VSW Salon December: NO-TV on TV: anti/broadcast

Program: Experiment

  • NO-TV Program 2: Experiment

    Contents:

    Revolt Against Technology (1986), Alex Roshuk 

    Switching Channels (1989), Samantha Mae Dorfman 

    Camel with Window Memory (1983), Peer Bode 

    Plastic Dance (1983), Ye Sook Rhee 

    Ghost Dances (1983), Anna Arnold 

    In Your Hands (1995), Liss Platt 

    Ahluvyalike (1983), Arturo Cubacub and Jan Heyn-Cubacub 

    Insomnia (1984), Matthew Schlanger 

    Note: Video descriptions taken from original NO-TV programs when possible.

     

    A split image featuring a colorful spiral pattern on the left, a blurred question "Destroy It?" in the center, and black and white tree branches on the right.
    No-TV #7 Episode 5 (1989)

     

    This is a poem which suggests that while technology is used for evil and good in our society, it is basically a tool which we all, as individuals, need to understand. I propose that this understanding is revolutionary, not in the destructive sense, but in the dialectic sense. Fundamentally each of us, in our isolated existences, and as creatures of habit, do have some power over our own lives. It is technology that can manifest this individuality as my video demonstrates.

     

    Three panels of video stills showing a young man with sunglasses, a distorted eye image, and a young man against a wall with graffiti.
    Switching Channels (1989), Samantha Mae Dorfman, 4:00
    No-TV #9 Episode 6 (1990)

     

    Switching Channels is a video piece about television. The music and lyrics were commissioned to comply with a conceptual visual idea. Rap music was the precise audio medium to correspond to the idea of visually “sampling” television. The end result was an inside-out music/video. It’s a contemporary, electronic fable with a moral.

     

    Three black and white images of a camel standing in a desert landscape within a distorted or glitchy frame.
    No-TV #10 Episode 6 (1991)

     

    From a series of video recordings entitled “Pre Progress Tapes,” these actions and electronic inscriptions attempt to set a place for a reflection on the physical understandings of representation, memory and time.

     

    Three panels of abstract video featuring vibrant colors and distorted shapes, creating a surreal and dynamic composition with a futuristic feel.
    Plastic Dance (1983), Ye Sook Rhee, 3:45
    No-TV #2 Episode 7 (1985)

     

    The dance film is subverted in this fantasia of video effects, with bodies barely implied below a dense weave of hypercolor and mingling plastic textures.

     

    Abstract digital art with three panels featuring distorted, colorful human figures and faces in a psychedelic style.
    Ghost Dances (1983), Anna Arnold, 9:30
    No-TV #2 Episode 7 (1983)

     

    American history found footage is collaged and made gorgeous with video effects. Anna Arnold narrates with personal reflections and secondhand stories that make the familiar footage new and strange.

     

    A triptych image featuring: on the left, a person lying on a bed; in the middle, the word "flesh" with an image of a hand squeezing a lemon over a juice container; and on the right, a close-up view of the interior of a melon.
    In Your Hands (1995), Liss Platt, 2:15
    No-TV #15 Episode 1 (1995)

     

    Created for Homer Jackson’s installation “Don’t Smoke In Bed,” this experimental short playfully exposes one butch’s desire to be “handled.” Featuring an array of reworked cliches, this tape disrupts gendered assump­tions about who wants to be the bottom.

     

    A series of three psychedelic digital art images displaying a person's face with colorful overlays, a pink heart, and two face silhouettes facing each other on a dark background.
    Ahluvyalike (1983), Arturo Cubacub and Jan Heyn-Cubacub, 6:15
    No-TV #2 Episode 6 (1985)

     

    A pulsating chant-poem based on Jan Heyn-Cubacub’s childhood stories and video footage. Lush and clever video effects place the viewer right inside the ribcage of this passionate testament.

     

    A series of abstract shapes in vibrant colors, including orange, blue, and purple, against a black and white background. The design features geometric forms and glowing effects, creating a modern and dynamic visual.
    Insomnia (1984), Matthew Schlanger, 5:15
    No-TV #4 Episode 10 (1986)

     

    “Video making is a process of looking, an asceticism of deciphering psychic configurations. At times, through this process I find collective forms being filled by my personal history. This mythopoesis communicates psychic form and dream. Often I use periodic waveforms as source material. I find the very temporal make up as well as iconic video display of these waveforms to have the evocative power of archetypal forms. Insomnia is a real time recording synthesized through analog processing.”

     

     

     

    The VSW Salon is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts and by the ArtWorks program of the National Endowment for the Arts.

     

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