Scratch video was a British

video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting ...

movement that emerged in the early to mid-1980s. It was characterised by the use of found footage,

fast cutting Fast cutting is a film editing technique which refers to several consecutive shots of a brief duration (e.g. 3 seconds or less). It can be used to quickly convey much information, or to imply either energy or chaos. Fast cutting is also frequent ...

and multi-layered rhythms. It is significant in that, as a form of

outsider art Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates e ...

, it challenged many of the establishment assumptions of broadcast television - as well of those of gallery-bound video art. Scratch Video arose in opposition to broadcast television, as (anti-)artists attempted to deal critically and directly with the impact of mass communications. The context these videos emerged in is important, as it tended to critique of the institutions making broadcast videos and the commercialism found on youth TV, especially

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

. This it did in form, content and in its mode of distribution. Much of the work was politically radical, often containing images of a sexual or violent nature, and using images appropriated from mainstream media, including corporate advertising; using strategies inspired by the

Situationist The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...

concept of detournement and

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

’ theories of Electronic Revolution.

Context

The primary audience for scratch video in the early to mid-1980s, was in nightclub performances by industrial music bands such as

The Anti-Group The Anti-Group Communications (often referred to as The Anti-Group or T.A.G.C.) is an open-membership collaborative art and information project formed in 1978 by Adi Newton and Steven Turner. The T.A.G.C. acronym refers to the four different t ...

, Cabaret Voltaire,

Nocturnal Emissions Nocturnal Emissions is Nigel Ayers's sound art project that has released numerous records and CDs in music styles ranging from electro-acoustic, musique concrète, hybridised beats, sound collage, post-industrial music, ambient and noise musi ...

, Psychic TV, SPK,

Test Dept Test Dept, sometimes credited as Test Department is a British industrial music group from London, England, that was one of the most important and influential early industrial music acts. Their approach was marked by the use of "found" material ...

, and

Autopsia Autopsia is a European art project dealing with music and visual production. Autopsia gathers authors of different professions in the realization of multimedia projects. Its art practice began in London in the late 1970s and continued during ...

. Some of those involved described their work as a form of

cultural terrorism Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...

or as a form of

anti-art Anti-art is a loosely used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Somewhat paradoxically, anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage poi ...

. In the mid-1980s typical London venues would be screenings at artist-run spaces such as the Ambulance Station, in independent cinemas such as the Brixton

Ritzy Cinema The Ritzy is a cinema in Brixton, London, England. It is a Grade II listed building. It is managed by Picturehouse Cinemas, who were bought by Cineworld in 2012. The cinema opened on 11 March 1911 as "the Electric Pavilion". It was built by E ...

, or the Fridge nightclub, which boasted an array of dozens of recycled colour televisions. There was also significant distribution on VHS tape, following similar networks to

cassette culture The cassette culture (also known as the tape/cassette scene or cassette underground) refers to the practices associated with amateur production and distribution of music and sound art on compact cassette that emerged in the mid-1970s. The cassett ...

. After Andy Lipman’s

City Limits City limits or city boundaries refer to the defined boundary or border of a city. The area within the city limit can be called the city proper. Town limit/boundary and village limit/boundary apply to towns and villages. Similarly, corporate limi ...

feature contextualised the art values of this practice, material began to be featured in small screenings in official art galleries such as the ICA and

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

. Television stations, like

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

began late night screenings of art videos, including scratch video. However, because much of the material was constructed using domestic VHS equipment, it was deemed both technically and legally unsuitable for broadcast (for fear of breaching copyright law). Being highly politicised, some of the material also broke with the broadcaster’s criteria of balance.

Artists

Emergency Broadcast Network Emergency Broadcast Network is a multimedia performance group formed in 1991 that took its name from the Emergency Broadcast System. The founders were Rhode Island School of Design graduates Joshua Pearson, Gardner Post, and Brian Kane (author ...

* George Barber *

Dara Birnbaum Dara Birnbaum (born 1946) is an American video and installation artist. Birnbaum entered the nascent field of video art in the mid-to-late 1970s challenging the gendered biases of the period and television’s ever-growing presence within the Amer ...

Joan Braderman Joan Braderman is an American video artist, director, performer, and writer. Braderman's video works are considered to have created her signature style known as "stand up theory." Via this "performative embodiment," she deconstructs and analyzes ...

* Cabaret Voltaire * Gorilla Tapes *

Sandra Goldbacher Sandra A. Goldbacher (born 1960) is a British film director, TV director, and screenwriter. Early life and education Goldbacher grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb in the London Borough of Barnet, the daughter of an Italian Sephardic Jewish fat ...

* Richard Heslop *

* Psychic TV * Systaime * Tom Fortunato * The Duvet Brothers

History

''Scratch video'' is a rather catch-all category of work which derive from popular dance and music fashions and the cutting of found trash images with it. Its long history begins with the

cubist Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

collages of Picasso and Braque, the 'ready-mades' of

Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

, and passes through

Joseph Cornell Joseph Cornell (December 24, 1903 – December 29, 1972) was an American visual artist and film-maker, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of Assemblage (art), assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde e ...

Bruce Conner Bruce Conner (November 18, 1933 – July 7, 2008) was an American artist who worked with assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography. Biography Bruce Conner was born November 18, 1933 in McPherson, Kansas.His well- ...

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

and William S. Burroughs and Anthony Balch cut-ups. The movement was influenced by the American video artist

.Mick Hartney, Grove Art Online, reproduced on the Museum of Modern Art websit

/ref> Speaking of the movements emergence and how it got its name, Rik Lander (one half of the Duvet Brothers) has stated: Original scratch video works continue to be shown in major exhibitions around the world. Notable events, amongst others, being Gorilla Tapes' participation in the ICA's 2007 exhibition
The Secret Public: The Last Days of the British Underground 1978-1988
' and
SCRATCH!
' a 2008 retrospective exhibition curated by Paul Pieroni at the Seventeen gallery in London.

Context

Artists

History

See also

References

Further reading