Performer/Audience/Mirror
Dan Graham
23:00 1975
In Performer/Audience/Mirror, Graham uses video to document an investigation into perception and real time informational "feedback."
Selected Works
William Wegman
90:00 (ex. 8:00) 1972
These three short pieces are a selection from the hours of short performances Wegman recorded in his studio from 1970-1978.
Baldessari Sings Lewitt (excerpt)
John Baldessari
12:35 (ex. 4:00) 1972
Baldessari's witty performance in which he sings Sol Lewitt's statements on conceptual art to popular tunes.
Undertone (excerpt)
Vito Acconci
30:00 (ex. 10:00) 1972
The artist seats himself at a table whose opposite end coincides with the bottom edge of the monitor, such that the viewer could imagine him/herself at the other end of the table. Acconci then proceeds to imagine a sexual exchange with a woman under the table.Acconci sets up a challenging relationship between the private and the public and the viewer and the performer in which the viewer is implicated in the sexual projections of the performer.
Vertical Roll
Joan Jonas
20:00 1972
In this well-known early tape, Jonas manipulates the grammar of the camera to create the sense of grossly disturbed physical space.
My Father
Shigeko Kubota
15:00 1975
In this classic personal elegy, Kubota mourns her father's death and recounts the last days of his life.
Exchange
Robert Morris
32:00 1973
Sometime in 1972 Robert Morris and Lynda Benglis agreed to exchange videos, in order to develop a dialogue building from each others work. Morris comments on the nature of this collaboration, on their interaction and on what they represent to each other.
The elinks:Performer/Audience/Mirror
Daniel Graham
"In Performer/Audience/Mirror, Graham uses video to document an investigation into perception and real time informational "feedback." The performance is doubly reflected back to the audience by the artist's lecturing, and the architectural device of a mirrored wall. Graham has written extensively on how video, which can deliver information in real time, functions semiotically as a mirror. Using the mirror at the back of the stage as a monitor, Graham voices his unrehearsed observations, activating the various feedback cycles taking place within himself as performer, between the performer and audience, and among audience members. Issues of duration and attention are critical for both performer and audience.
Through the use of the mirror, the audience is able to instantaneously perceive itself as a public mass (as a unity), offsetting its definition by the performer('s discourse). The audience sees itself reflected by the mirror instantly, while the performer's comments are slightly delayed. First, a person in the audience sees himself "objectively" ("subjectively") perceived by himself, next he hears himself described "objectively" ("subjectively") in terms of the performer's perception."
-Dan Graham (Zippay, 1991)
Selected Works
William Wegman
Wegman uses the area framed by the camera as his performance space, employing a single, fixed camera to record the scenes as he and Man Ray, his Weimaraner, act them out. It has been suggested that Wegman's performances with Man Ray are uncanny invocations of broadcast television's manipulations of its viewers. Man Ray and his companion are collectively mesmerized by a tennis ball. The misrepresentations and lewd stroking of Man Ray as Wegman delivers a used car salesman's monologue apes television's crass marketing. Man Ray's pursuit of a dog biscuit inside a glass bottle creates the type of narrative suspense that draws us into the action on the screen.
"In a way, [Man Ray is] like an object. You can look at him and say, how am I going to use you, whereas you can't with a person...You can manipulate him so that he doesn't feel manipulated, so that he feels he's doing something he's supposed to do or having fun, one of the two."
-William Wegman (Bear, 1973)
These tapes are a selection from the hours of short performances Wegman recorded in his studio from 1970-1978. Selected Works includes Two Dogs And Ball (silent), Used Car Salesman, Dog Biscuit In Glass Jar
Baldessari Sings Lewitt
John Baldessari
Baldessari's witty performance in which he sings Sol Lewitt's statements on conceptual art to popular tunes. This excerpt only appears on Surveying the First Decade. The original piece runs 12:50.
Undertone (Excerpt)
Vito Acconci
In this now infamous tape, exemplary of his early transgressive performance style, Acconci sits and relates a masturbatory fantasy about a girl rubbing his legs under the table. Carrying on a rambling dialogue that shifts back and forth between the camera/spectator and himself, Acconci sexualizes the implicit contract between performer and viewer-the viewer serving as a voyeur who makes the performance possible by watching and completing the scene, believing the fantasy.
"In a visual style of address exactly equivalent to the presidential address, the face-to-face camera regards The Insignificant Man making the Outrageous Confession that is as likely as not to be an Incredible Lie. Who can escape the television image of Nixon?"
-David Antin, Artforum
Vertical Roll
Joan Jonas
In this well-known early tape, Jonas manipulates the grammar of the camera to create the sense of a grossly disturbed physical space. The space functions as a metaphor for the unstable identity of the costumed and masked female figure roaming the screen, negotiating the rolling barrier of the screen's bottom edge.
"[Making] use of a jarring rhythmic technique to develop a sense of fragmentation, Vertical Roll uses a common television set malfunction of the same name to establish a constantly shifting stage for the actions that relate both to the nature of the image and to the artist's projected psychological state."
-David Ross, Joan Jonas: Scripts and Descriptions
My Father
Shigeko Kubota
In this classic personal elegy, Kubota mourns her father's death and recounts the last days of his life. Reflecting on Kubota's use of the video medium, the television emerges as the link between Kubota and her father, with the melodramatic crooning of Japanese pop singers providing a backdrop for Kubota's real-life tragedy.
Cycles of 3s and 7s
Tony Conrad
Cycles of 3's and 7's is a performance in which the harmonic intervals that would ordinarily be performed by a musical instrument are represented through the computation of their arithmetic relationships or frequency ratios. Conrad and the other members of hte Theater of Eternal Music-LaMonte Young, Marian Zazeela, John Cage, and Angus MacLise - composed and performed "dream music" in the early '60s. This seminal group was a major influence on what became known as minimalist music. Conrad's tape points to an important intersection of conceptual and performative experimentation in which the theoretical basis of sound and visual imagine tools were explored by musicians, filmmakers, videomakers, and electronic instrument designers.
Exchange
Robert Morris & Lynda Benglis
In 1972, Robert Morris and Lynda Benglis agreed to exchange videos in order to develop a dialogue between each other's work. Morris's tape, Exchange, is a part of that process-a response to Benglis's Mumble. At the beginning of the tape, Morris comments on the nature of the collaboration, their interaction, and what they represent to each other. Morris's speculations about work, travel, and relationships are juxtaposed with frozen images of race cars, Benglis herself, images from Benglis's tape, and Manet's Olympia. An asymmetry of elements forms as the tape moves from the professional towards the personal-a shift that gives the work humanity and, concerning the development of early conceptual video, its unique historical importance.
Baldessari_Sings_LeWitt_John_Baldessari(1972).mp4 
Exchange_Robert_Morris(1973).mp4 My_Father_Sigeko_Kubota(1975).mp4 Performer_Audience_Mirror_Dan_Graham(1975).mp4 Selected_Works_William_Wegman(1972).mp4 Undertone_Vito_Acconi(1972).mp4 Vertical_Roll_Joan_Jonas(1972).mp4 Big Thanks to Notaphid at Delirium-vault.com hopefully by January I believe the tracker will be up again and with luck we will get the rest od the tapes
There is a site that is great to get audio stuff of video-artists and also poets, writers etc etc, at http://www.ubu.com I downloaded only 7GB from that site, yes all the stuff is available on mp3, but 7GB is nothing compared to their archive check it out for yourself. Highly recommended.
...
