Parry Teasdale is an American video artist and a founding member of the early video collective

Videofreex The Videofreex were a pioneering video collective who used the Sony Portapak for countercultural video projects from 1969 to 1978. They were founded in 1969 by David Cort, Mary Curtis Ratcliff and Parry Teasdale, after Cort and Teasdale met each oth ...

. He was also involved with Lanesville TV, one of the first unlicensed TV stations, throughout the 1970s.

Role in founding Videofreex

Teasdale attended the Woodstock music festival during the summer of 1969 where he met and became friends with future Videofreex co-founder David Cort. Both having brought video equipment, the pair collaborated in filming the festival, placing emphasis on the crowds rather than the musical performers in their footage. After an unsuccessful attempt to sell the Woodstock tapes to the CBS news program ''

60 Minutes ''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique styl ...

'', Teasdale moved to Manhattan to found

along with Cort and Cort's then-girlfriend Curtis Ratcliff (Boyle 1997, p. 15). CBS executive Don West quickly became interested in the newly formed group's work, particularly their portrayals of youth and

1960s counterculture The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world in the 1960s and has been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights mo ...

. He funded the shooting of the pilot of a new program that might replace ''

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour ''The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour'' was an American comedy and variety show television series hosted by the Smothers Brothers and initially airing on CBS from 1967 to 1969. The series was a major success, especially considering it was sched ...

'', which had recently been cancelled. The network declined to pick up the finished project, titled Subject to Change, deeming it too radical for network television. Due to the high cost of rent in SoHo, several members of Videofreex including Teasdale decided to leave the city but remain part of the collective.Teasdale, Parry. "Parry Teasdale. Interviewed by Chris Hill, with Deedee Halleck." Interview by Chris Hill. Vasulka.org. Steina & Woody Vasulka, May 1995. Web. 28 Apr. 2015. .

Early work in unlicensed television

Having received a grant of $40,000 from the

Rochester Museum and Science Center The Rochester Museum & Science Center (RMSC) is a museum in Rochester, New York, dedicated to community education in science, technology and local history. The museum also operates the Strasenburgh Planetarium, located next to the museum, and the ...

, several Videofreex moved to a large house in Lanesville, a rural village located in the southern part of Hunter, New York in the

Catskill Mountains The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas c ...

. Here, they began to produce live " narrowcasts" (Boyle 1997, p. 88) for the local community every Saturday night, and the Lanesville TV project became the first unauthorized television program. After the collective dissolved in 1978, Teasdale worked as a

U.S. Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...

consultant in its investigation of the legality of

low power television Low-power broadcasting is broadcasting by a broadcast station at a low transmitter power output to a smaller service area than "full power" stations within the same region. It is often distinguished from "micropower broadcasting" (more commonly " ...

Involvement with TVTV

Teasdale collaborated with San Francisco-based video collective TVTV. He contributed to the editing of the independent documentary ''The World's Largest TV Studio,'' (Boyle 1997, p. 87), which provided coverage of the

1972 Democratic National Convention The 1972 Democratic National Convention was the presidential nominating convention of the Democratic Party for the 1972 presidential election. It was held at Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami Beach, Florida, also the host city of the Rep ...

in Miami Beach, Florida. This work became the first broadcast television program to be shot with portable equipment. Teasdale did not participate in the production of its Republican counterpart, ''Four More Years'', instead turning his attention to independent television in his pursuit of liveness and the unconventional (Boyle 1997, p. 44).

After Videofreex

In the 1980s, Teasdale went into the publishing industry and has held positions as editor of ''The

Woodstock Times ''Woodstock Times'' is a small weekly newspaper in Woodstock, New York that is circulated every Thursday. It was established in 1972 by its current owner Geddy Sveikauskas of Ulster Publishing Ulster Publishing is a newspaper publisher in Kingsto ...

'' and ''The Independent''. He now works as editor and publisher of ''The Columbia Paper'', an independent newspaper based in

Ghent, New York Ghent is a town in Columbia County, New York, United States, with a ZIP code of 12075. The population was 5,303 at the 2020 census, down from the 2010 census. Ghent is centrally located in the county and is northeast of the city of Hudson. His ...

. He also wrote (1999), an insider's account of the collective, and led the Videofreex in the collaboration (1973), a technical guide to video equipment.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Teasdale, Parry American video artists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people