Video activism

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]

• London Community Video Archive (LCVA), preserves the work of the Community Video movement in the 1970s and 80s, in London and the South East. Based at Goldsmiths University and the BFI. YouTube. Vimeo.

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.

• Videokronik: Aktivisme Video dan Distribusi Video di Indonesia, Yogyakarta: KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, and Collingwood: EngageMedia, 2009, 70 pp. Publisher. (Indonesian)
  • Videochronic: Video Activism and Video Distribution in Indonesia, Yogyakarta: KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, and Collingwood: EngageMedia, 2009, 68 pp. Publisher.

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

• Stéphanie Jeanjean, "Disobedient Video in France in the 1970s: Video Production by Women’s Collectives", Afterall 27, Summer 2011, pp 5-16.

• 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. Review: Day (Art Hist).

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

See also

• Video, Community radio, Community servers, Art and activism