Electronic Arts Intermix

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Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is a nonprofit arts organization that is a resource for video and media art. An advocate of media art and artists since 1971, EAI's core program is the distribution and preservation of a collection of over 3,500 new and historical video works by artists. [1] EAI has supported the creation, exhibition, distribution and preservation of video art, and more recently, digital art projects.

Contents

EAI supports artists through the distribution, preservation, exhibition and representation of their media artworks, and works closely with educators, curators, programmers and collectors to facilitate exhibitions, acquisitions and educational uses of media artworks. EAI provides access to video art within an educational and cultural framework. [2]

History

EAI was founded in 1971 as one of the first nonprofit organizations in the United States dedicated to the support of video as an art form. As one of the earliest organizations in the emergent video art movement, EAI was created to provide an alternative system of support for this nascent art form and the artists engaged with it. [3]

Howard Wise

EAI was founded by Howard Wise, an art dealer and supporter of video as art. From 1960 to 1970, the Howard Wise Gallery on 57th Street in New York was a locus for kinetic art and multimedia works that explored the nexus of art and technology. [4] The gallery featured several groundbreaking exhibitions, [5] including On the Move (1964), Lights in Orbit (1967), and TV as a Creative Medium (1969). [6] Seeking to create new paradigms to support artists working in the nascent video underground, Wise closed the gallery in 1970 to found the nonprofit organization Electronic Arts Intermix. [7] The founding mission was to support video as "a means of personal and creative expression and communication. [8]

Editing and Post Production Facility

In 1972, EAI began the Editing/Post Production Facility in response to a need for a creative workspace and equipment access for artists. [9] This facility was one of the first nonprofit services of its kind in the U.S., and enabled the creation of many seminal video works, by artists including Mary Lucier and Joan Jonas. The facility has served thousands of artists and organizations with low-cost access to analogue and digital technical facilities. [10]

Artists' Videotape Distribution Service

In 1973, the Artists' Videotape Distribution Service was founded to answer a need for a new paradigm for the dissemination of artists' video works, apart from the conventional gallery system. [11] Many artists of that time were drawn to the utopian notion of a medium that was easily reproducible and therefore democratic and widely accessible. Videotapes were distributed in unlimited editions at relatively low prices. Created around a core of seminal video artists, including Peter Campus, Juan Downey, and Nam June Paik, this service remains the oldest existing distributor of artists' video. In 1986, the EAI Preservation Program began as a way to facilitate the restoration and archiving of works in the EAI collection.

Collection and Public Services

Collection

The EAI collection spans the mid-1960s to the present. The works in the collection range from seminal videos by pioneering figures — such as Nam June Paik, [12] Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler [13] and Joan Jonas — to new digital works by emerging artists, including Seth Price, Paper Rad, Cory Arcangel and Takeshi Murata. Through EAI's Artists Media Distribution Service, the collection is made available for screenings, exhibitions and acquisitions to museums, collectors, and educational, arts and cultural institutions.

In September 2011 an exhibition commemorating the 40th anniversary of Electronic Arts Intermix, Circa 1971: Early Video and Film from the EAI Archive, opened at Dia:Beacon. [14] The exhibition, curated by current EAI Executive Director Lori Zippay, featured early video works by Joan Jonas, Nam June Paik, and Ant Farm. [15]

Public Resources

EAI provides an art historical and cultural framework for the collection, with related activities that include extensive online resources, educational initiatives, and public programs. In recent years artists such as Dan Graham, Joan Jonas, Paper Rad, Charles Atlas, Carolee Schneemann, Nancy Holt, Shana Moulton, Cory Arcangel, JODI, Kalup Linzy, [16] Lawrence Weiner and Tony Oursler [17] have participated in artists' talks and performances at EAI. In addition to these public programs, EAI's viewing room is open o the public for free viewing of works in the collection. [18] In addition to the EAI collection, the organization published two online resource guides on the current industry standards for display, preservation, and collection of media art. [19]

Artists

Below is a list of a few of the artists included in the EAI collection. [20]

Cecelia Condit Marina Abramović Dara Birnbaum Gary Hill Jayson Musson Paper Rad
Vito Acconci John Cage Nancy Holt Gordon Matta-Clark Raymond Pettibon
Peggy Ahwesh Sophie Calle Ken Jacobs Cynthia Maughan Seth Price
Ant Farm Seoungho Cho JODI Paul McCarthy Radical Software Group (RSG)
Eleanor Antin Tony Cokes Joan Jonas Ana Mendieta Pipilotti Rist
Cory Arcangel Jaime Davidovich Stanya Kahn Charlotte Moorman Martha Rosler
Charles Atlas Cheryl Donegan Mike Kelley Muntadas Carolee Schneemann
John Baldessari VALIE EXPORT Ken KoblandTakeshi Murata Robert Smithson
Phyllis Baldino Forcefield Shigeko Kubota Bruce Nauman Ryan Trecartin
Michael Bell-Smith Terry Fox George Kuchar Dennis Oppenheim Bill Viola
Lynda Benglis General Idea Kalup Linzy Tony Oursler Andy Warhol
Bernadette Corporation Jean-Luc Godard Mary Lucier Nam June Paik David Wojnarowicz
Joseph Beuys Dan Graham Chris Marker Charlemagne Palestine Bruce and Norman Yonemoto

Related Research Articles

Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast; installations viewed in galleries or museums; works streamed online, distributed as video tapes, or DVDs; and performances which may incorporate one or more television sets, video monitors, and projections, displaying live or recorded images and sounds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nam June Paik</span> Korean–American video artist

Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" to describe the future of telecommunications.

Madeline Charlotte Moorman was an American cellist, performance artist, and advocate for avant-garde music. Referred to as the "Jeanne d'Arc of new music", she was the founder of the Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York and a frequent collaborator with Korean American artist Nam June Paik.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jodi (art collective)</span> Collective of two internet artists

Jodi, is a collective of two internet artists, Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans, created in 1994. They were some of the first artists to create Web art and later started to create software art and artistic computer game modification. Their most well-known art piece is their website wwwwwwwww.jodi.org, which is a landscape of intricate designs made in basic HTML. JODI is represented by Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cory Arcangel</span> Post-conceptual New York artist

Cory Arcangel is an American post-conceptual artist who makes work in many different media, including drawing, music, video, performance art, and video game modifications, for which he is best known.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan Jonas</span> American visual artist

Joan Jonas is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, and one of the most important artists to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Jonas' projects and experiments were influential in the creation of video performance art as a medium. Her influences also extended to conceptual art, theatre, performance art and other visual media. She lives and works in New York and Nova Scotia, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shigeko Kubota</span> Japanese artist (1937–2015)

Shigeko Kubota was a Japanese video artist, sculptor and avant-garde performance artist, who mostly lived in New York City. She was one of the first artists to adopt the portable video camera Sony Portapak in 1970, likening it to a "new paintbrush." Kubota is known for constructing sculptural installations with a strong DIY aesthetic, which include sculptures with embedded monitors playing her original videos. She was a key member and influence on Fluxus, the international group of avant-garde artists centered on George Maciunas, having been involved with the group since witnessing John Cage perform in Tokyo in 1962 and subsequently moving to New York in 1964. She was closely associated with George Brecht, Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, Joe Jones, Nam June Paik, and Ay-O, among other members of Fluxus. Kubota was deemed "Vice Chairman" of the Fluxus Organization by Maciunas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kalup Linzy</span> American video and performance artist

Kalup Linzy is an American video and performance artist who currently lives and works in Tulsa, OK. His performance are characterized by their low-tech quality, themes of community, socializing, family, the church, sexuality and homosexuality.

Terry Alan Fox was an American Conceptual artist known for his work in performance art, video, and sound. He was of the first generation conceptual artists and he was a central participant in the West Coast performance art, video and Conceptual Art movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Fox was active in San Francisco and in Europe, living in Europe in the latter portion of his life.

New Langton Arts was a not-for-profit arts organization focusing on contemporary art founded in 1975 and located the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco, California. Part of the first wave of alternative art spaces in the United States, and New Langton Arts was a leader in exhibiting new media forms in art and involving artists in the decision-making process. Its first directors were Judy Moran and Renny Pritikin.

Peter d'Agostino is an artist and a professor of Film and Media Arts, Temple University, Philadelphia.

Skip Blumberg is one of the original camcorder-for-broadcast TV producers, and among the first wave of video artists in the 1970s. His early work reflects the era's emphasis on guerrilla tactics and medium-specific graphics, but his more recent work takes on more global issues. His work has screened widely on television and at museums. His video Pick Up Your Feet: The Double Dutch Show (1981) is considered a classic documentary video and was included in the Museum of Television and Radio's exhibition TV Critics' All-time Favorite Shows. His cultural documentaries and performance videos have been broadcast on PBS, National Geographic TV, Showtime, Bravo, Nickelodeon, among others.

La Mamelle, Inc. / Art Com was a not-for-profit arts organization, artist-run space, or alternative exhibition space, active from 1975 through 1995, and was located at 70-12th Street in the South of Market-area of San Francisco, California.

<i>Vertical Roll</i>

Vertical Roll is a 1972 video art piece by American video and performance artist Joan Jonas. It is a sequel to Jonas' first video work Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy. Jonas' interfacing with the material grammar of video was significant to the late 1960s and early 1970s experimentation with new video technology. Among others, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Nam June Paik and Peter Campus also contributed to the emergent material discourse of video art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dimitri Devyatkin</span> American screenwriter and filmmaker (born 1949)

Dimitri Devyatkin is an American director, producer, screenwriter, video artist, and journalist. Devyatkin uses elements of humor, art and new technology in his work. He is known as one of the first video makers to combine abstract synthesized imagery with camera footage. His programs have been broadcast domestically and internationally on ABC, PBS, Channel 4, WDR, France 3, TF1 and Channel One Russia. His works consist of digital media, computer art, broadcast news and feature filmmaking. His activities in the creation of new independent US filmmaking have been documented by Jonas Mekas in "Birth of a Nation" (1997).

Jud Yalkut (;1938–2013) was an experimental film and video maker and intermedia artist.

Larry Miller is an American artist, most strongly linked to the Fluxus movement after 1969. He is "an intermedia artist whose work questions the borders between artistic, scientific and theological disciplines. He was in the vanguard of using DNA and genetic technologies as new art media." Electronic Arts Intermix, a pioneering international resource for video and new media art has said, "Miller has produced a diverse body of experimental art works as a key figure in the emergent installation and performance movements in New York in the 1970s... His installations and performances have integrated diverse mediums [sic] and materials."

Frank Gillette is an American video and installation artist. Interested in the empirical observation of natural phenomena, his early work integrated the viewer's image with prerecorded information. He has been described as a "pioneer in video research [...] with an almost scientific attention for taxonomies and descriptions of ecological systems and environments". His seminal work Wipe Cycle –co-produced with Ira Schneider in 1968– is considered one of the first video installations in art history. Gillette and Schneider exhibited this early "sculptural video installation" in TV as a Creative Medium, the first show in the United States devoted to Video Art. In October 1969, Frank Gillette and Michael Shamberg founded the Raindance Corporation, a "media think-tank [...] that embraced video as an alternative form of cultural communication.

Shalom Gorewitz is an American visual artist. Gorewitz was among the first generation of artists who used early video technology as an expressive medium. Since the late 1960s, he has created videos that "transform recorded reality through an expressionistic manipulation of images and sound". His artworks often "confront the political conflicts, personal losses, and spiritual rituals of contemporary life". Gorewitz has also made documentary videos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video Gallery SCAN</span> Video art gallery in Tokyo, Japan

Video Gallery SCAN was the first Japanese art gallery exclusively dedicated to the exhibition, preservation, and promotion of video art. Founded in 1980 by the female performance artist and fog sculptor Fujiko Nakaya, SCAN was an independent, artist-run organization situated in Tokyo's Harajuku neighborhood. While small in scale, the Gallery was a multifunctional space whose services included a video distribution service, video archive & library, screening studio, and exhibition area.

References

  1. Nicole, Brigitte. "OC Loves NY Art Book Fair: Electronic Arts Intermix" . Retrieved 28 March 2012.
  2. Trezzi, Nicola. "Survey: Hybrid Art Spaces in New York". Archived from the original on 3 September 2012. Retrieved 28 March 2012.
  3. Wise, Howard (1973). Electronic Arts Intermix, Inc: At the Leading Edge of Art. p. 8.
  4. Margolies, John (September–October 1969). "TV The Next Medium". Art in America: 48–55.
  5. Samberg, Michael (March 2008). "Tapehead: Michael Shamberg Recounts His Journey from Renegade Video Maker to Hollywood Producer". Modern Painters: 63–65.
  6. Sturken, Marita (May 1974). "TV as a Creative Medium: Howard Wise and Video Art". After Image: 5–9.
  7. Oppenheimer, Robin (March–April 2007). "Video Installation: Characteristics of an Expanding Medium". After Image. 34 (5): 14–18. doi:10.1525/aft.2007.34.5.14. S2CID   251852714.
  8. Wise, Howard (1973). Electronic Arts Intermix, Inc: At the Leading Edge of Art. p. 10.
  9. Wise, Howard (June 1977). "What is Video Art?". Cablelibraries. 5 (6): 1.
  10. Sturken, Marita (May 1974). "TV as a Creative Medium: Howard Wise and Video Art". After Image: 5–9.
  11. Zippay, Lori (1991). Artists' Video: An International Guide. New York, NY: Cross River Press. pp.  1–271. ISBN   1-55859-357-8.
  12. Hamlyn, Nicky (2006). "Magnetic Memory: A Day-Long Video Tribute to Nam June Paik" (PDF). Film Quarterly. 60 (2): 12–16. doi:10.1525/fq.2006.60.2.12.[ dead link ]
  13. Caruth, Nicole (21 January 2011). "Gastro-Vision: Martha Rosler's Kitchen Mise-en-Scène". art:21. Retrieved 28 March 2012.
  14. Barron, Benjamin. "Early Video & Film from the EAI Archive at Dia:Beacon" . Retrieved 28 March 2012.
  15. "Electronic Arts Intermix Circa 1971: Early Video & Film from the EAI Archive". Dia Art Foundation. Archived from the original on October 14, 2011. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
  16. Carlin, T.J. "Kalup Linzy for Hire (well, sort of)". Time Out New York. Retrieved 28 March 2012.
  17. Nathan, Emily. "Tony Oursler: The Man Behind the Moving Camera". Artnet. Retrieved 28 March 2012.
  18. Kimball, Whitney (13 February 2012). "Some Art Spaces are Not Open All the Time". Art Fag City. Retrieved 28 March 2012.
  19. "Resources". Electronic Arts Intermix. Archived from the original on 7 May 2012. Retrieved 28 March 2012.
  20. Zippay, Lori (1991). Artists' Video: An International Guide. New York, NY: Cross River Press. pp.  1–271. ISBN   1-55859-357-8.