Kill Your TV: How Bay Area Video Art Exploded in the 1970s | KQED Arts
In the 1970s, an artistic movement fueled by social revolution and ignited by a new technology – the first portable video cameras -- made San Francisco a center of media art experimentation. Hit that SUBSCRIBE button! www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=kqedart Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/kqedarts Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/KQEDarts San Francisco had never experienced a Fourth of July quite like it did in 1975, when a custom Cadillac drove through a pyramid of 45 flaming televisions at the Cow Palace. “The Media Burn” was a carefully engineered publicity stunt, but it also represents a high point of a Bay Area artistic movement that was fueled by the social and cultural revolutions of the times and ignited by a new technology – the first portable video cameras. Until the late 1960s, television equipment had been expensive and cumbersome, the exclusive domain of big media. In the 1970s, Bay Area video artists and activist laid claim to what they saw as an instrument of mass-media control, turning video into a tool for self-expression and liberation and making San Francisco a center of media art experimentation. Inspired both by a communal instinct that was part of the times and the need to share scarce equipment, many of these artists formed collectives. One of the earliest, Electric Eye, experimented with abstract video imagery. Video Free America made a name in counter-culture reality television. TVTV (Top Value Television) aimed to provide a hippie alternative to network news, while Optic Nerve presented some of the first feminist documentaries. The T.R. Uthco team explored the narrative strategies of political speech Ant Farm, the court jesters of the Bay Area video scene, often partnered with other groups and brought an antic good humor to projects involving video, architecture, sculpture, performance and other media. Their iconic works – “Cadillac Ranch,” “Media Burn” and “The Eternal Frame” (a collaboration with T.R. Uthco) – embody witty critiques of consumer culture and the mass media.
