and then passed on their knowledge to others. They earned a reputation as the most technologically savvy of the active video groups. The Videofreex encouraged interview subjects to hold equipment and offered them a basic understanding of magnetic media technology. They developed a more systematic and holistic pedagogy with Cooperstown TV is a Museum, an experiential video workshop for historians that took place in 1972. In cooperation with the New York State Historical Association at the Fenimore House Museum, the Videofreex organized a training seminar for approximately 35 scholars, curators, and educators in video documentation, exhibition, and community engagement. Using Lanesville TV as a model, workshop participants also co-produced Cooperstown’s first live cablecast using the local Fish and Game Club as their studio. The Videofreex encouraged workshop participants to record tapes of Cooperstown residents and urged viewers to use their telephones to call in. The Oneonta Star bureau chief was impressed with the Videofreex, commenting in an article: “With cables all over…I watched with wide open eyes the young people, who were walking around or talking to each other setting up the equipment, but all the time knowing very well what they were doing, and as the results proved, coordinating all the details splendidly.”36 The success of Cooperstown TV is a Museum was in its totality of experience—from
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Top Videofreex, Cooperstown TV Is a Museum, 1973 Printed book 8 x 10 ½ in. Courtesy Skip Blumberg (Videofreex) Bottom John Dominis, Videofreex (l. to r.) David Cort, Bart Friedman, and Parry Teasdale (holding Sarah Teasdale) introduce Lanesville, NY resident Scottie Benjamin to Sony Portapak technology at Maple Tree Farm, 1973, Courtesy Videofreex
A flyer designed by Davidson Gigliotti describing Videofreex/ Media Bus programs and services. Courtesy Videofreex Videofreex : The Art of Guerrilla Television
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theory to process to production—and in its demonstration that technology can activate historical interpretation in a museum setting. The workshop was ultimately documented in a publication, produced as part of an artist residency at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, which combined discussion transcripts, descriptive notes, contact information, and photography in a quasi-hypertext format. An addendum to the publication reported that the workshop and cablecast generated increased interest in seeing Cooperstown TV continue with Portapak-produced local programming.37 The Videofreex’s following publication, The Spaghetti City Video Manual, written by Parry Teasdale (with input from Chuck Kennedy) and illustrated by Ann Woodward, was published in 1973 as a DIY repair and maintenance manual that saved Portapak users hundreds of dollars in costly repairs. Like most consumer products, the Portapak included a guidebook. However, its language was written for individuals with some degree of specialized knowledge. Similar to Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog, the influential counterculture magazine published between 1968 and 1972, the writing in Spaghetti City was accessible and intended for readers with no technical expertise. Woodward’s drawings were clever and instructive. A colorful cartoon strip appeared on the book cover: an anthropomorphic Portapak with Mickey Mouse hands and legs, eyes on its reels, and lips on its head drum strolls along an urban sidewalk and falls. A helpful screwdriver leads the damaged
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Portapak out of the urban jungle to an idyllic, grassy field populated by happy equipment, tools, the Videofreex, and their pets. The sun smiles and shines brightly, an attitude that the Videofreex cultivated on Lanesville TV with their theme song, A Sunny Disposish recorded by the Manhattan Transfer. The book, along with the many tapes, is a key part of the Videofreex legacy. Along with The Spaghetti City Video Manual, the Videofreex produced “tech tapes” featuring Dr. Electron—performed by Chuck Kennedy in one tape holding a light bulb and wearing a metallic poncho and a small television strapped to his groin—which explained basic video repair, part replacement, and soldering. The Videofreex convened engineers—both working in media arts and the commercial industry—through a series of professional development telephone conference calls coordinated by Teasdale and a face-to-face gathering called the TeleTechno Conferences. “Technoids” from groups such as the Experimental Television Center, Innervision, Media Study Buffalo, M.E.R.C., and Portable Channel met via telephone and in person to discuss Portapak maintenance, review computer/video interface systems, and plan for a test equipment pool.38
Photopostcard from the TeleTechno Conference at Maple Tree Farm, 1975/restored 2013 by Dave Jones. Standing left to right: Don McArthur of Experimental Television Center, Richard Monkhouse of EMS (hidden), Bill Claghorn of Adwar Video, Carl Geiger of Innervision, Chuck Heuer of Portable Channel, and Chuck Kennedy of Videofreex. Sitting left to right: Ken Jesser of Media Study Buffalo, Kevin Kenney of M.E.R.C., Dave Jones of Experimental Television Center, and Paul Lamarre of Tektronix. Courtesy Videofreex
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During seven years of working and living together in Lanesville, the Videofreex and the world changed. Technology evolved, too. New videotape formats replaced ½-inch open reel. VCRs replaced VTRs. The collectively administered structure of the Videofreex came to an end. Many members began to pursue other interests: solo careers as video practitioners or in other fields, new personal relationships, and parenthood. Although the last of the Videofreex moved out of Maple Tree Farm in 1978, the Videofreex experienced a renaissance with the establishment of their archive at Video Data Bank in 2001. The Videofreex continue their work as a legal partnership—administered by Skip Blumberg—for the licensing and distribution of their tapes.
bilize citizenry towards economic and political change. Wave Farm in the Catskills, KCHUNG in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, Otabenga Jones & Associates in Houston, Abounaddara in Damascus, and CAMP in Mumbai are but a few examples of today’s artist collectives that reflect strategies and values of early alternative broadcast pioneers. Thanks to wireless, video-enabled smartphones, technological tools for communication and creativity are more affordable and available to artists, activists, and the general public. Nevertheless, next generation media makers face their own challenges, such as access to the Internet and the means to control and experiment with technology. Their struggles may draw momentum and inspiration from what the Videofreex achieved 45 years ago.
Today’s contemporary artists and media makers stand on the shoulders of the Videofreex who serve as a model for community-based public access television, participatory art, and media democracy. Their non-hierarchical, collective action, as well as their long-term social engagement in Lanesville, inspired the co-founding of Paper Tiger TV, a public access and online showcase for art, academics, politics, and performance in 1981. Almost two decades later, during the 1999 World Trade Organization protests, Indymedia Centers formed to produce video in the tradition of Mayday 1971.39 In more recent years, global Occupy movements and the Arab Spring have shared images and text on social networking utilities such as Facebook and Twitter to mo-
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Bart Friedman, Nancy Cain, and Chuck Kennedy say farewell to landlord Sam Ginsberg on their last day at Maple Tree Farm, 1978. 35mm slide. Courtesy Parry Teasdale and Carol Vontobel (Videofreex)
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