The Amarillo News Tapes

Doug Hall, Chip Lord, and Jody Procter.

1980, 27:44 min, color, sound

With the intention of "dissecting" television news, Doug Hall, Chip Lord and Jody Procter travelled to Amarillo, Texas to serve as artists-in-residence at station KVII-TV. Collaborating with local newsmen, they combined documentary, sociology and parody in this analysis of news gathering,...

The B.C. Corporate Story

Bernadette Corporation 

1996, 7 min, color, sound

This video examines the sorts of propaganda that a corporation might distribute internally to communicate an over-arching mandate or vision to its workers in order to boost morale. Bernadette Corporation slyly turns the notion inside out, yielding a document that at once subverts and expresses the form.

The Ballads of JT LeRoy

Lynn Hershman Leeson

2014, 14:49 min, color, sound, HD video

A short documentary centering the literary figure JT LeRoy, a persona embodied by the artist Laura Albert and portrayed by Savannah Knoop from 1996-2006. Hershman Leeson supplements interviews with Albert and Knoop with pieces from the popular press “uncovering” Leroy’s identity and pursuing...

The Banana Man

Mike Kelley

1983, 28:15 min, color, sound

Writes Kelley: "This is my only truly solo video project. The tape is an exploration of character and was done in direct reaction to my performance work at the time, which was characterless. Video seemed a good way, by virtue of it not operating in 'real' time, of dealing with character and...

The Baptism

Barbara Hammer

1968, 9:21 min, color, silent, Super 8mm film on HD video

The Big Wheel

Chris Burden. In collaboration with Willoughby Sharp and Robert Burden. 

1980, 29:02 min, color, sound

During the 1980 exhibition of Burden's monumental kinetic sculpture The Big Wheel at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, Burden and Feldman were interviewed by art critic Willoughby Sharp. Burden articulates the process of creating The Big Wheel, a 6,000-pound, spinning cast-iron flywheel that is...

The Blackest Sea

Peggy Ahwesh

2016, 9:30 min, color, sound, HD video

Collaging appropriated CGI-animated clips from the Taiwanese news outlet TomoNews, The Blackest Sea juxtaposes the sky and sea as primordial phenomena against the anxious, bureaucratic features of modern human life. Hundreds of fish die and float to the top of the ocean due to pollution and rising temperatures; a deep-sea diver discovers a ceramic pot on the ocean floor; Syrian refugees flee across the ocean in tight-packed quarters, and a group of surfers spot the great white whale. By recontextualizing apocalyptic footage that is at once hyperrealistic and surreal, Ahwesh magnifies the ever-shifting relationship between news documentations of current events and the circumstances that produce them. Writes Peggy Ahwesh: “My intention is to force the source material to point back to itself and lay bare the gap between that sketchy cartoon world and reality.”

The Body Shop

Kit Fitzgerald

1991, 30 min, color, sound

The Book of Love

Tony Cokes

1992, 59:37 min, color, sound

In The Book of Love, Cokes' mother recounts her life through interview, stories, and song, effectively re-presenting history through the personal. Through intimate subjectivity, Cokes attempts to understand his own present and history by tracing/retracing the life of his mother.

The Collaborators: Cage, Cunningham & Rauschenberg

Merce Cunningham, KETC Public Television

1987, 56:04 min, color, sound

This documentary is in two parts, with the second part, Coast Zone, available separately. The first part of the program features a revealing and informal discussion between Cunningham and his longtime collaborators, composer and musician John Cage and artist Robert Rauschenberg. Their lively interchange is intercut with archival footage from their collaborative works, Travelogue, Minutiae, and Antic Meet. They discuss designing and composing for dance, aesthetic philosophies, and the adventures encountered when touring and performing together.