Where might I find old video art and outsider television online?
March 10, 2009 1:50 PM Subscribe
Where on the net is a well-stocked (and, with any luck, well-organized) archive of old video art and "outsider" (public access, for instance) television?
"Video Art 1984" was one of my favorite MeFi posts ever, but it leaves me wondering where else I might find classic video art from the 70s and 80s to watch online. Furthermore, where can I continue this aesthetic hunt and find archives of old, super-local television shows, the more low-budget and public access-y the better? (I call it "outsider television", and it's my favorite genre of the stuff.) I know some of this kind of thing is on YouTube, but it's not exactly easy to dig out of the jumble.
"Video Art 1984" was one of my favorite MeFi posts ever, but it leaves me wondering where else I might find classic video art from the 70s and 80s to watch online. Furthermore, where can I continue this aesthetic hunt and find archives of old, super-local television shows, the more low-budget and public access-y the better? (I call it "outsider television", and it's my favorite genre of the stuff.) I know some of this kind of thing is on YouTube, but it's not exactly easy to dig out of the jumble.
Did you find FPP as well?
EBN's Commercial Entertainment Product is 92. Maybe that's later than you want.
posted by mkb at 3:01 PM on March 10, 2009
EBN's Commercial Entertainment Product is 92. Maybe that's later than you want.
posted by mkb at 3:01 PM on March 10, 2009
Best answer: UbuWeb is your friend. "UbuWeb is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts." Here's the extensive list of film and video.
Most of the stuff here is either not in circulation, really really hard to get, or really really expensive to get. If it's on DVD, it probably won't be on Ubu. This is sort of such that with youtube/dvd/ubu, you can hopefully get a taste of the really accessible/accessible/inaccessible.
(Now -- Ubu caters to avant-garde and outsider art, yes, but I find it to be a very specific strain of art -- namely of the high-art avant-garde. I guess the banner image of Un Chien Andalou sums it up nicely - avant-garde but now historicized 'edgy' art. Look at the list: Broodthaers, Buckingham, Brackhage, Kiki Smith, Robert Smithson, Mike Kelley, Aram Saroyan, etc. I enjoy most of the stuff there tremendously, but just keep in mind that it's just another specific flavor of art that they represent, and other people on AskMe will probably post specific recommendations of more contemporary or less 'high-art' artists -- which IMO may be also very worth looking into.)
posted by suedehead at 3:29 PM on March 10, 2009 [1 favorite]
Most of the stuff here is either not in circulation, really really hard to get, or really really expensive to get. If it's on DVD, it probably won't be on Ubu. This is sort of such that with youtube/dvd/ubu, you can hopefully get a taste of the really accessible/accessible/inaccessible.
(Now -- Ubu caters to avant-garde and outsider art, yes, but I find it to be a very specific strain of art -- namely of the high-art avant-garde. I guess the banner image of Un Chien Andalou sums it up nicely - avant-garde but now historicized 'edgy' art. Look at the list: Broodthaers, Buckingham, Brackhage, Kiki Smith, Robert Smithson, Mike Kelley, Aram Saroyan, etc. I enjoy most of the stuff there tremendously, but just keep in mind that it's just another specific flavor of art that they represent, and other people on AskMe will probably post specific recommendations of more contemporary or less 'high-art' artists -- which IMO may be also very worth looking into.)
posted by suedehead at 3:29 PM on March 10, 2009 [1 favorite]
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You would love the DVD Fucked Up Friends, which consists of trippy grainy public access footage and porn edited together to form music videos for every song off Tobacco's album of the same title. Here are some samples, but please note, some of it is NSFW:
Street Trash
Hawker Boat
Truck Sweat
Hairy Candy
If you search for more song titles off that album, you'll find other clips from the DVD.
Either you hated that, or you loved it. Either way, it's bad news. The Fucked Up Friends DVD is out of print. Tobacco told us himself at a show in Chicago that he got the footage from Beta Carnage and did all the editing himself. So, apparently, Beta Carnage has an amazing treasure trove of this sort of thing. More bad news.
No one knows who Beta Carnage is. I know some huge Black Moth Super Rainbow fans, and we haven't figured it out. It's been thrown out there that it's just Tobacco, but why would he refer to himself as Beta Carnage in conversation with us? Too weird. I've never found any reference to him/her outside of credits for providing the footage for Fucked Up Friends.
Anyway, you need to go on a magical quest, and track down Beta Carnage. THEY WILL HAVE THE ANSWER.
posted by Juliet Banana at 2:46 PM on March 10, 2009