American Women's Video from the Los Angeles Women's Video Center. 26 October to 3 November, 1977.
The Women's Video Center, established in 1976 by Nancy Angelo, Candace Compton and Annette Hunt, was at the Women's Building, Los Angeles.
Its aims were to:
1/ To bring women Video Artists together with each other's work
2/ To provide the format and space for artists to get feedback on their work through dialogue with the audience.
3/ To raise the consciousness of the video audience by asking them to pay to see the tapes and making it constantly clear that the money was both to support the series and the artists
4/ To experiment with providing comfortable internal structures for showing tapes and encouraging discussions.
The collection of tapes drawn from artists working at or through the Women's Video Center are a diverse series that explore many aspects of the feminist struggle of the early 1970s.
Tapes listed to be shown in the program of seven sessions at the Ewing & George Paton Galleries were:
Session 1: (26 October)
Martha Rosler: Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained (1977)
Regarding the objectification of women, and the control of women's lives and behaviours by bureaucracy and the imposition of positivist social science. A women is measured “by a white-coated male examiner, who is eventually joined by a chorus of three women assistants.”1 The measuring is intended to remind the viewer of the bureaucratic “processing of human beings” in the military, in charity hospitals and the concentration camps.2
http://www.martharosler.net/
Candace Compton and Nancy Angelo: Nun and Deviant (1976)
Video of a collaboration lasting several months between the two artists, which became a performance in itself.
http://www.vdb.org/titles/nun-and-deviant
Anne Prutzman: Canyon Walk
“A ritual. A performance. A celebration. A walk through time” and the lands of the Diqueno Indians.3
Antoinette DeJong: Jealousy (1976)
An autobiographical piece in which DeJong “describes but does not act out the clichés of feminine jealousy” while sitting and casually swinging her foot.4
Session 2: (27 October)
Eileen Griffin: Sugar and Spice (1974)
Deals with contemporary attitudes and the complex social codes held in the transsexual world and how they reflect the usual ascriptions of “masculine” and “feminine.”
http://www.vasulka.org/archive/Contributors/PeterCrown/Banality.pdf
Session 3: (28 & 31 October)
Jennifer Kotter: Loveletter
A 30 minute sequence of photographic stills with voice over that explore “aspects of the cultural environment that had an affect upon young, white, middle class women who grew up in Southern California during 60's.”5
Holly O'Konski: 4 Rough Edges: Eeny, Meany, Miney, Mo (1977)
Four stories about the artist's past experience of childhood traumas, self-image, parental violence and peer-group betrayal.
Suzanne Lacey: Learn Where the Meat Comes From (1976)
A TV Gourmet housewife ridiculous performance demonstration of where the meat is on a lamb carcass as a counter to the objectification of women.
http://www.suzannelacy.com/1970smonster_meat.htm
Barbara Smith: I am Not Lost But Hidden (1976)
A performance that draws the audience to follow but not find the performer until a final cryptic revelation.
Session 4: (31 October)
Leslie Carlson: Wife Abuse: No Easy Way Out (1977?)
A documentary on wife abuse from the point of view of the victims.
Claudia Queen: Women by Choice (1977)
A documentary on the lives and emotions of transsexuals.
Session 5: (1 November)
Adele Shaules: I was visiting my sisters who are living in warm and friendly wouldn't-hurt-a-fly fascistic environment.
The relationship between a woman and her three sisters who are nuns.
Linda Henry: Quandary: Connections (1976)
“A simple collage of photos and jewellery, all of which have something to do with different times and places in my life – a personal statement.”6
Ilene Segalove: The Dormitory (c.1975), Professional Retirement Home (1975), Underground Walkway (c.1975), Mom (c.1975), I'm Bored (c.1975), Where is God? (c.1975), The Dive (c.1975).
A series of short pieces in which the artist investigates her past.
Session 6: (1 & 2 November)
Linda Montana: Learning to Talk (1977)
“About three years ago I began photographing myself with the clothes I found in my closet. I realized that there were many characters there.”
Nancy Heath Angelo: Part 1: On Joining the Order: In Which Angelica Furiosa Explains to Her Sisters How She Came to be Among Them. (1977)
A performance narrative that “focuses on guilt as part of women's oppression.”7
Marge Dean: Homemaking
Autobiographic stories about “the power of the family unit.”8
Session 7: (2 & 3 November)
Sandra Tabori: Idle Wishes Part 1 (1974) and Part 2 (1977), Not Present Love (c.1976)
A monologue revealing the artist's “personal feelings about what a wife is.”9 Part 2 is a technically improved extension of Part 1. Not Present Love is a comedy in which “a woman and a man talk about their sexual lives in successive monologues.”10
Susan Roberta Mogul: Comedy as a Backup – Big Tip Backup and Shut Out (c.1976)
Suggests that the artist should “become a comedian as a back up career in case [she] doesn't make it as an artist.”
Sheila Ruth and Jan Zimmerman: Signed by a Woman. (1976)
A documentary on the Women's Art Movement of the 1970s in California.
1Martha Rosler, catalogue entry for Session 1, in Kiffy Rubbo and Meredith Rogers (eds), Videotapes by Women From the Los Angeles Women's Video Centre. Melbourne: Ewing & George Paton Galleries (1977) exhibition catalogue.
2Ibid.
3Anne Pruzman in Ibid.
4Glenn Phillips, California video: artists and histories, Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, (2008 ?), 272-273.
5Jennifer Kotter, catalogue entry for Session 3, in Kiffy Rubbo and Meredith Rogers (eds), Videotapes by Women From the Los Angeles Women's Video Centre. Melbourne: Ewing & George Paton Galleries, (1977) exhibition catalogue.
6Linda Henry, catalogue entry for Session 5, in Kiffy Rubbo and Meredith Rogers (eds), Videotapes by Women From the Los Angeles Women's Video Centre. Melbourne: Ewing & George Paton Galleries, (1977) exhibition catalogue.
7Nancy Heath Angelo, catalogue entry for Session 6, in Kiffy Rubbo and Meredith Rogers (eds), Videotapes by Women From the Los Angeles Women's Video Centre. Melbourne: Ewing & George Paton Galleries, (1977) exhibition catalogue.
8Marge Dean, catalogue entry for Session 6, in Kiffy Rubbo and Meredith Rogers (eds), Videotapes by Women From the Los Angeles Women's Video Centre. Melbourne: Ewing & George Paton Galleries, (1977) exhibition catalogue.
9Sandra Tabori, catalogue entry for Session 7, in Kiffy Rubbo and Meredith Rogers (eds), Videotapes by Women From the Los Angeles Women's Video Centre. Melbourne: Ewing & George Paton Galleries, (1977) exhibition catalogue.
10Ibid.
