The year is 2005 and by now you should know how to make love to your television set. If you haven’t yet figured it out then it is time to get your Tape Freak on and head out to Rooftop Films this Friday. The current revival of the 80’s might be weirdly big, but the original 80’s were bigger and weirder, so journey back to the time of Journey, back to the wild and dystopian era of early video, back to the world of 8 bit video effects and men with mustaches! Lots of Mustaches! The Tape Freak program will take you on a sprint through the unpredictable history of early video and present you with a sketch of the video avant garde scratched out in fluorescent pink and blue markers!
FRIDAY, JULY 29, 8:30 pm ^ Tape Freak! ^ Co-presented with Electronic Arts Intermix
8:30 – Live music by Blarvuster ^ 9:00 – Go back to the dystopian dawn of video in the EAI time machine.
In Williamsburg ^ On the lawn of Automotive High School (50 Bedford Ave, at N. 13th street)
THE FILMS:
Documentation of Selected Works (Chris Burden / 1971-75 / 24:00) ^ Chris Burden’s provocative, often shocking conceptual performance pieces of the early 1970s retain their raw and confrontational force in these dramatic visual records, shot on Super-8, 16mm film, and half-inch video.
Excerpted from the original 34-minute piece.
Mr. Dead & Mrs. Free (Squat Theatre / 1982 / 4:00) ^ A brief glimpse of the wild cultural cross-pollination that was a given for this legendary performance group.
Excerpted from the original 90-minute piece.
Post-Video (Douglas Davis / 1981 / 12:00) ^ Selections from Davis’ brilliant and unique late 70s meta-TV programs.
Excerpted from the original 90-minute piece.
Folk Music & Documentary (Seth Price / 2004 / 6:00) ^ “Both folk music and documentary are traditional ‘Left’ art forms–or, let’s say, the popular-culture Left in America, as opposed to the more aristocratic Trotskyist Left (wait for laughter).” ‚ S. Price
Heartbeat (Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn / 1982 / 4:03)
Big Electric Cat (Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn in collaboration with Dean Winkler / 1982 / 5:12) ^ Early experimentations with image-processing using computer graphic and Paintbox systems produce what the artist Sanborn terms a “seamless and effortless trip through psychedelic techniques…”
Artbreak, MTV Networks, Inc. (Dara Birnbaum / 1987 / 0:30) ^ Produced for an Artbreak segment on MTV Network, this dynamic “thirty-second spot” presents an abbreviated history of animation according to the representation of women, from the cell imagery of Max Fleischer’s Out of the Inkwell series to the contemporary digital effects of television.
Lost in the Pictures (Max Almy / 1985 / 4:06) ^ In this contemporary “day in the life” of an average computer programmer, Almy depicts the dissolution of social dichotomies—public/private, labor/leisure, reality/fantasy—through TV’s reception in a culture spellbound by its images.
Neo Geo: An American Purchase (Peter Callas / 1989 / 9:17) ^ Callas’ dark vision of cultural memory is inscribed with symbols of violence, money, war, and jingoistic bravado.
For more info, visit the Rooftop Films website.
