Skip to main content

Rose Art Museum: Vision & Television

Videofreex

1970 00:59:34 United StatesEnglishB&WMono4:31/2" open reel video
Tags:
Art History, Video History

Description

This title documents events at the opening of the 1970 exhibition Vision and Televison.  Held at the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts from January 21 - February 22, the exhibition is widely regarded as the first museum exhibition of artist's video.

This two disc title contains the following video documentation:

  • Nam June Paik & Charlotte Moorman - TV Bra for Living Sculpture (39:43)

Featuring live footage of cellist Charlotte Moorman, clad only in her bra made of miniature televisions, creating fields of distortion with her electrified cello as she is encircled by Nam June Paik.  Poignantly, as the crowd huddles around to watch, you can hear Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ being played in the background.  After the performance, the Videofreex begin experimenting with their camera while filming other likeminded documentarians in the crowd.  The film concludes with Nam June Paik taking his shirt off and getting slapped by Moorman as he watches her prepare for another performance.

  • Panel Discusson with Artists (19:51)

A group of artists are filmed as they talk about the intersections between art and technology, difference in the personal and social implications of technological development. One participant discusses how at that time technological art meant manipulating hardware, while in the future more ethereal experiences will be created by manipulating technological software. Anticipating the complete technological integration of today’s society, the man describes a more effective experience being the affiliation of one’s self with the technological process in general as software rather than a dedication to any one particular technological output as hardware. David Cort also falls in a pool.

 

Exhibition organized by Russell Connor. Works by Frank Gillette (Amps, Volts and Watts), Ted Kraynik (Video Luminar #4) , Les Levine (The Dealer), Eugene Mattingly (Fred Helix), Nam June Paik with Charlotte Moorman,(TV Bra for Living Sculpture), Nam June Paik (The 9/23 Experiment, Still Life and Embryo for Wall to Wall TV), John Reilly and Rudi Stern (Innertube), Paul Ryan (Yes/No and Ego Me Absolvo), Ira Schneider (Random Interlace), Eric Siegel (Body, Mind and Video)., Aldo Tambellini (Some More Beginnings, Black Spiral and Black TV)), Jud Yalkut (Electronic Moon No. 2), USCO/Intermedia (Wave Forms and Tube Stills), Videofreex (Freex Out) and Joe Weintraub (AC/TV)

— Experimental TV Center

 

VDB Videofreex

Videofreex, one of the first video collectives, was founded in 1969 by David Cort, Mary Curtis Ratcliff and Parry Teasdale, after David and Parry met each other, video cameras in hand, at the Woodstock Music Festival. Working out of a loft in lower Manhattan, the group's first major project was producing a live and tape TV presentation for the CBS network, The Now Show, for which they traveled the country, interviewing countercultural figures such as Abbie Hoffman and Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

The group soon grew to ten full-time members--including Chuck Kennedy, Nancy Cain, Skip Blumberg, Davidson Gigliotti, Carol Vontobel, Bart Friedman and Ann Woodward--and produced tapes, installations and multimedia events. The Videofreex trained hundreds of makers in this brand new medium though the group's Media Bus project.

In 1971 the Freex moved to a 27-room, former boarding house called Maple Tree Farm in Lanesville, NY, operating one of the earliest media centers. Their innovative programming ranged from artists' tapes and performances to behind-the-scenes coverage of national politics and alternate culture. They also covered their Catskill Mountain hamlet, and in early 1972 they launched the first pirate TV station, Lanesville TV. An exuberant experiment with two-way, interactive broadcasting, it used live phone-ins and stretched cameras to the highway, transmitting whatever the active minds of the Freex coupled with their early video gear could share with their rural viewers.

During the decade that the Freex were together, this pioneer video group amassed an archive of 1,500+ raw tapes and edits.

In 2001, the Video Data Bank began assembling this unique archive of original 1/2-inch open-reel videos, collecting them from basements and attics where the tapes were stored. A restoration plan was hammered out in 2007 and a distribution contract was signed between VDB and the newly formalized Videofreex Partnership (administered by Skip Blumberg).

The Videofreex Archive, now housed at VDB, chronicles the countercultural movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The  titles listed here are the first wave of an ongoing project to preserve and digitize important examples of this early video.

More About the Videofreex Archive Preservation

Also see:

Parry Teasdale: An Interview

Videofreex Official Website