Picklesong

With Voice Windows (1986), Steina renews her efforts to generate a complex sound-image interface

Experimental short film by Barbara Sykes

This ironic and satirical video poem focuses on the mind of a young artist struggling with the desensitisation, exhaustion and stress of information overload at a time when 328.77 million terabytes of data are generated every day.

The innovative and influential British filmmaker Derek Jarman was invited to direct the Pet Shop Boys' 1989 tour. This film is a series of iconoclastic images he created for the background projections. Stunning, specially shot sequences (featuring actors, the Pet Shop Boys, and friends of Jarman) contrast with documentary montages of nature, all skillfully edited to music tracks.

a visualization of a poem telling a story of making a piramid out of a mountain

A woman strolls through nature, embraces trees, and enjoys stunning views. She dances around a large tree, then suddenly falls into darkness, wakes up in a completely different setting, and wonders if she was dreaming or if this is her dream.

Best known for his work in video, Richard Fung has made the politics of gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation his central focus. Chinese Characters (1986) examines the ambiguous relationship of gay Asian men with white gay porn.

Today, analogue video is attractive primarily thanks to the distinctive aesthetic quality of its pixelated image and raster errors. But for Czech artists who first explored the possibilities offered by video art in the late 1980s, this medium represented a path towards freedom. Through a portrait of her grandfather Radek Pilař, one of the pioneers of Czech video art, the director explores her own legacy of imperative creative fascination. Her film’s main story, i.e., the process of reconstructing the 1989 exhibition Video Day, contrasts this enchantment with life in the final days of the totalitarian regime, which different sharply with the adventures of those who decided to emigrate – whom the filmmaker also visits in order to discover forgotten works, get to know their creators, and re-establish broken ties.

Cóndor

IDFA and Canadian filmmaker Peter Wintonick had a close relationship for decades. He was a hard worker and often far from home, visiting festivals around the world. In 2013, he died after a short illness. His daughter Mira was left behind with a whole lot of questions, and a box full of videotapes that Wintonick shot for his Utopia project. She resolved to investigate what sort of film he envisaged, and to complete it for him.

Abstract video art created in 1979. Video and audio by Dean Winkler, Glenn Van Alstyne, Tom Lucke, Elaine Lewis, and Brian Aitchison. Chirp-1 / Quantel was created in two separate effects passes: At the RPI Video Synthesizer Lab an old porno tape (on stock that was donated to us) was processed using an analog Serge modular music synthesizer to sequence the sounds and control the colorization of an analog Hern video synthesizer. The sounds are also inserted into the video, which are the stripes you see, changing with frequency. The tape from the first pass was taken to EUE Video and used to seed an analog feedback loop around a Quantel 5000 digital effects device.

Video art by Vibeke Sorensen made at Calarts in 1989

Flooded McDonald's is a new film work in which a convincing life-size replica of the interior of a McDonald's burger bar, without any customers or staff present, gradually floods with water.

U B(ON) IN MY EYES

Enigma is something of a more glamorous version of White Hole, with a wide variety of elaborate textures (often composed of iconographic and religious symbols) converging towards the centre of the screen.

A short film that only uses photos and intertitles, this visual scenario depicts the sky as the sun sets. Picture yourself as the sunset leads into night.

DRK PARA

After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.

HIDEO, It's Me, Mama is a psychological melodrama that introduces narrative and structural devices that are integral to Idemitsu's work. Exploring the flawed universe of the contemporary Japanese family, she focuses on a woman's identity as mother through mother-child and husband-wife relationships. Hideo, a young man living away from his parents, is kept under constant surveillance by his doting mother via an omnipresent television monitor. In a cogent metaphor for familial relations in the media-saturated culture of contemporary Japan, Mama can only communicate with her beloved, absent son through the video screen. Idemitsu's poignant irony is embodied in the scene in which Mama, blind to her husband's needs, caresses Hideo's video image. (Electronic Arts Intermix)

An exploration of the VHS medium and the subterranean trash which thrived in it. Using source material from Emmanuelle 6, this DVD-R/VHS further blurs the line between low and high art. Beautiful cinematography coupled with smut. Strategic pauses and tracking errors guides the viewer to discover the true depth and sadness of the seemingly one-dimensional Emmanuelle. Soaring arpeggio synths and pulsating rhythms by Rob Feulner. The utter destruction of arguably the most beautiful film never seen, lost and forgotten on the shelf of your local video store, behind the cowboy doors or dangling beads. Written off as pornography by most, written off as too soft by creeps. This is the plight of Emmanuelle.