Video Out

About the Film

State of the Art and Illustrious Tradition

A VJ – analogous to a DJ– is someone who mixes images in relationship to sounds and creates transitions. Yet what often is the most interesting are the interludes, the spaces between images. VJs are at home in the club scene, where they cut visual effects to the music and generate visual backdrops for dancing club-goers. VJs create a relationship with club-goers, entertain and fascinate them. What they do is known as Light Art which had its beginnings in San Francisco during the Hippie movement of the late 1960’s. Back then, primitive methods like holding oil and water covered disks in front of flood lights were used to create interesting effects. George Stadnick, Glenn McKay and Joshua White reminisce about the early years of Light Art, a time of experimentation, string lights, and simple effects that seem quaint and retro today. Bob Goldstein remembers a formative Lightshow in 1967 at the O'Keath Center in Toronto in which Bill Graham mounted a week-long performance called “The San Francisco Scene”, with bands Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead, among others. To bring the San Francisco feeling to Canada, he hired Glenn McKay and Jerry Abraham to stage a music accompanying lightshow which they titled “Headlight”. The visual effects were impressive and proved to be the catalyst to developments in New York, where Goldstein and McKay met and began collaborating. Word of these parties and their innovative light installations got around and even Andy Warhol showed up once. With the advent of video technology, especially the portable Sony video camera, more and more artists took to the new medium and learned to manipulate their recordings. Effects in those early days consisted of simple things like scaling the images up or down, distorting them by squeezing or stretching, or picture in picture image effects. Artists were especially fascinated by the the feedback loop, a discovery that gave artists new possibilities. The electronic equivalent of sitting stoned in a field, staring at the fire. Steina Vasulka, video art pioneer and founder of cutting edge performance space The Kitchen Photo: Jayre Bali

Cathode Ray Goes Club

European artists Woody and Steina Vasulka made a name for themselves in New York: “Video is unlike film. It is different!” Against the advice of friends, they opened a gallery in the kitchen of an old theater in Soho, where the sidewalks were rolled up by 8pm. Called simply ‘The Kitchen’, their performance space and gallery drew interesting visitors and rejuvenated the district. But Steina remembers how sometimes the shows were so bad that she was really glad they had a bar, too. The Vasulka Effect, in which an image transverses five monitors set up next to each other, carries their name.

VJ: Darkened Dancefloor or White Cube?

And it’s not just the old hands getting air time in VIDEO OUT. The film interviews contemporary artists such as Missy Galore and Buck “Feedbuck” (together known as Feedbuck Galore), Angie Eng, Joshua Goldberg, David Lublin, The Lightning Surgeons, Kurt Ralske, Adam Chao, Bishop, Nix Mix, Chiaki Watanabe and Vishwanath Owen Bush, just to name a few. The artists give us the lowdown on the contemporary video scene and offer insights into how they work, the problems they have during gigs, and the special dangers that drunken club-goers pose for their equipment. They philosophize about the status of video art (somewhere between VJ and visual artist); the use of technology; and how the so-called ‘laptop artists’ are belittled in video art circles. Pushing buttons, groovin’ to the beat, and drinking in the atmosphere are all part of being a video artist. VJane Chiaki Watanabe at the controls in New York club The Tank Photo: Popeye Chang Many consider being called a VJ an insult. They feel the word discredits their work. But where does this type of visual art belong? The clubs aren’t really the right venue. What about museums, where Bill Viola and Nam Jun Paik have laid claims? Perhaps the best path is direct collaboration with musicians? There’s no unanimously agreed upon approach – just as you wouldn’t call the gals or guys who dally with visuals artists. For quite a few visual artists, having their feet on the ground and direct contact with the crowd - be it in a shabby plane hangar or on the club dance floor - is more important than an exhibition in a polished museum show room. Meredith Finkelstein and Paul Vlachos get close to the current scene and its artists while also providing a historical overview. And, if you watch until the credits stop rolling, you’ll be treated to a bonus visual poem.