Steina Vasulka (born Steinunn Briem Bjarnadottir in 1940)
Soros Center for Contemporary Arts Budapest and Woody Vasulka (born Bohuslav Vašulka on 20 January 1937 – 20 December 2019) are early pioneers of
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 ...
, and have been producing work since the early 1960s. The couple met in the early 1960s and moved to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
in 1965, where they began showing video art at the
Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...
and founded
The Kitchen
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary avant-garde performance and experimental art institution located at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was foun ...
in 1971. Steina and Woody both became Guggenheim fellows: Steina in 1976, and Woody in 1979.
Early life and education
Steina Vasulka was born in
Reykjavík
Reykjavík ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói bay. Its latitude is 64°08' N, making it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. With a po ...
,
Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
and trained as a classical musician and violinist and was a member of the
Iceland Symphony Orchestra
Sinfóníuhljómsveit Íslands (Iceland Symphony Orchestra) (ISO) is an Icelandic orchestra based in Reykjavík, Iceland. Its primary concert venue is the Harpa Concert Hall. The Iceland Symphony is an autonomous public institution under the aus ...
. Steina received a scholarship at the
Prague Conservatory
The Prague Conservatory or Prague Conservatoire ( cs, Pražská konzervatoř) is a music school in Prague, Czech Republic, founded in 1808. Currently, Prague Conservatory offers four or six year study courses, which can be compared to the level ...
in 1959.
Woody Vasulka was born in
Brno, now in the
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...
and trained as an engineer before studying television and film production at the
Academy of Performing Arts in Prague
The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague ( cs, Akademie múzických umění v Praze, AMU) is a university in the centre of Prague, Czech Republic, specialising in the study of music, dance, drama, film, television and multi-media. It is the larg ...
. While pursuing his studies in the fifties, Woody Vasulka wrote
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
and produced short films. The pair met in Prague in the early 1960s, where Woody introduced video to Steina.
New York / The Kitchen
For the first few years following their relocation to in New York, the Vasulkas were not involved with the local art scene; Steina continued to practice as a violinist and Woody began making independent documentaries and edited industrial films at Harvey Lloyd Productions.
In 1967, at the request of architects Woods and Ramirez, Woody collaborated on developing films designed for a multi-screen environment to be shown in the American Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal. In 1968, Woody conducted his first experiments with images made with
electronics
The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...
and put aside the cinematographic form in favor of
video
Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syst ...
. Steina was experimenting with video at the same time as Woody, with equipment that the couple had borrowed from Lloyd. Over time, the Vasulkas became more closely involved with the artistic communities around them and the emerging fascination with video and new-media, and grew more dedicated to their developing video art practice until they made it their shared full-time occupation.
On December 31, 1969 and January 1, 1970 Woody Valsulka video recorded
Jimi Hendrix performing with
Band of Gypsys
''Band of Gypsys'' is a live album by Jimi Hendrix and the first without his original group, the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was recorded on January 1, 1970, at the Fillmore East in New York City with Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums, ...
at the
Fillmore East
The Fillmore East was rock promoter Bill Graham's rock venue on Second Avenue near East 6th Street in the (at the time) Lower East Side neighborhood, now called the East Village neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan of New York City. I ...
in NYC. The recordings are included on a DVD included in a CD release of the concerts. (Source: Live at the Fillmore DVD released 1999, released again 2012)
In 1971, the Vasulkas founded
The Kitchen
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary avant-garde performance and experimental art institution located at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was foun ...
, a multi-use media theater located in the kitchen of the
Mercer Arts Center
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary avant-garde performance and experimental art institution located at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was foun ...
in
Grand Central Hotel
The Grand Central Hotel, later renamed the Broadway Central Hotel, was a hotel at 673 Broadway, New York City, that was famous as the site of the murder of financier James Fisk in 1872 by Edward S. Stokes.
The hotel collapsed on August 3, 19 ...
,
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
, in the interest of cultivating new-media art in an inclusive, comprehensive, and un-administrative context. Under the direction of
Dimitri Devyatkin
Dimitri Devyatkin (born July 31, 1949) is an American director, producer, screenwriter, video artist, and journalist. Devyatkin uses elements of humor, art and new technology in his work. He is known as one of the first video makers to combine a ...
, and with help from Andy Mannik, Sia and Michael Tschudin,
Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham (born September 19, 1952) is an American composer, guitarist, trumpet player, multi-instrumentalist (flutes in C, alto and bass, keyboard), primarily active in avant-garde and minimalism, minimalist music. He is best known for his "g ...
, and
Shridhar Bapat
Shridhar Bapat (born 1948) was an Indian video artist and key figure in the New York City's downtown video art scene in the 1970s. Bapat's artworks were screened at the MoMA PS1, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Kitchen, and the Mudd Club. He a ...
, the space received a grant from the
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) is an arts council serving the U.S. state of New York. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell (1905–1996 ...
and expanded its programming, which was foregrounded by video and electronic media performance and would come to include
new music programming under the direction of Rhys Chatham. The Kitchen would relocate following the collapse of the Mercer Arts Centre, but maintain its mission.
The Kitchen was valuable space for a number of music, performance, and media artists in New York who at the time did not feel welcome in commercial galleries or the mainstream art-world. The Vasulkas' programming for The Kitchen provided the space to a number video artists who would become prominent, including
Joan Jonas
Joan Jonas (born July 13, 1936) is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, and one of the most important artists to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[Nancy Holt
Nancy Holt (April 5, 1938 – February 8, 2014) was an American artist most known for her public sculpture, installation art, concrete poetry, and land art. Throughout her career, Holt also produced works in other media, including film and pho ...]
,
Vito Acconci
Vito Acconci (, ; January 24, 1940 – April 27, 2017) was an influential American performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His foundational p ...
,
Mary Lucier,
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 ...
,
Bill Viola
Bill Viola ( , ; born 1951) is an American contemporary video artist whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in new media. His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, d ...
, and
Gary Hill
Gary Hill (born April 4, 1951) is an American artist who lives and works in Seattle, Washington. Often viewed as one of the foundational artists in video art, based on the single-channel work and video- and sound-based installations of the 1970s ...
.
Work
The work that the Vasulkas presented at The Kitchen's original Greenwich Village location, which amounted to a handful of performances and showings each month, included a range of live documentary and experimental videos, live video performances, live
video processing In electronics engineering, video processing is a particular case of signal processing, in particular image processing, which often employs video filters and where the input and output signals are video files or video streams. Video processing ...
, media installations, and “experiments in perception.”
The Vasulkas' work at this time was colored by the artists' interest in negotiating terms like "space" in the context of video and what Yvonne Spielman calls video's "image object." The Vasulkas' wide exploration of video in this
ontological
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exi ...
regard led to apparent contrast, such as that between the
documentary-style ''Participation'' series involving
footage
In filmmaking and video production, footage is raw, unedited material as originally filmed by a movie camera or recorded by a ( often special) video camera, which typically must be edited to create a motion picture, video clip, television show or ...
of real-life performances (occurring in the space in front of and around the video camera), and works like ''Caligrams'', in which the Vasulkas use hardware devices such as scan processors, video sequencers, and multikeyers to "play" or perform with video like a musical instrument, and in a different kind of space.
In 1974, The Vasulkas moved to
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...
to pursue a faculty position at the
State University of New York's Department of Media Studies, though they would maintain involvement with The Kitchen and its programming. Though Steina and Woody had worked outside their duo before, their practices diverged to a greater extent following this relocation. Woody's practice became more focused on digital image manipulation and the employment of tools like the
Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer
The Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer is an analog raster manipulation device for image processing and real-time animation. The Rutt/Etra was co-invented by Steve Rutt
Steven Alexander Rutt (February 26, 1945 – May 20, 2011) was an American engineer ...
(Bill Etra, a co-creator of this device, showed frequently at the Kitchen during the Vasulkas' tenure). Steina's practice centered around environmental, mechanical, and physical relationships between body, video, and camera, beginning with a late-1970s series of moving-camera environments titled ''All Vision'' and ''Machine Vision'' which were shown, in part, at The Kitchen.
The Vasulkas have collaborated with
Harald Bode
Harald Bode (October 19, 1909 – January 15, 1987) was a German engineer and pioneer in the development of electronic musical instruments.
Biography
Harald Bode was born in 1909 in Hamburg, Germany. At the age of 18 he lost his parents an ...
(posthumously).
The Vasulka Chamber
In 2014, The National Gallery of Iceland opened the Vasulka Chamber, a collaboration between the museum and the artist couple. They donated a substantial amount of their digital archive to the museum and it is the Chamber's aim to preserve the legacy and collection of the artists.
The Vasulka Archive
In 2016 the Vašulka Kitchen Brno (VKB) was established in
Brno in The Czech Republic, for research, artistic experiment and informal education in the field of new media art. It consists of the archive of Woody and Steina Vašulkas’ work and a permanent exhibition of their selected works.
Gallery representation
The Vasulkas are represented by commercial art gallery BERG Contemporary.
Selected works
Complete and existing videotapes by Steina and Woody Vasulka include:
1969–71
* Participation, 60 min., b/w
1970
*Adagio, 10 min., color
* Calligrams, 12 min., b/w
* Decay #1, 7 min., color
* Decay #2, 7 min., b/w
* Don Cherry, 12 min., b/w (in collaboration with Elaine Milosh)
* Evolution, 16 min
* Interface, 3:30 min., b/w
* Jackie Curtis' First Television Special, 45 min., b/w
* Sexmachine, 6 min., b/w
* Sketches, 27 min., b/w
* Tissues, 6min., b/w
1970-78
* Violin Power, video, 10:04 min., b/w, sound (by Steina Vasulka)
1971
* Black Sunrise, 21 min., color
* Contrapoint, 3 min., b/w
* Discs, 6 min., b/w
* Elements, 9 min., color
* Keysnow, 12 min., color
* Shapes, 13 min., b/w
* Swan Lake, 7 min., b/w
1972
* Distant Activities, 6 min., color
* Soundprints, endless loops, color
* Spaces 1, 15 min., b/w
* Spaces 2, 15 min., b/w
1973
* Golden Voyage, 28 min., color
* Home, 16 min., color
* Vocabulary, 5 min., color
1974
* 1-2-3-4, 8 min., color
* Heraldic View, 5 min., color
*
Noisefields, 13 min., color
* Solo For 3, 5 min., color
* Soundgated Images, 10 min., color
* Soundsize, 5 min., color
* Telc, 5 min., color
1979
* Six Programs for Television: Matrix, Vocabulary, Transformations, Object, Steina, Digital Images, 174 min., total (29 min. each), color
1981
* In Search of the Castle, 12 min., color
* Progeny, 19 min., color (in collaboration with Bradford Smith)
1983
* The West, color
1984
* Pariah, color
1989
* In the Land of the Elevator Girls, color
References
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External links
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Vasulkas' web-presenceSteina and Woody Vasulkain th
Video Data BankSteina and Woody Vasulka, Mediateca Media Art Space*
ttp://www.imaionline-katalog.de/servlet/collectioning?col=19223&r=1000 Steina and Woody Vasulka portfolio at ImaiTools Thomas Dreher: History of Computer ArtChap. IV.1.2 Video Synthesizer
www.listasafn.is on ''UbuWeb''
The Kitchen: Steina and Woody Vasulka
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vasulka, Steina And Woody
Academy of Performing Arts in Prague alumni
Performance art in New York City
American video artists
American people of Czech descent
American people of Icelandic descent
20th-century women artists
Digital artists
Artists from New Mexico