Early Video Art is a collection of titles that are central to an understanding of the historical development of video art. This collection includes, but is not limited to, many titles from the original Castelli-Sonnabend collection, the first and most prominent collection of video art assembled in the United States. All of the work in this collection was produced between 1968 and 1980. These works represent important examples of the first experiments in video art, and include conceptual and feminist performances recorded on video, experiments with the video signal, and "guerilla" documentaries representing a counter-cultural view of the historical events of the 1960s and 70s. Many of these tapes represent a desire for a radically redefined television experience that is centered on the innovative, the personal, the political and the non-commercial.
LISTING STYLE:

Bob Snyder

Trim Subdivisions

1981 | 00:06:00

This tape deviates from the more purely formal investigations of Snyder’s earlier work; it has no soundtrack and uses camera images exclusively.

Bob Snyder

Lines of Force

1979 | 00:10:00

Lines of Force opens with footage of a dramatic explosion. For most of the piece, the screen is divided, into a triptych at first, and slowly into horizontal and vertical bars.

Bob Snyder

Icron

1978 | 00:11:00

Using the image processor as it was intended as a performance instrument, Icron exploits the processor’s real-time capabilities: the image and soundtrack were generated through…

Nina Sobell

Chicken on Foot

1974 | 00:08:20

In Chicken on Foot, Sobell bounces a chicken carcass as one would a child, periodically crushing eggs (fetal chickens) on her knee.

Nina Sobell

Hey, Chicky!!!

1978 | 00:09:55

In this cooking demonstration/performance, Sobell wears a chicken carcass over her face while dressing (literally, in baby clothes) a chicken to be cooked for dinner.

Doug Hall

The Speech

1982 | 00:03:39

This tape grew out of my fascination with Ronald Reagan and his uncanny ability to demonstrate what I called the 'Signifiers of Americanism'.

Affected and/or Effected begins with a close-up of a girl resting her head on her hand, reading.

Lawrence Weiner

Beached

1970 | 00:03:00

The soundtrack begins with the artist stating the conditions: “An artist may construct a work and/or a work may be fabricated and/or a work need not be built.

Lynda Benglis

Collage

1973 | 00:09:30

Three basic compositions are played and recombined in Collage: a hockey game; arms swinging across the screen; and a hand holding one, two, then three oranges.

Passage To The North is a companion film to Plowman's Lunch.

Using the structure of a feature film as its basic format, A First Quarter adopts the principles of nouvelle vague cinema.

Lawrence Weiner

Done To

1974 | 00:23:00

Done To (alternately titled It Is, Done To) consists of simple still-frames accompanied by a complex, incongrous soundtrack, or silence.