Steve Partridge Monitor 1 UK, 1975, 6mins, video

Dara Birnbaum Technology-Transformation: Wonderwoman USA, 1978, 7mins, video

Vito Acconci The Red Tapes 1, 2 & 3 USA, 1976, 120mins, video

The LUX archive contains many tapes from the beginnings of video art in the late 1960s and 1970s. Some of these artists went on to become well-known, but many others are only now being recognised as pioneers of contemporary video practice. Many of the videos from this period are notable for their inventiveness and their interest in the exploring the limits of the technology.

See also:
PIONEERS

VITO ACCONCI
THE RED TAPES 1, 2 & 3
USA, 1976, 120mins, video
The Red Tapes is Acconci's masterwork, a three-part epic that is one of the major works in video. Designed originally for video projection, the work is structured to merge video space -- the close-up -- with filmic space -- the landscape. Acconci maps a topography of the self within a cultural and social context, locating personal identity through history, cultural artifacts, language and representation. Stating that the work moves 'from Vito Acconci to a larger Americanism, between a psychological personal space and a cultural personal space,' he constructs a dense, poetic text in this search for self and America.

DARA BIRNBAUM
TECHNOLOGY-TRANSFORMATION: WONDERWOMAN
USA, 1978, 7mins, video
Explosive bursts of fire open Technology/Transformation, an incendiary deconstruction of the ideology embedded in television form and pop cultural iconography. Appropriating imagery from the TV series Wonder Woman, Birnbaum isolates and repeats the moment of the 'real' woman's symbolic transformation into super-hero. Entrapped in her magical metamorphosis by Birnbaum's stuttering edits, Wonder Woman spins dizzily like a music-box doll. Through radical manipulation of this female Pop icon, she subverts its meaning within the television text. Arresting the flow of images through fragmentation and repetition, Birnbaum condenses the comic-book narrative -- Wonder Woman deflects bullets off her bracelets, 'cuts' her throat in a hall of mirrors -- distilling its essence to allow the subtext to emerge. In a further textual deconstruction, she spells out the words to the song Wonder Woman in Discoland on the screen. The lyrics' double entendres ('Get us out from under ... Wonder Woman') reveal the sexual source of the superwoman's supposed empowerment: 'Shake thy Wonder Maker.' Writing about the 'stutter-step progression of `extended moments' of transformation from Wonder Woman,' Birnbaum states, 'The abbreviated narrative -- running, spinning, saving a man -- allows the underlying theme to surface: psychological transformation versus television product. Real becomes Wonder in order to 'do good' (be moral) in an (a) or (im)moral society.'

LUCIANO CELLI
TELEVISION SCREEN
Italy, 1977, 2 mins, video

DAVID CRITCHLEY
ZENO REACHES ZERO
UK, 1975, 5 mins, video
'All my work is about truth and lies. About mediation as the space in which facts are manipulated; re-presented. What is truth? I'd be a liar if I told you what I think. The digitally re-mastered versions of my old pieces are much better than they once were.' - D.C.

P. PAOLO FASSETTA
PICTURES FOR A VIDEOTAPE
Italy, 1979, 4 mins, video
Pictures For A Videotape is an analysis of the relationships between different languages, which attempts to reach a definitive statement in the field of visual communications. The video process is a documentation in real time of the construction of the message.

KEITH FRAKE
ACOUSTIC MAP
UK, 1977, 13 mins, video
In keeping with an interest in history, I have chosen to consult for my work those 'places of particular historical or ideological interest' examining the confrontation that occurs, or in some cases the seduction when present experience meets the past face to face.

JOCHEN GERZ
SIX PIECES ON LANGUAGE
UK, 1975, 50 mins, video
'Only the visible is totally dedicated to itself and cannot be taken away from itself, no matter what pretext, even for communication. It is proved in my case that nothing has been so damaging to my effort for understanding as the communication which arose between us like a despot. It was communication itself which came between us.' - J.G.

PHILIPPE GUERRIER
ERRANCE SUR/DANS LA TRAME
France, 1977, 16 mins, video
As the title suggests, this formalist tape like many of the same period, uses video effects to wander through different textures.

ERNEST GUSELLA
CONCEPTUAL PERFORMANCE PIECES
USA, 1974, 65 mins, video
'I have been producing video works which infuse stream-of-consciousness techniques within an electronic and digital syntax. These works all operate within the surrealist and mythic traditions of image-making, and investigate the medium itself in the process.' - E.G.

DAVID HALL
VIDICON INSCRIPTIONS
UK, 1975, 30 mins, video
Over-lighting exceeds capacity for assimilation in a 1970s video camera and images are 'burnt' into the surface of its tube. Here a unique property is discovered where both the passage of time and trace of that continuum are registered as one. A section of the original tape version records the image of the artist with a camera (via a mirror) panning, by stages, across the screen. Before movement the lens is covered and re-exposed after the change, and each time the image appears to be inscribed onto the screen. In the interactive installation a camera registers the live passage of time through a translucent polaroid shutter. Periodically the shutter lifts - triggered by the participants' movements - and images are fixed and inscribed.

MARIANNE HESKE
PHRENOLOGICAL SELF-PORTRAIT
Norway, 1976, 8 mins, video
The idea underlying phrenology is the postulation of a connection between the skull's external outline and the different areas of the brain, areas where talents and aspects of the personality are localised. Today, nobody takes the theory seriously. Marianne Heske makes use of it to ask questions. Are there eternal truths and values in science (and art)? And the things we believe in and practise today, what will history's verdict be about them?

JOAN JONAS
I WANT TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY
USA, 1976, 24 mins, video

WOLF KAHLEN
LIGHT LOSS
Germany, 1973, 14 mins, video
Wolf Kahlen is a pioneer German artist working in photography, video and performance. He has shown his work extensively in Germany, USA and Japan.

TAMARA KRIKORIAN
VANITAS
UK, 1977, 10 mins, video
"Vanitas came after seeing a French painting attributed to Nicolas Tournier at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, An Allegory of Justice and Vanity . Vanitas is a self-portrait of the artist and at the same time an allegory of the ephemeral nature of television." - T.K.

DALIBOR MARTINIS
RED TAPE
Yugoslavia, 1978, 2 mins, video

MARCELINE MORI
DEUXIEMES ET TROISIEMES IDENTITIES,
UK, 1978, 10 mins, video

STEVE PARTRIDGE
MONITOR 1
UK, 1975, 6, video
"Monitor is another important early work by Partridge which demonstrates his interest in structuralism...
In Monitor Partridge is looking to find those structures which characterise the language of video. In order to do this, he has to make video turn in on itself: he has to make the medium of video self-reflexive. His most obvious way of doing this in Monitor (apart from its title!) is to turn the camera onto the monitor itself, so that the subject of the video becomes itself." - John Calcutt

CLIVE RICHARDSON
VIDEO SKETCHES
UK, 1972, 22 mins, video

MICHELE SAMBIN
SPARTITO FOR CELLO
Italy, 1975, 14 mins, video
Since 1969, Michele Sambin has worked in visual and sound fields, in the search for a way to unify the two means of expression into a unique language.

JOHN SANBORN & KIT FITZGERALD
EXCHANGE IN THREE PARTS
USA, 1977, 29 mins, video
Working as a collaborative team from 1976 until 1982, John Sanborn and Kit Fitzgerald created influential works that broke new ground in their dynamic fusion of video art television tactics. Rapidfire percussive editing and the kinetic use of post-production effects defined their energetic juxtapositions of visual, musical and conceptual themes.

JOHN SCARLETT-DAVIS
OH SUPERMAN,
UK, ?, 6 mins, video

GORAN TRBULJAK
NO TITLE (CUT)
Yugoslavia, 1976, 1 min, video
In No Title (Cut) the camera films the videorecorder. After a certain sequence, the tape is cut.

STAN VANDERBEEK
PANELS FOR WALLS OF THE WORLD
USA, 1967, sound, B&W, 8 mins, 16mm.
'An experiment in video tape control, an electric collage that mixes the images by way of electronic matts, superimpositions, and other electronic means of integrating as many as eight separate images onto one screen. A film commissioned by CBS for television, it is the first attempt to examine the almost unlimited graphic and visual possibilities of video tape inter-mix.' -S.V.

STEINA & WOODY VASULKA
TELC
USA, 1974, 5 mins, video
In Telc, a Rutt/Etra Scan Processor is used to transform portapak images from a trip to a town in Southern Bohemia. Like faded memories, images of the landscape and people are sculpted and abstracted, as the energy of the image is translated into electronic scan lines.

STEINA & WOODY VASULKA
SOUNDSIZE
USA, 1974, 4 mins, video
Soundsize continues the Vasulkas' investigation into the relationship of sound and image. Here a pattern of dots is modulated by sounds generated from a synthesizer, changing size and shape in a visual manifestation of electronic sound.

LUIGI VIOLA
TAKING PLACE
Italy, 1976, 1 min, video
In this case taking place means changing places, a complete and mutual transformation, as is seen in the eternal contrast between bios and thanatos. In the video changing places becomes a moment of identification, favored by the ambiguity of a date, 1949 which is the only element two people have in common, since one of them died and the other was born in that year.