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The Los Angeles portion of the cablecast has been stitched together by Kathy Rae Huffman, curator of the Long Beach Museum of Art, whose video and television department has long ranked as one of the nation's finest. The New York segment will "hopefully look like a contemporary Ed Sullivan show," according to the coordinator here, Carol Ann Klonarides. To give the same "look" to each feed, the limited physical dimensions of the Alternate Media Center have dictated the structure of the live portion: performers will be restricted to a small rectangle, and only one camera will be used for the events in each location. Klonarides has opted for the comedic approach, one she readily admits not many people associate with art video. "But I've found people such as Anne Magnuson, who has played the club scene, who like working with comedy," she said.

Linking the performances, and offering commentary on the whole field of video art/performance/television, will be a series of panels in each city, with the heavy-weight title going to Iowa City. Panelists there will include Huffman, from the Long Beach Museum; Barbara London, curator of video at the Museum of Modern Art; John Hanhardt, video curator at the Whitney; Wulf Herzogenrath, director of Germany's Des Kolnischen Kunstvereins; and former Federal Communications Commissioner Nicholas Johnson.

Panelists in Los Angeles will include Richard Meltzer, video critic for the L.A. Reader; Alan Bloom, director of video for the American Film Institute; and the team of Kit Galloway and Sherry Rabinowitz, who several years ago conceived the satellite interactive "Hole in Space" project between Los Angeles and New York. Norman Lear will also be an L.A. panelist, talking about distribution systems.

The New York panel has a distinctly downtown cast, including Lisa Baer, whose approach to technology and communications is as close to guerrilla warfare as you can get, and Global Village founder John Reilly. Rounding out the New York panel are those champions of the superfast edit, John Sanborn and Kit Fitzgerald, as well as Les Brown, whose appearance at these events is as sure a thing as Marine Band at a pro-football halftime.

Davidovitch and Pollock will hold a tight rein on all these personalities--as well as Hindman, who will not hesitate to pull the switch on the long-winded. (And with this cast of characters, that's probably a given.) The end result of this three hour mega-event? As far a Davidovitch, Pollock, and Hindman are concerned, a giant leap toward public acceptance of a medium that to date has mostly played galleries.

The fact that this program is emanating from Iowa says a lot about both the political and technological state of cable TV here in New York. Hindman and his employer have a warm and supportive relationship with their community, particularly the arts and public-access community. The cable company and the community view each other as mutual assets working toward somewhat mutual goals. Not the case at Manhattan Cable, where access producers are viewed as barely tolerated enemies, and where pursuit of the bottom line overrides almost any social considerations. Technologically, artists like Davidovitch might as well be in Iowa as in New York. There the cable company willingly provides studios, editing time, and instruction to access producers. Here, Manhattan Cable has no studios, and access producers have to drop their tapes through a slot. Both companies are owned by Time Inc., so the difference must be that in Iowa City they know how to write, and enforce, a cable TV franchise.

[[left margin]] PAMELA DUFFY [[/left margin]]
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Jamie Davidovich: Stop calling it video and start calling it television.