LOT 32 / VIDEO
Paik, Nam June
New School presents: Nam June Paik… I. Electronic TV + color TV Experiments. II. 3 Robots. III. Pop Sonata. IV. 2 Zen boxes + 1 Zen can.
New York: New School for Social Research, January 8, 1965.
£ 250
Tall, illustrated broadsheet (41.5 x 20 cm.); recto illustrated with a Peter Moore photograph of Paik’s Robot K-456, which featured in the advertised event. Small notch to lower margin.
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From a one-night concert/exhibition of Paik’s work; his first one-man show in the United States. The verso features a text from Paik (“Electronic TV & Color TV experiment”) illustrated with circuit diagram, along with various press quotes. The evening also featured live performances by Carol Bergé and Mieko Shiomo. With single OCLC / COPAC record discovered (Northwestern).
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LOT 33 / VIDEO
Paik, Nam June
[Flyer for Monday-night Fluxus series at Cafe Au Go Go].
New York, October 1965.
£ 200
Small broadside (22 x 14 cm.) for “Worldtheatre;” a series of “experimental music & dance & theatre. Works by Erik Anderson, Andy Warhol, Dick Higgins, Steve Balkin, Al Hansen, Yoko Ono, John Herbert McDowell, Diter Rot, Christo, Nam June Pai[k], Wolf Vostell, Charlotte Moorman, Alison Knowles, Liz Keen, T. Kosugi.”
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Monday, October 4, 1965 holds mythical status in the natural history of video art. Pope Paul VI’s visit to NYC—the first of a Pope to the United States—resulted in a traffic jam. Stuck in a cab in that traffic jam, on his way to a Fluxus event downtown, was Nam June Paik, along with his newly-acquired Sony portapak camera. The video footage that he captured from that cab was exhibited later that night at Cafe Au Go Go. This is the invitation to that not-yet event (which ironically includes the typo “Nam June Pai”); unrecorded on OCLC.
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LOT 34 / VIDEO
Weiner, Lawrence / Schum, Gerry
Beached / Broken off.
Hannover and Düsseldorf: Videogalerie Gerry Schum, 1970-1971. [Distribution copy: Köln, 1990].
£ 750
Fuji VHS cassette (PAL), with custom titles printed to label (in German): "Lawrence Weiner / 'Beached' 1970, s/w, Ton, / 2,5 min. / 'Broken off' 1970, s/w, Ton, / 1,5 min. / Videogalerie Gerry Schum." Further hand-stamped: "Copyright Ursula Wevers." Cassette housed in vintage white case, with printed title sheet under transparent sleeve; dated February 1990, with Köln address of Wevers. Accompanied by USB key, housing recent digital transfer (.mov) of the cassette’s contents (04:10, with sound). For those interested in previewing the video, simply send request.
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In 1970, Lawrence Weiner first experimented with motion pictures with To the sea / on the sea / from the sea / at the sea / bordering the sea; a 50 second contribution to Gerry Schum’s Identifications programme, which was broadcast over Sudwestfunk television. (Other contributors included Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert & George, Alghiero Boetti, and Richard Serra). Over the next year—as Schum abandoned his idea of avant-garde television, and instead developed his Videogalerie production/distribution model in Düsseldorf—Weiner would create two more black-and-white video works with Schum: Beached and Broken off. Each of the videos explored the material possibilities of the medium, in sets of five variant actions (i.e. of relocating drift-wood onto the beach and breaking material objects with his hands), whilst holding to the ethos of creating “public freehold example[s] of what could be art within my responsibility.” In the fifth and final possibility explored in Broken off, Weiner pulls the plug on the camera itself.
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Later reflecting on these early video works, Weiner lamented: “there is an inherent mistake in the idea of video being used just as a historical way to present what an artist’s actions have been. [Instead] you had some kind of obligation to the idea that this was other people’s real time, and they were going to be sitting and they were going to be watching and they were going to give up part of their lives. You had to give them a full package... You had to remember it was a reasonable theatrical performance, that it was other people’s real life you were imposing on.”
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After Schum’s premature death in 1973, responsibility for the Videogalerie and its works transferred to his wife (and artist) Ursula Wevers, who produced this distribution copy in 1990. Institutional holdings for these works are scarce, with Chicago’s Video Data Bank having produced a compilation of Weiner’s first four videos (1970-1972), from which copies are reporting at Emory and Virginia Commonwealth.
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LOT 35 / VIDEO
Vostell, Wolf
Desastres. [Promotional broadsheet].
Berlin: Neuer Berliner Kunstverein - Videothek, 1972.
£ 100
Broadsheet (58 x 80 cm.), printed in b&w, with full-page composition to recto; the verso folds into four distinct compositions: a title page (19 x 20 cm.), a 3 pp. text by producer Jörn Merkert ("Widerhaken im eindämmernden bewusstsein..."), and two wide sets of images from the film (19 x 80 cm.).
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An evocative print-supplement to Vostell’s first long-form motion picture (45 min.), released in the year after he helped found the Videothek in Berlin. A pounding heartbeat accompanies post-Nazi/post-industrial images of latent violence, with the recurring figure of a naked woman having various of her body parts fused with concrete. With single OCLC/COPAC record discovered (Northwestern).
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LOT 36 / VIDEO
Korot, Beryl / Schneider, Ira (editors)
Radical software: vol. 2, no. 2. The TV environment.
New York: Gordon and Breach / Raindance Foundation, 1973.
£ 275
White wrappers (31 cm.), showing some fading. With hand-stamp to front cover from Centre for Advanced TV Studies (London). Contents of 64 pages; illustrated throughout after b&w photographs.
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“Consider these facts: the TV set is on an average of five hours and forty-five minutes a day; ninety-seven percent of all families in the United States have at least one TV set; and between the ages of two and sixty-five, an average American will spend nine full years watching television—one-quarter of his waking life... Television has created TV spine, TV eyes, and the TV habit. With the continuing growth of television it will become more and more difficult to separate what is inside and what is outside the TV Environment.” In this number of their Radical software publishing project (1970-1974), The Raindance Foundation—founded in 1969 to explore the possibilities of video art and alternative television—explores the ecological dimensions of the television medium (as evolutionary fact), with illustrated reflections on Richard Nixon (as the first TV president), talk shows, game shows, baseball, wrestling, women on TV, the homes of TV stars, a typology of TV sets, and separate interviews with a TV repairman and TV salesman. This copy having belonged to the Centre for Advanced TV Studies in London, being the formal face of the radical media group IRAT (the Institute for Research in Art and Technology).
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LOT 38 / VIDEO
Filliou, Robert
Modern video manual.
Hamburg: Ed. Griffelkunst, 1984.
£ 400
Lithograph (48 x 64 cm.) with pencil additions, on pale yellow/blue binary field. From an edition of 541 prints; signed by Filliou in pencil, horizontally along centre-line. In crisp condition. Cf. Meyer, p. 180.
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One of the first video pioneers, Fluxus artist Robert Filliou often-meditated on the medium in the early-to-mid 1980s, before retiring to monastic life. Here, the Janus-faced figure that reappears throughout his oeuvre is mobilized within a “modern video model” of measured gazes and screens. With single OCLC record discovered (BnF).
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LOT 39 / VIDEO
Rankin, Scott (curator)
Video and language: video as language.
Los Angeles: Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), 1986.
£ 200
Exhibition catalogue. Single sheet, folded into six panels (30 x 18 cm.). Illustrated after b&w photographs. Accompanied by original invitation to exhibition, printed on bright yellow stock (28 x 22 cm.).
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"This exhibition presents artists' work in video which has as its object language and sign systems. Each investigates various aspects of this form/code/channel matrix. Most utilize the inherent ability of video to deliver visual and auditory information equally. Some of these artists are well known and have exerted influence. Others are less known. All are investigating and expanding video and the code by which it operates as a language." Mobilizing the thoughts of Baudrillard, Eco, and McLuhan, Scott Rankin here curates a catalogue of 18 works of video art from 1972-1986, each represented in the catalogue by a screenshot image, brief synopsis, and metadata.
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Artists included: Gary Hill, Marina Abramovic/Ulay, Richard Serra, Linda Montano, Hans Breder, Laurie Anderson, John Baldessari, Annette Barbier, William Wegman, Skip Arnold, David Bunn, Juan Downey, Jacques Nyst, Peter Rose, Ken Fiengold, Pier Marton, Caterina Borelli, Carole Ann Klonarides/Michael Owen, and Rene Pulfer/Herbert Fritsch—with the latter attempting to hold a smile for 45 minutes. With only 2 OCLC records discovered (Alberta, UC Santa Barbara).
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