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Attention! Production! Audience!—
Performing Video in its First Decade, 1968-1980
Chris Hill
1. A radical communications paradigm for to the U.S. market of the relatively affordable
a participatory democracy ($1500) and light weight half-inch open reel
portapak in 1967-1968. In the half decade
The argument was not only about before the arrival of this mobile video
producing new form for new production unit, art about television or its
content, it was also about technology had entered the cultural imaginary
changing the nature of the through Fluxus artists' modified TV sets that
relationship between reader and challenged bourgeois televisual sensibilities,
literary text, between spectator and art and technology exhibitions at major
and spectacle, and the changing galleries. Speculation by the influential
of this relationship was itself Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan
premised upon new ways of on the parallel evolution of communications
thinking about the relationship media and structures of consciousness fueled
between art (or more generally utopian conjecturing about a new information-
'representation') and reality...the based society. McLuhan's writing had
adequacy or effectivity of the particular impact on the post-war generation
devices employed depends that grew up with television. In 1968 artists
entirely upon the historical and social activists welcomed the new
moment or "conjecture" within attentional terrain offered by the
which they are manifest. —Sylvia unintimidating, real-time video medium and
Harvey [1] the possibility of developing an accessible
democratic communication system as an
a. Cultural agency and new technologies alternative to commercial television.
Unified by cultural imperatives for a more
Artists and social activists declared video a open and egalitarian way of living as well as
cultural praxis in the United States in the late by the pragmatic need to pool equipment—
60s, a period of radical assertions fueled by a portapaks, microphones, and a growing
decade of civil rights confrontations, assortment of independently engineered
controversy surrounding U.S. involvement in tools—a number of artists, activists, and
Vietnam, and the rise of a new youth culture electronic tool designers formed working
intent on consciousness expansion. Within a collectives. Woody Vasulka described video in
charged atmosphere of personal and social 1969-1970 as "a very free medium, and the
change and political confrontation, the community was very young, naive, new,
production of culture was understood to be a strong, cooperative, no animosities, kind of a
necessary step in the development of a welcoming tribe. So we ganged together west
reinvigorated participatory democracy. The coast, east coast, Canadian west and east
first issue of Radical Software (1970), a coasts, and we created overnight a spiritual
tabloid published by the New York media community." [3]
collective Raindance Corporation, asserted Even before the appearance of the
that video making and other "information portapak in the late 60s, sculptors,
software design" were radical cultural tools experimental filmmakers, painters,
and proposed that "unless we design and performers, musicians, and dancers had
implement alternate information structures begun to seriously challenge long-held
which transcend and reconfigure the existing modernist concepts about the formal
ones, our alternate systems and life styles will separation of specific art disciplines and
be no more than products of the existing interpretive discourses. Some would
process." [2] eventually include video in their
The video art and communications projects interdisciplinary investigations. Starting in the
nurtured by this radical climate were fused late 50s, Happenings expanded paintings into
into a cultural "movement" by the introduction interactive environments, engaging those
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aspects of art which "consciously intended to Committee (SNCC), which organized
replace habit with the spirit of exploration and interracial Freedom Rides to integrate
experiment." [4] By the late 60s some restaurants and restrooms in the South in
members of the counterculture involved with 1961. According to Todd Gitlin, 60s activist
the absorbing psychedelic underground of and sociologist, "The [civil rights] movement's
music, experimental film, theater, and light rise and fall, its transmutations from southern
shows found video to be a provocative new nonviolence to black power, its insistence on
moving image and installation medium. the self-determination of the insulted and
Sculptors who had been working within the injured, was the template for every other
emerging vocabulary of post-minimalism movement of the decade." [7]
found video to be a medium with which they Influenced by SNCC's egalitarianism,
could foreground the phenomenology of where middle class and poor struggled
perceptual or conceptual process over the together, Students for a Democratic Society
aesthetic object or product. Artists (SDS) in 1962 issued the Port Huron
participating in the "high" art gallery and Statement which called for a "participatory
museum spaces as well as those positioned democracy" based on "love and community in
in the clubs, concerts and mass cultural decisions shaping private lives." This New
scenes found reasons to explore the new Left asserted that necessary social change
moving image and sync sound medium. would come about only by replacing
institutions of control not by reforming them.[8]
Link to an interview with Tony Conrad on The civil rights movement, SDS, the growing
minimalizing and totalizing cultures (app. A) anti-war movement, and community
organizing around urban poverty provided
The manifestos and commentary by those activist models that would challenge the
caught up in the early video movement of generation coming of age in the mid-60s to
1968-1973 reflected an optimism stemming interrogate institutionalized authority, national
from the belief that real social change was priorities, and conventional expectations of
possible; they expressed a commitment to personal satisfaction and class privilege. On
cultural change that bordered on the ecstatic. college campuses teach-ins, information
During this heady period political theorists, sharing, and local organizing around issues of
artists, and activists delivered powerful housing, health, and legal rights offered
arguments for a participatory democracy. The practica for a radically revised education for
possibility of working for radical social change living. By 1968, 50% of the population was
was conflated with the task of personal under 25, and across the country young
change and with imperatives to explore one's people were swept up in the intoxication of the
consciousness through music, art, drugs, expanding and celebratory counterculture, its
encounter groups, spirituality, sexuality, and music, and its libertarian lifestyle choices.
countercultural lifestyles. The valorization of Although deep divisions between political
"process" and "an almost religious return to radicals and lifestyle radicals remained
experience" was shared by both political and throughout the decade, the country
cultural radicals of the late 60s, even though experienced a profound transformation of
their agendas and strategies varied cultural relations in their wake.
considerably.[5] Much of the enthusiasm As part of the progressive dialogue on
expressed about the "process" and college campuses between 1968 and 1973,
"experience" available to artists and tracts by writers like Herbert Marcuse were
audiences through the new portable video broadly circulated and discussed. They
technology centered on instant replay and the described the media as a "consciousness
immediate "feedback" of one's experience. industry" responsible for the alienation of the
The social and cultural challenges of the individual, the commodification of culture, and
60s were "a disruption of late capitalist the centralized control of communications
ideology, political hegemony, and the technologies. In his widely read books, One-
bourgeois dream of unproblematic Dimensional Man (1964) and An Essay on
production." [6] The decade opened with the Liberation (1969), Herbert Marcuse identified
beginning of the civil disobedience phase of a relationship between the consciousness of
the civil rights movement and the formation of the individual and the political, asserting that
the Student Non-Violent Coordinating "radical change in consciousness is the
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beginning, the first step in changing social alternative video makers' wariness of
existence: the emergence of a new Subject." allying with corporate television.
This new citizen, aware of and actively
dealing with "tragedy and romance, Link to an interview with Parry Teasdale on
archetypal dreams and anxieties" would be Videofreex (app. B)
less susceptible to "technical solutions"
offered through contemporary society's By the early 70s video theorists writing in
homogeneous "happy consciousness."[9] Radical Software along with Marxist critic
Marcuse's writing framed other mandates for Todd Gitlin and German socialist Hans
consciousness expansion and change and Magnus Enzensberger had outlined
validated the role that personal agency should arguments for an alternative, independent
play in accomplishing social change. electronic media practice. In 1970, building on
By 1969, through confrontation and ideas developed earlier by Bertolt Brecht
consciousness raising—the sharing and study regarding the corporate structure of radio
of personal experience and history—African communications, Enzensberger critiqued the
Americans and women had declared asymmetry between media
themselves new historical "subjects." producers/transmitters and media
Strategizing around separatism and alliances, consumers/receivers. The radio and television
their liberation movements developed industries had centralized and controlled
solidarity with other U.S. and international access to the production, programming, and
movements as global awareness permeated transmission of media, and limited those
their public discourse. The gay rights individual receivers to participation as
movement, born after the 1969 Stonewall consumers. However there was nothing
confrontation, and the American Indian inherent in the technology that could not
Movement (AIM) also asserted political and support a more reciprocal communications
cultural identities through public actions and system such as, for example, the telephone.
cultural networking during the early 1970s. Enzensberger concluded that new portable
These new movements focused both on video technology set the stage for redressing
histories of economic exploitation and this contradiction:
systemic cultural domination. The Port Huron
Statement had demanded a less alienated For the first time in history the
society and claimed a definitive subjectivity for media are making possible mass
the generation coming of age in the 60s; participation in a social and
these new movements also sought profound socialized productive process, the
transformation in both socioeconomic and practical means of which are in the
cultural relations. hands of the masses themselves.
Although the New Left and the anti-war Such a use of them would bring
movement in the late 60s had close ties with the communications media, which
progressive documentary filmmakers, for up to now have not deserved the
example the Newsreel film collective, their name, into their own. In its present
reports and analyses were disseminated form, equipment like television or
primarily through an extensive underground film does not serve communication
press. [10] The Left regarded mainstream but prevents it. It allows no
media, including commercial television, with reciprocal action between
distrust. Planning for the 1968 anti-war transmitter and receiver;
protests in Chicago during the Democratic technically speaking, it reduces
National Convention did include strategizing feedback to the lowest point
around national press coverage, but it was compatible with the system.[11]
fringe groups like the Yippies that specifically
sought confrontation with and coverage by Such a political analysis of
commercial media. Forays into network telecommunications practice was generally
broadcasting, such as the Videofreex overshadowed at the time by the popular
collaboration with CBS on the aborted 1969 views of media theorist Marshall McLuhan,
Subject to Change project, revealed the whose books on the history of
industry's contradictory aspirations for new communications technologies were widely
broadcast programming and reinforced discussed by the national media. McLuhan
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wrote in Understanding Media (1964) that with much less content, and a
human history was a succession of much cooler mode of moral
technological extensions of human judgment—like music, films,
communication and perception where each dance, architecture, painting,
new medium subsumed the previous sculpture. The practice of these
technology, sometimes as an artform. arts—all of which draw profusely,
Through the inherent speed and immediacy of naturally, and without
electronic video technology, television had embarrassment, upon science and
become an extension of the human nervous technology—are the locus of the
system. His notion of television's "flowing, new sensibility...In fact there can
unified perceptual events" bringing about be no divorce between science
changes in consciousness spoke directly to and technology, on the one hand,
the contemporary psychedelic drug and art, on the other, any more
experience as well as to artists experimenting than there can be a divorce
with new electronic visualizations. His between art and the forms of
aphorism "the medium is the message" social life. [13]
suggested that consciousness change was
brought about primarily through formal Enthusiasm about new technologies—
changes in communications technologies computers and the information-based society
rather than the specific content delivered by they might anticipate, and theorizing on
those media, which resonated with the human evolution, cybernetics, human
concentration on formalist investigations perception, ecology, and transformable
practiced in the contemporary arts at the time. environments—appeared at a time when post-
Although McLuhan's and others' war economic growth generated confidence
prescriptions for technological utopia and society seemed to be capable of radical
appeared poetic to many, he popularized the change. Through the writing of McLuhan,
notion of television, a "high participation," Norbert Wiener, Buckminster Fuller, Gregory
"cool medium," as a generational marker and Bateson and others [14] the intersection of
as a potentially liberatory information tool in information and systems theory with biological
the hands of the first generation that had models provided communications and human
grown up with it. McLuhan did not not potential references for a generation that had
address ways of restructuring a more grown up with the increasing availability of
democratic telecommunications system, but powerful and expressive personal tools—cars,
did inspire others to apply his ideas as they televisions, transistor radios, 35mm and 8mm
investigated video production and theorized movie cameras, electronic musical
about the new medium. instruments, and now portable video cameras
The belief that new technologies would and recording decks. The mixed metaphors of
inspire and generate the foundation for a new science, biology, and revolution, dubbed
society was underwritten in part by the "cyber-scat" by critic David Antin [15] are
American post-war investment in the grand evident in Michael Shamberg's 1971
cultural imperative of science, which had description of "Media-America":
brought about the international green
revolution in agriculture and the space race. It may be that unless we re-design
Americans had landed on the moon in 1969, our television structure our own
in the "biggest show in broadcast history." [12] capacity to survive as a species
The rational spirit of science resonated in a may be diminished. For if the
series of art and technology exhibitions at character of our culture is defined
major museums. Critic Susan Sontag by its dominant communications
articulated this "new sensibility" as it related to medium, and that medium is an
the arts: overly-centralized, low-variety
system, then we will succumb to
What gives literature its those biologically unviable
preeminence is its heavy burden characteristics. Fortunately
of 'content,' both reportage and techno-evolution has spawned
moral judgment...But the model new video modes like portable
arts of our time are actually those videotape, cable television, and
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video-cassettes which promise to practical user information were made
restore a media-ecological available through publications like Radical
balance to TV. [16] Software (1970-1976) which reported on
videomaking initiatives in art, education,
b. Early video collectives psychotherapies, and community building.
Hands-on technical guides like Spaghetti City
The video collectives that formed between Video Manual (1973), written by the
1968-1971 embraced the new portable video Videofreex, and Independent Video (1974) by
technology and assumptions about the need Ken Marsh, co-founder of People's Video
for cultural and social change that could Theater, demystified the technology and
include humanely reconfigured technologies. encouraged independent problem-solving and
The individual groups were bonded by the self-sufficiency with video tools. These
practical need to share technical resources publications were critical in promoting a vision
and to collaborate on the many tasks required of radicalized personal communications,
for productions. Some groups functioned as providing an education for the uninitiated and
communes, with members living together as curious, and identifying a network of fellow
well as working regularly with video. Parry enthusiasts. Their pragmatic approach to the
Teasdale, a member of the Videofreex, present and sometimes utopian visions for the
recalled "the video medium...was part of the future were shared by others who examined
concept of enjoyment as well as and challenged the delivery of basic
experimentation, as well as art, as well as institutional systems—education,
politics—all those things." [17] Philip Mallory communications, government, health—and
Jones described his involvement with the envisioned new grassroots configurations
Ithaca video community, initially as a member which often centered on new or reconfigured
of a video-producing commune: technologies. The first edition of the widely
referenced Whole Earth Catalog (1969)
For me it was a two way thing. begins with a section on "understanding
There was the individual vision whole systems," including communications,
and the individual maker working featuring descriptions of Super-8 filmmaking
with a set of tools to do something. and audio synthesizer construction and
The tools were something I could describing the role that accessing and
get access to one way or another, understanding tools might play in a new
without a lot of money. The other society:
concern was the serious business
of making revolution. These So far, remotely driven power and
things were not separated. These glory—as via government, big
things were a part of everybody business, formal education,
else's concern too.[18] church—has succeeded to the
point where gross defects obscure
The expansion of these various collectives actual gains. In response to this
into an informal national network of producers dilemma and to these gains, a
with common interests can be traced through realm of intimate, personal power
the "Feedback" sections of the early issues of is developing—power of the
Radical Software, published by the New York individual to conduct his own
City collective Raindance. The masthead from education, find his own inspiration,
the first issue articulates the broad aspirations shape his own environment, and
of the editors' proposed cultural intervention: share adventure with whoever is
"Videotape can be to television what writing is interested. Tools that aid this
to language. And television, in turn, has process are sought and promoted
subsumed written language as the globe's by the Whole Earth Catalog. [20]
dominant communications medium. Soon
accessible VTR [video tape recorder] systems Most of the early video collectives developed
and videocassettes (even before CATV [cable projects which articulated production and
antenna television] opens up) will make reception as essential structural components
alternate networks a reality." [19] Manifestos of their telecommunications visions, reflecting
about making video with portapaks and a pragmatic need for new exhibition venues
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that would accommodate videomakers' commodities for sale, but participated in an
aspirations as well as the period's recognition alternative cultural economy that valued
of the politicization of culture. Specific information exchange in the service of
audience feedback structures were imaging a new society.
envisioned which exercised portable video's The cultural exchanges performed through
capacity to render real time documentations of the production/reception configurations of
everyday events, perceptual investigations, early collectives' projects varied greatly
and experimental tech performances. These according to specific agendas and sites of
structural concerns combined with the operation. Descriptions of a few of these
imprecision of early video editing initially early projects gives some sense of the range
overshadowed the production of a singular that existed across the country. People's
tape in favor of the documentation of Video Theater was founded by Ken Marsh, an
"process." The work of the early collectives artist working with light shows, and Elliot
revealed their acknowledgement of video as Glass, a language teacher videotaping his
mediating social relations—managing or students' conversations in Spanish-speaking
guiding the attention of viewers, directly neighborhoods in New York. PVT videotaped
engaging viewers in some aspect of the interviews and events on the streets of New
expressive, performative or production York during the day and then invited
process, and educating audiences as new interviewees to their loft "theater" in the
users. The often-stated goal of radicalized evening for screenings and further
communications was further reflected in the discussions as part of "activating the
early collectives' strategies for the distribution information flow." [23] PVT also taped
of information they produced. Tape libraries, community "mediations" where points of view
tape exchanges, and mobile services were on a particular issue would be researched and
established; the print media—journals and recorded, then played back for politicians,
books—were considered important adjunct community leaders, and neighborhood people
communications "software"; experimental as part of the negotiating process. Ken Marsh
video labs and theaters accommodated regarded video production at the time as an
interactive screenings; transmission using low aspect of citizenship. "The rhetoric that we
power broadcast, cable television, and public subscribed to was that 'the people are the
broadcast television was explored. information'... Everybody could do it and
The diverse "cultural data banks" everybody should do it. That was the
inventoried in the early issues of Radical mandate—pick it up, it's there. Like the power
Software read as maps to the counter cultural to vote—vote, take responsibility. Make it and
imagination of the time. Random examples see it." [24]
include: "Dick Gregory speaking at San Jose In 1972 the Videofreex, initially a New York
State College 11/69" by Electric Eye; Eric City collective, moved to the Catskills, and
Siegel's tapes made with his began broadcasting a mix of live and recorded
Psychedelevision color video synthesizer; " a programming each week over a low power,
tour of el barrio by a Minister of the Young pirate TV station to their tiny community in
Lords Party" and "Gay Liberation Day" by Lanesville. Another seminal group formed
People's Video Theater. [21] Enzensberger around experimental filmmaker and dancer
recognized the radical potential of video data Shirley Clarke. Her T.P. Video Space Troupe
banks to be a "memory-in-readiness" for a produced interactive exercises and events
changing society, and contrasted it with class- using video, dance, and performance, which
based notions of intellectual "heritage." [22] also served as a video training model for
These pioneering recordings were participants. One of Clarke's exercises, a
documentations of the counterculture, by the sunrise project, concluded when participants
counterculture. Like home movies, they were reconvened at her Chelsea Hotel rooftop
collections of personal experiences, but unlike apartment at sunrise to replay the evening's
those private records, these tapes were portapak documentation of New York's
contributions to an information bank from nightlife. A little further west, the Ithaca video
which anyone could draw, where often no one commune collaborated with local social
person was specifically credited with having service projects and screened their
produced the tape. The contents of the video sometimes controversial programming in bars
libraries posted in Radical Software were not and bookstores, generating discussion about
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local and national issues as well as educating invigorating the voices of those largely
local audiences to the possibilities of portable unrepresented by commercial television.
video. Philip Mallory Jones and others In a 1970 issue of The Nation, Ralph Lee
eventually initiated the Ithaca Video Festival, Smith chronicled the competition among
the first touring video festival (1974-1984) and broadcast TV, cable TV, and the telephone
an important showcase for early video art and companies for a "wired nation." Smith cited
documentary. post-war federal commitment to building the
interstate highway system as a precedent for
Link to an interview with Philip Mallory mandating similar planning in the public
Jones on his 1960s media involvement as interest for the development of an "electronic
revolutionary acts (app. C) highway" in the 70s. Smith's prescient article
concluded:
At Antioch College in Ohio an active
national tape exchange was maintained by It is hard to assign a dollar value to
students through their Community Media many or most of the educational,
Center. At the Antioch Free Library people cultural, recreational, social and
were welcome to borrow tapes or add their political benefits that the nation
own tapes to the collection. Through the would receive from a national
college's alternating semesters of work and communications highway. It is
study and its new program in easier to assert the negative—that
communications, media students became the nation probably cannot afford
actively involved in planning and establishing not to build it...It cannot be
public access cable operations all over the assumed that all the social effects
country. of the cable will be good. For
example...the cable will make it
Link to an interview with Bob Devine about less and less necessary for the
intersection of social activist and video art more affluent population of the
agendas (app. D) suburbs to enter the city, either for
work or recreation. Lack of
concern and alienation could
c. Access to cable and public broadcast easily deepen, with effects that
TV could cancel the benefits of
community expression that the
Alongside the inspiration of the portapak, cable will bring to inner-city
the burgeoning cable television industry was neighborhoods. At the very least,
heralded as a promising technological such dangerous possibilities must
development by artists writing in Radical be foreseen, and the educational
Software, as well as by community activists potential of the cable itself must be
and urban policy planners. Portable video strongly marshaled to meet them...
technology could introduce non-professional [25]
people to production, and cable television
companies which contracted with individual The "benefits of community expression" cited
municipalities could use their local systems to by Smith are echoed in "Minority Cable
disseminate the citizen-generated and Report" written for Televisions magazine in
community-responsive programming. Cable the early 1970s. Roger Newell argued for
companies anxious to expand into new minorities' stake in the cable business and
markets offered public access provisions as community projects that would keep the public
incentives to potential municipal clients. For informed and also "operationally involved." He
public policy planners and community media pointed out that in the findings of the 1968
activists public access provisions could be National Advisory Commission on Civil
negotiated as a resource in exchange for the Disorder (the Kerner Commission), "blacks
companies receiving access to municipal interviewed by investigators for the
infrastructures (utility poles, right-of-way to lay commission felt that the media could not be
cable). Citizens' access to cable TV was trusted to present the true story of conditions
welcomed by diverse factions as potentially that led to the riots." Furthermore,
"proponents of the use of cable in minority
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communities saw it as the clear alternative to neighborhoods in Manhattan to be cabled,
commercial broadcasting...Cable gives us a indicate their commitment to process-oriented
second—and perhaps last—chance to productions and the viability of community
determine whether television can be used to participation in cable television:
teach, to inspire, to change humans' lives for
the better. The task will be demanding and Tape 190: Black Response to
expensive." [26] Riots 9/25/71. Cabled:
Teleprompter, Sept 14, 16, 18.
The movement to develop public access to Because of an article in the NY
cable in the United States initially centered Times about Dominican and black
around New York University's Alternative gangs fighting, Joel went up to
Media Center (AMC) and George Stoney, who 164th St. and Amsterdam Ave. to
had directed the Canadian National Film see if videotape could be used in
Board's Challenge for Change from 1968- any way to help in this situation
1970, a project that encouraged "community possibly by using tape to get
animation" by training people to use media to information to both sides, possibly
represent themselves and local issues to putting this information on public
government agencies. Dorothy Henaut and access to bring the communities'
Bonnie Klein describe the investment of attention to this incident. It was the
citizens participating in Challenge for Change first time Joel had gone out alone,
in the first issue of Radical Software: so he gave the mike to the people
because he had no partner to take
Half-inch video allows complete sound. At the beginning, Joel
control of the media by the people asked questions, but then the
of a community. They can use the people just started relating to each
camera to view themselves and other and totally ignored Joel. He
their neighborhood with a new and felt they really wanted to get
more perceptive eye; they can do something out and had a strong
interviews and ask the questions need to speak. He played the tape
more pertinent to them; they can back for the people through the
record discussions; they can edit camera and they dug it...The
tapes designed to carry a stereotyped image of a Black
particular message to a particular voice is destroyed by the
audience—an audience they have information on the tape showing
chosen and invited themselves. the difference of views. People talk
[27] to each other as well as to the
camera.[28]
Stoney worked with other video activists
taking portapaks into New York City In 1972 the Federal Communications
neighborhoods, strategizing with city officials, Commission (FCC), under the leadership of
federal regulators and cable companies, and Nicholas Johnson, issued regulations which
speaking out at public hearings about the required every cable system with 3,500 or
need to establish diversity of programming more subscribers to originate local
voices in order to prevent cable from programming and to provide one dedicated,
becoming a copy of commercial broadcasting. noncommercial public access channel,
In 1970 Stoney and Red Burns founded the available without charge at all times on a first-
Alternate Media Center at New York come, first-served, non-discriminatory basis to
University with support from the Markle carry that programming. At that time the cable
Foundation and, shortly thereafter, the industry had a 7% penetration of U.S.
National Endowment for the Arts to train households. This legislation provided the
organizers to work with interested community groundwork from which citizens,
groups, cable companies, and city municipalities, or cable companies could
governments to develop public access to initiate public access production and
cable TV around the country. Descriptions of programming anywhere in the country.
tapes made by Alternate Media Center interns Cable access facilities typically supported
in Washington Heights, one of the first local production by providing consumer video
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equipment, training, and programming access diversity in points of view, challenging existing
to cable channels, and were funded primarily union policies as well as programming
by federally mandated fees paid by cable policies. Some video groups established
companies to cities. By 1976 former AMC working relationships in the early 1970s with
interns had established the National their local PBS stations—Portable Channel
Federation for Local Cable Programmers with WXXI in Rochester (New York) and
(NFLCP), an umbrella organization whose University Community Video with KTCA in
newsletters and conferences generated Minneapolis—to produce news and
communication and ongoing education within documentaries specifically for local broadcast
the growing number of access centers. The audiences. Technical developments—
NFLCP continued to support citizens, portability, color video, 3/4" U-matic cassette
municipalities and cable companies interested format, CMX computer video editing—all
in initiating public access cable facilities enhanced video production throughout the
around the country, and their legislative and decade. At the same time debates, which
grass roots advocacy impacted significantly continue today, began to take shape around
on national communications legislation independents' access to new technologies
throughout the decade. By 1986 there were and the receptivity of public television and its
over 1,200 public access facilities in the legislative and corporate funders to
United States, actively supporting local independent programming.
productions and programming by the public Reflecting back on the formative period
on cable TV. [29] (1968-1973) both technological utopians and
Public libraries also pioneered community social historians testified to an inspired
video activity—extending their mission by engagement with the possibilities of a new
loaning out portapaks, collecting and society. Hans Magnus Enzensberger
screening tapes, and advocating for public commented on the year 1968, when
access to cable. Public libraries in Port "...utopian thinking seemed to meet the
Washington, New York, the Cattaraugus- material conditions for its own realization.
Chautauqua Public Library in Jamestown, Liberation had ceased to be a mere wishful
New York, and Donnell Library in New York thought. It appeared to be a real possibility."
City became notable sites for videotape [31] Videofreex member Parry Teasdale
production and dissemination. Port recalled the imperative to make a
Washington Public Library's video director commitment: "Without understanding the
Walter Dale asked the questions: "Could the dynamics of the war in Vietnam and what that
library maintain in the area of video those did to society; I don't think you can
qualities it fought for in print; namely, the right understand video...it spawned the technology
to read all views and expressions? Could the and it created the necessary groundwork for
library become a true catalyst for the free an adversarial relationship within the society
market place of visual as well as printed that defined sides so clearly that people could
expressions?" [30] To Dale, the answer was choose and choose righteously to be a part of
yes. something." [32] Ralph Lee Smith looked
Although cable could reach potentially back on his first encounter with advocates for
large television audiences, not all public access cable TV: "Those people
communities were cabled, and because cable were...applying not just technology but
companies charged viewers for their service, appropriate technology. That is to say they
many households chose not to subscribe. So were adopting enough of the technology, at a
despite the opportunities offered by cable TV, level of expression which was just adequate
local public (broadcast) television remained to do the job and no more, to achieve what
important channels for early video producers. they wanted to achieve...They were way
The stand-alone time base corrector ahead of their time." [33] Woody Vasulka
appeared on the market in 1973, stabilizing recalled a time when many welcomed "a new
the signal of 1/2" open reel tapes and society that would be based on a new
effectively ending early technological model...a drive for personal
objections to broadcasting portable video. As enlightenment...the possibility of
video began to replace film for news transcendence through image as an actual
productions, independents using portable machine-made evocation...Some thought of
video equipment began calling for more
9
Essay also available online: www.bavc.org/preservation/dvd/resources/essays.htm
this as a healing process or...a restructuring of comprehensive history of the alternative video
one's consciousness." [34] culture from this period.
Despite limits to systemic change sought Videotaped documentation of community
by the early video practitioners, widespread "process" set out to establish a media
questioning of fundamental ideological and vocabulary for a new way of speaking and
lifestyle choices did inspire the invention of participating in American society. Why have
experimental community structures and so many of these tapes been relegated to the
economies founded on the use value of media back shelves of social and educational
production. Such emphatic commitments institutions and producers' attics? One part of
focused a radical subjectivity which identified the answer lies in the social and institutional
itself as an alternative to the "alienated" and dynamics of any cultural scene. Almost any
spiritually bankrupt bureaucratic mainstream. cultural production, whether destined for a
Collectives and networked individuals museum or a living room via public access
invented new cultural forms and nourished an cable, depends on intersecting social and
energy that focused, invigorated, and institutional systems that construct the
sustained productive social scenes. Existing motivation for the work's production, and the
institutions—television networks, museums, distribution or exhibition vehicle which
schools, libraries—were challenged to connects it with an audience, all contributing
respond to the interests and needs of their to its value and meaning. In working to
audiences, markets, and users. Optimistic establish a decentralized media practice that
about the role the new media technology had more to do with practice and process than
could play in a new society, these early video product, especially in the early 70s, producers
tribes committed themselves to the consciously positioned themselves on the
performance of a radically de-centralized and cultural margins. Many of these early
potentially more democratic electronic initiatives were undertaken by members of
communication practice. This alternative minority groups or geographically-isolated
vision of decentralized media culture(s) was communities, which had never established
funded starting in the early 70s as not-for- cultural currency outside their local scenes.
profit artists projects, artist-run spaces, video Many of these early communications
access centers, and public access cable projects were intended to be narrow-casted to
facilities by federal, state and local arts specific audiences, and conceived essentially
councils, private foundations, public television to intersect with locally constructed social and
and cable companies. cultural territory. Are these challenges to
existing limitations imposed by class, race,
d. Invisible histories—reconstructing a age, and gender less legible today?
picture of decentralized media practice Contemporary viewers may require a context
explaining the previous generation's
Few of the tapes from the immense body commitment to process, lack of narrative
of work produced by these early collectives closure, and rough editing.
and access projects have been restored and Cultural theorist Fredric Jameson claimed
are available today. Most open reel tapes at the end of the 70s:
from this period are in desperate need of
preservation. Archivist Roger House recently Authentic cultural creation is
described Inside Bed-Stuy, one of the first dependent for its existence on
(1968) black-produced community access authentic collective life, on the
shows as revealing "a community in the midst vitality of the 'organic' social group
of trying to speak to itself, articulate its needs, in whatever form...[The] only
appreciate its creativity, and urge its residents authentic cultural production today
to rise to the challenges of the times." He has seemed to be that which can
commented on "how healthy it was to see draw on the collective experience
average people of all ages, in splendid of marginal pockets of the social
plainness of speech and appearance, life of the world system...and this
speaking out on the Vietnam war, production is possible only to the
unemployment, urban blight, black capitalism, degree to which these forms of
and black power." [35] Much research is collective life or collective solidarity
needed to identify, recover, and evaluate a have not yet been fully penetrated
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