Articles, Reviews & Interviews

This page includes a selection of reviews and articles relating to media art events at The Kitchen in the 1970s. Also featured is a lively interview conducted by Jud Yalkut with Woody and Steina Vasulka, Shridhar Bapat and Dimitri Devyatkin broadcast on WBAI. Please click on appropriate link to read an article or listen to the interview.
     
  John J. O'Connor, “What Hath The Underground Wrought?“
New York Times (June 4, 1972)

New York Times television critic John J. O'Connor discusses the Kitchen's 8-monitor installation of The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd by San Francisco collective Video Free America. This verite soap opera captures the lives of a porn actress and a bisexual drug-addict. O'Connor describes the screening as an extraordinary experience for the viewer; the images on the monitors are controlled live, ensuring the uniqueness of each screening.

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  John Rockwell, “Multimedia Concert at Kitchen Proves Less Than Success.”
 New York Times (February 20, 1973)

The reviewer is unimpressed by the multimedia concert at The Kitchen in February 1973. He discusses the three acts on the program: Charlotte Moorman's performance of Chamber Music by Takahisa Kosugi, Yoshi Wada's musical performance, and Nam June Paik's 10-monitor screening of Japanese TV commercials, which he finds Òrather less rewarding.Ó

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  Victor Ancona, "Strange Brew: What’s Cooking at the Kitchen?"
 Video Art (July 1977): pag. 42-44.

In this extensive article Victor Ancona traces the history and early years of the Kitchen, including its relationship to Howard Wise and Electronic Arts Intermix. He includes numerous quotes from Robert Stearns, the Kitchen's executive director at the time, and gives an account of the institution's current aims, programs and activities.

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David L. Shirey, "Video Art Turns to Abstract Imagery."
 New York Times (July 4, 1972): 6.

David L. Shirey reviews the Video Festival, organized by the Vasulkas, which was held at The Kitchen in July 1972. Even though he finds some works "tediously repetitive," he praises the "feeling of discovery, the impression of experiencing a new phenomenon." He comments on works by the Vasulkas, Aldo Tambellini, Stephen Beck, and Nam June Paik, and describes the various techniques that video artists employ. The article includes several quotes by Woody Vasulka, who states that video is still in its infancy, and that "All the video artists are like one big family learning from one another and thinking about video art's big future."

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The Kitchen: An Image and Sound Laboratory:
A Rap with Woody and Steina Vasulka, Shridhar Bapat and Dimitri Devyatkin
Broadcast on WBAI-FM, New York, on April 1, 1973.
Interviewer: Jud Yalkut.
Time: 01:07:18

This radio program was produced by Jud Yalkut and broadcast on WBAI-FM, New York, as part of a series of one-hour panel discussions on contemporary art, which were presented in the station's Artists and Critics series. Yalkut hosted several of them, including two shows on 16mm film in New York City, and two discussions on video. The first panel discussion on video, Talking Heads in Videospace, featured artists Nam June Paik, Shirley Clarke, Bill Etra and Walter Wright. The second program was about The Kitchen. The participants included the organization's founders and early programmers, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Shridhar Bhapat, and Dimitri Devyatkin. In this conversation, they discuss topics ranging from The Kitchen's genesis; its early focus on video artists working in electronic experimentation, rather than conceptualism; its context as a theater; its evolution from a grass-roots space to a more professional organization; and programs such as the Computer Art Festival. They also discuss the philosophical and aesthetic implications of video as a medium; its relation to literature and modern art; the growing vocabulary of technological tools, and video's communal and humanistic applications.

Listen to interview (MP3)
     
   

The Kitchen: An Image and Sound Laboratory:
A Rap with Woody and Steina Vasulka, Shridhar Bapat and Dimitri Devyatkin
Broadcast on WBAI-FM, New York, on April 1, 1973.
Interviewer: Jud Yalkut.

This 20-page document is Jud Yalkut's transcription of the interview described above.

Read interview