Video Data Bank
Encyclopedia
Video Data Bank is an international video art
distribution organization and a resource in the United States for videos by and about contemporary artists. Located in Chicago, Illinois VDB was founded at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement.
VDB provides experimental video art, documentaries made by artists, and taped interviews with visual artists and critics for a wide range of audiences. These include micro-cinemas, film festivals, media arts centers, universities, libraries, museums, community-based workshops, public television, and cable TV Public-access television
centers. Video Data Bank currently holds over 2,000 titles in distribution, by more than 400 artists, available in a variety of screening and archival video formats. It also actively publishes anthologies and curated programs of video art.
The preservation of historic video is an ongoing project of the Video Data Bank. The total holdings, including works both in and out of distribution, include over 5,000 titles of original and in some cases, rarely seen, video art and documentaries from the late 1960s on. The VDB functions as a Department of the Art Institute of Chicago
and is supported in part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts
and the Illinois Arts Council
.
and successfully conducting talks with painters Joan Mitchell
and Agnes Martin
and curator Marcia Tucker
, the pair decided to continue the series. "It was really a kind of accident,” noted Horsfield in a 2007 interview. “We were looking for inspiration for ourselves, but we were also looking for information on what was happening. If you read art magazines in the early '70s, it was very rare to see any real coverage of any women artists." In 1976 Horsfield and Blumenthal officially founded the Video Data Bank, taking over a small collection of student video productions and interviews that was begun by Phil Morton
at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They went on to add to the archive, conducting talks with prominent artists of the period such as Alice Neel
, Lucy Lippard, Lee Krasner
, Barbara Kruger
, and the Guerilla Girls, who appeared wearing their trademark gorilla masks.
Lyn Blumenthal died in 1988 and the VDB maintains the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund for independent video. Horsfield remained director of the collection until her retirement in 2006. The current director, Abina Manning, was named in December 2007. In 2007 the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) named Video Data Bank as the year's "Outstanding Media Arts Organization"
Early Video Art includes many titles from the 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 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. Artists included are Vito Acconci
, Lynda Benglis
, Dara Birnbaum
, Joan Jonas
, Bruce Nauman
and William Wegman
.
Independent Video and Alternative Media is a collection that includes works made since 1980. These works represent the next generation of video makers and younger artists, and largely address post-modern themes in contemporary art such as feminism, AIDS, gender studies, guerilla television, technology, and multi-cultural identity. This collection includes active contemporary artists such as Sadie Benning
, Jem Cohen
, Harun Farocki
, Walid Raad
, Paul Chan, Guillermo Gomez-Pena
, Miranda July
, and George Kuchar
.
On Art and Artists is a collection of taped interviews with visual artists, photographers and critics. The interviews focus on the development of the artists' body of work.
Chris Hill, former video curator at Hallwells Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, New York, curated the project. The anthology has become a recognized resource for media studies curricula and offers an authoritative introduction to the history of video art. Surveying the First Decade is notable for its inclusion of grassroots activist and community-based documentary work alongside examples video experimentation by established artists. This pairing offers an overview of the diversity of video practices that originated during the early days of video.
Video art
Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...
distribution organization and a resource in the United States for videos by and about contemporary artists. Located in Chicago, Illinois VDB was founded at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement.
VDB provides experimental video art, documentaries made by artists, and taped interviews with visual artists and critics for a wide range of audiences. These include micro-cinemas, film festivals, media arts centers, universities, libraries, museums, community-based workshops, public television, and cable TV Public-access television
Public-access television
Public-access television is a form of non-commercial mass media where ordinary people can create content television programming which is cablecast through cable TV specialty channels...
centers. Video Data Bank currently holds over 2,000 titles in distribution, by more than 400 artists, available in a variety of screening and archival video formats. It also actively publishes anthologies and curated programs of video art.
The preservation of historic video is an ongoing project of the Video Data Bank. The total holdings, including works both in and out of distribution, include over 5,000 titles of original and in some cases, rarely seen, video art and documentaries from the late 1960s on. The VDB functions as a Department of the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
and is supported in part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
and the Illinois Arts Council
Illinois Arts Council
The Illinois Arts Council is a government agency of the state of Illinois formed to encourage development of the arts throughout Illinois. Founded in 1965 by the Illinois General Assembly, the Illinois Arts Council provides financial and technical assistance to artists, arts organizations, and...
.
History
In 1974, VDB co-founders Kate Horsfield and Lyn Blumenthal, graduate students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, began conducting video interviews with women artists who they felt were underrepresented critically in the art world. After buying a Panasonic PortapakPortapak
A Portapak is a battery powered self-contained video tape analog recording system that can be carried by one person. Earlier television cameras were large and relatively immovable, but the Portapak made it possible to record television images while moving around...
and successfully conducting talks with painters Joan Mitchell
Joan Mitchell
Joan Mitchell was a "second generation" abstract expressionist painter. She was an essential member of the American Abstract expressionist movement, even though much of her career took place in France. Along with Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, and Helen Frankenthaler she was one of her era's few...
and Agnes Martin
Agnes Martin
Agnes Bernice Martin was an American abstract painter, often referred to as a minimalist; Martin considered herself an abstract expressionist.She won a National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1998....
and curator Marcia Tucker
Marcia Tucker
Marcia Tucker was the founding director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art from 1977 to 1999, a museum located in New York City, dedicated to innovative art and artistic practice...
, the pair decided to continue the series. "It was really a kind of accident,” noted Horsfield in a 2007 interview. “We were looking for inspiration for ourselves, but we were also looking for information on what was happening. If you read art magazines in the early '70s, it was very rare to see any real coverage of any women artists." In 1976 Horsfield and Blumenthal officially founded the Video Data Bank, taking over a small collection of student video productions and interviews that was begun by Phil Morton
Phil Morton
Phil Morton was an influential Video artist and activist who founded the Video Area in 1970 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he taught from 1969 - 1981/1982.- Biography :...
at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They went on to add to the archive, conducting talks with prominent artists of the period such as Alice Neel
Alice Neel
Alice Neel was an American artist known for her oil on canvas portraits of friends, family, lovers, poets, artists and strangers...
, Lucy Lippard, Lee Krasner
Lee Krasner
Lee Krasner was an influential abstract expressionist painter in the second half of the 20th century. On October 25, 1945, she married artist Jackson Pollock, who was also influential in the Abstract Expressionism movement....
, Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed...
, and the Guerilla Girls, who appeared wearing their trademark gorilla masks.
Lyn Blumenthal died in 1988 and the VDB maintains the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund for independent video. Horsfield remained director of the collection until her retirement in 2006. The current director, Abina Manning, was named in December 2007. In 2007 the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) named Video Data Bank as the year's "Outstanding Media Arts Organization"
Collections
The Video Data Bank maintains three collections of video produced from 1968 to the present:Early Video Art includes many titles from the 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 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. Artists included are Vito Acconci
Vito Acconci
Vito Hannibal Acconci is a Bronx, New York-born, Brooklyn-based designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist.-Education:...
, Lynda Benglis
Lynda Benglis
Lynda Benglis is an American sculptor known for her wax paintings and poured latex sculptures. After earning a BFA from Newcomb College in 1964, Benglis moved to New York, where she lives and works today...
, Dara Birnbaum
Dara Birnbaum
Dara Birnbaum, born in 1946 in New York ,USA, where she continues to live and work, uses video to reconstruct television imagery using as material such archetypal formats as quizzes, soap operas, and sports programmes. Her techniques involve the repetition of images and interruption of flow with...
, Joan Jonas
Joan Jonas
Born in 1936 in New York City, Joan Jonas is a pioneer of video and performance art and one of the most important female artists to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s.She began her career in New York City as a sculptor...
, Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....
and William Wegman
William Wegman (photographer)
William Wegman is an artist best known for creating series of compositions involving dogs, primarily his own Weimaraners in various costumes and poses.-Life and career:...
.
Independent Video and Alternative Media is a collection that includes works made since 1980. These works represent the next generation of video makers and younger artists, and largely address post-modern themes in contemporary art such as feminism, AIDS, gender studies, guerilla television, technology, and multi-cultural identity. This collection includes active contemporary artists such as Sadie Benning
Sadie Benning
Sadie Benning is a video maker, visual artist, and musician.She first made her name in the early 1990s as a teenage video maker from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Raised by her mother in inner-city Milwaukee, Benning left school at age 16, primarily due to the homophobia she experienced...
, Jem Cohen
Jem Cohen
Jem Alan Cohen is an award-winning New York City-based filmmaker known for his observational portraits of urban landscapes, blending of media formats and collaborations with music artists. He is the recipient of the Independent Spirit Award and many first place awards for feature filmmaking...
, Harun Farocki
Harun Farocki
Harun Farocki is a German filmmaker.He has made over 90 films, the vast majority of them short experimental documentaries...
, Walid Raad
Walid Raad
Walid Raad is a contemporary media artist. The Atlas Group is a fictional collective, the work of which is produced by Walid Raad....
, Paul Chan, Guillermo Gomez-Pena
Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Guillermo Gómez-Peña was born in Mexico City and moved to the US in 1978, where he established himself as a performance artist, writer, activist, and educator. He has pioneered multiple media, including performance art, experimental radio, video, performance photography and installation art...
, Miranda July
Miranda July
Miranda July is a performing artist, writer, actress and film director. Born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger, she works under the surname of "July," which can be traced to a character from a "girlzine" Miranda created with high school friend Johanna Fateman, called Snarla.- Background :Miranda...
, and George Kuchar
George Kuchar
George Kuchar was an American underground film director, known for his "low-fi" aesthetic.-Early life and career:...
.
On Art and Artists is a collection of taped interviews with visual artists, photographers and critics. The interviews focus on the development of the artists' body of work.
Surveying the First Decade
Surveying the First Decade: Video Art and Alternative Media in the U.S. is a seventeen-hour compilation of experimental and independent video created from 1968-1980, the first decade of video art production. Originally released on VHS in 1995, the collection will be re-released on DVD on September 1 2008. The anthology includes 68 titles by more than 60 artists and is curated into eight programs ranging from conceptual, performance-based, feminist, and image-processed works, to documentary and grassroots activism.Chris Hill, former video curator at Hallwells Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, New York, curated the project. The anthology has become a recognized resource for media studies curricula and offers an authoritative introduction to the history of video art. Surveying the First Decade is notable for its inclusion of grassroots activist and community-based documentary work alongside examples video experimentation by established artists. This pairing offers an overview of the diversity of video practices that originated during the early days of video.