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