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IN New York [underlined]

Video-Art, a TVinfant, Is Shooting for Prime Time

By Alexander Anderson and B. J. Archer

New York (IHT)- The term video-art is apt to produce giant yawns from otherwise enthusiastic observers of the contemporary art scene.  This relative infant demands time and concentration while the proper viewer-to-object relationship goes through a period of trial and error.
      Going to museums or galleries to watch television is in itself a paradox, as anyone whose TV set is near a comfortable chair or bed will attest.  Well aware of these anomalies, a few pioneering New York organizations are beginning to find more acceptable to expose and advance TV as it is used by artists.
      The porta-pack (the modern equivalent of the paint box and easel) and xerography are among the newest of artist’s tools; they have been used to allow video artists to record and interpret their perceptions to amazing and even outrageous effect.  But how to get and audience to wake up to it?

     The Kitchen, at 484 Broome Street, began in 1971 as a screening room and showcase for the video tape.  Under the direction of Mary MacArthur, a Welsh gift to New York’s ranks of young arts administrators, and beautiful and smart curator Rosalee Goldberg, who comes to SoHo via London’s Royal College of Art (author of a forthcoming Thames and Hudson arry[?] Abrams book “Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present”), new options are being explored. 
     This fall The Kitchen is opening its season with “Made For TV?”, a highly concentrated, month-long presentation of daytime television selected from the best work of New York-based artists.  “Made for TV?” Raises the open question as to what differentiates artist’s video from network material and why it remains so difficult for artists to break into the market.
     Vito Acconci’s “Red Tapes,” an interior fantastical narrative- a kind of prototype American novel- and Richard Foreman’s “City Archives,” a video translation of some brilliant director’s theatrical concerns are among the strongest entry’s.
     Late this month Virginia Quesada, a West Coast composer will do a live disc jockey show, using video tape decks like a d.j.uses a record player.  The Kitchen’s viewing room, a carpeted, platformed, pillow-strewn nest now under construction will be available for horizontal one-to-one video watching away from home.  What this ambitious and thoughtful program still lacks is systemic access to the airwaves, a crucial tie-in for any broad acceptance of the medium.  Viewing rooms, however inviting, don’t remedy the essential problem of limited exposure that has plagued artist’s video.
     In 1976, a consortium of artists calling themselves Cable SoHo succeeded in bringing cable TV below Houston Street.  The Kitchen was the first SoHo site to be wired for incoming cable reception.  Public-Access television had provided the first necessary hardware, and video artist Douglas Davis inaugurated the sustem [?] with a live performance, broadcast in February of 1976 throughout Manhattan on Channel D.

Bad Packaging

     “So far, artists’ tapes have generally suffered from inappropriate packaging and marketing techniques,” says Jaime Devidovich, Argentine-born video artist, and major force behind the organization of The Artists Television Network, Cable SoHo’s reincarnation as a nonprofit corporation.
     Last year ATN produced the first series of 13 hour-long programs showcasing artists’ video and a wide range of contemporary art activities.  The series, which included previously produced tapes such as Jean Dupuy’s “Artist Propaganda II” (a montage of 18 performance pieces), music, dance and interviews with such avant-garde mainstays as John Cage, was broadcast over Manhattan Cable’s Channel 10 and captured nearly 10 percent of the cable audience.
     Currently, Davidovich is gearing up for this year’s season, and a new 13-hour series to be aired in January is in production.  Davidovich, whose 10 years of corporate marketing experience make him a perfect bridge between the experimental outer space of the avant garde and the world of commercial television broadcasting, understands the vast potential of public access television.
     “Cable television needs software and we can produce it,” he says.  “Our programs are broadcast-quality in color and black and white.  We are bringing new dimensions to cable and will eventually bring individual shows to public television.”
     No longer limited to porta-pack production standards, ATV uses the unique Center for Non-Broadcast Television (formerly Automation House) on East 68th Street, a superbly equipped studio that also has satellite-hookup capacity.  “Eventually, we can reach the entire country and Europe through RCA and Weststar hookups,” Davidovich adds.  SoHo TV’s popularity is proving Davidovich’s theory that the road to success for artists’ video will come through audience-building.  “An audience for artists’ programs means buying public as well.  It works just like Betamax, something the galleries have failed to realize.”
   ATN will co-produce live music and performance broadcasts from The Kitchen and is negotiating with the video center at The Pompidou Center in Paris to initiate co-sponsored projects there in 1979.  This month, Davidovich will take some of his software to the International TV and Video Conference in Barcelona.  Move over Fred Silverman: It might not be long before Lynda Bengalis and Joan Jonas are competing for air time with the Bionic Woman.

Herald International Tribune
       [Logo}
Published with the New York Times and The Washington Post
Paris, Saturday-Sunday, October 14-15, 1978