Critical Writing Index

I'm Having A Flashback: Video Data Bank revisits video's formative years in Surveying the First Decade.

by Danielle Schwartz

The Independent, July 1997, pp. 28-31

Danielle Schwartz reviews an ambitious joint project between the Video Data Bank, Electronic Arts Intermix and the Bay Area Video Coalition. The 17 hour anthology series released by the Video Data Bank titled Surveying the First Decade: Video Art and Alternative Media in the United States, 1968-1980 shows the work of fifty artists, in 34 complete videos and 27 excerpts. The series is accompanied by a publication Rewind which includes writings from curators and scholars as well as articles and manifestos from collectives and artists from the time period. Starting in 1968, the year Sony released the Portapak, to 1980, Surveying the First Decade forges a dialogue between video art and video made by activists, firmly planting video art's formative roots in political activism.

The anthology, intended for educational and institutional use, preserves many of these tapes, which would have otherwise been lost to technological obsolescence, providing a history of video which is an alternative to broadcast media in the United States.

ITEM 1997.125 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Media BurnAnt Farm

Video LocomotionPeer Bodes

Vertical RollStephen Beck

Healthcare: Your Money or your LifeVito Acconci

Port Huron Statement (Manifesto)Shigeko Kubota

Radical Software (Periodical)Joan Jonas

Stamping in the StudioPeople's Video Theater

CalligramsPortable Channel

CalligramsDowntown Community Television

Vita Statistics of a Citizen, Simply ObtainedStudents For A Democratic Society

Female SensibilityRaindance

Television Delivers PeopleBruce Nauman

Television Delivers PeopleWoody Vasulka

Switch! Monitor! Drift!Steina Vasulka

Selected WorksMartha Rosler

Eternal FrameLinda Benglis

Eternal FrameRichard Serra

Fifty Wonderful YearsCarlotta Fay Schoolman

ParticipationSteina Vasulka

ParticipationWilliam Wegman

Mayday RealtimeAnt Farm

Mayday RealtimeT.R. Uthco

Four More YearsOptic Nerve

The Business of Local NewsSteina Vasulka

Woody Vasulka

David Cort

Curtis Ratcliff

Austin Community Television

TVTV

University Community Video