Confrontation is the element that defines Acconci’s work, from explorations of the body and self to his performances, videos, and installations to the more recent “transporting and self-erecting architecture.” Throughout his work Acconci has aggressively challenged the status quo: he has violated sexual/cultural roles and has pointed out social/political ambivalence—and in doing so, his notorious activities have stretched the boundaries of what we accept as art.

This video was produced for the Artists TV Network series Conversations.

Laurie Anderson is perhaps best known as a performance artist who works in both the art and commercial worlds. Anderson talks to Steven Poser through a voice manipulator, commenting on how performing abroad has informed her work and her perspective on American culture, especially regarding issues of language and voice in communication.

This video was produced for the Artists TV Network series Conversations.

Julie Ault is an artist, curator, and founding member of the artist collective Group Material, which has organized exhibitions on themes such as the U.S.’s involvement in Central America, AIDS, education, and mass consumerism. Her exhibitions question traditional gallery and museum systems by asking “how is culture made and for whom?”

Interview by Michael Crane.

Between the Frames is a series that offers a glimpse into contemporary history that is already past, a portrait of personalities and opinions shaping what and how art reaches a public forum.

The Dealers: Between the Frames, Chapter 1 and The Galleries: Between the Frames, Chapter 3

Between the Frames is a series that offers a glimpse into contemporary history that is already past, a portrait of personalities and opinions shaping what and how art reaches a public forum.

The Collectors: Between the Frames, Chapter 2

Art collectors offer various explanations of why and what they acquire. With Herman Daled, Robert Rowan, Eric and Sylvie Boissonas, Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, Marcia Weisman, Fernando Vijande, Bob Calle, Acey and Bill Wolgin, Gianni Rampa, Isabel de Pedro, Rafael Tous, and Toshio Ohara. 

Between the Frames is a series that offers a glimpse into contemporary history that is already past, a portrait of personalities and opinions shaping what and how art reaches a public forum.

Chapter 3: The Galleries

Included in this video are Mary Boone, Michel Durand-Dessert, Helene Winer, Lucio Amelio, Richard Kuhlenschmidt, Holly Solomon, Joan de Muga, Ronald Feldman, Ileana Sonnabend, Mario Diacono, Rosamund Felsen, Al Nodal, Joy Silverman, Marisa Diez, Leo Castelli, Daniel Templon, and Ivan Karp.

Between the Frames is a series that offers a glimpse into contemporary history that is already past, a portrait of personalities and opinions shaping what and how art reaches a public forum.

The Museum: Between the Frames, Chapter 4

Between the Frames is a series that offers a glimpse into contemporary history that is already past, a portrait of personalities and opinions shaping what and how art reaches a public forum.

Between the Frames is a series that offers a glimpse into contemporary history that is already past, a portrait of personalities and opinions shaping what and how art reaches a public forum.

The Critics: Between the Frames, Chapter 6

Between the Frames is a series that offers a glimpse into contemporary history that is already past, a portrait of personalities and opinions shaping what and how art reaches a public forum.

The Media: Between the Frames, Chapter 7

Between the Frames is a series that offers a glimpse into contemporary history that is already past, a portrait of personalities and opinions shaping what and how art reaches a public forum.

Epilogue: Between the Frames, Chapter 8

Horace Bristol discusses his long career in photography, which began with shooting for Life and Fortune magazines in the 1930s. His photojournalism took him to the Dutch East Indies and post-war Japan. His documents of Depression-era workers famously inspired John Steinbeck to write the classic The Grapes of Wrath.  “I felt I was not an artist but a worker, so as a photojournalist, I had a job to do,” Bristol says.

Produced by the Fellows of Contemporary Art on artists exhibiting in a Pasadena Armory exhibition.

Benjamin Buchloh is an influential art critic and historian; he has written extensively on contemporary art for journals and exhibition catalogs, as well as his essay collection Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry (2002). This interview with Buchloh is one of several collected by Antonio Muntadas for his series Between the Frames. In this video Buchloh discusses the relationship between people and institutions.

Photographer, theorist, and lecturer Victor Burgin lives and works in London. A Professor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and former Professor Emeritus of the History of Consciousness at University of California-Santa Cruz, Burgin’s work explores the semiotics of meaning in visual art. His books include The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Postmodernity (1986), In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture (1996) and, as editor, Thinking Photography (1986), Between (1986) and Formations of Fantasy (1986).

John Cage’s work has had an immeasurable influence on 20th Century music and art, and his formal and technological innovations were tied to his desire to push the boundaries of the art world. In 1951 he initiated the first recording on magnetic tape, and in 1952 he staged a theatrical event that is considered the first Happening. His invention of the prepared piano and his work with percussion instruments led him to imagine and explore many unique and fascinating ways of structuring the temporal dimension of music.

John Cage’s compositions and performances have had a profound influence on generations of musicians and artists. In this tape, he initiates For the Third Time as author Richard Kostelanetz interviews him. “I’ve left the punctuation out, but I’ve distributed it by chance operations on the page, like an explosion,” Cage says. “You can replace the punctuation where you wish.”

Robert Colescott paints expressive parodies of Western masterpieces. His work—which has transformed Leutze’s George Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851) into George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware (1975), Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters (1885) into Eat Dem Taters, (1975), and Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) as Les Demoiselles d’Alabama (1985)—deals with stereotypes and the role of blacks in American culture.

Interview by Jim Johnson.

Jonas Dos Santos is a performance and installation artist from Brazil who came to the U.S. in 1968. His early work consisted of sculptural pieces in atypical spaces—caves and parks. His work remains informed by Brazilian iconography and rituals such as Carnival while also integrating responses to American culture’s tendency toward waste. His work, in particular his performance art, comes out of improvisation and intuition. This video incorporates still images of Dos Santos’s sculptures and footage of his performances.

Interview by Toni Rosato.

Painter/mixed media artist David Dunlap creates installations and performances that draw from the notebooks he has kept since the mid-’70s—giving three-dimensional, public form to his intimate thoughts and diaries. He lives and works in Iowa City, where he is a professor of art at the University of Iowa.

Cherokee-American artist Jimmie Durham has worked in performance since the mid-’60s. In the ‘70s, he immersed himself in activism, working for Native American rights as part of the American Indian Movement. In the ‘80s, his focus returned to producing art in multiple forms—performance, poetry, and mixed-media visual works—that consider Native American identity and critique American domestic colonialism. He has also published numerous critical essays.

Michel Foucault was one of the most influential philosophers and cultural historians of the 20th Century, reconceiving power and identities as historically specific social relations and discourses. His studies challenged the works of Marx and Freud, offering new understandings of institutional practices and their effects on the human body and psyche in his studies of prisons, mental illness, medicine, and sexuality.

In collaboration with fellow camera operator Alan Gerberg, Freed visits George Segal at his North Brunswick, N.J studio in October 1972. While preparing a model Segal discusses Hebrew mystic spirituality in relation to abstract painting and defends his position as a long term figurative artist. He suggests that his work is an ongoing search for spirituality and while describing his influences, Segal muses on the use of form in art to propose that a deep, intimate feeling should preside over aesthetic judgements in the creation of art works.

Painter and multi-media artist Jack Goldstein lived and worked in New York City. His airbrushed paintings of lightning and night skies are shown here accompanied by synthetic music, which the artist also composed. Goldstein committed suicide in 2003.

Interviewed by Jim Johnson.

Guerilla Girls are artist activists who have dedicated themselves to informing the public of the gender and racial inequalities that persists in the art world. Dressed in gorilla masks, they discuss their postering activities and their collaborative projects.

Interview by Lucy Lippard.

Elizabeth Hess addresses issues of censorship, AIDS, war, feminism, and politics in general. She has written extensively on women’s issues, contributes to The Village Voice, and is co-author of Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex (1986). Interview by Lucy Lippard.