I'm Having A Flashback: Video Data Bank revisits video's formative years in Surveying the First Decade.
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 Burn – Ant Farm
Video Locomotion – Peer Bodes
Stephen Beck
Vito Acconci
Shigeko Kubota
Vertical Roll – Joan Jonas
People's Video Theater
Portable Channel
Healthcare: Your Money or your Life – Downtown Community Television
Port Huron Statement (Manifesto) – Students For A Democratic Society
Radical Software (Periodical) – Raindance
Stamping in the Studio – Bruce Nauman
Calligrams – Woody Vasulka
Calligrams – Steina Vasulka
Vita Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained – Martha Rosler
Female Sensibility – Linda Benglis
Television Delivers People – Richard Serra
Television Delivers People – Carlotta Fay Schoolman
Switch! Monitor! Drift! – Steina Vasulka
Selected Works – William Wegman
Eternal Frame – Ant Farm
Eternal Frame – T.R. Uthco
Fifty Wonderful Years – Optic Nerve
Participation – Steina Vasulka
Participation – Woody Vasulka
Mayday Realtime – David Cort
Mayday Realtime – Curtis Ratcliff
Austin Community Television
Four More Years – TVTV
The Business of Local News – University Community Video