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Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is pleased to host a panel and screening in conjunction with the current exhibition, Videofreex: The Art of Guerrilla Television, organized by Andrew Ingall at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. Videofreex are a pioneering collective of media activists founded on the conviction that access to portable video equipment could provide an alternative voice to the monolith of network television.
This event will highlight the collective's bold interdisciplinary explorations, with a special focus on Videofreex founding member David Cort, who edited several of his key video works at EAI in the 1970s. Selections of Cort's video work, representing his use of video as an interactive tool for electronic imaging experimentation, will precede a panel discussion with Videofreex member Davidson Gigliotti, artist and Cort collaborator Shalom Gorewitz, and Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus of LoVid, who represent a new generation of artists integrating multiple disciplines through participatory media.
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Television and its offspring technology, video, were the springboards for the Videofreex. When CBS invited--then rejected--an experimental pilot presentation developed by the collective in 1969, it unwittingly galvanized the group's determined subversion of the form and function of corporate network television. The Freex turned the equipment and production knowledge they gained from the CBS experience, and funding from the New York State Council on the Arts, into their own brand of irreverent television.
For much of the 1970s, first in New York City and then in Lanesville (in Greene County, New York), the Videofreex sustained a creative, community-driven approach to making media that took full advantage of the collective's high technical proficiency and diverse skill-sets. Reflecting on this time, Davidson Gigliotti described the group as combining elements of "visual art, theater, music, comedy, tragedy, pedagogy, and outright buffoonery..." Explorations in the Videospace (1974), an exhibition organized by Cort for The Kitchen, which demonstrated special editing and imaging effects he explored at WNET's artist-centric TV Lab, is a poignant example of this playful hybridization. Theater, buffoonery, and visual art merged in the absurd image composites Cort and the Videofreex performed and recorded with the TV Lab's professional processing tools, creating video collages reminiscent of Dada or Fluxus: an expression of unscripted creativity that departed from tightly controlled corporate television in every way.
At EAI, excerpts of video from Explorations in the Videospace will be shown, followed by a discussion focused on how an interdisciplinary approach guided the Freex's projects, and what the legacy of this is today. Ingall and EAI's Director of Distribution, Rebecca Cleman will moderate the discussion.
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Videofreex is one of the pioneer production groups that formed when consumer video was first introduced in the late 1960s. Over their nine-plus years together, they produced several thousand videotapes, installations and multimedia events and trained hundreds of videomakers in the then new video medium. The core members are David Cort, Parry Teasdale, Mary Curtis Ratcliff, Nancy Cain, Chuck Kennedy, Skip Blumberg, Davidson Gigliotti, Carol Vontobel, Bart Friedman and Ann Woodward. In 2007, Chicago's Video Data Bank launched the Videofreex Archive. The archive serves as a comprehensive, searchable source for Videofreex coverage of this unique era of social and cultural change.
Videofreex: The Art of Guerrilla Television will be on view at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Patlz until July 12, 2015: www.newpaltz.edu/museum
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About EAI
EAI is one of the world's leading resources for moving image art. Founded in 1971, EAI is a New York-based nonprofit organization that fosters the creation, exhibition, distribution, and preservation of video and media art. EAI holds a major collection of over 3,500 new and historical media artworks, from groundbreaking early video by pioneering figures of the 1960s to new digital projects by today's emerging artists. EAI works closely with artists, museums, schools and other venues worldwide to preserve and provide access to this significant archive. EAI also presents public programs such as artists' talks, exhibitions and panels; extensive digital resources; viewing access; technical facilities, and educational services. EAI's Online Catalogue is a comprehensive resource on the artists and works in the EAI collection, and features expansive materials on media art's histories and current practices:
www.eai.org
Friends of EAI Membership 2015
Become a 2015 Friends of EAI Member at one of five levels and enjoy a range of wonderful benefits, including complimentary tickets to EAI on-site public programs and special access to the artists and works in the EAI collection. Membership helps to support our programs and services, including our online resources, educational outreach, and vital preservation activities. By becoming a Friend of EAI, you support the future of media art and artists. Memberships begin at $40 ($25 for students). For more information, and to become a member, please visit:
www.eai.org/eai/members.htm
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Electronic Arts Intermix
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10011
t (212) 337-0680
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info@eai.org
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This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council and is also made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. EAI receives program support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
In partnership with the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz.
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