L PHOTOGRAPHY/ INDEPENDENT FILM/ VIDEO/VISU4L BOOKS I

AFTERIMAGEA PUBLICATION OF THE VISU4L STUDIES WORKSHOP

VOLUME 14, NUMBER 7I FEBRUARY 19871$2.75

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NEWSREEL

ACTIVIST FILMMAKINGIN THE LATE 1960s

AN INTERVIEW WITH

DIANA BARRIE

BAeRA*KEIORDEAL BY ROSES

MISUNDERSTANDING MEDIA

PHOTOGRAPHY FUNDING

SOLOMON D. BUTCHER

BARBARA NORFLEET

PRIVATE PRACTICES

BILL VIOLA

THE AFl NATIONAL VIDEO FESTIVAL

CHRIS STRAAYER

The L.A . weather was steady 18% mediumgray for the American Film Institute's 1986National Video Festival (Dec . 4-7) . By thetime I arrived on Friday afternoon, numerousparticipants already were making similar ob-servations about the festival and expressinga yearning for high-contrast drama.The festival had programmed a wide range

of choices : from a High Definition TelevisionShowcase to consumer "home videos" inAFI's "Visions of U.S ." competition ; fromOrson Welles Television to the latestGodard ; from 1940s Panoram Sourndies to1980s music videos ; from a West Germanvideo selection to U.S. regional representa-tion ; from over 50 hours of curated publictelevision from Britain's Channel 4 and theCanadian Broadcasting Corporation to over50 hours of independent video by producers"ranking" from students to the first genera-tion . But, somehow, when this formidablearray of "outsider" and "on-the-edge" voiceswas outlined over an eight-page, seven-col-umn schedule, a postmodern leveling effectoccurred-not unlike that known to televi-sion-and many videophiles found them-selves frantically flipping the dial .

Essentially absent from this whirl were thefestival's outsiders-women and minorityproducers . Weeks prior tothe event, publicitymaterials indicating a scandalously low pro-portion of women's works among festivalpremieres had caused rumblings of dismayand outrage across the country . For the festi-val, a newly-formed Los Angeles public inter-vention group named Mothers of Medusa :The Western Conscience of the Art Worldstapled onto the heads of several hundredrubber snakes paper strips bearing mes-sages such as "Welcome to theAFI . . . Where a woman's work is seldomshown" and "AFI . . . Dick or Deck, what's thedifference?" These snakes were distributedabout the AFI campus-rather shoddily-inrubbery globs of approximately 50 snakeseach on hallway tables, between cars in theparking lot, in the women's bathroom, etc .One sympathizer complained to me that AFlstart had removed the entire bad)TOOM sup-ply of snakes overnight . What else could beexpected, I thought . Even an Easter egg huntwould seem a more effective distributionstrategy. For her Saturday night presenta-tion, Branda Miller, one of only 2 womenamong 20 premiering artists, calculated fromthe festival catalogue the disparity betweenthese male and female producers at over1000 minutes to 10 minutes tape timerespectively .

Enter Paper Tiger Television, the festival'sofficial on-the-edge antagonist . Paper TigerTelevision, well known for its five years of on-the-air media criticism on New York cableand its 1986 Deep Dish national cable ac-cess program on social issues, was invitedby AFI to present tapes and to "read the Na-tional Video Festival" with an on-site produc-tion tobe screened on the festival's last night .In an atmosphere promoting viewer passiv-ity, PTT was a welcome sight and a reminderto festival "participants" of their real participa-tion in constructing and nurturing this field ofvideo . Lugging equipment back and forthfrom the Sony Center, shooting scenes in theback of a truck in the parking lot, interviewingpeople on the Goodson building balcony,PTT was a reassuring presence. Theywouldintervene ; they would say it for us . In themeantime, the festival/we proceeded asprogrammed.

PremieresControversy notwithstanding, the video artpremieres provided the most successful partof the festival for me . In past years, pre-mieres have been programmed via an "au-teurish" approach, with the festival commit-ting early to major artists' upcoming worksbased on past performance . This year's pre-mieres were selected primarily from finishedor nearly finished works . In the past, last min-ute crash-out editing and psychologicalstates relating to prescheduled payoffs haveproduced several less-than-outstandingpremieres .

This year's premieres (all 1986 unless indi-cated), however, were exceptionally strong,

CHRIS STRAAYER is a Ph.D . candidate in radio,TV, and film, currently writing her dissertation onvideo art . This article was made possible in part bya Dissertation Year Grant from NorthwesternUniversity .

RUBBER SNAKES& PAPER TIGERSTHE AFI NATIONALVIDEO FESTIVAL

Top : frame from Storm and Stress (1986), by Doug Hall . Photo by Kira Perov . Middle left : frame fromThe Amazing Voyage of Gustave Flaubert andRaymond Roussei (1986), by Steven Fagin . Middleright : frame from Art of Memory : The Legend (1986), by Woody VasuIka . Photo by Erika Suderburg .Bottom : frame from 1 Want Some Insecticide (1986), by Branda Miller . Photo by Kira Perov .

as evidenced by Steve Fagin's gorgeous andintelligent The Amazing Voyage of GustaveFlaubert and Raymond Roussel, Ken Kob-land's filmic, surreal Flaubert Dreams of Trav-el, Pier Marton's controversy-engendered-Like Men, Paul Knotter's pro(anti-art)-objec-tification We Are Things (1985-86), Teri Yar-brow's high-tech Atomic Dreams, and Vulture Video's Lo Pay No Way? (1985), a rap,

scratch, strike tape against working condi-tions in the fast-food industry .

In good tradition, three premieres ex-tended video's longstanding critique of tele-vision . Gary Hill's installation In Situ seeks toreproduce physically and conceptually thetelevision viewing experience by overflowingtelevision's objecthood . A mechanical deviceat ceiling level cranks out paper texts, which

AFTERIMAGE/February 1987

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float down to litter the floor among a TV set,an easy chair, and speakers emitting thesound of whirling fans while blowing out air .Buzz Box by David Daniels also presents

an information overload . Using "nineteenth-century techniques" such as 3-D slice anima-tion, Daniels created a twentieth-century"Media Hemorrhage." One gory face followsanother in a melting pot of ugliness . Violentdisintegrations and rapid transformationsbarrage us in an accelerated televisiontravesty . Avoiding history, context, plot, andreason, we're propelled through equally re-pulsive daily "reports" from Monday to Fri-day, only to be shocked still further by aneven faster, more concentrated' weekend in-stant replay." The tape, which Daniels de-scribes as "maximalism," finally ends with thetitle "No End ."

In Line by Tony Conrad also exposes thissadomasochistic TV-viewer experience, butwith different tactics . In direct address, Con-rad's face on the monitor psychologically bat-ters the audience with a parodic display ofmind control . He attempts to hypnotize us.He stares us down . He knows we can't turnaway from the screen . He holds objects inour line of view to control our thoughts . Heforces us to think of country singer WebbPierce by showing us an album cover . "Youthink I have to seduce you," he says, finallyrising from his torturer's position, which wenow realize has been metonymically in-formed by a toilet . In his personal appear-ance following this screening, Conrad appro-priately did not ask for questions from the au-dience . Instead he surprised us with anotherhumorous performance/lecture- "Studentsdon't like video," announced Conrad, whoteaches at SUNY-Buffalo . "Video suspects itholds the key to better TV watching---- Wethink it's a matter of quality . . . . Home video'smarginality is different than the marginality of

punks or nudists because it is rapidly becom-ing a majority ." Conrad describes his ownwork as post-post-postmodern video-leadership for potentially active viewers .

Another premiere tape to which perfor-mance was integral was, of course, DougHail's. The artist's presence in Storm andStress is subtle but significant . Storm andStress is at the centerpoint of nature, tech-nology, and beauty, a mixture of landscapedocumentary, sci-fi, and video art . Cloudmovements are dramatized in stepped mo-tion . A black and white surveillance cameraexposes the eye of a tornado. An artificial tor-nado rises in a spiral from a laboratory floor.Inside a storm research center, in an isolatedchair and a stationary pose, Hall looks up atan enormous screen display of nature . Thisconfiguration evokes memories of Hall inSongs of the 8D's (1983) and of Edward G .Robinson in Soylent Green (1973) . Thisscreen that both separates and connects hu-manity and the elements becomes a motiflater in the tape when nature and cultureshare monitor time via an internal rectangu-lar key . The blazing fire of a furnace is keyedinto a forest fire . The internal view of a boat'scontrol room is keyed into the waves that areraging against it . At the convergence of at-traction and repulsion, stress condenses . Ina small, isolated, outdated town, still withboardwalk and vertical parking, several chil-dren gape at a storm, then run from its thun-der . Similarly, Hall mesmerizes us with aprismatic collage of tornadoes in spirals, ves-sels, cups, and ribbons----accompanied bymusic of Giussepe Verdi-and then pre-sents black and white evidence of the de-struction they wreak .Storm and Stress is one of three CAT

(Contemporary Art Television) Fund produc-tions premiered at this year's festival . Others

AR, cont'd.(continued from page 3)

of perception and emotion, impressive for itsdynamic visuals as well as its experimentalsound track .

It would be impossible within the AFI facili-ties and time frame to exhibit everythingequally, even in such an extensive festival asthis. Certainly I am vulnerable to accusationsthat my own personal aesthetics motivate ar-guments that certain other tapes deservedpremiering . This is true . But it is also true thatthefestival maintains, perhaps inadvertently,a hierarchical agenda for the gaze .

In the independent video field, economicshas, in fact, replaced geography as thedefin-ing element of regionalism . This is most evi-dent in the festival's conceptualization of theVideo Regions program, which showcasedtapes funded by the NEA Regional Fellow-ship Program . In his catalogue essay, "VideoRegions : NEA's Regional Media FellowshipsProgram," curator Nell Selling (of LIC Videoin Minneapolis) explains the NEA's rationalefor this regional funding, now in its fifth year .

A laudable step toward greater cultural democ-racy, the program intended to decentralize She pro-cess of getting funding to independent producersby setting up a system of re-granting media artscenters in seven NEA regions----The kind of diversity that is a goal of the program

is critical for the health of a field that can becriticized for the stratification of an elite layer of pro-ducers who receive a disproportionate percentageof funds and exhibition opportunities .

Rather than "challenge the basic condi-tions of the regional trap," as Steve Riccihoped it would, the festival actually reen-forced them . Not only were premiere tapesgiven higher visibility than other tapes in thefestival, but by providing travel and hotelfunds for premiering artists, AFI assuredthese artists a celebrity presence . Potentiallyprogressive programs, such as RegionalVoices and the AFI Student Competition, ineffect were subsumed by a false geographyof presence and absence necessitated bythe festival's traditional structure . Ratherthan celebrating and h'ighhgnting outsiders'voices, the festival's basic logistics silencedthem. The false semantics of regionalism re-mained undaunted white the starsystem wasallowed to stand .To the festival's credit, a "Best of the Fest"

screening of tapes, determined by popularrequest, provided one mechanism for flexibil-ity . It was during this screening that AaronRanen met with a most enthusiastic recep-tion for his Television Believers (1986), atape that debunks a television evangelistwhose miraculous telepathic powers dependon a tiny transmitter in his ear by which he re-ceives messages from his wife backstage .The AFI staff person facilitating this screen-ing had the good sense to allow time forRanen to respond to spontaneous questionsfrom the audience . Only two people had at-tended the tape's earlier screening as part ofthe Video Regions program .

Visions of 11 .5.Another pleasant surprise I experienced inthe Best of the Fest screening was Colette'sVignette (1986) by Wendell B . Harris Jr .,grand prize winner of AFI's "Visions of U.S .,"a national contest for 1/2-inch home videos .Colette is a young, self-assured blackwoman with an aggressive humor and a nat-ural talent on the syntagmatic plane . Hermonologue, cleverly "post-scripted" viajumpcuts, slides from a nervy discussion o ¬sex, to depression, to her pretty cousin's darkskin, to motherhood and baby spit . Shot insimple talking-heads style, her expressiveface is shown in tight close-up-wise pro-duction choices that acknowledge, as doesthe title, that it is Colette who makes this tapeoriginal .

I asked my mom to get me an operation to clip myears . She told me no because I was not a Dober-man pinscher . . . . Most of the guys I date arestupid, stupid. . . . My prom date is a good example .I said, like, "Hey let's go to a motel ." And he's like,"Yeah, let's ." I said, "Forget it . You're tripping ." Heshouldn't have been so stupid . I was treating himso obnoxious all that night, why the hell would Iwant to spend the night with him . He wasn't thatfine . . . . Was I a virgin then?

AFI started the Visions of U .S . competi-tion, sponsored by the Sony Corporation, in1984 in an effort to find out what was beingdone with '12-inch consumer video equip-ment . The competition was open to anyone

first prize winner in the nonfiction category . It

CNRS in Paris), and John Wyver (televisionis a documentary about a private men's club

writer and critic) . But the effort essentiallyin Connecticut where middle- to older-aged

failed . In some ways this was no fault of themen-all naked-get massages, cook

festival . It's just that we're tired of envyingsausages, eat, drink, sing, and brag about

Channel 4, and U .S . TV curators are begin-their sexual prowess .

ning to seem

like

middle-managementfixtures .

High Definition

Thedesign of a panel on packaging videoEach year, the Sony Corporation's sponsor-

for TV simultaneously recognizes and dis-ship of the National Video Festival is felt most

misses independent videamakers' strugglein the sophisticated technology available for

for access to the airwaves . By privileging theexhibitions, installations, and demonstra- particular strategy of packaging-devisedtions . This year, High Definition Television

by go-betweens-such a panel collapses(HDTV) was on display with an international

discussions on power relations and aesthet-showcase of tapes . With 1125 scan lines,

ics . Thus Archer talks about the leveling ef-these

high-resolution

images-projected

fect of television and video's attempts to in-wall size-indeed looked exceptional . Less

terrupt the television flow ; Bellour describesimpressive, however, was the selection of

video's position "right up against TV" and itstapes used to show off the technology .

potential to silence TV ; Taubin recognizesThough I was unable to view the entire pro-

that all packaging marginalizes works bygram, the few videos I did see constituted an

those independents who want to be includedunsettling consumerist discourse . Though

but aren't ; Ward explains that public-TV de-stylistically advanced, the content of these

sign decisions often must cater more to thepromos was extremely backward . NHK's

taste of 200 stations-potential buyers of a(Japan Public Television) introductory tape,

show-than to the viewing public .This is Hi-Vision, uses the image of a nude

John Wyver writes in his catalogue essay,woman to demonstrate its scanning process .

"Dunkley's Paradox : Packaging Video forHanae Mori's Fashion Presentation (Japan)

TV," that "if television continues to dictate thewould provide John Berger ample material

terms, video's potential for offering new vi-for an epilogue to Ways of Seeing . Four

sions, new conceptual frameworks and newfemale models, fashionably Japanese, en-

understandings of our place in the world maytrap viewers with the classical advertising

be significantly diluted ." From the audiencegaze, then jerk their heads to the side in a uni-

at the presentation, Bill Viola argued that TVfled snobbish rebuff . Ironically, Barry Rebo's

is itself the overwhelming context, regardlessmusic video of John Lennon's Imagine (New

of packaging variables ; incorporation intoTVYork City), an extended track through a

is grotesque . Implicit in the entire discussionclosed cycle of stylishly sterile, gleamingly

is an acknowledgement of "the Boss," thatwhite, upper-class, heterosexual choreog-

power to and from which curators bow andraphy, left me wondering what the lower barrow . Is this a displaced stalemate be-classes will look like in high definition . There

tween independents and broadcasters? Ifwas too remarkable a similarity between

so, we're banging our heads against a wall,these promo tapes and a 1960s scopitone

and our discussion needs to take a newfilm jukebox "hit" playing just down the hall-

track .Debbie Reynolds in a fluted mini-skirt singing

Three of the panelists described their own"if I Had a Hammer."

programs as much as they discussed rele-How could two decades of obvious tech-

vant issues, thus confusing the roles of rep-nological advances produce such unchang-

resentatives and authorities . There was es-ing, incestuous content? This question, of

sentially no discussion of the numerousprimary importance to many videomakers,

packaging efforts taking place throughoutregrettably was not on the showcase's

the country, e.g ., those that regularly pro-agenda . In fact, one of the festival's gram video straight-Image Union in

from kids to professionals as long as their

shortcomings was a lack of constructedworks were noncommercial and shot on Beta

space for critical discussions .or VHS . "Are people creating new ways ofspeaking?" asked Melanie Ingalls in the first

Critical Discussionyear's Visions of U .S . catalogue .

Yes, there's a difference between festivalsand conferences . However, as the field of

Well, yes and no . Television language is some-

video now stands--with very few festivalsthing we have grown up with and it is not surprising

and even fewer conferences, with theory-that we know its formulas well enough to use themourselves . Many of the entries in the "Visions" con- informed artists who not only create but com-test were clearly based on network television

ment-people come to any event with basicshows . However, in the hands of many home vid-

needs : to validate their field, to talk business,eomakers, video is being used to create personal

and to engage in serious critical discourse .statements of depth and originality . Even when

Though the catalogue this year is the bestworking within the conventional TV formats, thesetapemakers bring creativity and enthusiasm to the

yet, with articles worthyof their commissions,medium .

the practical embodiment of these analysesrarely came to life .

I wish 1 could say that my favorites among

There was a valid attempt by the festival tothis year's winners included some young,

provide a certain level of discussion-amateurtalent and nouveau styles and dash-

including a group presentation introduced bying content, but f can't-though the com-

Peter Broderick, "Beyond the Pale : Provoca-plete list of winners does offer a wide variety

five British Television," and a panel calledof personal (and geographical) specs . My

"Packaging : The Part and the Whole," withown taste in a contest of this design is for

Amy Taubin ("Two Moon July," The Kitchenworks that don't mimic televisions, but rather

in New York City), Melinda Ward ("Alive fromgrab onto what television cannot, or will not,

Off Center," KCTA in Minneapolis) Johntouch . From this point of view, I appreciated

Archer ("Saturday Review," BBC in London),Angelico Cruz's Pete's Steambath (1985),

Raymond Bellour (director of research,