Community television

Eleanor Boyer (left) and Karen Peugh. (Source)

Delphine Seyrig, Maria Schneider and Carole Roussopoulos during the shooting of Sois belle et tais-toi, 1975.

Wendy Appel and Rita Ogden filming with Sony Portapak, c.1972. Photo: Paul Goldsmith. Photo courtesy of TVTV.

Video activism, guerrilla television, alternative television, video documentary, community television, community video, access TV, camcorder journalism

Projects, collectives, activists

• Ant Farm
• Black Box
• Skip Blumberg
• Eleanor Boyer
• Candida TV
• CEFREC
• David Cort
• Deptford.TV
• Global Village
• Adnan Hadzi
• DeeDee Halleck
• Judy Hoffman
• Les Insoumuses
• Kartemquin Films
• Medienwerkstatt Freiburg
• Original Videojournal
• Paper Tiger TV
• Raindance Foundation
• Delphine Seyrig
• Spectacle
• TVTV
• Undercurrents
• Videofreex

also: Whispered Media, Witness, Appalshop in the USA; Chiapas Media Project in Mexico; Drishti Media Collective, Indian People's Media Collective Kritika in India; Undercurrents, I-contact video network in the UK; Labor News Production in South Korea; INSIST in Indonesia; Karahaber and Videa in Turkey

Events

• Video Vortex #10 Istanbul: Art, Activism, Archive, Istanbul, 19-20 Sep 2014. [1]

• The Power of Activist Videos, conference, ICI Berlin, 12-13 May 2017. Organized by Jens Eder, Britta Hartmann and Chris Tedjasukmana.

• Testcard, programme of artists moving-image that takes the format of a 24-hour TV variety show which included a combination of live and pre-recorded material to draw on the history of radical and public broadcasting, open publishing and transmission, 24-25 Sep 2022. Developed by Nastassja Simensky and Anneke Kampman.

• People Make Television, exhibition, Raven Row, London, 28 Jan-26 Mar 2023. Curated by Lori E. Allen, William Fowler, Matthew Harle and Alex Sainsbury.

Collections, digital platforms

• Media Burn Archive, Chicago. The website features a digital archive of videos from the 1950s onward. "The collection forms an unmatched portrait of 20th and 21st century American life, created by individuals with a deeply rooted commitment to increasing our understanding of other human beings and communities." [2] [3]

• Preserving Guerilla Television: TVTV, BAMPFA, University of California. Digital collections. [4]

Resources

• Video Activism 2.0, research project on the attention strategies of video activism on the social web.

Publications

Radical Software, 1970-1974.

Michael Shamberg, Raindance Corporation, Guerrilla Television, 1971.

Deidre Boyle, Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited, 1997, Log.

Defiant Muses: Delphine Seyrig and the Feminist Video Collectives in France, 1970s-1980s, 2019, Log, PDF.

• Radical Software, 11 issues, eds. Beryl Korot, Phyllis Segura, and Ira Schneider, New York: Raindance Corporation (later Raindance Foundation with Gordon and Breach Publishers), 1970-1974.

• Michael Shamberg, Raindance Corporation, Guerrilla Television, New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt Rinehart and Winstin, 1971, 108 pp. TOC. Ad. Review. [5] [6] [7]

• Martha Gever, "Video Politics: Early Feminist Projects", Afterimage, Summer 1983, pp 25-27. [8]

• Wolfgang Stickel, Zur Geschichte der Videobewegung: politisch orientierte Medienarbeit mit Video in den 70er und 80er Jahren: am Beispiel der Medienwerkstatt Freiburg und anderer Videogruppen und Medienzentren in der Bundesrepublik, Freiburg: Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg, 1991; corr.ed., 1992; 2014, 187 pp. Master's thesis. Excerpt. (German)

• Tjebbe van Tijen, "A Context for Collecting the New Media", in Next 5 Minutes Video Catalogue: Catalogue of Videotapes Shown During the Festival on Tactical Television held in Paradiso Amsterdam, 8-10 January 1993, eds. Bas Raijmakers and Tjebbe van Tijen, Amsterdam: International Institute of Social History, 1993.

• Alexandra Juhasz, AIDS TV: Identity, Community, and Alternative Video, Duke University Press, 1995, 316 pp. Author. Publisher.

• Deidre Boyle, Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited, Oxford University Press, 1997, 286 pp, PDF.

• Carlos Fernandez, "Movements and Militant Media: Communications Technology and Latin American Grassroots Politics", in Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority, eds. Josh MacPhee and Erik Reuland, AK Press, 2007, pp 229-235.

• Carolyn Faber, Jakob Jakobsen, Guerilla Television and Activist Video: A View from the Last 35 Years, Copenhagen: Copenhagen Free University, 2007, 56 pp. Excerpt, [9]. Booklet with an interview with tv-pioneer Tom Weinberg - by Carolyn Faber, documents from the Media Burn Archive and a Guerilla Television Lexicon.

• Jesse Drew, "The Collective Camcorder in Art and Activism", in Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination After 1945, eds. Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, pp 95-113.

• Nancy Cain, Video Days and What We Saw Through the Viewfinder, Palm Springs, CA: Event Horizon Press, 2011.

• Ege Berensel, "From Guerilla Television to Video-Activism, from Witness Video to Media-Activism: How to Resist Using Video", Goethe.de, 2012.

• William Merrin, "Still Fighting “the Beast”: Guerrilla Television and the Limits of YouTube", Cultural Politics 8:1, Mar 2012, pp 97-119.

• Journal of Film and Video 64(1-2): "Early Video History", ed. Elizabeth Coffman, Spring/Summer 2012. TOC. [10]

• Sara Chapman, "Guerrilla Television in the Digital Archive", Journal of Film and Video 64:1-2, Spring/Summer 2012, pp 42-50.

• Kris Paulsen, "Half-Inch Revolution: The Guerrilla Video Tape Network", Amodern 2, Oct 2013.

• Brian Holmes, "Tactical Television. Movement Media in the Nineties", Regarding Spectatorship, 2015.

• Chris Robé, Breaking the Spell: A History of Anarchist Filmmakers, Videotape Guerrillas, and Digital Ninjas, Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2017, x+469 pp.

• Ege Berensel (ed.), Video'nun Eylemi, Istanbul: Alef Yayinevi, 2017, 238 pp. [11] (Turkish)

• Gülüm Şener, Nihan Gider Işıkman (eds.), Video Aktivizmde. Kavramlar Sorunlar Uygulamalar, Ankara: um:ag Yayınları, 2018, 230 pp. Publisher. [12] (Turkish)

• Michael Goddard, Guerrilla Networks: An Anarchaeology of 1970s Radical Media Ecologies, Amsterdam University Press, 2018, 358 pp. TOC & Introduction. [13]. Review: Gloor (H-Soz-Kult).

• Freya Schiwy, "Thresholds of the Visible: Activist Video, Militancy, and Prefigurative Politics", ARTMargins 8:3, Oct 2019, pp 7-28. [14]

• Freya Schiwy, The Open Invitation: Activist Video, Mexico, and the Politics of Affect, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019.

• Defiant Muses: Delphine Seyrig and the Feminist Video Collectives in France, 1970s-1980s, Madrid: Museo Reina Sofía, 2019, 231 pp. (English)
  • Musas insumisas: Delphine Seyrig y los colectivos de vídeo feminista en Francia en los 70 y 80, Madrid: Museo Reina Sofía, 2019, 231 pp. (Spanish)

• Sandra Ristovska, Seeing Human Rights: Video Activism as a Proxy Profession, MIT Press, 2021, 288 pp, EPUB. [15]

• Francesco Spampinato, Art vs. TV: A Brief History of Contemporary Artists' Responses to Television, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, 368 pp. Publisher.

• Andrew Roach, Community Media: A Handbook for Revolutions in DIY TV, 2023. Toot.

See also

• Video, Community radio, Community servers