"EDITED AT EAI": Dara Birnbaum - Screening and Conversation

Please join us for a special evening featuring media artist Dara Birnbaum in conversation with former EAI editors Matt Danowski, Pat Ivers, and Ann Volkes, moderated by Lori Zippay. Birnbaum, one of the most important and influential artists working in video and multi-media installation, will discuss the creative processes surrounding analogue video editing and EAI's "laboratory-studio" atmosphere of the early 1980s with editors whom she worked with at EAI. A selection of Birnbaum's video works from that period, including Pop-Pop Video: Kojak/Wang (1980); the rarely seen New Music Shorts (1981), with musicians Radio Fire Fight and Glenn Branca; Remy/Grand Central: Trains and Boats and Planes (1980); Fire!/Hendrix (1982), and PM Magazine/Acid Rock (1982), will be screened and discussed in depth.

Organized in conjunction with EAI's 45th anniversary, the "Edited at EAI" series highlights a historically significant but less well-known area of EAI's programs: EAI's Editing Facility for artists, one of the first such creative workspaces for video in the United States.

Thursday, September 22, 2016 6:30pm Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) 535 West 22nd Street, 5th Fl. New York, NY 10011 www.eai.org Admission $7, Students $5 Free for EAI Members RSVP: info@eai.org

Dara Birnbaum's groundbreaking video works of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Technology Transformation/Wonder Woman (1978) and Pop Pop Video (1980), were distinctive in their use of popular television as source material and appropriation as a strategy to deconstruct and reassemble meaning. In the early 1980s, Birnbaum produced a series of music-based video pieces, edited in whole or part at EAI, which signaled a new direction. In New Music Shorts she documented the downtown New York music scene; in Fire!/Hendrix and Remy/Grand Central: Trains and Boats and Planes (both commissions), she employed the language of mass media advertising as critique. Created at a time when MTV had just debuted as a significant pop cultural force, these pieces can be seen as "alternative music videos." 

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, EAI was part of a small but vital ecosystem of nonprofit editing facilities for video artists that were associated with alternative spaces or "TV labs" at public television stations nationwide. The goal was to provide artists with the tools needed to create media-based works, at a time when such access was scarce. This era also ushered in new possibilities for how video could be circulated and the contexts in which it could be seen, including video lounges in New York clubs such as the Mudd Club and Danceteria, and video art on public access cable TV.

As EAI celebrates its 45th anniversary, this special event brings Birnbaum together with Matt Danowski, Pat Ivers, and Ann Volkes – three former EAI editors who went on to highly recognized professional careers in news, documentary, or media art editing – to discuss the creative spirit and collaborative processes around analogue editing in EAI's "laboratory-studio" of this period, a dynamic and foundational moment in the development of media art. 

___________________________________

Dara Birnbaum
New York-based media and installation artist Dara Birnbaum has achieved international recognition within the arts, spurring some of the most controversial discussions in contemporary media exploration. Her work addresses both the ideological and aesthetic character of mass media imagery. Her installations and video works have also examined–and challenged–the way women have been portrayed historically, predominantly within Western culture. Major retrospective exhibitions of Birnbaum's work have been presented at Museu Serralves, Porto (2010); S.M.A.K., Gent (2009); Kunsthalle Wien, Austria (1995/6); and Norrtälje Konsthall, Sweden (1995). Major international exhibitions have included Documenta 7 (1982), 8 (1987), and IX (1992); La Biennale di Venezia (including 2001, 2003, 2006); Biennial de Valencia (2001); Carnegie International (1985); and the Whitney Biennial (1985). She has received numerous distinguished awards, including the TV Picture Prize, International Festival of Video and Electronic Arts in Locarno, Switzerland; San Sebastian Film Festival; American Film Institute's Maya Deren Award for Independent Film and Video Artists; and the Chicago International Film Festival. Birnbaum is represented by Marian Goodman Gallery, NYC–Paris-London and Wilkinson Gallery, London. Her video work is distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, NYC; Video Data Bank, Chicago; LUX, London; and imai, Düsseldorf. 

Matt Danowski
In 1981, Matt Danowski began freelancing on the night-shift at EAI's Editing/Post Production Facility in New York City. Later, he became manager of the E/PPF, which supported hundreds of downtown video artists, dancers, performers, independent documentary-makers and public-access producers by providing low-cost studio access, including editors dedicated to assisting their creative work. In 1987, drawn to television journalism, and following several other E/PPF alums, he started at CBS News. An editor at "60 Minutes" since 1994, he has worked together with the broadcast's legendary correspondents and producers on over one hundred reports and profiles of newsmakers, educators, musicians, and celebrities. A 1997 News and Documentary Emmy winner, he has also received awards from the Athens International Film/Video Festival, Video Culture International and Sony's Visions of U.S. Video Contest for video art pieces produced in the 1980s.

Pat Ivers
Pat Ivers is a producer/editor, who has worked in video art, documentary television and news since the 1970s. She is, along with Emily Armstrong, the creator/producer of theGoNightclubbing Archive, the definitive visual record of the Punk scene in 1970s NYC. She worked as an editor at Electronic Arts Intermix in the late '70s and early '80s, working with artists like Nam June Paik, Dara Birnbaum and Bill Viola. She developed and helmed a video program at CUNY in the 80s and 90s and edited at ABC Sports on Monday Night Football and Wide World of Sports. She won an Emmy award at WPIX in 1999 and NYS Broadcast Awards for her work during the events of 2001. In 2010, the Fales Downtown Collection at NYU acquired and digitized the Gonightclubbing collection. Ivers and Armstrong returned to screenings of their vast performance archives at museums and galleries, creating video installations like the recreation of their iconic 1980s Video Lounge and, most recently, Alone At Last, a meditation on sex and gender before the AIDS crisis at the Howl! Happening gallery.

Ann Eugenia Volkes
Ann Eugenia Volkes started working in portable video and video editing in early 1973 at the Video Access Center with Maxi Cohen and Rochelle Shulman, and at the Women's Interart Center with Susan Milano. Volkes was the co-coordinator of the Women's Video Festival for several years with Susan Milano and Assistant Curator of Video at Anthology Film Archives with Shigeko Kubota. Her early video work included documentaries and installations, such as Japan Love, Honto, which was exhibited in 1982 at Anthology Film Archives and Fuji TV, among other venues. She edited at Electronic Arts Intermix from 1977 to 1980 while also working for the New York State Council on the Arts. During this time, Volkes also managed the video art judging panels for the CAPS program. She was the editor at WCBS local news for eight years before becoming the video editor of "60 Minutes" from 1980 to 2008. Volkes continues to make her own video art and has exhibited in numerous festivals, galleries and museums.

Image:  Dara Birnbaum, Fire!/Hendrix (1982)

___________________________________

Upcoming fall events

Ellen Cantor: Screening
Wednesday, October 5, 2016 | 6:30pm
EAI presents a program of moving image work by Ellen Cantor (1961-2013). In these diaristic and intimate works, Cantor deftly uses the medium of video to appropriate, re-dub, and reframe imagery from such diverse sources as Antonioni, Disney cartoons, John Cassavetes, and Brian DePalma's Carrie (1976). Key works, including Evokation of My Demon Sister, Remember Me, and Madame Bovary's Revenge, will be screened along with rarely-seen videos from Cantor's archive.

This screening is part of a series of concurrent exhibitions, public programs, and screenings featuring Cantor's work, scheduled throughout Fall 2016. Exhibitions take place at 80WSE Gallery, Maccarone, Participant Inc., and Foxy Production, with public programs hosted by Skowhegan, The Museum of Modern Art and EAI.

Charlotte Moorman: Rarely Seen Television Performances
Thursday, October 20, 6:30pm  
This screening will present rare documentation of groundbreaking performance artist Charlotte Moorman's performances for and with television and video, including26'1.1499" For A String Player, in which she collaborated with Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut to stage John Cage's composition for broadcast television. Introduced by Barbara Moore, independent scholar and a close associate of Moorman's.

Organized by EAI and co-sponsored by NYU's Grey Art Gallery. In conjunction with the exhibition A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant Garde, 1960s-1980s.

___________________________________

Friends of EAI Membership
Become a 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/cartMembership.htm

___________________________________

About EAI
Celebrating our 45th anniversary in 2016, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is a nonprofit arts organization that fosters the creation, exhibition, distribution, and preservation of moving image art. A New York-based international resource for media art and artists, 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 services also include viewing access, educational initiatives, extensive online resources, technical facilities, and public programs such as artists' talks, screenings, and multi-media performances. 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

___________________________________

Electronic Arts Intermix
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10011
t (212) 337-0680
f (212) 337-0679

info@eai.org

EAI on Facebook

EAI on Twitter

___________________________________

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. This presentation is also made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts' Electronic Media and Film Preservation Funds grant program, administered by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes. EAI receives program support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.