Steina: Machine Vision (1978–)

An electro-opto-mechanical environment by Steina, with instrumentation by Josef Krames, Woody Vasulka, and Bruce Hamilton. First shown at the Vasulkas exhibition at Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, 1978.

“When a human being operates the camera, the assumption is that the camera is an extension of the eye. You move the camera the way you move the head and the body. In video, unlike photography or film, the viewfinder is not necessarily an integral part of the camera apparatus. … In the late 1970s, I began a series of environments titled Machine Vision and Allvision, with a mirrored sphere. Another variation has a motorized moving mirror in front of the camera so that depending on the horizontal or vertical positioning of the mirror, the video monitor displays a continuous pan or tilt either back/forth or up/down. A third variation is a continuous rotation through a turning prism, while still another has a zoom lens in continuing motion, in/out. These automatic motions simulate all possible camera movements freeing the human eye from being the central point of the universe.” (Steina)

Recorded at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, 1994/1995

Artist statement and documentation (artist’s website archive with restored videos)

WEBM (42 MB)

Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective (1987)

“In 1985, Ana Mendieta died tragically. During her 36 years of life she produced a tremendous amount of work covering a range of activities that included performance, installation, and sculpture. Her death cut short her prolific career and left the art world and those who knew her void of a feisty, political, and passionate human being.

After Mendieta’s death, her sister and estate executer, Raquel Mendieta Harrington, formed an art advisory committee comprised of Mendieta’s friends to insure that her work would be compiled, catalogued, and exhibited. John Perreault and Petra Barreras del Rio were chosen to curate a retrospective exhibition of important selections representing a full range of work that had never before been presented together. The result was an exhibition held at the New Museum in New York City, November 1987 through January 1988. Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective affirmed the abundance, strength, and significance of Mendieta’s work.”

With essays by Petra Barreras del Rio and John Perrault.

Publisher New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1987
ISBN 0915557614, 9780915557615
85 pages

Exh. review: Michael Brenson (New York Times, 1987).

Exhibition
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (45 MB)

Ilya Kabakov: On Art (2018)

“During the 1960s and 1970s, the Russian conceptual artist Ilya Kabakov was a galvanizing figure in Moscow’s underground art community, ultimately gaining international prominence as the “leader” of a band of artists known as the Moscow Conceptual Circle. Throughout this time, he created texts that he would distribute among his friends, and by the late 1990s his written production amounted to hundreds of pages.

Devoted to themes that range from the “cosmism” of pre-Revolutionary Russian modernism to the philosophical implications of Moscow’s garbage, Kabakov’s handmade booklets were typed out on paper, then stapled or sewn together using rough butcher paper for their covers. Among these writings are faux Socialist Realist verses, theoretical explorations, art historical analyses, accompaniments to installation projects, and transcripts of dialogues between the artist and literary theorists, critics, journalists, and other artists.

This volume offers for the first time in English the most significant texts written by Kabakov. The writings have been expressly selected for this English-language volume.”

Edited and with an Introduction by Matthew Jesse Jackson
Translated by Antonina W. Bouis and Cynthia Martin with Matthew Jesse Jackson
Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2018
ISBN 9780226384566, 022638456X
432 pages

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF