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Robert Ashley: An Interview

Video Data Bank

1988 00:34:00 United StatesEnglishColorMono4:3Video
Tags:
Interview, Music, Performance, VDB Interviews

Description

Contemporary American composer and performance artist Robert Ashley (1930-2014) was a pioneer in the development of large-scale, collaborative performance works and new uses of language in operas and recordings. His landmark project, Perfect Lives, was opera produced for television in seven half-hour episodes.

In this interview with Peter Gena, the composer shares his interest in the exploration of visual media to express musical ideas. "There is a language and with that language you could be vernacular... or you could try to say something about some other realm of your life," he notes.

A historical interview originally recorded in 1988.

The Video Data Bank is the leading resource in the United States for videotapes by and about contemporary artists. The VDB collection features innovative video work made by artists from an aesthetic, political or personal point of view. The collection includes seminal works that, seen as a whole, describe the development of video as an art form originating in the late 1960's and continuing to the present. Works in the collection employ innovative uses of form and technology, mixed with original visual style to address contemporary art and cultural themes.

Founded in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement in the United States, the Video Data Bank is one of the nation's largest providers of alternative and art-based video. Through a successful national and international distribution service, the VDB distributes video art, documentaries made by artists, and recorded interviews with visual artists, photographers and critics.