[-empyre-] from Peer Bode: bold electronic experimenters

Tue Sep 29 02:14:06 AEST 2015

I love that Peer Bode remembered Thierry Kuntzel's visit to the ETC.  I remember chats Thierry and I had about the difference in working at the ETC from that of working with the technicians at INA l'Institut National de l'audio-visuel) in Paris, when he was a fellow there.  At INA the technical staff resisted any play with the image, and were hard to interest in the kind of experimentation he aimed to do.  Deregulating their standard imagery registration was not part of their customary practice.  So I know that his interaction with Peer was a pleasure for him.
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From: empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au <empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> on behalf of Timothy Conway Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>
Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2015 7:23 PM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: [-empyre-] from Peer Bode: bold electronic experimenters

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Hi, everyone, I am forwarding this posting from Peer Bode:

The ETC allowed many of we next generation young artists to participate in
the adventures of electronic video thinking and making. When I think of
making work at the ETC, I come back to the notions of experimentation,
process and performance. There were the array of evolving electronically
modified and electronically designed and built tools handed over to each
artist, commonly for five days, in a space and location that had great
ambience of comfort and particularly in Owego, great natural beauty, the
Susquehanna river etc. The artists were given a fast workshop in equipment
and system details by myself and in later years by Hank Rudolph. They were
then left alone to explore and work. I was taken by Kristin Lucas¹s
comment of how many tapes and recording she had made at her ETC
residencies. Multiply that by the number of artists who worked in the ETC
studios and you begin to see the sheer enormous scale of work, now
history, that was made at the ETC. That is a cultural heritage, a huge
virtual archive across many artists.

The thinking regarding my personal video work at the ETC goes something
like this. There was electronic learning and experimenting, process and
performance. Having studied the New American Cinema in Binghamton and also
being inspired by the New Music richness, including electronic music, wow,
that was internalized as an understanding, a striving and teasing out a
set of electronic practices, atmospheres, certain qualities, textures,
certain rhythms and durations Šparticular occurrences and discoveries Š
ways of opening a thinking space, a kind of breathing, a speeding up and
slowing down. There was this electronic vibratory easing, the moving image
and sound going from glancing to a being sticky. The point being, reactive
spaces, processes and dialogues. Reflective surfaces to see, to
electronically re-network and to internally discover and reinforce.

All of this was in combinations with linguistic concerns. They were both
influences bumping up against each other. The linguistic together with the
direct intangible states, realisms, materialisms and art. We also had
artists Ralph Hocking, Larry Gotham, Ken Jacobs, the dance artists Arnie
Zane, Bill T, Jones and Lois Welk and the writer and theorist Maureen
Turim to spar with.

The actual moving image and sound makers are in fact the great fans, the
experimenters, the researchers of the electronic moments. Video artist
Shegiko Kubota came to the ETC several times. I very much liked Shegiko¹s
writings, including she writing that video was ³the vacation of art². And
there was also ³video as the vengeance of the vagina².  Video as a
vacation of art Š interesting.  In that vein, we are free, if only
intermittently and yes heroically, free of arts historical and critical
burdensŠ open spaces, a kind of freedom.

As still a new form, even now, video and electronic arts are free to be
used to experiment and work in those often contested strange and wonderful
regions, those spaces and durations of the unassigned. The photographer,
filmmaker, videomaker and digital artist Hollis Frampton also considered
and speculated in these ideas. He, by the way taught, early in his career,
at Hunter College.  Hollis suggested in a moment of humbleness or not,
that film art (the moving image and sound art) was superior as the single
art that incorporated the codes of all the other arts AND that film art
was 20 years ahead of the painting and sculpture arts. I still like his
conceit.  Maybe it is in fact 40 years, including the 20 years the
electronic arts have lost using commercial software, that forever renewing
commercial redesign product. As we get through this period and as hardware
and software settles around useful structures and systems, (open sourceŠ
new hardware instruments) interested people, young media artists, will
move quickly and deeply into more personal investigations using electronic
materials, tools, instruments, ideas and cultures.

The years of my engagement with the facilities of the Experimental
Television Center and the remarkable people guiding and participating in
its adventure have convinced me of the importance of pushing back, of the
value of alternative thinkings, practices and communities. Nicholas Ray
had thoughts about alternative cultures. Nicolas Ray, American auteur film
director, who we in Binghamton had the opportunity experience as filmmaker
and mentor and who together with Binghamton film students made a multi
image electronically inspired film had thoughts about alternative
cultures. Nick made video synthesizer recordings at the ETC.  The
multi-frame narrative feature film ³We Can¹t Go Home Again² offered the
suggestion for a 1970¹s generation of young people to ³find your
communities and take care of each other.²Not bad.  The film and the
accompanying documentary film, ³Don¹t Expect Too Much²by Susan Ray is
distributed by Oscilloscope films.

The French theorist and artist Thierry Kunztel  came to the ETC in Owego,
via South America in 1981. In conversation I asked him if there was
something singularly important that he learned studying with Christian
Metz and Roland Barthes.  His response was quick. He said it was the
importance of making actual media image and sound work. Given that Thierry
himself was such an important and celebrated writer, his comments
concerning the importance of making media work was a surprise. I agreed
with him. I would add on today Š  make the media work and make the
situations to see and hear and reflect on the media work. Look at the
work. Listen to the work. Keep looking and listening to the work. Keep
being in dialogue with the work.

The ETC experience Š wow Š.  Fortunately the ETC studio and programs¹
closing have not put an end to it all.  Although many of us are still
trying to get over it.  The Experimental Television¹s immediate
organization children, the Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA) Alfred and
Signal Culture, Owego continue the experimental electronic arts
imagination and outreach today.

Thank you Š Bests, Peer

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