MICROCINEMA SOLIDARITY: Video Revelations from Visual Studies Workshop
dir. Various, 1971-1975
United States, 75 min
In English
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22 – 5 PM
Presented by Tara Merenda Nelson, VSW Curator.
Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) is a nonprofit artist space, audiovisual archive, and microcinema founded in 1969 in Rochester, NY with a mission to support the makers and interpreters of images. Critically interested in the role images play in society, VSW became a repository for discarded media deemed unusable or obsolete by larger institutions and has provided unrestricted access to artists interested in the creative reuse of archives.
Most tapes in the collection originate from artists, activists, citizen journalists, and public access programming from Central and Western New York, as well as significant early experimental artists’ video productions. VSW has worked to preserve the most unique—and endangered—tapes in this library.
This screening will present recently preserved tapes highlighting the vibrant, largely unseen history of video art and activism in New York State. Pulling from the archive of video collective Portable Channel, which operated between 1971-1986, the selections include homemade experiments with the electronic image by artists Steina and Woody Vasulkas, a Videofreex party (where everyone is using PortaPacks), and coverage of the 1971 Attica uprising.