In Final Exit, an aged one is confronted with his options in blunt terms. Does he want to drag out his existence, increasingly infirm and a burden to his caretakers, or go quietly before resentment overwhelms sentiment? Does he wish to go on living, the quality of his life increasingly diminishing, or be euthanized? Would he prefer cremation or burial? This video confronts the issues of mortality and advancing decrepitude that faces even the friskiest.
This surprisingly candid tape between two men looking to avoid the draft and a draft counselor offers unique entry into conversations that often only took place behind closed doors during the Vietnam War. The Videofreex capture the length of a discussion, set in an office room piled high with stacks of records and forms, during which a counselor guides two college-age men through a series of questions that they must manage and address in order to carefully navigate the legal system.
Repurposing an ancient confessional video diary made about 40 years ago, this 11-minute narrative creates a poignant and humorous conversation where both ‘selves’ question, enlighten, and warn one another about things in life that really matter.
Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.
This tape includes footage of one of the first broadcasts of Lanesville TV, as it appears on the television set of Lanesville local, Todd Benjamin, and a television set installed in a public bar. Interwoven with shots recording the program’s reception, are segments recorded for Lanesville TV itself: Bart (playing the part of “Russell”) approaches Parry, dressed as a hillbilly car mechanic “fixing” the VW Van; nearby, Nancy opens the door to a cabin, wearing a bonnet, while Carol and Chuck, crowding behind her, play the part of other Lanesville TV protagonists.
Sections 1-30 of an incomplete extended poem describing the artist's connection to the radical black tradition. The completed poem will be formed of 180 sections.
"Lessons are all about constraints; they are thirty seconds, must feature a black figure, and I have rules about where to make cuts, how to edit sound, etc."
— Martine Syms in conversation with Aram Moshayedi, Mousse Magazine
In Two-Spirits Speak Out, Brenda and Glennda interview members of We'Wah and Bar-Chee-Ampe, one of the first Two-Spirit Native American organizations in New York. This episode addresses gender identity among Two-Spirit people, and discusses their involvement and experiences within the queer community in New York City.
In this episode of Glennda and Friends, Glennda Orgasm and Mark Allen drink at Marie's Crisis Café, a piano bar in Manhattan. They interview other bar patrons and discuss topics including politics, Judy Garland, and the idea of mid-life crisis.
An episode of Glennda and Friends, hosted by Glennda Orgasm and Mark Allen.
A primer in satellite system operation, Send/Receive extends the critique of media as commodity by asking questions concerning the people's right to access satellites. The objective of Send/Receive was specifically to connect groups of artists on the East and West Coasts via public satellite, and it was the first artist-initiated project to do so.
Holzer adopts the form and language of commercial messages to disrupt communication, presenting kamikaze texts that are designed to stimulate thought, with humor, and inspire a critical attitude in an often passive audience. As in all of Holzer’s work, these television spots present deceptively simple sequences of text that mix provocative social commentary with resonant poetic reflection.
An architect and urban planner by training, Dara Birnbaum began using video in 1978 while teaching at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where she worked with Dan Graham. Recognized as one of the first video artists to employ the appropriation of television images as a subversive strategy, Birnbaum recontextualizes pop cultural icons (Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978-79) and TV genres (Kiss the Girls: Make them Cry, 1979) to reveal their subtexts.
In this classic personal elegy, Kubota mourns her father's death and recounts the last days of his life. Reflecting on Kubota's use of the video medium, the television emerges as the link between Kubota and her father, with the melodramatic crooning of Japanese pop singers providing a backdrop for Kubota's real-life tragedy.
This title is also available on Surveying the First Decade: Volume 1.
In this video, Glennda Orgasm and social critic Camille Paglia walk the streets of downtown Manhattan and discuss the status of mainstream feminism in the early 1990s. They visit the Stonewall Inn, Washington Square Park, and a gay bookstore, and confront a group of anti-pornography protesters.
An episode of Glennda and Friends, hosted by Glennda Orgasm and Camille Paglia. Featuring The Centaurians, Brian Roach, and Rennard Snowden.
Beginning with the arrival by canoe of a TV and VCR in their village, The Spirit of TV documents the Waiãpi people’s first encounter with TV images of themselves and others. They view a tape from their chief’s first trip to Brasilia to speak to the government, news broadcasts, and videos of other Brazilian native peoples, and record a session directed by Chief Waiwai for villages in his territory.
Gibbons plays the sleazy Director and lampoons the movie audition and its legendary corollary, the casting couch. Barbie is recast, not as the impossible-to-attain ideal beauty, but as the victim of sexual harrassment and exploitation.
This title is also available on Joe Gibbons Videoworks: Volume 1.
Pop-Pop Video: Kojak/Wang takes a shootout from Kojak and extends the shot and counter-shot into a potentially endless battle. In the original TV fragment, images, gestures and actions rebound off one another like the echoes of repeated bursts of gunfire. Birnbaum compares gunfire with the beams of laser light from a computer in a Wang commercial, connecting destruction and violence with the products of advancing technology.
In One Man Ladies, Glennda Orgasm is joined by Vaginal Davis as they meet women on the streets of New York City to discuss Laura Schlessinger's book Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives. The pair humorously explore the best ways modern women can find and secure a husband.
An episode of Glennda and Friends, hosted by Glennda Orgasm and Vaginal Davis.
In response to the 1994 Republican campaign Contract with America that ushered in the first GOP House majority in over 42 years, Ligorano Reese screen printed men’s and women’s cotton briefs with the face of Newt Gingrich on the crotch and the Contract with America legislative agenda on the seat. The underwear became an overnight sensation when elected officials in Washington received them and became so infamous the Republican National Committee threatened the artists with copyright and trademark infringement.
“It’s spring, it’s spring, and I feel I’m giving birth myself, to something monstrous, something ugly.” Gibbons enters the woods to begin his destructive campaign against spring, snapping the buds off trees while babbling maniacally. Sabotaging Spring is an impressionistic peek at Gibbons’s paranoid fancy; he explains the facts of life, evolution, and whistling to his dog Woody.
This title is also available on Joe Gibbons Videoworks: Volume 1.
Silver directs and performs all the roles in this raucous and hilarious music video rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s "Freebird", the infamous Southern rock anthem for an entire generation of 1970s male youth. In this spoof of straight mass culture, Silver flips ironically between roles; from a lesbian proudly proclaiming her sexuality at the Academy Awards, to an in-concert Coors-drinking Ronnie Van Zant, and, finally, to a black-lace lesbian lounge swinger celebrating the wild, colorful world of “out” visibility.
In From Fagtasia to Frisco, Brenda and Glennda report from Fagtasia, an event honoring the Summer Solstice in New York organized by the Radical Faeries. Through interviews with Faeries and footage of their walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, the group proposes to reclaim the city as a safe space for queer people, and discuss reorienting queer consciousness toward spirituality.
In Fagtasia Solstice, Brenda and Glennda attend a Radical Faerie event in New York City to commemorate the Summer Solstice. Through interviews with Faeries and footage of their walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, the group proposes to reclaim the city as a safe space for queer people, and discuss reorienting queer consciousness toward spirituality.
An episode of The Brenda and Glennda Show, hosted by Brenda Sexual and Glennda Orgasm. Featuring the Radical Faeries. Thanks to Julie Clark and Dana Nasrallah.
In Mondo Toronto, Glennda travels to Toronto to visit Liza LaBruce (Bruce LaBruce). Liza gives Glennda a tour of the city's public parks, with specific reference to their role in gay culture. Following this, Glennda attends a party that LaBruce is hosting and interviews partygoers, including Scott Thompson from The Kids in the Hall and Amy Nitrate.
“We are hoping that in presenting this story in such a minimal way it would become evident that this Freudian logic is a conceptual and visual cliché. We want our audience to have an emotional response to the work, but at the same time realize that they’re being manipulated.” —Bruce and Norman Yonemoto
"Between March 1972 and February 1977, the Videofreex aired 258 television broadcasts from a home-built studio and jerry-rigged transmitter in an old boarding house they rented in the tiny Catskill Mountain hamlet of Lanesville. It was a revolutionary act in defiance of FCC regulations — the first unlicensed TV station in America."
In this video, Brenda and Glennda attend and interview participants at the 1991 New York City Pride March. Speaking with a range of attendees, they underscore the significance of non-white queer communities, diverse gender and sexual identities, and political causes at pride events.
