VIDEOA TVICTOR ANCONA

The Seventh Ithaca Video FestivalThe Ithaca Video Festival is becoming

the most celebrated, traveled and talkedabout video festival in the United States .The seventh edition is no less prestigiousthan were the last two covered in thiscolumn, (See Videography September1979 ; September and October 1980)The first year, 1974, drew 40 entries,

seven of which were chosen for showingin Ithaca . There were 290this year . The 19tapes selected will be seen in at least 25cities throughout the United States. "it isgratifying to know that the work is beingshown in so many places, to a greaternumber of people than ever before,"said Philip Mallory Jones, director ofIthaca Video Projects, which sponsors thefestival . It is hoped that the festival willsoon travel abroad, Japan is interested,

This year's panel consisted of BarbaraLondon, Museum of Modern Art, NewYork ; Arthur Tsuchiya, formerly videocurator at Visual Studies Workshop,Rochester NY and now with the NewYork State Council on the Arts (NYSCA);Carvin Eison of the Artists Workshop atWXXI-TV, Rochester NY; and PhilipJones."The panel sees everything . We have

no prejudging of tapes," said Jones. "Ifound out repeatedly that if I prejudgedtapes, some would never make thefestivals-and this year would have beenno exception. First, the judges gothrough all the tapes, make notes if theywish, but do not make hard and fast deci-sions before they see every submission .Weattempt to put together an exhibitionpackage that will give the public a broadoverview of the kind of work being donein independent video. Ideally, we wouldhave examples of the major directions invideo. Ideally, we would have a geo-graphical distribution ."

Since Jones claims not to favor any par-ticular artist, he does not believe in ano-nymity . "Some tapes have such a strongstamp of the maker that judges would behard put not to identify the producer.Whodoes the work is not as important ashow well it was done . We are looking fortapes that are truly exceptional, yet wedon't expect viewers to like everythingwe choose."

November 1961

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and France is a likely place for gratefulaudiences.U. S. balance of payments will not be

substantially affected by the nominalweekly rate of$50 that is charged to insti-tutions wishing to book the festival,regardless of audience size . What's more,Ithaca Video Projects does not have thepersonnel to insure an optimum viewingenvironment: Is the public sufficientlyprepared to experience non-televisionvideo fare;While some other festivals prejudge

tapes before submitting the balance to a"distinguished panel of artist/producers,critics and curators," the panel that ischosen to select the tapes for Ithaca seesevery tape submitted during the courseof a three-day marathon viewing session.

The judges learn from one another bydiscussing the tapes and telling whytheyfavor one tape over another. It takestime' but anything one does well takestime . The panel then arrives at a consen-sus. Any "no" vote keeps a tape out, soit's essential that they talk about theworkbefore voting. According to Jones, in anumber of cases certain members of thepanel are not particularly impressed bysome of the work submitted until one ormore of the panelists very carefully andcogently convinces the reluctant ones.Next year, Jones hopes to give the panelan extra day for judging, "to give themthe chance to walk away from the workbefore rendering a final decision ."With 290 submissions to select from,

the panel chose two tapes from twovideographers: Shalom Gorewitz of NewYork City and Steina of Santa Fe, NewMexico. Without begrudging them theirrespective honors . I question whetherany of the other entries could have ratedfurther exposure over these two fineartists' double billing . Admittedly, Stel-na's two tapes were quite different inconcept and execution, but ShalomGorewitx's tapes were not too dissimilar .Videotapes of performance and per-

sonal visions were predominant in thisyear's festival, with documentaries beingconspicuous by their absence. "The lackof documentaries was not at all inten-tional," said Jones. "It was a combinationof the chemistry of the panel and the

Videotravhr

work submitted."Conditions for submitting work to the

Ithaca festival are minimal but stringent .Entries must have originated on video-tape, be on 1/i-inch open reel or . 3L-inchU-Matic cassette not exceeding 30 min-utes in length . Fortunately, there is noentry fee. Submissions chosen for exhibi-tion are awarded a one-time rental fee of$100 for each tape selected .The festival auspiciously opened with

Ed Emshwiller's three-minute tape, Sun-stone, a computer-graphics animationtour de force that took the maker eightmonths to complete using a digital paintprogram at the New York Institute ofTechnology (NYIT) . Emshwiller, aninnovative image-maker, now Dean ofFilm and Video at California Institute ofthe Arts, painted the electronic imagesusing a computer with graphictablet. Theimmeasurable movements and transfor-mations were achieved through compu-ter programs written by members of theNYIT graphics laboratory .Sunstone has deservedly won national

and international recognition for its orig-inal concept and execution . It wasscreened abroad thissummer at the SixthEdinburgh Television Festival along with5capemates, another celebrated Emsh-willer oeuvre . Sunstone begins with amoon face found in the computer bankby the artist. He then drew, manipulatedand transformed it into images corres-ponding to his inner vision-images weare privileged to explore as the workmoves from one imaginative phase to thenext . The artist's sensitivity and warmthare paramount reasons for the tape'saccessibility despite the use of hard-edgetechnology . Emshwiller is master of themedium, perfectly blending science andart.While Emshwiller producestapes using

available technology, the creative teamof Woody and Steina Vasulka, who inci-dently have three tapes in this year's fes-tival, lean more heavily on technology-tools they often create to interface withtheir electronic imageandsound output.Woody's Artifacts It and Steina's UrbanEpisodes and 5elecred Treecuts, whilehighly inventive and exciting in theirmechanical, optical and electronicmanipulation of images, result neverthe-less in inducing a restrained and distantemotional response . We are moved bythe artists' inventiveness but not by theworks themselves .

In the program notes, Steina says ofUrban Episodes : "In the spring of 1975, Istarted working on a series of installationsand tapes involving mechanized modesof camera control. The effort resulted in acollection of work I call 'machine vision.Urban Episodes, shot in downtown Min-neapolis, is the latest in this series ."Regarding Selected Treecuts, Steinawrites : "This work is composed of arhythmical collage of images of trees,

November 1981

"Body Count," by Dan Reeves and John Hilton .

grapherwhopool their respective talentsto create a videotape essentially sus-tained by George Lewis' excellent music.Billed as "a narrative form without utiliz-ing a story line," the tape is supposed tobe a look at a private moment- in one'slife . Unfortunately, it remains private andthe work proves to be ambiguous, pre-tentious and arty, with closeups that doan injustice to the performing artist .Urn Laco de lospiracao e Morte, by

Christopher Coughlan, Denise Milanand Nana Vasconcelos, I am told, wasadapted from an allegory about the pro-cess by which one recognizes the mythsand preconceptions with which one livesand then struggles to overcome . Heavy?The titleof the tape refers to the relation-ship between life and death; theend andthe new beginning . The tape is set to thepoetry of Denise Milan and the music ofNana Vasconcelos . The language isPortugese.

Coughlan's virtuoso technical abilitiesare apparentand well represented in thislong, rambling, ambiguous and uneven

tape . However, its allegorical, symbolicand poetic imagery allows viewers toinvent their own ideas about what'sgoing on . So who cares if the theme ispronounced in a foreign languages'

Live from Lunds, a tape by Tom Adairand Kenneth Robins, is the only comicrelief in an_ otherwise staid and seriousexhibition . The fun, fantasy and frolicgoing on in this loony supermarket balletis superproof of the makers' love for zanyhumor replete with sound video prod uc-lion standards. "Video artist is too stronga term to describe myself," says TomAdair. "I'm more of a frustrated TVviewer who has realized that the only wayI'll ever see anything broadcast thatappeals to my sense of (tumor is to do itmyself, and hopefully I'll entertain a fewother people along the way." Adair'shopes have been realized? As a child,Robins watched TV, dreaming of the daythere would be video so he could be avideo artist . Now that that time hasarrived, he finds himself pioneering theadvent of the fairy tale verite, as in this

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hilarious tape, thanks to Lunds FoodsStores and the Adair/Robins madcaphumor.Other tapes included in the festival, in

a variety of genres, are- Measures ofVolatility and Ef Corandero both by Sha-lom Gorewitz ; 2 Aspects by John Stur-geon - Nature by Kit Fitzgeraldand John Sanborn; Around and About byGarry Hill ; Steel and Flash by Dana Atch-ley and Eric Metcalfe ; Flowers by Ros Bar-ron; Best Friend by Neecy Twinem ;Quarks by Peter D'Agostino ; and Doubleidentities by Taka iimura . All deservefurther mention and comment were itnot for pressing time and spaceconsiderations.The festival appropriately inaugurated

its nine-month traveling schedule at theHerbert F. Johnson Museum in IthacaNY, then played in museums, galleries,colleges, universities and media centersin Bayville, Elmira, Rochester, Syracuse,Jamestown, Buffalo and Port Washing-ton, all in New York State . It also touredBowling Green and Dayton in Ohio ;Long Beach and San Francisco in Califor-nia; Bradford and Cambridge in Massa-chusettes; Houston, Texas; Decatur,Georgia; Norman, Oklahoma ; and NewOrleans, Louisiana. The festival was evenbooked at the Peppermint Lounge inNew York City, thus blurring distinctionsbetween discos and museums.Videography readers still have a

chance to see the tapes at the AlbanyPublic Library, Albany NY, November 6-17 ; the Seattle Public Library, Seattle WA,November 9-15 ; Broward CommunityCollege, Fort Lauderdale FL, November19-25; McKissick Museums, ColumbiaSC, November 22-December 12 ; North-west Film Study Center, Portland OR,January 1-15, 1982 ; Kitsap Library, Bre-merton WA,January 1-8.The Ithaca Video Festival is made pos-

sible in part by supportfromthe NationalEndowment for the Arts and the NewYork State Council on the Arts. Ourcountry is enriched when public fundsare made available for experimentationin the arts, humanities and sciences .

GeT more into . Cit6e Reader Card No . 121

conceived either directly from a cameraor from camera images held briefly incomputer memory . Additional move-ment is produced by an automatic in/outloom lens ."Woody Vasulka describes his nine-

minute videotape . Arrifac[5 fl, as "a col-lection of images initiated by basic algo-rithmical procedures, to verify thefunctional operation of a newly createdtool, the digital image articulator,designed by Schier/Vasulka specificallyto study real-time image performance."The Vasulkas designate their work asessentially being "a dialogue between

the tool and the image." That may beprecisely why I experience a certain dis-tance when viewing their work, as if Iwere watching a dialogue rather thanparticipating in one . While I marvel at thehuman capacity to create tools, visualeffects per se can be tiresome .Of the three vasulka tapes in the testi-

val, I found Steina's Urban Episodes themost satisfying because she allowed meto see and experience a typical cityscapewith new eyes . Bravo to 5teina andWoody Vasulka for their continuing risk-taking and explorations . We owethem adebt of gratitude for their ingeniousforays into the possibilities of the videomedium and whose mechanical/opti-cal/electronic image-manipulation toolsbring us nearer to using the medium as ameans of infinite expression .The extraordinary team of Dan Reeves

and Jon L. Hilton was represented in theFifth Annual Ithaca Festival, and I'm gladtheir work was selected again this year .Body Count, this year'sentry, is an exper-imental study for a larger, more narrativework, 5mothering Dreams, producedthrough The Television Laboratory atNew York's PBS station, WHET-13, andaired this September as part of the sta-tions Videofifm Review series of newandinnovative work.The exceptionally orchestrated edit-

ing, the juxtaposed images of archivaland re-enacted war images, portray anightmare and horror that translate into adocument of powerful proportions .Quick cuts of colorized images areinterspersed with raw reality, closeupsand panoramas of death and destructionthat build up to a climactic need to cryout "ND MORE WAR1" There is a relent-less barrage of fantasy/reality as childrenand adults emulate one another in theirinhumanity . It seems unbelievabie thatthe total experience we go through lastsonly nine minutes-the message crams alifetime of anguish and pain . The work isa powerful personal statement that

"Suns1Bne," by Ed Emshwiller.

speaks a universal language . The makerssay the tape is "an autobiography of thesurreal, an act of remembrance-a purg-ing of 13 years of anger, sorrow and anx-iety as well as a warning about lessons tooquickly forgotten."Body Count, a tape that should be

required viewing for all politicians, isdedicated to the men of the Third Pla-toon Company, a first Amtrack Battalionand the North Vietnamese soldiers whodied on January 2{}, 1968 along the Cua

Viet River. This superb video chroniclewas written, produced and directed byDan Reeves with video editing assistancefrom Ion L. Hilton . The equally superbsynchronous electronic music, soundeffects and audio mix are credited to Hil-ton with editing help by Reeves . A fineteam, consisting of production manager,field and postproduction engineers,technical assistant, researchers, and a castof young actors, helped actualize theReeves/Hilton masterpiece . The makershave closed the gap between documen-taries and experimental video, using thevery best characteristics of both genres .After experiencing the masterful

Reeves/Hilton tape, unfortunately theother works pale in comparison . BlueSquawk is a long three-minute tape byEva Mater, "a classically trained dancerwhose inspiration for movement comesfrom a varitey of sources : human,machine and animal ." This inconsequen-tial tape, made on a sunny August morn-ing on a farm in Bennington, Vermonthas Maier dancing amid chickens andpassing cars who manage to steal theshow . The dance/video she makesshould be left to others .A Visual Diary, by Blondell Cummings

and Shirley Clarke, is a collaborativeeffort by a choreographer/performerand an award-winning filmmaker/vi-