A Genealogy of Video- Paul Ryan

In this article Paul Ryan explains how he viewed one genealogy of video. He explains that this account is not the genealogy of video but a genealogy of video. He breaks up his topic (is video moving towards social change or art) into five sections: technological, theoretical, political, institutional, and cultural.

Marshall Mcluhan’s work is mentioned often in this section. He believed that the technologies of communication, not economics, are the keys to social change. This idea also functioned in the sense that it would incorporate minorities frequently disregarded such as teenagers, elderly, and ethnic minorities. McLuhan felt that artists were “the antennae of the race” meaning they were the ones capable of utilizing new technologies and deciding how they would be integrated into society.

In 1970 Nelson Rockefeller, governor of New York at the time, increased the arts budget from 2 million to 20 million. Knowing that many of the wealthy operated within the art world, Rockefeller donated to several arts-related places to insure popularity among the class and improve chances for re-election. The amount of money was so much in comparison that a handful of video groups got nice chunks of funding to continue pursuing the new medium of video. Many of these groups felt that video was directly connected to social change and thus, the new money would aid in this goal.

The groups Videofreex, Raindance, People’s Video Theatre and Global Village were the main groups to compete for the ½ million being allocated to the video arts at this time. The trading of information, equipment, and work was done so on a gift basis. With so much money flowing, many people within these groups felt that an open exchange was the best way for going about their work. As time went on though funding for the arts decreased and many of these groups broke apart. The funding had begun to shift to larger institutions or individual artists.

The cultural aspect of this genealogy looks out how video began to integrate with broadcast television. At the time this did not happen so much, television was used to broadcast shows and news and stayed on a commercial basis. Don West, who was the assistant to the president of CBS met David Cort and Parry Teasdale at Woodstock. This meeting ended up allocating the two artists to document the experience at Woodstock and to take their product back to CBS. CBS was not enthralled when they saw the footage, did not want anything to do with it, and eventually fired West. This example shows the differences in overall goals between the artist and the media- social change and art vs. commercialism.

This paper was written in 1985 and is an important note to make. Ryan concludes by saying that with the evolution of the computer it will shift previous interest in video to the computer, as it exists now as the forefront of technology.

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