Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#2

anyMeta 4.19.3 - Atom module 0.3.2 2012-02-16T16:45:11+01:00 http://www.mediamatic.net/feed/atom/14283/en Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#2 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/15590 2010-08-19T11:33:42+02:00 Editorial

In the last few years, the video art infrastructure in The Netherlands has functioned reasonably well. Small institutions distribute video art, assist in its production, supply information, and give presentations directed at the public. In spite of some overlap in their goals, each of these institutions has its own image, and is associated with its own set of artists.

<a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/158508/en/libretto-86"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/473/158508-400-311.jpg" height="311" width="400" alt="" title="Libretto 86" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Libretto 86 - Mediamatic.net" href="/158508/en/libretto-86">Libretto 86</a> Media art is a difficult product commercially, due to its less material nature and the fact that it has only just outgrown its swaddling clothes, and therefore these institutions are dependent on subsidies. The news that the Dutch government wants to concentrate and reduce drastically the financial support for these initiatives, naturally caused great stir in the Dutch 'video scene'. The idea that an institution such as Montevideo was to be closed down caused surprise abroad as well. The greatest fury has calmed down by now, and the predictable discussion about the integrity and competence of the minister, his department and his advisers has subsided. Plans are being made. These plans show great variation. Some institutions are seeking supplementary finances to be able to continue their work. Other institutions precipitately push off a number of activities, and try to fetch in subsidies by specialization and profiling themselves. Of much interest will also be the Great Plan for Dutch Video Art, which is being prepared in relative silence by Time Based Arts, the only adopted child of the minister. When the present issue of Mediamatic will come out, more will be known about this plan. In the next issue we shall pay detailed attention to the implications of the new situation. The next issue of Mediamatic will appear soon after the present one, to make up for the delay caused by all kinds of circumstances beyond our control. <h2>In this issue</h2> you will find reviews of two festivals: the festival Ars Electronica held this summer in Linz, Austria, is reviewed by Simon Biggs, a European festival seen through Australian eyes. Maurice Nio saw the Dutch edition of Infermental, which in spite of the rather emphatic contribution by the compiler, Con Rumore, still resembles a video festival by post, more than a journal. Sluik en Kurpershoek supplied the artist's contribution, presenting their romantic-industrial video art in a clear and orderly way. We asked Richard Hefti for a contribution in the light of his installation Libretto 86 which was born early this year during his residency in the Vleeshal in Middelburg. In this very personal and emotional installation, he combined video, sound, painting and sculpture. It is typical of his attitude towards the media that his contribution to our journal was merely painted. Bert Merbius ' pages need no comment. The sixties are dealt with extensively in two historical articles; Annie Wright portrays the influence of the rise of television on society and especially on the young people of those days. Marie Adele Rajandream describes the reaction of Fluxus to the same phenomenon. Gábor Bódy shot his Either/Or in Chinatown in Vancouver; this is a video about erotic desire, the aesthetics of decay and the impossibility of choice. Mart Grisel en Murk Hoekstra give a conceptual analysis with Kierkegaard in mind. Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#2 Redactioneel

Nederland kent sinds een aantal jaren een redelijk functionerende infrastructuur voor video-kunst. Kleine instellingen distribueren werk, assisteren bij productie, verspreiden informatie en verzorgen publiekgerichte presentaties. Die instellingen hebben ondanks hier en daar overlappende taakstellingen, elk hun eigen gezicht en een eigen groep kunstenaars om zich heen.

<a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/158508/en/libretto-86"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/473/158508-400-311.jpg" height="311" width="400" alt="" title="Libretto 86" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Libretto 86 - Mediamatic.net" href="/158508/en/libretto-86">Libretto 86</a> Omdat media-kunst zich, door haar minder stoffelijke karakter en het feit dat ze de kinderschoenen nog maar net aan het ontgroeien is, slecht laat verhandelen, zijn deze instellingen afhankelijk van subsidies. Het bericht dat de rijksoverheid de financiële ondersteuning van deze initiatieven sterk wil concentreren en inkrimpen leidde dan ook tot grote omsteltenis in de Nederlandse 'videowereld'. Het idee dat een instelling als Montevideo opgeheven zou worden wekte ook in het buitenland verbazing. Inmiddels is de ergste woede bekoeld en voorspelbare discussie over integriteit en competentie van de minister, zijn ambtenaren en zijn adviseurs wat weggeëbd. Men maakt plannen. Die plannen variëren sterk. De ene instelling zoekt naar extra financiering om haar beleid voort te kunnen zetten. De andere instelling stoot overhaast activiteiten af en probeert door specialisering en profilering tach in aanmerking te komen voor rijkssubsidie. Ook zeer interessant zal zijn het Grote plan voor de Nederlandse Videokunst dat Time Based Arts, tot enigst kind uitverkoren voor de minister, in betrekkelijke stilte voorbereidt. Over deze plannen zal bij het verschijnen van dit nummer van Mediamatic meer bekend zijn. We zullen in het volgende nummer uitvoerig aandacht besteden aan vooral de inhoudelijke consequenties van de nieuwe situatie. Dat volgende nummer zal overigens snel na het huidige verschijnen om zo de achterstand die we door allerlei omstandigheden opliepen weer wat teniet te doen treft u besprekingen aan van twee festivals; Ars Electronica afgelopen zomer in Linz, Oostenrijk, wordt besproken door de Australiër Simon Biggs, een Europees festival door een buitenstaander gezien. MauriceNio zag de Nederlandse editie van lnfermental, dat, ondanks vrij nadrukkelijke redactionele inbreng van samensteller Con Rumore, nog steeds meer lijkt op een videofestival per post, dan op een tijdschrift. Sluik en Kurpershoek maakten een kunstenaarsbijdrage waarin de industriële romantiek van hun videowerk strak werd vormgegeven. Richard Hefti vroegen we een bijdrage naar aanleiding van de installatie Libretto 86 die ontstond tijdens zijn residency, begin dit jaar in de Vleeshal in Middelburg. In deze installatie, die een heel persoonlijk emotioneel karakter heeft, combineerde hij video, geluid, schilderen en ruimtelijk werk op een volstrekt natuurlijke manier. Het is tekenend voor zijn omgang met deze media dat hij voor ons blad een puur geschilderde bijdrage maakte. Bert Mebius' pagina's spreken voor zich. De jaren zestig komen uitgebreid aan bod in twee historische artikelen; Annie Wright beschrijft de invloed van de opkomst van televisie op de maatschappij en vooral de jeugd in die jaren. Marie Adele Rajandream beschrijft de reactie van Fluxus op die zelfde opkomst. Gàbor Bòdy nam in Vancouver zijn Either/Or in Chinatown op, een video over erotisch verlangen, de estetiek van het verval en de onmogelijkheid van keuzes. Mart Grisel en Murk Hoekstra doen met Kierkegaard in de hand een inhoudelijke analyse. - d d ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14284 2010-08-24T10:39:37+02:00 Ars Electronica

Last June Ars Electronica, Festival fur Kunst, Technologie und Gesellschaft took place for the fifth time in Linz, Austria. It was a festival of 'electronic art', which (from now on) will be held annually. A fantastic show which included for instance five evenings of broadcasting of live-performance, video-art and talkshows around the art(ists) on the Austrian national broadcasting network (ORF). Videotapes and even larger stage performances (Galas, Sanborn etc.) were commissioned by the organization. The budget for the broadcastings and the commissioned tapes (ORF- videonale) was about six million oS (£300,000. -)

<a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/15618/en/logo-ars-electronica"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/093/15618-400-214.jpg" height="214" width="400" alt="" title="Logo Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Logo Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15618/en/logo-ars-electronica">Logo Ars Electronica</a> Unfortunately, foreign visitors had great difficulty in getting to see these broadcasts, because there was no TV set in the Brucknerhaus, where most of the live-shows were performed... . Therefore Simon Biggs only reports on performances and on the Terminal Kunst exhibition, a collection of art-teletext and other visual computer applications. That technology has had a history of impact not only on the culture that bears it but also on its (generally) attendant art forms is well documented. Various art media, to varying degrees, have evolved in direct response to new technologies. In the late Twentieth Century we live in what is often called the information society; a culture constituted of signals rather than artifacts - or perhaps a new family of artifacts. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/15619/en/galas-diamanda-masque-of-the-red-death-ars"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/702/15619-400-267.jpg" height="267" width="400" alt="" title="Galas, Diamanda. Masque of the Red Death - Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Galas, Diamanda. Masque of the Red Death - Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15619/en/galas-diamanda-masque-of-the-red-death-ars">Galas, Diamanda. Masque of the Red Death - Ars Electronica</a> That a festival such as Ars Electronica has evolved to deal with the relationship between art and technology would seem to imply that a need exists for such a forum. However, in our world the laws of cause and effect, desire and gratification are not always as straightforward as they once were. The information is scrambled by conflicting signals and ever present noise. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/15620/en/attersee-und-seine-freunde-ars-electronica"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/501/15620-281-400.jpg" height="400" width="281" alt="" title="Attersee und seine Freunde - Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Attersee und seine Freunde - Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15620/en/attersee-und-seine-freunde-ars-electronica">Attersee und seine Freunde - Ars Electronica</a> <h2>Isolation</h2> Ars Elecrronica was first held in 1979 and then in 1980, 82 and 1984. It has developed from a small event organised by the artists involved to a quite large, government run show. This has allowed for greater funding, and all the benefits this will bring - however one ponders the political undertones of this support. Why a festival of this kind in what is if not a country town then a small regional centre? Why should such a small center spend many thousands of dollars on art work of a highly experimental nature that is not only isolated from an art context but even more so from its potential audience? <h2>Roll out the barrel</h2> At this years event a certain incipient German nationalism was definitely in the air. Problems arose for the audience with the Germans and Eastern Europeans failing to comprehend the Western European and American contributions and vice versa. This led to total confusion at certain events. For example, the central event, titled Attersee und sein Freunde was completely incomprehensible to the non-Germanic part of the audience. The Germans certainly loved it, but the rest walked out in frustration. A who's who of German/Austrian art (A.R. Penck, Markus Lupertz, Herman Nitsch, Dieter Roth and Arnulf Rainer to name a few) came and went in what appeared to be a roll out the barrel amateur hour with Fluxus overtones - not to mention new right nationalist undertones. Strangely, this event, the most publicized and well attended of Ars Electronica, involved no technology (beyond a few microphones and a PA) and did not seek to engage that context. Attersee- whose main reason for being there seemed to be because he is Linz's most famous artist- stated that he wished to show the human behind the machine by focusing on the individual artist. That he succeeded in his subversive intent - calling into question the whole rationale for Ars Electronica- is probable, however if the work he and his friends presented is an alternative then bring on the machines. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/15621/en/hess-felix-chirping-and-silence-ars-electronica"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/352/15621-400-293.jpg" height="293" width="400" alt="" title="Hess, Felix. Chirping and Silence - Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Hess, Felix. Chirping and Silence - Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15621/en/hess-felix-chirping-and-silence-ars-electronica">Hess, Felix. Chirping and Silence - Ars Electronica</a> <h2>Highlights</h2> In marked contrast to this example of Austrian self-indulgence was the performance of Cabaret Voltaire (UK) Their slice of life experimental rock presentation - dealing with certain things English (the class structure, urban collapse, identity crisis) and some German (Adolph Hitler, control, etc) - was received in virtual silence and received polite applause. I personally found their work highly charged but it was most strange to see an audience remain unmoved through such a spectacle. An artist with certain things in common with Cabaret Voltaire is Diamanda Galas (USA). Her dark, confronting and mysterious work was initially remarkable for its Faustian/phallic symbolism and its ear- shattering volume. Somewhere between Wagners Ring and Status Quo (via Spinal Tap), in the end it went on for too long. Perhaps a development of the theme, rather than a constant reiteration, would have helped. However, if this work has flawed, at least it was in the grand manner. From a completely different tack came the work of Richard Teitelbaum (USA). This work was a real high point, the technology being used in an integrated and transcendent manner. This concert featured works for three pianos - one under direct control of the composer/pianist and the others under that of a computer. Aside from the complex and evocative music this work sought to problematize the whole nature of performance - the status of the performer, his tools and the audience. This set of fundamental relationships, well set in most cases, became fluid and indeterminate suggesting manifold re-alignments of the vectors of communication and meaning that constitute art. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/15622/en/voltaire-cabaret-a-contemplation-of-dangerous"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/395/15622-400-329.jpg" height="329" width="400" alt="" title="Voltaire, Cabaret. A Contemplation of Dangerous Games - Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Voltaire, Cabaret. A Contemplation of Dangerous Games - Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15622/en/voltaire-cabaret-a-contemplation-of-dangerous">Voltaire, Cabaret. A Contemplation of Dangerous Games - Ars Electronica</a> Similarly, the work by Felix Hess (NL), Chirping and Silence called into question these same basic issues. This piece consisted of a network of small machines capable of talking or singing to one another and the audience. Perhaps more a sound sculpture than a performance - although presented here in concert conditions - this work involved no human performer but rather the machines suggesting many small creatures exhibiting their intelligence and intent thus displacing and deconstructing the roles of reader and writer, performer and audience. Although here the technology was highly visible the result was subtle and completely natural. An elegant moment amongst a great deal of noise. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/15623/en/vogel-peter-klang-labor-ars-electronica"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/993/15623-300-400.jpg" height="400" width="300" alt="" title="Vogel, Peter. Klang Labor - Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Vogel, Peter. Klang Labor - Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15623/en/vogel-peter-klang-labor-ars-electronica">Vogel, Peter. Klang Labor - Ars Electronica</a> <h2>Terminal Kunst</h2> Amongst all the performances the visual arts made an occasional and attendant appearance. The main exhibition, titled Terminal Kunst, showed a complete lack of curatorial intent or cohesion. The works were without exception very badly displayed and located relative to one another. The work of Italian video artists Giovanatti, Mondani and Meccanici was very clever and witty amongst a lot of serious, and seriously lacking, art. Using basic low quality computer generated video they produced a series of small vignettes around the adventures of Futurist theorist Marinetti. They confronted him with the eventual products of his unrealised labours in a nicely stylised, tongue-in-cheek pop idiom. Klang Labor, by Peter Vogel, was a sound sculpture activated by the viewers shadow, creating myriad possibilities in sound and space. Here the sign of both absence and presence, the shadow, was the performance ingredient - the real content/neg-content of the piece. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/15624/en/mondani-giovanatti-meccanici-ars-electronica"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/695/15624-400-277.jpg" height="277" width="400" alt="" title="Mondani, Giovanatti. Meccanici - Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Mondani, Giovanatti. Meccanici - Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15624/en/mondani-giovanatti-meccanici-ars-electronica">Mondani, Giovanatti. Meccanici - Ars Electronica</a> <h2>Ghetto?</h2> This paradoxal metaphor was really at work in Ars Eleclronica as a whole. The problem here is as follows; artists working in a similar and experimental nature need to get together to develop their work and for mutual support. On the other hand this can lead to a marginalization or ghetto mentality that ultimately isolates the artist and their work from the broader artistic and social context they should be seeking to engage. Perhaps it is that Linz is the wrong place for an event of this kind, or maybe the fault is with the curators/administrators (who were generally notable in their absence from the proceedings). All up the event failed to engage (beyond a small number of works) and if the stated intention of Ars Electronica - to explore the relationships between the arts, technology and society M is to be achieved a major re-think is required. Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#2 Ars Electronica (nl)

In juni vond Ars Electronica, Festival für Kunst, Technologie und Gesellschaft voor de vijfde keer plaats in Linz, Oostenrijk. Het was een festival van 'electronische kunst' dat (vanaf '86) elk jaar zal plaatsvinden; een reusachtige show, met onder andere vijf avonden uitzending, op de Oostenrijkse televisie ( ORF ), van live-optredens, videokunst en talkshows rond de kunst(enaars). Er waren opdrachten aan kunstenaars voor het maken van video-tapes en zelfs voor avondvullende voorstellingen ( Galas, Sanborn etc). Het budget voor de TV-uitzendingen en videokunst opdrachten alleen ( ORF-videonale) was ongeveer zes miljoen S (Fl1.000.000,-).

<a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/222201/en/pop-up"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/093/15618-400-214.jpg" height="214" width="400" alt="" title="Logo Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Logo Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15618/en/logo-ars-electronica">Logo Ars Electronica</a> Helaas waren de TV- uitzendingen wat moeilijk te volgen voor buitenlandse festivalbezoekers omdat er geen ontvanger beschikbaar was in het Brucknerhaus, waar het live-deel van het festival zich afspeelde... Daarom verslaat Simon Biggs hieronder alleen voorstellingen en de Terminal Kunst- tentoonstelling, een verzameling kunstteletekst en andere visuele computertoepassingen. Veel is er geschreven over het feit dat de technologie niet alleen reeds lange tijd invloed uitoefent op de cultuur waaruit zij voortkomt, maar ook op de kunstvormen waarmee deze culluur in het algemeen gepaard gaat. Verscheidene kunst-media hebben, in meer of mindere mate, zich ontwikkeld als een direct antwoord op nieuwe technologieën. Aan het eind van de twintigste eeuw leven we in wat vaak de informatie-maatschappij genoemd wordt; een cultuur opgebouwd uit signalen in plaats van uit artefacten - of misschien uit een nieuw soort artefacten. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/222201/en/pop-up"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/702/15619-400-267.jpg" height="267" width="400" alt="" title="Galas, Diamanda. Masque of the Red Death - Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Galas, Diamanda. Masque of the Red Death - Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15619/en/galas-diamanda-masque-of-the-red-death-ars">Galas, Diamanda. Masque of the Red Death - Ars Electronica</a> Diamanda Galas Masque of the Red Death Dat een festival zoals Ars Electronica is ontstaan, een festival dat de relatie tussen kunst en technologie onderzoekt, zou erop kunnen wijzen dat er een behoefte aan een dergelijk platform zou bestaan. In onze wereld zijn echter de wetten van oorzaak en gevolg, van verlangen en bevrediging, niet altijd even doorzichtig als vroeger. De informatie wordt vervormd door tegengestelde signalen en de altijd aanwezige ruis. <h2>Isolatie</h2> Ars Electronica werd voor het eerst georganiseerd in 1979, en vervolgens in 1980,1982 en 1984. Het heeft zich ontwikkeld van een kleinschalige gebeurtenis die door de kunstenaars zelf werd opgezet tot een tamelijk groot, door de regering georganiseerd evenement. Dit heeft grotere geldstromen aangetrokken - met aIle voordelen vandien, hoe men ook moge denken over de politieke ondertoon van deze steun. Waarom een dergelijk festival in een kleine provinciestad, in een klein regionaal centrum? Waarom zou een dergelijk klein centrum vele duizenden dollars uitgeven aan uiterst experimentele kunst die niet alleen geisoleerd is ten opzichte van andere kunst, maar nog meer ten opzichte van haar potentiele publiek? <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/222201/en/pop-up"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/501/15620-281-400.jpg" height="400" width="281" alt="" title="Attersee und seine Freunde - Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Attersee und seine Freunde - Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15620/en/attersee-und-seine-freunde-ars-electronica">Attersee und seine Freunde - Ars Electronica</a> Attersee und seine Freunde, affiche <h2>Biertonnen</h2> Dit jaar hing er ontegenzeggelijk een atmosfeer van beginnend Duits nationalisme in de lucht! Dit gaf problemen bij het publiek; Duitsers en Oost-Europeanen die de West-Europese en Amerikaanse bijdragen niet begrepen, en vice versa. Bij sommige onderdelen leidde dit tot complete verwarring. Het centrale onderdeel bijvoorbeeld, getiteld Attersee und seine Freunde was voor het niet-Germaanse deel van het publiek geheel onbegrijpelijk. De Duitsers vanden het fantastisch, maar de rest liep gefrustreerd weg. Het leek wel een Wie is Wie van de Duits/Oostenrijkse kunst (A.R. Pencck, Markus Lupertz, Hermann Nitsch, Dieter Roth en Arnulf Rainer om er een paar te noemen), een soort leve de bierton -amateur-uurtje met Fluxus - invloeden; om maar te zwijgen over de ondertoon van nieuw-rechts nationalisme. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/222201/en/pop-up"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/352/15621-400-293.jpg" height="293" width="400" alt="" title="Hess, Felix. Chirping and Silence - Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Hess, Felix. Chirping and Silence - Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15621/en/hess-felix-chirping-and-silence-ars-electronica">Hess, Felix. Chirping and Silence - Ars Electronica</a> Felix Hess Chirping and Silence Vreemd genoeg maakte deze happening waar het meest over geschreven is, en die het meeste publiek trok, geen gebruik van technologie (behalve een paar microfoons en een versterker) en leek zich ook niet op de technologie te richten. Attersee, die voornamelijk aanwezig was omdat hij de beroemdste kunstenaar van Linz is, vertelde dat hij de mens achter de machine wilde laten zien door zich op de individuele kunstenaar te richten. Het lijkt waarschijnlijk dat hij in zijn subversieve opzet - het in twijfel trekken van de hele grondgedachte achter Ars Electronica- geslaagd is, maar als zijn werk en dat van zijn vrienden een alternatief moet zijn, dan toch liever machines. <h2>Topkunst</h2> In schril contrast met deze Oostenrijkse zelfgenoegzaamheid stond het optreden van Cabaret Voltaire(GB) Hun life-experimentele-rock-presentatie met als onderwerp bepaalde Engelse zaken (klassenmaatschappij, ondergang van de steden, identiteitscrisis), en een paar Duitse (Adolf Hitler, Kontrolle etc), werd in stilte aangehoord, en met beleefd applaus beloond. Persoonlijk vond ik het een zeer geladen optreden en het was bijzonder vreemd om te zien dat het publiek onbeweeglijk bleef bij zo'n spektakel. Een kunstenaar die bepaalde overeenkomsten heeft met Cabaret Voltaire is Diamanda Galas (vs). Haar donkere, confronterende en mysterieuze werk viel op door de Faustiaanse/fallische symboliek en het oorverdovende volume, iets tussen de Ring van Wagner en Status Quo (via Spinal Tap). Al met al duurde het te lang. Misschien was een ontwikkeling van het thema, in plaats van de constante herhaling, wel op zijn plaats geweest. Hoe dan ook, als het werk zwakheden kende, waren het tenminste gróótse. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/222201/en/pop-up"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/395/15622-400-329.jpg" height="329" width="400" alt="" title="Voltaire, Cabaret. A Contemplation of Dangerous Games - Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Voltaire, Cabaret. A Contemplation of Dangerous Games - Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15622/en/voltaire-cabaret-a-contemplation-of-dangerous">Voltaire, Cabaret. A Contemplation of Dangerous Games - Ars Electronica</a> Cabaret Voltaire A Contemplation of dangerous Games Uit een geheel andere hoek kwam het werk van Richard Teitelbaum(vs). Zijn werk bleek een echt hoogtepunt; de technologie werd gebruikt op een geïntegreerde en transcendente manier. Dit concert bestond uit stukken voor drie piano's - een onder directe controle van de componist/pianist en de andere gestuurd door een computer. Niet alleen was de muziek complex en evocatief, maar dit werkstuk deed ook een poging om het hele wezen van performance te analyseren - de status van de performer, de gebruikte middelen en het publiek. Deze groep van fundamentele verhoudingen - die over het algemeen wel vastliggen - werd tot een vloeiend en onbepaald geheel, en suggereerde allerlei hergroeperingen van de vectoren van communicatie en betekenis die samen de bouwstenen van de kunst vormen. Met Chirping And Silence zette Felix Hess (nl) vraagtekens bij dezelfde basisprincipes. Dit stuk bestond uit een netwerk van kleine machines die met elkaar en met het publiek konden praten en ook zingen. Misschien was dit meer een geluidssculptuur dan een performance (hoewel hier als concert gepresenteerd), omdat er geen menselijke performer aan te pas kwam, maar de machines de suggestie opriepen van kleine wezentjes die hun intelligentie en ideeën tentoonstellen, om op deze manier de rollen van lezer en schrijver, van performer en publiek, los te weken en af te breken. Hoewel de technologie hier zeer duidelijk zichtbaar was, was het resultaat subtiel en geheel natuurlijk. Een elegant moment tussen een heleboel lawaai. <h2>Terminal Kunst</h2> Tussen al deze performances werd af en toe wat beeldende kunst gepresenteerd. De belangrijkste temoonstelling, getiteld Terminal Kunst, bleek geheel zonder visie of samenhang. De werken waren stuk voor stuk zeer sIecht opgesteld, ook in relatie tot elkaar. Tussen een heleboel serieuze en duidelijk tekortschietende kunst, viel het werk van de Italiaanse video- kunstenaars Giovanatti, Mondani en Meccanici op door zijn intelligentie en geestigheid. Met behulp van een eenvoudige, door een computer van lage kwaliteit voortgebrachte video maakten zij een reeks vignetten over de avonturen van de Futuristische theoreticus Marinetti . Zij confronteerden hem met de uiteindelijke resultaten van zijn onuitgevoerde werken, in een prettig gestileerd ironisch pop-idioom. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/222201/en/pop-up"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/993/15623-300-400.jpg" height="400" width="300" alt="" title="Vogel, Peter. Klang Labor - Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Vogel, Peter. Klang Labor - Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15623/en/vogel-peter-klang-labor-ars-electronica">Vogel, Peter. Klang Labor - Ars Electronica</a> Peter Vogel Klang Labor Peter Vogel's Klang Labor was een geluidssculptuur die tot stand kwam door de schaduwen van de toeschouwers, waarbij onbeperkte mogelijkheden in geluid en ruimte werden gecreëerd. Hier was de schaduw - zowel de aan- als de afwezigheid het performance-ingrediënt; de werkelijke inhoud/negatieve inhoud van het werk. <h2>Getto?</h2> Deze paradoxale metafoor was eigenlijk op Ars Electronica als geheel van toepassing. Het probleem is als volgt: kunstenaars die in een gelijksoortig experimenteel kader werken, moeten de gelegenheid hebben om samen hun werk te ontwikkelen en elkaar te steunen. Dat kan aan de andere kant leiden tot marginalisme of een getto-mentaliteit, die uiteindelijk de kunstenaar en zijn werk isoleert van de ruimere artistieke en sociale context, waar hij zich juist mee bezig zou moeten houden. Misschien is Linz gewoon de verkeerde plaats voor een dergelijke gebeurtenis, of misschien ligt de fout bij de conservatoren en organisatoren (die in het algemeen schitterden door afwezigheid). AI met al kon deze gebeurtenis niet boeien (op een klein aantal individuele werken na), en als de bedoeling van Ars Electronica - een onderzoek naar de relatie tussen kunst, technologie en de maatschappij - ooit verwezenlijkt wil worden, dan is een diepgaande bezinning op zijn plaats. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/222201/en/pop-up"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/695/15624-400-277.jpg" height="277" width="400" alt="" title="Mondani, Giovanatti. Meccanici - Ars Electronica" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Mondani, Giovanatti. Meccanici - Ars Electronica - Mediamatic.net" href="/15624/en/mondani-giovanatti-meccanici-ars-electronica">Mondani, Giovanatti. Meccanici - Ars Electronica</a> Giovanatti, Mondani, Meccanici Vertaling: FOKKE SLUITER Groningen Simon Biggs http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14285 c c ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14287 2009-05-22T13:52:19+02:00 Through the Looking Glass Television and the Sixties Generation

In the sixties, artists used video to criticize television (cf. the Fluxus article in this issue). Annie Wright describes the influence of TV on normal people.

The 1960 Presidential Elections were going comfortably in favour of the Republican candidate. Of course he didn't have to take on the TV debates, rather it was an act of bravado, a final opportunity to trounce his youthful opponent. The story's outcome is now just another part of popular history. What was said is irrelevant as who won or lost the debates. What does matter is that the avuncular good looks, the charm of Democrat John F.Kennedy illuminated millions of American living rooms while the Republican, Richard Nixon, appeared as he would a decade later: thuggish, shifty, his make-up running under the hot studio lights. And, one hardly need add, it was Kennedy who won a surprise victory a few weeks later. In 1949, there were an estimated one million television sets in the United States. 1 By 1959, there were ten million. Although the TV set was still a luxury item, it was not an uncommon one. Certainly, as the 1960 elections show, it was sufficiently accessible to the masses that Nixon's easy progress to the White House was abruptly halted. Significantly, the debates were also broadcast on radio where, it was felt, they were either a draw or possibly represented a victory for Nixon. On television, it was all Kennedy, the medium had demonstrated its power. 1 Encyclopedia Britannica 1973 During the 1 960s, the television set became just another household object. By the early 1970s there were 50 million TV sets in the States alone. People deplored its popularity. It was seen as vulgar, crass, a threat to children's literacy. While reading was considered a worthwhile activity, watching was not. Nonetheless, a generation was indeed growing up with and through television, its curiosity ranging way beyond what was intended as children's TV . What a distressing contrast, there is between the radiant intelligence of a child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. Sigmund Freud Through the TV looking-glass is a world where fact and fantasy meet. Kennedy, for instance, was a president script-written for television. He swept into the White House and transformed it into Camelot (as it was known during his administration). Certainly, the news program fitted in perfectly alongside Roger Moore in Ivanhoe as the enigmatic Lee Harvey Oswald could have been something out of the Twilight Zone. Growing up in front of the box meant a witnessing, a sharing of one's personal history with world events: remembering where you were when Kennedy was shot became tangible evidence of your part in the Zeitgeist. The children of the first TV generation were marked out not only by the newness of their relationship to television but by the fact of their sheer numbers. By 1967, half the American population was under the age of 30, the lowest median age in the nation's history. It simply stands to reason that the Sixties was to be an era dominated by youth. In a sense, the years of the 1960s seemed to grow with the burgeoning TV generation. The Beatles were the decade's first media craze: the lovable mop-tops who were adored by grannies and toddlers alike. Their songs were simple, straight-forward paeans to exuberance: She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah! A couple of years later and pubescent libidos first stirred to the strut and fuck riffs of The Rolling Stones. They looked like they could be dirty and that's exactly what you wanted them to be. If, as has been suggested, the 1960s was one long party, it was well underway by the mid-Sixties. London swung, skirts shrunk and Vogue magazine talked about Youthquakers 2. News traveled fast because it traveled by TV . Its screen provided a mirror between the youthful viewer and the beautiful people beyond. Style was just there for the taking. And even from the comparative isolation of individual living rooms, this experience was essentially one which was shared. For instance: seeing The Beatles at Shea Stadium was not a question of living in the vicinity of New York City, it was a matter of conviction in and commitment to your generation (and turning your television on at the right time). 2 Vogue (American Edition) august 1965 Girl: What are you rebelling against? Brando: Whaddya got? The Wild Ones Considering (as Freud 3 did) adolescence as the genital stage, a revival of earlier oedipal attachments and rivalries with the need to resolve these conflicts through greater independence must make the Sixties the quintessential adolescent age. We want the world and we want it now, sang the archadolescent Jim Morrison. The desire for greater independence, freedom, meant questioning authority, all authority: be it parents, school, college or government. 3 Sigmunt Freud A general introduction to psychoanalysis New York 1953 By 1968, rebelliousness had turned into uprisings and resistance: Paris, Prague, Chicago. Freudian-Marxist Herbert Marcuse gave a generation of students their voice and political groups proliferated. From their earliest years, the TV generation has been exposed to night after night of evidence of the world's imperfection, its curious logic as demonstrated by the American major in Vietnam who stated that we had to destroy Ben Tre in order to save it. While the transition to adulthood is often marked by a rebellious adolescence, there are also those who don't want to grow up at all, the Peter Pans clinging to the vast imaginative realms of childhood. In 1967, this crisis triggered a mass metamorphosis of teenagers and young adults into flower children: wide-eyed, long-haired seekers of some elusive Eden of love and peace. Haight Ashbury was its first location due, in part, to a rather bland but seminal song (If you go to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair) which enticed thousands of hippies to the city. Allen Ginsberg came to chant mantras and a vote-conscious Bobby Kennedy commented approvingly: They want to be recognized as individuals (according to a poll in the Haight, he was currently running second in presidential popularity- to Snoopy). However fast this Eden crumbled in San Francisco (and as early as October 1967 there was a mock funeral to mourn the death of Hippie), the ideal continued elsewhere. For what had started primarily as a utopic Californian phenomenon rapidly took root everywhere, its forms subtly differing from Amsterdam to Copenhagen and across the hippie trail to Marrakesh, Ibiza and Katmandu. Dropping out was one of life's alternatives in the late Sixties and although a (counter-)culture arose with its forms of the media (with magazines like Rolling Stone and Oz), it was still television which provided the day-to-day news of events world-wide. While it was impossible to attend every happening, demonstration or festival, one could still witness many of them on television. This produced a curious equality of experience: by growing up with TV, you were automatically implicated in the spirit of the age. I asked myself many times, 'What made Charlie change? What was the main cause?' and one thought kept recurring: If Abbey Road had come out sooner, maybe there wouldn't have been a murder. a friend of Charles Manson 4 4 Lance Fairweather Manson in: The Sixties New York 1974 Then, suddenly, as it seemed that the party would go on forever, it was over. Woodstock became Altamont, the hippie dream had soured into the nightmare of the Tate-La Bianca murders. For all the euphoria, from that day in Dallas onwards there always been a darker side to the Sixties. But if this was tragedy, were was the fatal flaw? With hindsight, one can say that for all their idealism, the hippies and the politicos always seemed doomed to be no more successful than their parents were. Throughout that era of the global village, (which I would define as extending beyond the chronological boundaries of the decade itself), the United States took stage center. Why? Because of its political and cultural dominance and the war in Vietnam made the American president the biggest father-figure of all to rebel against. Finally, the birds came home to roost in 1972 with the Watergate trials. The American nation followed Watergate like a particularly morbid soap opera. For those who missed the daytime edition of these sessions televised daily, there was a four hour evening repeat on educational TV. It evoked the fascinated horror of watching the predator coming in for the kill with each new relevation of life at the White House. The machinations of the dirty tricks department, Creep ( Nixon's re-election campaign) and the ironical fact that Nixon had the whole place so well bugged that potentially any conversation could be used as evidence against him were just minor details to be gleaned from the transmissions. And slowly, inextricably, the spotlight of guilt came to rest on one man above all others: on the President himself. Writer Mary McCarthy has suggested that Watergate was America's way of atoning for its sins in Vietnam: Atonement is directed not toward the victims but toward the crime-on God or the fragile social tissue holding living beings together. Some degree of repair here is possible, or at least the attempt is salutary and may benefit the criminal If nobody else. 5 How else could a nation in the early 1970s have cleansed its collective conscience than through the mass witnessing of this dies irae on television? 5 Mary McCarthy The Mask of State: Watergate Portraits New York 1974 And meanwhile Vietnam was lumbering to a clumsy and belated close. No victory, there was only the knowledge that the army of well-built young men brought up on the meaty diet of post-war affluence had failed to defeat their slight Third World opponents. Worse still, it emerged that some of these action men of the TV generation even had difficulty in distinguishing reality from the TV screen. As Vietnam correspondent Michael Herr records in his book Dispatches: You don't know what a media freak is until you've seen the way a few of those grunts would run around during a fight when they knew that there was a TV crew nearby... we'd seen too many movies... It was the same violence only moved over to another medium; some kind of jungle play with giant helicopters and fantastic special effects, actors out there lying in canvas body bags waiting for the scene 10 end so they could get up and walk it off But that was some scene (you found out), there was no cutting it. 6 Too much television, evidently, could be dangerous to your health. 6 Michael Herr Dispatches New York 1977 With Papa Nixon effectively deposed and his nation humiliated there was no greater (temporal) authority to be challenged and youthful rebellion cooled. Rock'n Roll, the music that promised in the Sixties to set you free settled down in the Seventies to produce a staple diet of such pop pap as Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees. The Beatels had disbanded, The Stones were tamed (I know it's only rock' n roll but I like it) and Dylan had found Christ. The Sixties is usually pronounced with a sigh of nostalgia or a leer of disdain. Depending on your point of view it was either a magical time or an era of mass indulgence. Probably it was both. Certainly, its kaleidoscopic diversity has not been equaled since. Singer Joni Mitchell commented in a recent interview that in the Sixties people wanted to change the world, in the Seventies they wanted to change themselves and in the Eighties they just wanted to make money. Not surprisingly, when getting a job is by no means automatic, increasing value is placed on material possessions (preppies and yuppies are masters of the nuances of this game). With Reagan and Thatcher in power, the political climate has swung to the right and liberalism has been largely eclipsed. But curiously there is a growing nostalgia for the Sixties which is reflected in fashion, music and the number of books being published on the subject. The appeal is, I think, not simply the style but the aura of freshness it exudes, a yearning for innocence which was, ironically, the goal of much of the Sixties youthful energy. Edenic this impetus may still be but it is no longer utopic. What is missing is the excitement of the new when nothing exists and everything seems possible, the first time, the trial run: the first TV generation. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/15914/en/mm1-2-through-the-light"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/432/15914-373-400.jpg" height="400" width="373" alt="" title="MM1#2 Through the light" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 Through the light - Mediamatic.net" href="/15914/en/mm1-2-through-the-light">MM1#2 Through the light</a> "Don't you understand? This is life, this is what is happening. We can't switch to another channel." Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#2 Through the Looking Glass Televisie en de Jaren-60 Generatie

In de jaren zestig werd video door beeldend kunstenaars gebruikt om kritische uitlatingen te doen over televisie (zie het artikel over Fluxus in dit nummer). Annie Wright beschrijft de invloed van TV op gewone mensen.

In 1960 liepen de Amerikaanse presidentsverkiezingen op rolletjes voar de republikeinse kandidaat. Hij hoefde natuurlijk nog geen televisiedebatten aan te gaan; het was meer een staaltje bluf, een laatste gelegenheid om zijn jeugdige tegenstander de grond in te boren. De afloop van het verhaal is nu gewoon verleden tijd. Wat er gezegd werd, is net zo onbelangrijk als wie er won of verloor. Her enige belangrijke is dat de charme en het knappe uiterlijk van de democratische kandidaat orne John F. Kennedy straalde in miljoenen Amerikaanse huiskamers; de republikeinse kandidaat, Richard Nixon kwam over zoals hij dat tien jaar later ook zou doen: als een achterbakse schurk, terwijl onder de warme studiolampen het zweet de make-up van zijn gezicht spoelde. Onnodig te vermelden dat Kennedy enkele weken later een (toen) verrassende overwinning behaalde. In 1949 waren er naar schatting 1 miljoen televisietoestellen in de Verenigde Staten1. 1 Encyclopedia Brittannica 1973 In 1959 waren het er 10 miljoen. Hoewel een televisie nog steeds een luxe-artikel was, was het bezit ervan toch ook niet meer ongewoon. Uit de verkiezingen van 1960 blijkt dat de te!evisie voor het grote publiek al voldoende binnen handbereik was om Nixon's soepele opmars naar het Witte Huis abrupt tot staan te brengen. Het is veelzeggend dat de debatten ook op de radio werden uitgezonden) waar ze, naar in het algemeen werd gedacht, uitliepen op een gelijk spel, of eventueel een overwinning voor Nixon. Op de televisie was het een en al Kennedy; het medium had zijn macht gedemonstreerd. In de loop van de jaren zestig werd het televisietoestel een alledaags gebruiksvoorwerp. Aan het begin van de zeventiger jaren waren er alleen al in de Verenigde Staten 50 miljoen TV'S. Haar populariteit werd betreurd, Men beschouwde televisie als vulgair en grof) een bedreiging voor het leren lezen en schrijven van de kinderen. Lezen werd als een nuttige activiteit gezien, maar televisie kijken niet. Desondanks groeide er wel een generatie op met en door televisie, een generatie die een veel ruimere belangstelling had dan alleen voor wat bedoeld was als kinderprogramma's. Wat is er toch een bedroevende tegenstelling tussen de stralende intelligentie van een kind, en de zwakke mentaliteit van een volwassene. Sigmund Freud Achter de spiegel van de televisie ligt een wereld waar feiten en fantasie samenvloeien. Kennedy, bijvoorbeeld, was als president voor de TV gemaakt. Hij veroverde het Witte Huis en veranderde het in Camelot (zoals het tijdens zijn presidentschap bekend stond). In elk geval paste het journaal prima bij Roger Moore in Ivanhoe, en leek de raadselachtige Lee Harvey Oswald wel iemand uit de Twilight Zone. Opgroeien voor de TV betekende dat je erbij hoorde het samengaan van je eigen persoonlijke levensloop met de gebeurtenissen in de wereld: je te herinneren waar je was toen Kennedy werd doodgeschoten, was een tastbaar bewijs van jouw aandeel in de tijdgeest. De eerste generatie televisiekinderen werd niet alleen gekenmerkt door het nieuwe van haar relatie tot de TV, maar ook door haar enorme aantal. In 1967 was de helft van de Amerikaanse bevolking onder de dertig, de laagste gemiddelde leeftijd in de Amerikaanse geschiedenis, Het lag voor de hand dat de zestiger jaren door de jeugd gedomineerd zouden worden. Op een bepaalde manier leek het alsof de jaren zestig meegroeiden met de ontluikende TV generatie. De eerste media-rage uit die tijd ontstond rondom de Beatles: goedhartige braverikken die evenzeer door grootmoeders als door peuters werden bewonderd. Hun liedjes waren simpele, rechttoe rechtaan lofzangen op de uitbundigheid: She loves you, yeah. yeah. yeah! Een paar jaar later: puberale libido's werden voor het eerst in beroering gebracht door neuk-en-beuk-loopjes van de Rolling Stones. Zij zagen er vies uit, en dat was ook precies zoals jij ze wilde zien. Ais je de jaren zestig als een groot feest beschouwt, dan was dat feest omstreeks 1965 al in volle gang. Swinging London, korte rokjes en verhalen in Vogue over hippies.2 2 Vogue(American Edition) august 1965 Het nieuws verspreidde zich snel omdat het op de televisie werd uitgezonden. Het TV scherm werd een spiegel russen de jeugdige kijker en de wereld van schone schijn. Slljl lag overal voor het oprapen. En zelfs in het betrekkelijke isolement van de individue!e woonkamers werd deze ervaring toch gedeeld met anderen. Om de Beatles in het Shea Stadion te zien hoefde je bijvoorbeeld niet in de buurt van New York City te wonen; je hoefde alleen maar in je generatie te geloven, en je erbij betrokken te voelen (en je TV op het juiste moment aan te zetten). Jonge vrouw: What are you rebelling against? Brando: Whaddya got? The Wild Ones Als je met Freud3 de adolescentie als een genitaal stadium wil zien, dan maakt een opleving van vroegere Oedipusverhoudingen en jaloezieën, en de behoefte om deze conflicten op te lossen door grotere onafhankelijkheid, de zestiger jaren tot het tijdperk van de adolescentie bij uitstek. 3 Sigmund Freud a general introduction to psychoanalysis New York 1974 We want the world and we want it now zong de oer-adolescent Jim Morrison. Het verlangen naar grotere vrijheid en onafhankelijkheid, hield in dat je vraagtekens zette bij het begrip autoriteit, bij elke autoriteit, of het nu de school, de universiteit, of de regering was. In 1968 had de rebellie zich ontwikkeld tot oproer en verzet: Parijs, Praag, Chicago. De Freudiaanse Marxist Herbert Marcuse werd de spreekbuis voor een hele generatie studenten, en politieke groeperingen schoten als paddestoelen uit de grond. Vanaf hun prilste jeugd waren de leden van de TV-generatie avond aan avond blootgesteld aan de onvolmaaktheid van deze wereld, en aan haar merkwaardige logica, zoals die werd verwoord door een Amerikaanse majoor in Vietnam, toen hij zei: We moesten Ben Tre wel verwoesten om het te kunnen redden. Hoewel de overgang naar de volwassenheid vaak met opstandigheid gepaard gaat, zijn er ook mensen die helemaal niet volwassen willen worden, flieretluiters die zijn blijven steken in het uitgestrekte rijk van de kinderlijke verbeelding. In 1967 was deze crisis de aanleiding tot een massale metamorfose van tieners en jonge volwassenen tot bloemenkinderen: langharigen, met grote ogen, op zoek naar een of ander ongrijpbaar paradijs van liefde en vrede. Haight Ashbury in San Francisco was de plaats waar het allemaal begon, mede als gevolg van een nogal zoetsappig maar zeer invloedrijk liedje (If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair), een liedje dat duizenden hippies naar de stad lokte. Allen Ginsburg kwam zelfs mantra's opdreunen, en een kiezers-gevoelige Bobby Kennedy gaf als instemmend commentaar: Deze mensen willen erkend worden als individuen (volgens een opiniepeiling in Haight Ashbury was hij op dat moment - na Snoopy - de meest populaire presidentskandidaat). In San Francisco brokkelde dit paradijs al snel weer af (er was in 1968 al een nepbegrafenis: De dood van de hIppie), maar het ideaal leefde op andere plaatsen voort. Wat oorspronkelijk was begonnen als een Californische utopie verspreidde zich zeer snel; met subtiele verschillen tussen Amsterdam en Kopenhagen, en de plaatsen langs de hippie-route, zoals Marrakech, Ibiza en Katmandu. Aan het eind van de zestiger jaren was dropping out een serieus alternatief. Hoewel er een tegencultuur opkwam met haar eigen media (muziekbladen als Rolling Stone en Oz), was het toch de televisie die dagelijks het wereldnieuws verspreidde. Het was onmogelijk om elke happening, demonstratie of festival mee te maken, maar je kon een heleboel ervan volgen via de televisie. Dit leidde tot een merkwaardige gelijkschakeling van ervaringen: als je voor de TV opgroeide, werd je automatisch betrokken bij de tijdgeest. Ik heb me vaak afgevraagd: 'Waarom veranderde Charlie toch zo? Wat was de belangrijkste oorzaak?' Eén gedachte bleef terugkomen: 'Als Abbey Road eerder was uitgekomen, zou er misschien geen moord zijn gepleegd'. een vriend van Charles Manson. Lance Fairweather, Manson in: The Sixties New York 1974. Opeens was het feest dat eeuwig leek te duren voorbij. Woodstock werd Altamont, en de hippiedroom werd een nachtmerrie na de Tate-laBianca moorden. Ondanks alle euferie hing er na de moord op Kennedy altijd een donkere schaduw over de zestiger jaren. Maar als dit een tragedie was, wat was dan de fatale fout? Achteraf kan men stellen dat de hippies en de politieke activisten ondanks al hun idealisme niet beter en niet slechter waren dan hun ouders. Gedurende het hele tijdperk van de global village (de wereld als één grote creatieve gemeenschap), een tijdperk dat langer duurde dan de zestiger jaren, namen de Verenigde Staten een centrale plaats in. Waarom? Op grond van hun politieke en culturele overwicht, en omdat de oorlog in Vietnam de Amerikaanse president tot de grootste vaderfiguur maakte waar je je tegen af kon zetten. Uiteindelijk kreeg iedereen zijn trekken thuis met de rechtszaken van de Watergate-affaire in 1972. De Amerikanen volgden Watergate als een wel bijzonder morbide TV-feuilleton. Voor iemand die de dag-editie van deze sessies had gemist, was er 's avonds nog een vier uur durende herhaling. ledere nieuwe onthulling over het leven in het Witte Huis werd met een gefascineerd afgrijzen gadegeslagen, zoals men kijkt naar een roofdier dat zich klaarmaakt voor de genadeslag. De kuiperijen van de vuile trucjes afdeling, Nixon's herverklezingscampagne gennaamd CREEP , en het ironische feit dat Nixon zoveel atluisterapparatuur had laten plaatsen dat elk gesprek als mogelijk bewijsmateriaal tegen hem gebruikt kon worden, waren slechts kleine details van deze uitzendingen. Langzaam, onafwendbaar, kwam de schuld steeds meer bij één persoon te liggen: de president zelf. De schrijfster Mary McCarthy opperde dat Watergate voor Amerika een manier was om te boeten voor zonden begaan in Vietnam: Men doet geen boete voor de slachtoffers, maar voor de misdaad -begaan tegen God, of tegen het tere sociale netwerk dat de mensen bijeen houdt. Het is hier tot op zekere hoogte mogelijk om de zaken weer goed te maken; een poging hiertoe is in elk geval wenselijk, en kan van nut zijn voor de misdadiger, hoewel verder misschien voor niemand.5 Hoe zou een land aan het begin van de jaren zeventig anders zijn geweten kunnen zuiveren dan door het grote publiek via de TV getuige te laten zijn van deze Dag des Oordeels? 5 Mary McCarthy The Mask of State: Watergate Portraits New York 1974 Ondertussen strompelde het Vietnamavontuur naar een stuntelig en verlaat einde. Er was geen overwinning, alleen de wetenschap dat het leger van goedgebouwde jongemannen, grootgebracht met het krachtvoer van de na-oorlogse rijkdom, er niet in was geslaagd om een nietige derdewereld tegenstander te verslaan. Nog erger was het, dat sommige van deze actievelingen van de TV -generatie moeite bleken te hebben om de werkelijkheid te onderscheiden van het TV-scherm. Vietnam-correspondent Michael Herr schreef in zijn boek Dispatches: Je weet niet wat een TV -verslaafde is voor je hebt gezien hoe sommige van die hufters heen en weer gingen rennen tijdens het gevecht, als ze wisten dat er een lelevisieploeg in de buurt was...wij hadden te veel films gezien...het was hetzelfde geweld, alleen verplaatst naar een ander medium; een soort jungle-spel, waarblj de 'doden' in canvas zakken lagen te wachten op het einde van een scène, totdat ze konden opstaan en weglopen. Maar al spoedig bleek dat dit een scène was waarin niet geknipt kon worden.6 6 Michael Herr Dispatches New York 1977 Te veel TV was duidelijk een gevaar voor je gezondheid. Met Nixon doeltreffend afgezet en zijn land vernederd bleef er geen grote autoriteit over om uit te dagen en jeugdige opstandigheid op te botvieren. Rock'n Roll, de muziek die in de jaren zestig een bevrijdingsbelofte leek in te houden, verviel in de jaren zeventig tot een ingeblikt product, zoals de kleffe pop van Peter Frampton en de Bee Gees. De Beatles waren uit elkaar, de Stones getemd (It's only Rock'n Roll, but I like it), en Bob Dylan was bekeerd. Er wordt vaak over de zestiger jaren gesproken met een nostalgische zucht of een minachtende blik. Afhankelijk van je ideeën was het een magische periode of een tijdperk van massale uitspattingen. Waarschijnlijk ligt de waarheid in het midden. In elk geval is de caleidoscopische verscheidenheid van deze tijd sinsdien niet meer geëvenaard. De zangeres Joni Mitchell zei in een recent interview dat in de jaren zestig de mensen de wereld wilden veranderen, in de jaren zeventig ziehzelf, en in de jaren tachtig alleen nog maar aan geld verdienen dachten. In een tijd waarin het vinden van een baan allerminst zeker is, worden materiële bezittingen natuurlijk in toenemende mate gewaardeerd (Preppies en Yuppies beheersen dit spel tot in de kleinste details). Met Reagan en Thatcher aan de macht is het politieke klimaat naar rechts verschoven, en het liberalisme grotendeels opgebrand. Toch is er merkwaardigerwijs een groeiende nostalgie naar de jaren zestig; dit blijkt uit de mode, de muziek en het groeiende aantal boeken dat over dit onderwerp verschijnt. De aantrekkingskracht schuilt, naar mijn gevoel, niet alleen in de stijl, maar ook in de frisheid van die tijd die goed aansluit bij een verlangen naar onschuld; een onschuld waar ook de jeugd van de zestiger jaren veel van haar energie op richtte. Hoe paradijselijk deze drijfveer nog steeds is, ze is niet meer utopisch. Wat er nu aan ontbreekt is de opwinding van iets dat geheel nieuw is, waarvan nog niets vaststaat, waarbij alles mogelijk lijkt, een eerste keer, een experiment: zoals de eerste televisiegeneratie. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/222201/en/pop-up"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/432/15914-373-400.jpg" height="400" width="373" alt="" title="MM1#2 Through the light" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 Through the light - Mediamatic.net" href="/15914/en/mm1-2-through-the-light">MM1#2 Through the light</a> "Don't you understand? This is life, this is what is happening. We can't switch to another channel." Vertaling Fokke Sluiter Groningen Annie Wright http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14288 c c ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14289 2010-08-24T12:15:21+02:00 Either/ Or in Chinatown

In 1984 Gábor Bòdy was artist in residence at Western Front in Vancouver. He made Either/ Or in Chinatown, a 37- minute video with a narrative structure, about the esthetic's of decay, erotic desire, and the impossibility of choice. The historians of literature Grisel and Hoekstra endeavored at a psycho- analytical- semiotic analysis.

<a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16513/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/524/16513-400-292.jpg" height="292" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16513/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> <h2>GáBOR BòDY</h2> The Hungarian filmmaker Gàbor Bòdy was born in Budapest in 1946. He started reading philosophy and history at Budapest University from where he obtained a Master's degree in 1971, the title of his thesis being A Contribution to Cinematographic Meaning. Four years later he graduated from Budapest School of Art, after receiving training in the fields of television and film direction. His graduation film Amerikai anzix won him the Great Prize of the Mannheim film festival in 1976. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16794/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/945/16794-400-278.jpg" height="278" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16794/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> This started a career of film making; he produced several more or less experimental films in which he sometimes also appeared as an actor. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16795/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/691/16795-400-294.jpg" height="294" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16795/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> In the late sixties he started using video and in 1980 he founded Infermental, an annually appearing video-art-video magazine (see Maurice Nio in this issue). In 1984, one year before he took his own life, he made Either/Or in Chinatown. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16796/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/843/16796-400-284.jpg" height="284" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16796/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> <h2>KIERKEGAARD</h2> Either/Or in Chinatown is based on Diary of a Seducer, which is a pan of Either/Or, the first major work of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), published in 1843. Kierkegaard's writings might be regarded as a reaction against the German idealistic tradition, especially against the dialectical Hegelian philosophy. According to Kierkegaard , a synthesis of oppositions is only possible in the idea in its purely abstract form: in our daily life we continuously have to make a choice and our choices are not always as rational as Hegel's philosophy suggests. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16797/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/706/16797-400-322.jpg" height="322" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16797/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> One of the choices dealt with in Either/Or is that between the aesthetic and the ethic outlook on life. From the ethical point of view, individual life is an aspiration towards eternity. The 'aesthetic' way of hie, which is that most evidently available to the romantic consciousness, unites the subject with what is temporary, and fixes his soul in the immediate. The aesthetic consciousness finds its paradigm of personalhfe in what is most determined by the passage of time - the erotic. 1 1 Roger Scruton From Descartes to Wittgenstein London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, p. 189 <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16798/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/926/16798-400-330.jpg" height="330" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16798/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> Diary of a Seducer, written in a vivacious, literary, and at times even high-flown style, deals with the aesthete, who affirms that a seducer must conquer a woman by a carefully construed display of his intellectual, not sensual qualities. His aim is not to seduce as many women as possible, but to seduce them by means of a beautiful and carefully mapped out strategy. The seducer, Johannes, is caracterised by a rationalistic, self- reflective attitude: with painstaking preciseness he describes his motives and the plans he has for Cordelia, the object of his desire. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16799/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/474/16799-400-309.jpg" height="309" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16799/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> Cordelia is indeed his Cordelia to the extent that she has become the product of his imagination, Johannes tries to mould her like an artist paints his beloved; that gives him pleasure. 2 According to Johannes seduction must be seen as a work of art, which comprises not only the person involved but also her surroundings: Environment is always of great importance, especially for the sake of memory. Every erotic relation should always be lived so that one can easily reproduce a picture of it, in all the beauty of the original scene. To make this successful one must be especially observant of the surroundings. If one does not find them as one wants them, then one must make them so. 2 Soren Kierkegaard Either/ Or Princeton. Princeton University Press, 1959 <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16801/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/859/16801-400-295.jpg" height="295" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16801/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> <h2>Either/Or in Chinatown</h2> Gàbor Bòdy chose Vancouver's Chinatown for the setting of his film. This is not as far-fetched as it may seem, as Diary of a Seducer already refers to a Chinese atmosphere: On the table stands a lamp shaped like a flower, which shoots up vigorously to bear its crown, over which a delicately cut paper shade hangs down so lightly that it is never still. The form of the lamp reminds one of oriental lands, the movement of the shade of the mild oriental breezes. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16802/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/154/16802-400-302.jpg" height="302" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16802/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> Either/Or in Chinatown is not just a faithful representation of the book: an ironic distance is created by the turgid tone of the narrator who cites fragments of Kierkegaard's book and the music in the film which includes Chinese take-away muzak adds to this effect. The narrator and the music weld the succession of scenes together into a straight narrative. The abundancy of the narration makes it impossible to interpret it entirely. The narration only functions when some of its key words coincide with certain scenes of the film. The protagonist of the film is a young Canadian called Johannes. He catches sight of a Chinese girl, Cordelia, and follows her for several days. Although he is in love with her, he is afraid to talk to her. After a while, Johannes discovers that there is another man, Edward, who also shows interest in Cordelia and with whom he becomes friends. Both men pay a visit to Cordelia's house and Edward seems to have an edge over Johannes in that he seems to be on more friendly terms with Cordelia, whereas Johannes is just entertaining her aunt, A few days later, Johannes clumsily proposes to Cordelia by offering her an engagement ring, Cordelia, however, declines his proposal, but this does not mark the end of their relationship: Cordelia tries to seduce him. Whether or not Johannes makes love to her remains unclear. At the end of the film, we only see him lying on his bed, his crotch covered with a bandage. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16803/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/722/16803-400-325.jpg" height="325" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16803/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> The viewer will become even more confused when Gàbor Bòdy interweaves the love story of Cordelia and Johannes with a discussion held by the Vancouver Philosophical Society. They are debating the Kierkegaardian and the Platonic concept of love, and the theory of the origin of the two sexes as it is described in the Symposion. As if this were not enough, our devoted scholars also struggle to shed light on the metaphysical problem of the Tibetan rainbow death, i.e. the mythical idea that the hair and fingernails are the only remainders of a person who has just died. One of these sophisticates argues that the rainbow death can be linked with the use of make-up by women; he sees the excessive care for the hair and the fingernails as pure erotica. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16804/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/309/16804-400-315.jpg" height="315" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16804/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> The TV in Johannes's hotel room constantly shows the philosophical debate but he rarely pays any attention to it. Obviously, this pseudo-intellectual discussion is a clear case of interpretation running wild. There is very strong evidence to suggest that it is meant to function as a surreptitious parody of Kierkegaard's philosophy as it is to be found in Diary of a Seducer. At any rate the philosophers help toning down the high-flown manner in which the narrator expresses himself, all the more so because the events forming the story of Cordelia and Johannes in Either/Or in Chinatown can only be described as prosaic. Only their ricksaw-ride comes close to Hollywood-style good old-fashioned romance. It reminds one of the ride in a fiacre shared by Emma and Leon in Madame Bovary and announces a new stage in the relationship of Cordelia and Johannes which seems to lose its hitherto platonic character. The black leather outfits that they wear for the occasion also point it that direction. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16805/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/475/16805-400-305.jpg" height="305" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16805/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> During the fist platonic stage of their affair Johannes can only enjoy Cordelia as long as he kept a firm distance. He is incapable of regarding Cordelia as a woman with an individual personality of her own; he merely sees her as a mirror to reflect his own ideas and desires. Only when she declines his proposal she shows Johannes that she has a will of her own and she thus underlines her otherness that he failed to perceive. Cordelia is now in the position to impose her own terms upon Johannes: she tries to seduce him by licking the whipped cream of a cake in a very sensual way. Johannes, however, does not move an inch towards her. A later scene shows Cordelia lying naked on the ground, playing with what looks like the male equivalent of a Barbie doll. She can easily bend the doll's limbs, which suggests her dominance over Johannes. This even evokes the classical idea of woman having power over man in a sexual perspective. The Kierkegaardian thesis that woman's main raison d'etre is her being for another - quoted by one of the philosophers - has been inverted: the film closes with a shot of Johannes lying on his bed, his private parts covered by a bandage. Johannes, finally, has allowed himself to be carried away by the female charms of Cordelia. Only, he had to pay a price: the final scene goes a long way towards suggesting that he has been castrated. Either Cordelia deprived Johannes of his masculinity, and thus eliminated the sexual difference between her and Johannes, or Johannes mutilated himself in an attempt to escape the choice between satisfying his desire for Cordelia and not satisfying it at all. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16806/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/398/16806-400-304.jpg" height="304" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16806/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> The final scene is broken in two by the lecturer who 'previously delivered a speech on seduction, in which he rightly states that deferring satisfaction of desire precisely determines the structure of desire. The desire of the seducer must by definition remain unsatisfied within him or he would destroy the distance through which this form of desire defines itself Thus, when for example we take pleasure in watching the flight of a seaplane over the landscape it certainly does not follow that we would want to relieve the pilot of his job. If we ourselves pilot the plane we loose the original view and become like the man in the story who wished for a sausage and suddenly found one growing out of his nose. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16807/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/492/16807-400-309.jpg" height="309" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16807/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> During the last couple of scenes the lecturer kept coming back and his words can be interpreted as a comment on Johannes. When he states: A world that feeds on its images looses its capacity in the realm of deeds... he clearly points out that Johannes did only watch the image of Cordelia and is unable to act. He also presents us with a couple of dilemmas: Either you like this picture or you live in this hotel... And: either this fish head is beautiful or you take up residence in the deep blue sea... Hinting at Kierkegaard's rejection of Hegelian dialectics he thereby draws our attention to the fact that our choices often lack rationality and are sometimes even impossible to make. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16808/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/189/16808-400-309.jpg" height="309" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16808/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> He also holds up the two tools that keep popping up throughout the tape. Showing the bottle-opener he asks: Isn't this nice? Would you like to have this in your house?... Then he demonstrates the wrench and asks: Isn't this nice? Would you like to work with it?... Alone in his hotel room Johannes makes use of the bottle-opener to decapitate a whole row of bottles of San Pellegrino (pilgrim!) mineral water so often that it has almost become an extension of his arm. With this water Johannes baptizes some fish heads, which associates Johannes with John the Baptist. Did not John the Baptist also become the victim of the fatal desire of a woman? Through its form the bottle-opener seems to be a parody of a penis symbol and at the same time it functions as such: contrived as its virtuosity may seem, it still works. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16809/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/135/16809-400-300.jpg" height="300" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16809/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> As we have already stated above, Johannes needs a distance between himself and Cordelia. Previous to the seduction scene, Johannes has only indulged in voyeurism in its purest form. On the night that Johannes sees Cordelia for the first time, the narrator remarks: To be sure, it is dark; I shall not disturb you; I only pause under this street lamp where it is impossible for you to see me, and one is never embarrassed unless one is seen, and of course If one cannot see, one cannot be seen. Johannes gets his satisfaction from following Cordelia wherever she goes and he even watches her with a telescope, not knowing how to contact her. Does the frequent use of the bottle-opener imply that Johannes seeks refuge in the safe practice of masturbation on his hotel room? <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16810/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/319/16810-400-317.jpg" height="317" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16810/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> In another scene we can see Cordelia polishing her fingernails. We only get to see her hands resting lightly on the bottle-opener, thus associating this form of female erotica with death, through the concept of the rainbow death, as one of the philosophers affirmed. Thus the Vancouver Philosophical Society both suggests this symbolic interpretation and warns us against it: one of the members of the philosophical panel, a priest, although he belongs to the most connotative signifying systems in the Western world, the Christian Church, flatly states: The excessive use of signifiers is questionable... That might just be Bòdy's way of mocking a system of signifiers - his video-while being unable to do without it. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16811/en/either-or-in-chinatown"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/428/16811-400-310.jpg" height="310" width="400" alt="" title="Either/ Or in Chinatown" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Either/ Or in Chinatown - Mediamatic.net" href="/16811/en/either-or-in-chinatown">Either/ Or in Chinatown</a> Ilustrations from: Gàbor Bòdy Either/ Or in Chinatown. International distribution Vera Bòdy, Köln Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#2 Mart Grisel http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14290 Murk Hoestra http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14291 c c ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14300 2009-04-24T11:55:38+02:00 Bert Mebius <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16756/en/mm1-2-bert-m"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/302/16756-400-242.jpg" height="242" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#2 bert m" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 bert m - Mediamatic.net" href="/16756/en/mm1-2-bert-m">MM1#2 bert m</a> horses, one of those palm prints, deer, nothing special. At the end of the tour the guide admitted that what we had seen were only copies. The original works were elsewhere in the complex, and not on show for conservational reasons. In addition they were to be found at very inaccessible places. After astonishment, silence, and finally comprehension on our part, and embarrassed hesitation on his, the guide decided to show us ('Well, you're such a small group, and so interested') one of the originals. He led the way to a remote corner of the immense room, where we entered a low and narrow tunnel. In some places the tunnel was so narrow that we had to shuffle sideways, then again so low that we had to bend down, and take care not to rip open our backs by touching the ceiling. We came to a small room where one could not stand upright. Near the floor was a kind of little inner room where one had to sit on one's heels, and only four people at a time, and there ('Not as far away as possible, but in a way as near as possible', as Jaja said later), in a flat piece of rock near the floor, at first hard to distinguish from the natural cracks and scratches in the stone, were engraved the contours of two, what do you call them? ...anyway, it does not matter. But this was what J had to think about - and via Jaja also about Kiki and Hebe and Lili - when I read about your exhibition. And I remembered this quotation from Geoffry Madan, of which you once said that it had everything to do with the way you work: ....the guests did not have bells in their rooms, but at night there were servants in the corridors; white patches showed where they leaned with their wigs against the wall'. Though I have not seen your exhibition, yet I did imagine what it would be like. Near the doors leading to the exhibition rooms, you rubbed your dirty fingers against the wall a great many times (or perhaps you invited a class of schoolchildren to do it for you; just bore them stiff, by making them enter a room and leave. in and out). Actually nobody notices, which does not matter, and in the room where your work is displayed, a small notice is stuck all the wall, with the quotation from Madan, as one comes across notices saying 'out on loan' or 'in restauration'. Ever seen a notice saying 'out of use '? The other day I was in the Kroller-Muller museum with Kith Kiki; in the museum garden was supposed to be one of her father's works, his only sculpture in a European museum. Following the instructions on the map, we took the shortest way, through the shrubbery. Having arrived at the spot indicated on the map, a quiet shadowy corner of an extensive lawn, we did not find the 'sculpture consisting of five blocks of different geometrical forms (' Wandering Rocks ')' but only its imprint on the lawn, five withered yellow patches in a lawn of saturated green grass, beautiful. Recently I read something by Lili van Ginneken (or Janneke Wesseling, I can't remember), about the Deux Plateaux by Daniel Buren in Paris. and all the commotion it caused. Public and authorities filled with indignation, wanting the work to be taken down. Also indignant is Lili van Ginneken (or Janneke Wesseling),who holds it against Buren that he, being an artist with a political background, an artist for whom the temporariness of his work has always been essential, and who always protested against the 'false notion of immortal art, of an eternal work', has now created a monument that is everything but temporary, a monument to himself which on the photograph looks like the remnants of the witch's house in Hansel and Gretel, though, only bigger. Yet Daniel Buren did not create an immortal work at all, nor has he given up the ideological struggle against the establishment, which he sees as the basis for his work - on the contrary. He is only playing for higher stakes. Because if you want to create something of a truly disruptive nature, disruptive towards the familiar image and the establishment, a work in which temporariness can show its greatest strength, then <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16757/en/mm1-2-bert-m"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/465/16757-400-333.jpg" height="333" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#2 bert m" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 bert m - Mediamatic.net" href="/16757/en/mm1-2-bert-m">MM1#2 bert m</a> the best you can do is to use materials of the greatest durability, in a selling as established as possible. If you want to show that nothing lasts, it is more fun to tear down monuments than, say, clay huts. Buren speculated on all this indignant opposition, speculated that Leotard et al. will succeed in razing the Deux Plateaux to the ground, thus completing the work, and giving it its final significance. But quite another matter is that this thing with Bebe has rather upset me. See, it has <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16758/en/mm1-2-bert-m"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/504/16758-400-344.jpg" height="344" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#2 bert m" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 bert m - Mediamatic.net" href="/16758/en/mm1-2-bert-m">MM1#2 bert m</a> never happened to me before that someone stealthily handed me her telephone number, and that my story about the meeting of the Walrus and the Piglet was taken seriously. That first time I did not even see her, it could have been anybody. It was against nobody in particular Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#2 Bert Mebius http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14301 c c ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14302 2009-04-24T11:56:20+02:00 Infermental 5 The Image of Fiction

In 1980, in order to bridge the gap between video festival and video gallery, Gàbor Bòdy founded an international magazine on video cassette: Infermental. The only constant element of the magazine is its name- everything else is subject to change: editors, subjects, focus of the selected material, ad the cities where the editions are published. Previous editions appeared in Berlin, Hamburg, Budapest, Lyons, and most recently it was the turn of Rotterdam to produce a Dutch edition: Infermental 5.

Infermental 5 was produced by the Con Rumore foundation, and consists of some forty videotapes from twelve countries. The tapes have been divided into thematic groups, forming five cassettes of one hour each: The Hero, Desire, Narrative Video, Electronic Sign Language, and Sound. The first two themes The Hero, and Desire, have probably been selected primarily because they offer the opportunity to observe how video artists deal with images from the mass media. Narrative Video has been chosen in order to show that video can -in her own way- tell a story, if we do not simply interpret narration as just staging a scene or a play. Electronic Sign Language mainly has a cataloging function, and Sound wants to show how sound is dealt with, and how it takes possession of space. This set-up is attractive, because, contrary to video festivals, the selections focus on a certain theme, and in this way one is spared the impression of being lost in a video labyrinth. It is a pity, however, that Infermental does not in any way function as a magazine: Infermental can still only be seen in galleries, the cassettes cannot be leased and taken home, so there is no possibility of leafing through the magazine. Besides the fact that the cassettes deal with a certain theme, the attraction of lnfermental lies in the links and cross- references that are made, consciously or unconsciously, between the videotapes. These are not just productions to be seen in isolation, but together they form a collection of which the several parts tell something about each other, supplement or contradict each other. The editors of lnfermental 5 did not only selected the tapes and put them in order, but also interspersed the videotapes with statements directly related to the theme and the tapes. The spectator should realize that these prominently shown statements are not meant to be serious; yet what one remembers afterwards is not their irony, but their pomposity, and for this reason they annoy rather than stimulate. The editorial comments on the tapes, published in the accompanying catalogue, are also rather ponderous, and often have an old-fashioned rin about them. A statement such as: Most people do not only need identification, they also want to play the hero themselves (from the text for Cassette 1: The Hero) does not only sound rather worn out, but also underestimates the diabolic games still played with heroes and heroism. The editors still look upon the hero as a fiction blown up by the media, a fiction that has to be dismantled, exposed, and debunked. Not a word about the way in which heroes deflate themselves beforehand (David Bowie, Andy Warhol), or the way in which fans pervert their heroes and make fetishes of them, instead of simply and obediently believing in them. But how dus this affect the selection of the tapes in Cassette I: The Hero? This cassette consists of very feeble parodies (Heroes by Klaus Boegel, Go for it, Mike by Michael Smith, Blue-blind by Byron Black), heroines in adventures that are doomed to fail (Aufwarts zum Mount Everest by Ulrike Rosenbach, Beauty Becomes the Beast by Lydia Schouten), and superficial analysis of heroism (Manfred Hulverscheidt 's Tschak, Tschak, and Coupe du Monde by Geoffrey Shea). Only Dara Birnbaum's aggressively cut Fire with music by Jimi Hendrix is slightly more exciting. Perhaps this is due the fact that she does not try to sympathise with or accuse the heroic image, but instead turns its emptiness into a weapon. The same objection apply to Cassette 2: Desire. Desire is also seen as directed at an imaginary world, constructed by the media, a world which we are longing for, and which contrasts sharply with the world we live in. The same alienation theory applies here: television and film have taken possession of daily hie. They have created a pseudo-hie, in which 'youth' is . eternal, and the existence of death is denied. Some of the tapes (Calling the Shots by Mark Wilcox, and True Life Romance by Marty St. James & Anne Wilson) indeed work out this idea, but a tape such as, for instance, Cosmic Sperm, is not at all concerned with an individual longing for immortality, nor with desire corrupted by the media. In this tape Kees De Groot and Frank Morssinkhof create a sultry atmosphere in which desire is not linked to human beings, but lies hidden everywhere, rank and diffuse, eating away all life; this desire is visualized by means of withered flowers and a buzzing spiral that pierces a young girl's heart. By far the most surprising compilation is Cassette 3: Narrative Video. Surprising, because narration is not simply taken as the presentation of a coherent and finished story, but rather as the creation of an atmosphere in which a narrative might develop, or an atmosphere that suggests that something has just happened, of which an afterglow is still perceptible. I shall try to deal with this cassette in some detail. To Sorrow by Kit Fitzgerald, the first tape of Narrative Video, is a small miracle from beginning to end. The opening images will probably suggest kitsch; imagine a picturesque green landscape with grazing cows, sheep, and horses, a complete children's farm. An idyllic scene, but without the stuffiness of an idyll. Something, I'm not quite sure what, shines through this pastoral scene. The images remain grand and open. How does Fitzgerald achieve this? This effect is perhaps partly due to the music by Peter Gordon, which remains so beautifully transparent, with a trumpet functioning as a second, sonorous horizon to the meadows of the countryside. Perhaps it is also due to the careful cutting, which makes the images flow into each other in a smooth and spatial way. Or maybe it is the way in which all the animals have been put in a framework: tight, stiff, close to the skin, which lends a centrifugal force to the image. Look at the horse on the right-hand side, shaking its head -in slow motion- with wide open mouth, as if growling and yawning at the same time. There ,is no relation at all ,between the horse and the landscape behind it, there is too much space in between, a hiatus. Or look at those cows, filmed from behind, and flood-lighted by the headlights of a car. In the dusk only their impassive behinds, almost filling the screen, can be seen glimmering vaguely. Is this an idyll? Everything points in this direction, but whether you watch the horse's head or the batch of cows, you keep wondering what is wrong, what has disturbed the quiet. The clear and apparently innocent images of this pastoral have a much more unheimlich effect than a grubby image accompanied by neurotic sounds. Those tapes that were meant to be sinister (Tango de Perro by Jan Bultheel in Electronic Sign Language, or Media Vita in Morte Sumus by Dedo in Sound), are in fact not very interesting, because they only offer an amorphous agglomeration. There is a difference between surprise and alienation. If a tape surprises you, you may have the feeling that something may leap at you any moment -in this way To Sorrow gives you the idea that some kind of monster may burst out of the horse. If a tape is alienating, you do not even get a chance to suspect, or be surprised, because in this case the image does not hide a strangeness, it is strange itself. This is the reason why To Sorrow remains grand and open: it is open to all kinds of interpretations, it does not turn you away (by noise). Instead it gives you well-known images, carefully hiding their venom. The next tape, Like Paradise by Sascha Wonders, is a simple black-and-white registration of three men who leave their cares behind to enjoy a day out in the country. The difference between the ambiguity of nature in To Sorrow and the naive, and indeed innocent, nature in Like Paradise is striking. (This is the merry Moscow country says one of the men in the course of their conversation.) The men also are without the tension of the animals in the meadow. But this was probably never the maker's intention. Like Paradise has the charm of a holiday film which you show every now and then to hear the story of the three men again... In the third tape, Everything's just Fine, a merry and not very angaging video-song, Herbert Wentscher does his utmost to upset his performance of the song by making feeble jokes, with the intention of creating a disturbed and perturbed video clip (Tony Oursler, however is much better skilled in breaking down his own stories). This is followed by Imagination by Richard Hefti. A long transparent sheet with drawings on it is slowly passed from left to right, while behind, the same sheet, in a mirror- reflection, is passed from right to left. Together these sheets create ever-changing configurations. The drawings consist of colourful blots and smears, resembling leaves and branches blown by the wind. Autumn seems to have come. The tender and fleeting atmosphere of the images is empathized by the haltingly spoken words. You can hardly hear them. Sometimes it is possible to hear what is said (Amsterdam, Kurt Schwitters), just as sometimes the drawings represent a recognizable image (man in hat and raincoat), but words and images never go together: they do not explain each other, they have evaporated as soon as they are spoken. Yet before they vanish, each has separately transmitted something of a gigantic space, a treasure-house full of diaries, notes, drawings, and old photographs. Imagination. What these tapes have in common, is that they do not tell their story in a linear, but an elliptic way -for instance, by showing the setting of an imminent event (To Sorrow), or by making the spectator conjecture about the accompanying anecdotes (Like Paradise), by breaking up and disseminating the plot (Everything's just Fine), by hesitantly lifting only a tip of the veil of the plot (Imagination), or by making the narrative functions of image and sound work against each other: the image as an emblem, the sound as a saying. This happens in Island Stories by Nigel Rolfe, the fifth tape of Narrative Video. The image is turned inwards upon itself, while a heart-rending song tells the story of a fifteen-year-old girl (who doesn't seem to finish up very well). No matter what kind of video you make, whether it is a narrative video or not, everything depends on the sound, the shades, the frame-works, and the speed of the first images. Looking at the opening images of Island Stories, one feels that nothing can go wrong anymore. The screen is a black field of which two oblong spaces have been cut out: to the left, a field of gravel which is being raked, to the right, a muddy hole filled with water, in which a spade is striking. Both sequences are shown in slowmotion (clearly visible from the glistening water dripping from the spade), and everything is submerged in a golden haze. At first one hears the sound of a typewriter, belonging to the image on the left, which changes into the sound of moving gravel. Simultaneously we hear the sound of cymbals, synchronous with the spade striking down. Both the rake and the spade are observed from different angles, but we cannot see who is handling them. Slowly these sounds make way for the song, which is accompanied by an emerging madonna-like statue, in the middle between the cut-outs. Together this produces a ridiculous image: a heavenly apparition, caught between two earthly actions. The most beautiful part of lnfermental 5 is Peter Forgacs' Ironage - a tape with images so simple and at the same time so astonishing, that you cannot burn them out of your memory. The protagonist of lronage is a blind man; in his company are four women, one of whom embraces and kisses him in the opening scene. Actually, it seems rather cynical to film the embrace of a blind man and a woman who can see (- yet why? How does he know where her lips are? And what is that thing creeping in the upper left corner of the screen?). Clearly this is not an embrace a la Rodin, virtuous and romantic but rather à la Celine, Tom Waits, or Lucebert, sour, but passionate, and yet nothing is more disarming than this kiss. And this goes for the rest of the tape as well. Filmed in black-and-white, but in very tender shades. This was recorded on Super 8, and look what one can do simply by manipulating the film when it is turning. Shaking images follow each other, as if Forcags stops the film again and again. Especially in the beginning, this produces an effect of great tension, when the man and the woman are standing close together, and you do not know exactly what they are up to, because the film is shaking or shown in reverse. In Ironage there is the same threatening atmosphere as in To Sorrow, combined with the holiday mood of Like Paradise, but lronage surpasses both in sensuality. Only listen to the sound of an echoing flute in slow-motion, which together with the images produce the effect of a hot and sultry summer's day. After having seen this tape, Double Lunar Dogs by Joan Jonas, is rather a wash-out, in spite of the fact that it is in fact the only really narrative video. There is quite a lot of narration going on in Double Lunar Dogs, but it is done in such a pathetic and emphatic way that one cannot endure listening to it for very long. And the special effects, so proudly shown off in this tape, are used in such a bland way that one cannot endure watching this for very long either. What remains? Nothing. Cassette 4: Electronic Sign Language provides a good survey of the several ways of exploiting video techniques. There are tapes that move at dizzying speed (Rotorama by Ingo Gunther), which are so disorientating that afterwards all videotapes seem to be played in slow-motion. Hanno Beathe, on the other hand, has produced a stilled, diaphanous, ode to sand: Flugsand. The last cassette, Sound, is just like Electronic Sign Language, a kind of video-catalogue. Here the supremacy of image over sound comes under attack, and the invisible, but always perceptible, role of sound is evaluated. In Ironland by Llurex, for instance, the image reacts directly to the sound. In Servaas Fish from Holland the sound is criticized by the image. In Nightsoil, Ricardo Fuglistahler has melted image and sound into one rhythmic whole, while in the chaotic Tale Enclosure by Gary Hill sound and image compete with each other. Halfway through the cassette -a truly marvelous idea- one is all at once sheltered from all sound: Watching Out, a tape in which Nah Hoover keeps watch for ten minutes, in utter silence. Translation: Fokke Sluiter Groningen Infermental 5 Rotterdam 1986 editors: LeonieBodeving Rob Perrèe Lydia Schouten International distribution: dr. Vera Bòdy, Köln. distributie Nederland: Kijkhuis, den Haag Montevideo, Amsterdam Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#2 Maurice Nio http://www.mediamatic.net/id/861 c c ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14315 2009-04-24T11:57:06+02:00 Fluxus + Video

Excessive motions, as for instance with dysenteria, which purge the system. -Low or high tide. -A substance which improves the joining of metals or other materials. By applying the above cited definition of the word fluxus to the arts, the American George Maciunas (in 1963) formulated the objectives of the Fluxus movement which he had started some years before: -Purge the world of middle-class nausea, of the intellectual, professional and commercialized culture. Purge the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art, abstract art, illusional art, mathematical art. Purge the world of Europeanism. -Promote a revolutionary tide. Promote live art, ensure that in a reality without art everyone can live fully and that there will be no critics, dilettante or professionals. -Fuse the cultural, social and political revolutionary cadres together in a united campaign. Marie-Adele Rajandream describes the period in which video was turned into a material for the visual arts.

<a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16913/en/mm1-2-fluxus"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/437/16913-236-400.jpg" height="400" width="236" alt="" title="MM1#2 Fluxus" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 Fluxus - Mediamatic.net" href="/16913/en/mm1-2-fluxus">MM1#2 Fluxus</a> Parallele Aufführungen Neuester Musik John Cage Solo for voice no.2 performed by Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles Maciunas strove for rigorous changes in art. For him art was a way to promote a particular attitude, a process had to be started in which everyone would achieve an attitude to life inspired by art. This would cause the art and the attached institutions to be made superfluous and, in the end, to be eliminated. This object had to be reached through the cooperative efforts of as many artists as possible. Many artists in the USA took part in the Fluxus activities organized by Maciunas. In November 1961 Maciunas left for Europe where in September 1962, in Wiesbaden, the first European Fluxus Festival was staged. Information in Germany on Fluxus was propagated by the German artist Wolf Vostell (1932). A month after their performance at the Wiesbaden festival, Vostell took the international Fluxus party to Amsterdam, There, at the Galerie Monet were staged the Parallele Auffuhrungen Neuester Musik, the first happening in the Netherlands. In 1964 rising tension between Vostell and Maciunas created a rift within the movement, Fluxus however was not to come to an end until the late '70s. The character of Fluxus was very conflicting and non-committal. This was caused on the one hand by the lack of logical coherence, and on the other by all participating artists using their own definitions. As a result there is no Fluxus ideology as such, at best one can define a number of characteristics. They wanted to create a concrete form of art, devoid of references. Several disciplines of art were represented: ballet, theater, poetry, visual arts, cinematography and video, but above all music. Artists with a musical interest wanted to give music a concrete form through audience participation. This idea they borrowed from the American composer Johan Cage. Cage held the opinion that the noises made by the audience during the concert, were part of the performance. This way the structure was jointly defined by the listener. Therefore such a concert was very loosely defined and could end up a multimedial affair. Many Fluxus artists developed this idea further and tried working with every possible medium. The interdisciplinary character of Fluxus also spread to spheres outside art. For the realization of their ideas they sought contact with scientists and engineers. Although Fluxus displayed a critical attitude towards technology and tried to find alternative solutions to existing social and artistic situations, it cannot be considered a political organization. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16914/en/mm1-2-fluxus"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/162/16914-159-400.jpg" height="400" width="159" alt="" title="MM1#2 Fluxus" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 Fluxus - Mediamatic.net" href="/16914/en/mm1-2-fluxus">MM1#2 Fluxus</a> Wolf Vostell Heuschrecken 1969/70 <h2>Television Video</h2> In the Sixties the prosperity of the western nations and the USA increased and technology became more accessible, and became integrated in society. This situation is well described by Reyner Banham in his book Theory and Design in the First Machine Age: ...and what appeared to be a second machine age as glorious as the first (technical developments between 1900 and 1930, MAR) beckoned us into the Fabulous Sixties - miniaturization, transistorization, jet and rocket travel, wonder-drugs and new domestic chemistries, television and the computer seemed to offer more of the same only better. What had been promised by the First Machine Age, but never properly delivered, now seemed to be at hand. Indeed in this period a television set had become an established household appliance. In the USA the mass production of television sets had started after WW 2 . Soon the public started buying the sets en masse. From 1948' onwards the American local televisions stations and the national TV networks started regular transmissions. Europe only reached this stage in the fifties. However the technological developments were nor accepted offhand, as one was well aware of the possible negative applications. The horrors of the Second World War and Viet-Nam proved this point. Moreover it soon became apparent that television like radio was only going to be used in one-way traffic and not for real communication. The Viet-Nam War (1964-1975), one of , the most dramatic events of the decade, was the first of the so-called TV -wars. Reports on the war were shown on the news and in commentaries next to entertainment and commercials. Thus a large discrepancy existed between the offerings on the screen, without this receiving much emphasis. All classes of information were reduced to the same level. When artists started using video, their works showed positive and negative views on technology. A lot of video-art referred to television. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16915/en/mm1-2-fluxus"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/221/16915-400-288.jpg" height="288" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#2 Fluxus" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 Fluxus - Mediamatic.net" href="/16915/en/mm1-2-fluxus">MM1#2 Fluxus</a> Wolf Vostell TV- Burying 1963 On the one hand the artists were thinking towards an Utopian society in which the mass-media would only be used for positive goals. They owed these views to the, in those days very influential, theories of, Marshall Mcluhan (1911-1980), a Canadian cultural philosopher and expert on the mass-media. He thought that the explosion of electronic ways of communication would create a new way of perception. He looked upon all modern media as an extension of the human nerve-system which consequently would spread over the whole world. Through this extensive communication-network people would be drawn closer and a new society, the global village, would be formed. On the other hand the artists considered that for several reasons the way the mass media were used had to be denounced. The main reasons were: the fact that television was not freely accessible but monopolized by TV networks and broadcast-companies, the watering down of information by the programme-directors, the uni-directional character of television and the fact that television represented the establishment. Many works of video art from the sixties unite negative and positive criticism on the mass media and offer alternatives for the usual approach to television. <h2>WOLF VOSTELL</h2> The two most important artists of Fluxus working with video were Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell . Vostell 's starting-paint was his theory of De-coll/age, which stands for an omnipresent process of decomposition and wear. This conception covers all destructive action. In his oeuvre he used destructive techniques and showed objects or concepts torn out of context in a new framework. He wanted to confront his public with fear, destruction and human distress, to achieve a therapeutical effect. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16916/en/mm1-2-fluxus"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/885/16916-400-360.jpg" height="360" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#2 Fluxus" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 Fluxus - Mediamatic.net" href="/16916/en/mm1-2-fluxus">MM1#2 Fluxus</a> His works were always critical of society. He tried to detach himself from the stigma of the artist as the suffering individual. As he considered art and life to be equal, he thought artists had to take joint responsibility for history. Although Macinuas was of the same opinion, he lacked the political aspect. Vostell joined Fluxus out of musical interest. For him visual art and music were not very far apart: in the arts, when time is used as a material, one is composing. He made De-coil/age music with homemade instruments, to reproduce the sounds of destruction. In 1958 en 1959 there appeared for the first time in his notes directions for the use of film and video in art. His first work of TV art, Schwarzes Zimmer (1958), can be seen as a forerunner of the video-installation. A television set wrapped in barbed wire and with a distorted picture and several objects which were reminiscent of the mass-murders of Treblinka and Auschwitz were exhibited in a triangular setting. Schwarzes Zimmer referred to the misuse in Nazi-Germany of the mass-media as a tool for manipulation. Till through the sixties Vostell kept applying himself to the deformation of the picture or the TV set itself. Again and again he would involve other media. At the Yam Festival (New Brunswick, USA, 1963) he buried a television set while it was operating, The same year, he organized the happening 9 De-coll/agen in Wuppertal. During the performance he showed images distorted in a special way: he projected a movie of images taken from a TV screen. Also he had a TV set implode. In 1968 he exhibited the environment Elecronischer Decoll/age Happening Raum in Nuremberg. This was the work of video art which best expressed the influence of Fluxus , although he had severed connections with the movement some years before. He used a television set for its musical properties. A defective, noise producing TV set functioned within this environment as a De-coil/age musical instrument. Heuschrecken (1969) is the first real video installation made by Wolf Vostell . The entering visitor appeared on 20 monitors simultaneously. Two gigantic pictures were shown above the row of monitors: an erotic photography and a war scene. With Heuschrecken Vostell criticized the equalization of the various grades of information in the media. At the time this work was made, the Vietnam War was underway, therefore it is not unlikely that he has made this work referring to the reports on this war. All these works of art severely criticized the traditional use of the media. At times Vostell used this to give the media a new function as in 9 De-colli agenor in Electranischer De-coil/age Happening Raum. <h2>NAM JUNE PAIK</h2> Paik (1932) joined Fluxus in 1962, after he had met, Maciunas in Germany. Hence from he would participate in several Fluxus- activities like the festival in Wiesbaden and the Paralelle Aufffihrungen Neuester Musik in Amsterdam. Nam June Paik was first of all a composer who was fascinated by the ideas of John Cage. Paik saw the extension of concerts into multimedial spectacles as a way to visualize music. Before he was to concentrate himself on electronical image-forming, he experimented with electronic music. A logical step towards realizing the visualization of this music appeared to him to be to use TV and video. This way of thinking was typical for the interdisciplinary approach, practiced by this. Fluxus- artist of the first hour. He looked upon video as a medium that would unite the different branches of music, painting, film and theater. He held the view that in the future video would replace the traditional techniques of painting. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16917/en/mm1-2-fluxus"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/708/16917-251-400.jpg" height="400" width="251" alt="" title="MM1#2 Fluxus" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 Fluxus - Mediamatic.net" href="/16917/en/mm1-2-fluxus">MM1#2 Fluxus</a> Nam June Paik TV-Bra for Living Sculpture 1972 with Charlotte Moorman Audience-participation, for which video is a highly suitable medium, also played an important role in his work, as with many other Fluxus- artists. Paik wanted to use technology to bring people closer together, he wanted to humanize technology. In his theoretical work from the sixties (Utopian laser TV-station (1966), Expanded Education for the Paperless Society and Global University (1968) he incorporated many ideas from Marshall Mcluhan. He believed like Mcluhan that the era in which all information was in the way of writing, would peter out and be superceded by a TV age in which all information would be visual and distributed by satellites. However he did consider the forming of stations, independent of networks and commerce, a prerequisite to exploit the educational and interactive possibilities of TV . Only thus could a Global University be originated in which artists too would have their place. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16918/en/mm1-2-fluxus"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/853/16918-400-348.jpg" height="348" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#2 Fluxus" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 Fluxus - Mediamatic.net" href="/16918/en/mm1-2-fluxus">MM1#2 Fluxus</a> Nam June Paik with magneto- coil 1965 Paik too was not uncritical of the way technology was used in society. Once he said he used technology to be able to hate it even more. In his TV and video works he combined his criticism with research. By distorting the images and by placing video or TV sets in surroundings where they didn't belong he arrived at new aesthetics. In 1963 his first TV environment was on show at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal. Several rooms were used and different objects displayed. One room was filled with eleven television sets, all with a distorted picture. Their original function was replaced by a new one: that of a musical instrument creating images. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16919/en/mm1-2-fluxus"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/015/16919-400-333.jpg" height="333" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#2 Fluxus" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 Fluxus - Mediamatic.net" href="/16919/en/mm1-2-fluxus">MM1#2 Fluxus</a> Nam June Paik 1975 In 1965 Nam June Paik was the first artist to employ a video camera: he made recordings of the papal visit to New York. The tape, called Electronic Video Recorder, was played in Cafe a gogo (New York). Electronic Video Recorder showed the possibilities of video as an alternative television without directly attacking the television establishment. In his Participation TV projects, the first dates from 1965, we find an implicit attitude against the makers of television. Paik had the audience distort the picture of a TV set with magnets or microphones. In 1969 two other Participation TV projects were staged in the New York Galerie Howard Wise, which had also staged the first. Electronic Opera no. 1 (1969) was part of The Medium is the Medium, a TV program made by artists, and broadcast by Wgbh-TV of Boston. Paik had made a compilation of takes of a dancer, hippies, two lovers, synthesized images and TV -shots of Nixon These fragments were at times distorted. The viewer was for instance instructed to close his eyes or to switch of the set. This way Paik broke down the conventional (visual) codes of television, replaced them with a new language and used the medium for bi-directional communication. His TV -Bra for Living Sculpture (1969) was again performed in the Galerie Howard Wise. The cellist Charlotte Moorman played her instrument dressed in a brassiere of which both cups were replaced by monitors. The different tones kept changing the image on the screens. By creating an association with an object that close to the body, Nam June Paik strived to humanize television. At the same time he showed how television made people dependent by comparing it with breast milk. Of course also the visualization of music was a main theme of TV Bra for Living Sculpture. Paik incorporated his attacks on those in charge of the media in playfull works of art in which the public usually had to take part. Thus illustrating that art and life do not have to be so far apart. <h2>The Netherlands</h2> In the Netherlands it was Wim T. Schippers (1942) who as a Fluxus -a rtist turned against the TV culture. In discordance with his foreign colleges he operated within the established circuits. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16930/en/mm1-2-fluxus"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/076/16930-400-327.jpg" height="327" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#2 Fluxus" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 Fluxus - Mediamatic.net" href="/16930/en/mm1-2-fluxus">MM1#2 Fluxus</a> In 1962 Schippers had already applied himself to activities allied to Fluxus when in 1963 he took part in Internatianaal Programma Nieuwste Muziek. Nieuwste Theater- Nieuwste Literatuur. This was one of the Fluxus festivals organized in the Netherlands. It took place in the Kleine Komedie in Amsterdam. From then on he would participate in the Dutch Fluxus activities until 1966, the year he and De Ridder made a special Fluxus -edition of the paper Kunst van Nu. After that the Fluxus -activities in the Netherlands would come to an end. Schippers used many different media: visual arts, printing, music, film and TV . His art was concrete and showed a sense of humor. In 1963 Schippers and De Ridder were asked by director Henk De Bij to take charge of the Vara program Signalement. This would be the beginning of the multitude of TV activities of Schippers. In this program he and De Ridder discussed in a very personal style the recent developments in modern art. Their own projects came up too, as with Schippers emptying of a lemonade-bottle into the sea, and De Ridder's Papieren Canstellaties. The presentation was fast and businesslike and the unwritten rules of television were subtly made a fool of. Hoepla was broadcast by the Vpro in 1967 and 1968. It was put together by Trino Flothuis, Wim Van Der Linden, Wim T. Schippers and Hans Verhagen. Hoepla was a youth-magazine in which (for those days) controversial subjects passed in review. The authors strove to give the programmes an amateuristic and chaotic character and thus kicked against the conventions of TV- esthetics. If we compare the aforementioned artists we can conclude they all shed a new light on the use and function of TV and video. Vostell 's work can be titled as serious. They posses a clear message to the public to improve society. Nam June Paik too criticized society, but in a more light- hearted manner. For him the experiments with the equipment and the musical aspects were just as important. For Wim T. Schippers the emphasis rested on the content and the way of presentation. The social values and standards were the material he experimented/s with. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/16931/en/mm1-2-fluxus"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/968/16931-400-110.jpg" height="110" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#2 Fluxus" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#2 Fluxus - Mediamatic.net" href="/16931/en/mm1-2-fluxus">MM1#2 Fluxus</a> Translation: Marten Gerritsen, Enschede Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#2 Marie-Adèle Rajandream http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14235 c c ARTICLE 1