Original subtitles

- [Computer] One, two, three, four, five,

I caught a hair alive.

Downloaded from YTS.MX

Sister Suzie sells seashells down by the seashore.

She sells sea shells down by the sea shore.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

Sister Suzie sells sea shells down by the sea shore.

- [Woman] Hello, darling.

- Hello, honey.

- How are you?

- I'm all right, how are you?

- Can't you look at me when you talk to me?

- I'm looking at you.

- But it doesn't look like that in the camera.

- I see. - It doesn't look like

you're look at all. - Oh, there's no syntax.

Oh, I see.

- [Man] They're crossing, they're crossing.

- But it looks like an eye,

from that point, there is looking at you.

- Oh, that's very nice, that's cute.

Maybe I should kind of look at you.

(giggling)

And talk to you.

- Hi, is that you?

- Yes.

- Hi, how are you?

- Oh, thank you,

I'm fine. - Why don't you kiss my hand?

(kissing)

It's a media couple, huh?

God, they're disintegrated into.

Yeah, we use it.

(soft, ambient music)

- [Man] Vasulkas, for me, are two

of the most important artists of the 20th Century.

And I consider that to be a new Renaissance, because both

art and science, in the beginning of the 20th Century,

have redefined reality and how we represent it.

- No, you did so a while ago.

- [Man] Green A, L, U.

(dissonant music)

- I really see Steina's and Woody's work as important,

because it was, is many ways, ahead of its time.

Not only were pioneers of video art,

exploring its early manifestations,

but I think they already saw its relevance

to what this work could be, and the potential that it had,

and how it would relate to a future mediascape

that we are inhabiting right now.

- I didn't know this was gonna be a masterpiece.

(cheering)

Shit, how could we do this, Woody?

- [Woody] I don't know.

(static buzzing)

(birds softly chirping)

(soft, ambient music)

(vegetation rustling)

I've never taken life seriously.

I never insisted on living.

I was given that, and I never had a chance to waste it.

(blow dryer humming)

- [Steina] I've always felt

that I saw the world differently.

And when I was younger, I would say,

why don't they see the world like I do?

What's wrong with them?

But now, it's just something that's wrong with me.

And that's good that I have my place on the planet.

(speaking in a foreign language)

- I really don't know what to do

in the morning, except what I do here.

Steina, Steina.

Ah, I see my pee pee.

Because when you are younger, and suddenly,

you wake up in the morning, and just work.

And now, here, you have to make coffee,

and wait for something else.

(keyboard clicking)

The house is just kind of alone.

But now, I'm just looking out of the window.

What is the day, Steina?

- Still a Wednesday.

(chuckling)

(electricity humming)

- There are here the most important hard drives,

and they are all active, and they all meet in this computer.

Maybe I would like to make my legacy, leave it behind.

And see, unfortunately, I have this woman with me, Steina.

She always really put me straight, you know?

- Well, let me just see what I have.

Yes.

No, I need one of these guys.

- Which one?

Oh, the big one.

- Yeah.

This is what we have to do, you know, is all the tapes.

They are well over 500.

They are going to be digitized.

This is half-inch, and we have them

half done and half not done.

See, this is how early video looked like.

It came on a reel like that, the tape like this, you know?

- Terry worked me all off a thing, because this is the only

book that contains everything, as far as hard drives.

That means, everything that we have recorded

and put into the hard drive format.

That's all the legacy we are leaving behind us.

- Well, one thing is for sure, that humankind

is much more interested in archived past art

than whatever is happening now.

(device clicking)

(gadget whirring)

(soft, ambient music)

(distortion buzzing)

(speaking in a foreign language)

- This is a great opportunity for me to talk to you

tonight about the problem we all are involved,

and we all would like to solve for the future.

Let me see what we have here.

Hold on, there's pictures here.

- [Steina] This is what you did with Alfons.

- [Woody] Oh, yes, that's very interesting.

- [Steina] This is a unique picture of Woody, the filmmaker.

(soft, ambient music)

- This.

AMU, DAMU, FAMU, and HAMU.

I spent the last, maybe, three years

of my film education right here.

(bluesy music)

Prominent school now.

Historically speaking, we would write

and produce 35 millimeter films there.

(upbeat orchestral music)

But of course, since Lenin said that

the film was the most important medium

for the political propaganda of the so-called

communist future, it was lavishly sponsored.

(train horn blaring)

- [Steina] I came here in the fall, September 18 of '59,

to Czechoslovakia to study violin.

And I didn't know much about playing violin.

I was not a good student, really.

And it was such a big deal.

My parents were good bourgeois people,

and they got so scarred that they were gonna send

the favorite daughter out to Prague.

(soft, jazzy music)

- [Woody] I just finished school, and the film

I ended with was a documentary type,

because I couldn't really face the actors.

And so, I just said, no, I'm not cut to do this.

I'm not gonna pursue this, and I have nothing to say

to film, because film was glorious at that time.

- There was a common dormitory, so I met a lot

of the kids that were going to the film school.

I met Woody in the dormitory.

(soft, ambient music)

It looked a little bit like that place

- With that big narrow piece.

- This one.

- Yeah.

- Okay, we're in the right place.

- We stood here.

And Kendra, she introduced us to each other.

And you gave me the hand, like that.

You remember that?

You gave me the hand.

- Yeah, just like that. - And you said,

(speaking in a foreign language)

He said, marry me, get me out of here.

And I said, yes.

And were the first words were said to each other.

(sighing)

- That was after I tried to fix you up.

- [Steina] No, you were.

It was very nonchalant, it was, sure, I'll marry you, sure.

(soft piano music)

- So, this was the place.

We came there.

It's very small place, you know?

- It was just a place where they did marriages.

And it was very uninformal.

They asked us if you want the music, and we said, yes.

And I said, can you play the Mendelssohn Wedding March?

What's that, they said.

Can you play Wagner Wedding March?

They said, we don't know that.

Then they played Czech music, and it was better.

(bell ringing)

(soft piano music)

- Would you ring a bell?

- I will ring a bell.

(speaking in a foreign language)

(soft, ambient music)

- As a child, I used to play here.

This was my playground.

Ah.

(laughing)

(speaking in a foreign language)

My father's machinery.

My father was a communist.

And my father want me to be in the factory,

because he was in the factory.

Unfortunately, that factory was making weapons.

I was there, but I didn't work.

And then, I said to myself, no, of course,

I don't want to go to a factory.

I just want to be free man.

He had, downstairs in the bottom of a house, a workshop,

which I visited since age of three and half, or whatever.

And he never mind if I broke something like a drill bit.

So, he look at me, and always just learning, as I did.

(soft, ambient music)

(speaking in a foreign language)

This was my sister.

And she was always older, and she had her own friends, see?

She didn't care for me.

(soft piano music)

- Very difficult to get through this Iron Curtain.

We had to fill out an application.

And one of the questions was, where do you intend to live?

We said, Iceland.

Because we were not stupid.

We were not gonna say U.S.A.

And that's what took them 18 months to think about

from the time we submitted application to get married.

So, it was clear, even before we put it into application,

we will never live in Iceland.

It didn't serve any purpose, but they just decided

that Woody was a traitor, since he has left,

and took away his citizenship.

(train hatch rattling)

(speaking in a foreign language)

And I left two days later, two days after the wedding.

(speaking in a foreign language)

I left for Iceland.

(jet engine roaring)

(soft, ambient music)

(water splashing)

(water splashing)

And there, I immediately joined the symphony orchestra.

They have a warm seat for me.

And so, I managed to play in the symphony orchestra

from the beginning in January of '64

until the end of December '64.

Then I played an awful lot of chamber music,

because it's good players, and we were all the same age.

And I left for the United States then beginning of '65.

And Woody had to still get his exam.

(jet engine humming)

(landing gear squealing)

And it was really homelandish for me.

We came here in '65, and so, we were here five years

before we sort of landed into video.

And in the fall, we got a residency at International House.

- What's made you tick, what's made you be here?

What's made you find a reason to occupy your time?

This is what we want.

- Then, we met Alfons Schilling,

and he said, you have to live in a loft.

There are loft all over this new thing that they call SoHo.

It was well chain lofted and a sweatshop before,

and it was large and good, and cost 125.

And they will say, aren't you crazy?

Nobody pays over $100 for a loft.

They took you for one.

(soft, ambient music)

That was on 14th Street and Union Square.

And I think we must have moved there

either '67 or '68, somewhere in there.

And it became a wild place.

(people screaming)

(people cheering)

(upbeat rock music)

And at that time, the video was starting to come up.

Andy Warhol had a so-called Rover.

That was the portable camera that he bought in '68.

Woody was working that summer of '69

with these kind of weird people

who were mostly photographers or filmmakers.

And he start to discover video.

It had to do with that they were

going to make a industrial exhibition

with something called General Can Company.

Woody suggest that they will do it in video,

because they were doing those multiple screens.

And he said, you can just put one image

on as many monitors as you can.

- We are getting into another project,

which is also dealing with TV.

Industrial shows isn't our bag, exactly.

We want to get more socially connected,

to get more or less into other fields.

And that's gonna dictate for us the future.

- And that summer, there was an exhibition

in Howard Weiss Gallery called TV as a Creative Medium.

And that's where we met all of them,

Nam June and Eric Siegel.

- Why do you have the camera pointed in the lights

Pan it down.

- [Woody] Yeah, we are speechless.

We are tired.

- I'm very tired. - We are very tired.

- He walks in there, and we found Nam June

on the floor, fixing the TV bra.

And I realize, in retrospect,

that that had a great influence.

- My very first one was where I put sound waves.

'Cause I had sound waves, anyway, in general.

- Yeah.

- To create the video pictures, you know?

- Just directly into video input?

- Yeah. - Yeah.

That's the first thing we did, too.

- Yeah, that's it.

- But many years later.

- Yeah, and they said, oh, we get just lines,

and the engineer said nothing.

Then I think, well, let's do.

- [Steina] Yeah.

- And how can you say that this is just stupid clips?

Please.

You don't like it.

That's all.

But do we know him?

- [Steina] Yes.

- Yes?

- [Steina] We used to know him.

- Who?

- [Steina] We used to know him.

- Please, for the public, so we can,

- [Steina] Ah yeah, his name is Nam June Paik.

- This is Nam June Paik?

Is he dead already?

- [Steina] Yeah.

- Shit, so we can say about him anything you want.

- [Steina] But his theory was we should hang on it,

and then sell it for a lot of money.

- Steina,

it's such a naive piece. - It was autographed.

Huh?

- It's such a naive piece.

- [Steina] Yeah, yeah.

- And look, he puts that, and switch as that.

(horn bellowing) (bell ringing)

Started to shoot everything, you know, like jazz

(modern jazz music)

- No, no, no, one limousine.

- [Steina] We would do documentaries,

and lectures, and all kind of other stuff.

(singing in a foreign language)

Sometimes even get money and sums of worth.

- [Woman] Are you any more satisfied now?

- Yeah, we're more satisfied now, sexually.

- [Steina] But we knew that for the one

where there was an audience, for the other, there wasn't.

It was clear like that.

(classical violin music)

I was still playing, and he comes from Fillmore East,

where he had taped Jethro Tull, which was a wild group.

- Ah-one, two, three.

(rock music)

(audience cheering and applauding)

- [Steina] We liked it very much, and there was

a steady stream of people who wanted to see it.

- [Woody] We're gonna look at this.

Nice loft, and the musicians from upstairs started

to migrate down, and got stoned, it was all fantastic.

Hey man.

- [Man] How are you?

- [Woody] Bloody Christ, Miles Davis,

we had collected very interesting features.

- [Steina] And they would always bring friends,

and then people would call us and say,

can we see what you shot the other night?

And we didn't have any home anymore.

We couldn't even go to bed,

because the house was full of people.

("(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by The Rolling Stones)

They were definitely fun.

It was just fabulous to socialize with what was going on.

And it was so much partying and drinking and carrying on.

And we just had a time of it, and it got better ever year.

'65 was the most kind of sober, '66 was getting there.

And by '68, it was totally full-fledged.

- I'd like to dedicate this one

to the city dragging scene that's going on.

All the soldiers that are fighting

in Chicago and Milwaukee and New York.

Oh yes, and all the soldiers fighting in Vietnam.

(guitar chord blaring)

I do a thing called Machine Gun.

♪ Hey, I think I might survive the border ♪

- [Steina] Jimi Hendrix was either on

the last day of '69 or first day of '70.

And at that time was considered,

that was the day when I started video.

- Happy New Year, first of all.

- [Steina] And to be locked into this culture of video.

And it was kind of culture.

We didn't know what to do when it was happening,

but in retrospect, it was very intense.

(static buzzing)

And I assumed that everybody was fascinated by the Zipmal,

which, for us, was the magic, that you could make video

out of audio signal, audio out video signal,

or take an external source and get them

both to move the moving image.

(distortion blaring)

And that it was electronic, it was unique.

And we assumed that everybody was involved in that.

But in retrospect, nobody was except us.

(electronic music)

- [Woody] Did you just move another object?

- [Steina] We had processing amplifiers and sync generator,

and none of our colleagues did that.

And this is actually why everybody concluded

we are not artists, that we were the techies.

(electronic music)

We were mostly the foreigners, we were mostly

among the Czechs, and there was a lot of suspicion.

We never knew who was a spy and who was not.

And we had to sort of figure that, everything, out.

And then came the onslaught, after the Russians

moved in to Czech of artists from Czechoslovakia.

- Some missing picture from the gallery.

(Steina groaning)

- [Woody] Nudity all over the place.

- [Steina] You know, the Czechs are like Icelanders,

they don't care if somebody sees them.

- Steina. - Yeah?

- What was this orgy here?

- [Steina] We have no rights

to show this to anybody. - Wow.

- No, but I don't know, I don't remember.

Is it from Canada?

- [Steina] Yeah.

The Czechs are very loose, exciting case in them.

So, we were used to that.

There was a competition, who had the longest penis,

or there was a revolution, and dancing

together naked, and things like that.

So, weren't totally aware of how

puritanical it was still in America.

Of course, we had to have parties

where everybody took off their clothes.

(soft, ambient music)

Once, I saw a beautiful scene.

- [Alfons] What?

- [Steina] First there was a girl sitting,

I told you about this.

- No. - She was sitting

like that in the window, beautiful girl, just across here.

And then suddenly, she stood up,

and she was as nake as nake could be.

So, I was writing more, and I was

looking up sometimes, spying just a little bit.

And suddenly, here came this guy.

Exactly as nake.

(laughing)

I like that, wow.

And now, I just sat in the window,

and I didn't stop looking.

And what do you think I saw then?

- [Man] I don't know.

- Another naked guy.

(gasping)

- Too much.

- We befriended Alfons.

He had discovered 3D, and Woody had helped him

to build some mice machines to take 3D.

And he was, that time, taking portrait of people.

And he needed subjects.

So, in the transfer state, he found, first, Jackie Curtis.

And he comes to us, and says,

you want to come to a party?

(people cheering)

(mellow rock music)

- Oh, hello.

- Is that a TV camera or a movie camera?

- [Steina] He took us there, and there was

this beautiful party, and Jackie sang her song.

(piano music)

♪ Oh, in old Constantinople, ♪

(people cheering)

♪ Love has got an oval ♪

(people cheering and laughing)

(people applauding)

- [Steina] Salvador Dali was there, and Mama,

Ellen Steward of La Mama.

- And since then, she's been writing plays.

And her play, Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit,

is currently playing. - Bravo.

- [Ellen] At La Mama, at the Playhouse of the Ridiculous.

(applauding)

(soft piano music)

- [Steina] We came here to see Femme Fatale,

which was written by Jackie Curtis.

♪ I remember the night you told me goodbye ♪

- [Steina] She was the main star.

And in it was also Patti Smith.

She was totally new in New York, exactly then.

- Ah, this is a stickup.

- No.

- And we did our first theater production with Jackie.

And there were one of four or five

that she eventually ended up doing.

(chuckling)

- [Man] Jackie was a playwright,

and that was very important.

And we could provide for that, it's important.

- This is both Jackie.

Jackie as a man, and Jackie as a woman.

- That means you, too, sister.

- Oh, Diana, goddess of the moon, tread lightly tonight.

Treat lightly tomorrow night.

Diana, Diana, Diana.

(body thudding)

- [Steina] The transvestites were always always

the most avant garde of all avant gardes.

So, that became kind of my playground.

Woody didn't do much with them at all.

I needed to train on camera.

I needed to become a camera person.

- Canda Lupe.

(gasping)

Lupe Velez.

- That's me, that's me. - Mala Femmina.

Steina is so fabulous.

There is nothing in Western civilization

she knows from, and don't freak her out.

- [Steina] They loved to be in front of the camera.

They loved to be unusual and female in one scene,

and then male in another scene.

♪ Is this my Achilles heel ♪

- They were interviewed all the time,

because they did the films with Warhol,

but they also did the plays here.

Candy and Jackie were a part of not only La Mama,

but also the Factory, Andy Warhol.

I think it was Vain Victory they were doing.

And the show was supposed to start.

And on the list for Vain Victory,

there were many, many famous people.

Andy Warhol, all these people, blah, blah, blah, you know.

And what would happen is, if somebody showed up

to see the show, Jackie, in the middle of the show,

would go into the audience and bring them up,

and said, oh, here's Lou Reed, or here's so-and-so.

And he's coming here.

So, suddenly, he was part of the show.

But, in fact, he never was a part of the show.

It was somebody that you pulled in.

(acoustic guitar music)

- We get sound on this thing.

- Even Andy Warhol came once.

They dragged him up to our loft, we were up on 3rd floor.

But we were neighbors, because we were on

the Union Square, and he was on the Union Square.

- This is Steina.

I hired her to do a table read.

We leave it at that portion.

- And we found out that he spoke

not Czech, but Rusanian, which was very close.

They play it up in the mountains of Slovakia.

So, we were able to talk to him on that language.

And then, I watched where they took him up the elevator.

He was flirting me, and we were flirting with each other.

And I had these stinging eyes.

And I understood why everybody was kind of in love with him,

both the men and the women.

And the men knew he was homosexual, and the women

we sure he was a secret heterosexual.

It was kind of funny, he was very sexy, yeah.

(people clamoring)

Oh, it was very much in the air.

It was impossible to not be involved.

Like, say, the earth's first Earth Day ever

happened right outside our window,

because it was on Union Square.

(people chanting)

So, we had never heard of any Earth Day,

or that the earth needed a day, or any of that.

But of course we went out there to tape it.

That was a part of being in New York.

- The transfer in Nevada. - The last four years,

genocide has been practiced on the Black Panther Party,

because we're a revolutionary party

that's trying to bring to the people the idea

of what's behind all this degenerated housing and no jobs.

- [Steina] We didn't know that

the blacks were social underclass.

We had never encountered it.

We thought that they were just fighting a war.

And also at the transfer state were homosexuals.

We were not involved in the politics.

We came out of communism,

and the Black Panthers, they adored communism.

So, we were not gonna be anywhere close to that.

- And at this hearing today, I enjoyed--

- [Steina] Eldridge Cleaver and that organization,

he was that time in Africa, just took

all the names that they found radical softer,

because he understood the power of the medium,

so we just got a letter like anybody else,

and we didn't take it seriously, either.

But we got an FBI agent to visit us

shortly after we got the letter.

It definitely was there, because we had showed up

on some list of dangerous people.

We figured out, when he was leaving,

that he had been sent by FBI to find out who we were.

(soft music)

- [Announcer] Our first act tonight

is gonna be our four gorgeous Willow girls.

- [Steina] Yeah, we were contacted by,

really, it was the political people, but pornographers,

because that was something that

was strictly forbidden, and it was coming up.

It was sort of leaking out on the environment.

There were people who were dying

to do pornography, and videos seemed to be sold

just for that, so they contacted us, and hired Woody,

I wasn't involved in shooting, to shoot a scene,

said they showing something called Blue Dome.

And Woody came home with three hours

of such boring stuff, or people just showing their genitals.

And sure enough, they never came.

They didn't even want to look at what Woody had shot.

And we didn't get any money.

But out of that came in the Sex Machine tape.

♪ Get up, get on up ♪

♪ Get up, get on up ♪

♪ Stay on the scene, get on up, ♪

♪ Like a sex machine, get on up ♪

- And another tape called Adagio.

(soft orchestral music)

(device clicking) (electricity whirring)

(electronic music)

Now, this tape is called The Evolution.

And this is feedback, and the sound

was, then, generated from the image.

- [Man] It was the first time that I attempted

to make a composition in three parts,

kind of a triptych against slipping,

begging to the narrative structures.

And that particular piece contains

these most important components to me.

It's just sound-image exchange, image, sound,

control and the re-timing.

It's the hauling off adrift.

(electronic music)

(computer rattling)

- Yeah.

(speaking in a foreign language)

(electronic music)

(violin music)

I was freelancing as a violinist in New York

when Woody started bringing home

those toys from a place where he worked.

(classical violin music)

Violin power is kind of our organic system.

You draw a bow on a string, and you get a sound wave.

(dissonant electronic music)

But once you are in the digital realm,

you have to define the frequency,

you have to define the tone, and it is all very restricted.

And the playfulness doesn't come

until you have written your score.

(violin and electronic music)

Ah, the violin.

Media violin, with five strings.

(nose sniffling)

So, five different channels of media information.

(violin and electronic music)

So, one can control speed, another can control assignment

of films, and then assignments of clip inside the film,

and so on and so forth.

(violin and electronic music)

(audience cheering and applauding)

We got so many people visiting us home,

that they have no privacy left.

So, we were already wondering about

if we could find a new place, and there was

no place, there was no video theater.

There were a couple, but they were dedicated

to their kind of work, they were not

open to other artists coming in.

(engines and machines whirring)

(soft, ambient music)

I think I'm going in there.

- Yes, that's where I'm going.

- [Steina] Hi.

- Building a media theater, which we call,

it's an old kitchen in the Mercer Playhouse.

It's called Mercer Media, or The Kitchen.

It's 240 Mercer Street, and we are building

a theater, media theater, where we have already shown

some video tapes and media images.

- Steina and Woody Vasulka created The Kitchen in 1971.

They created it as a place for video, but very shortly,

it became, as they called it, a home for the homeless,

which meant artists across disciplines.

- We would gather a lot of monitors.

And I think we did the first thing like that already

in 1970, at the end of the year.

- Hello.

I'm Tim Griffin, director here now.

Such a pleasure and an honor.

How are you? - I'm Steina.

I was once director.

- I know.

(chuckling)

You are the original.

- Who collected this, did you?

- You know, I have some more archival materials here.

- [Woody] The first show in

Max's Kansas City Steak House upstairs.

If we could ask him, that's how we

get this money, it's from him.

- [Steina] And when we showed in Max's Kansas City,

upstairs, and people would come,

and they would come in gladly, and quite a lot

of them, not any tiny, little audiences.

And tons of marijuana.

And they would all sit on the floor and be so stoned

they couldn't care less what they were seeing.

- [Tim] How did you end up in the location on Mercer Street?

- That was the third party we had.

It was Steina, Woody, and Andy Manek.

And it was just a space to come and just look at it.

So, we came and look at it.

Wow, we want this space.

There was no question after we saw this space.

(soft, ambient music)

- [Woody] And they got some money from

- State council, New York. - State council.

- And plumpeted around this, basically,

where they were prepaid.

So, we didn't really have to care for daily operations.

And that saved, basically, our day-by-day performing.

- [Steina] We always had the idea with

The Kitchen that we will share it.

We wouldn't be able to fill

it out anyhow just by our stuffs.

We never invited anybody to perform here.

We never asked anybody to do anything there.

People came to us.

So, when The Kitchen was open,

they'd the fill the gap, an enormous gap.

And we had different events every day of the week.

(soft, ambient music)

We actually decided that we didn't want to run it.

We never wanted to run it.

And we didn't run it, because everybody was running it,

and they were all volunteers

and hangers on, as you would say.

We just had this fun of meeting everybody

and being in the heart of New York and everything.

- [Man] See, right now, the whole area is roped off.

There are close to 100 firemen

on the scene, dozens of police.

- We had moved out a month before.

The other theaters, they collapsed with everything.

The building collapsed on an empty space

that used to be The Kitchen.

Then, it moved to the West Side.

Mostly, it's very good people

who took it over, and it was good.

And then, eventually, they had to have

a Board of Directors, and it was all good.

(cello music)

- [Tim] The Kitchen survived, partly, because the base of it

really came to be how it was a hub

for artists of all striped, beginning a lot with music,

Reese Chatham going into electronic music, but soon,

involving the likes of Phillip Glass, Laurie Anderson.

- It was a very pioneering moment.

We worked on a lot of other peoples' work.

♪ So you better get ready ♪

♪ Ha ha ha ha ha ♪

♪ Ready to go ♪

People would really help each other.

That's what I love about The Kitchen.

(rock music)

♪ Psycho killer ♪

(singing in a foreign language)

- Talking Heads had their first concert here.

Beastie Boys had one of their

first concerts here, Fab Five Freddy.

Cindy Sherman first showed her film stills

in New York in this location.

Robert Mapplethorpe's first exhibition

anywhere, institutionally, took place at The Kitchen.

The Mapplethorpe show was here, because no one else

would show it, and that's a tradition that, maybe, we keep.

Raina, Steina, Steina, Raina.

- Hi. - Hi, Raina.

(giggling)

- [Tim] Next gen, first gen.

(chuckling)

And that legacy, begun by the Vasulkas, and which has

continued over the decades, is palpable in this space.

- New York needs this kind of place.

And things that are necessary survive.

- [Tim] Steina, do you know

the 50th anniversary is coming up?

- [Steina] What, are we really that old?

- [Tim] If you're interested in, and if you believe in,

electronic music and composition, this is the place.

- And we were out of it, and it's only lasted

a few years, we were still in Buffalo

when everybody had forgotten us.

And we were happy for that,

because we didn't want them to remember us.

It was a different New York than, wasn't it?

- It'd a different New York, yeah.

(soft, ambient music)

- [Woody] Okay, go in.

Right.

Okay, I will stop it down on, that's 5.8.

The time of the beginning, which is our real occasion

from New York to Buffalo, was strange, of course.

But planned coincidence, not by us,

by Jerry O'Grady, the conceptualist.

- [Steina] He was spying on us, and he liked what he saw,

and gave us an offer of coming to Buffalo.

And, of course, we said no.

And then, we said no again, and no several times.

And he was persistent, so eventually, we got to Buffalo.

- Did you detect there is any different policy

in your thinking about a frame?

- [Woody] So, he got us, one by one, on various

search and survey abilities of us,

and he assembled, we would call it, a unique group,

because somehow, we were all in transitory position

from all the media we knew before.

- [Steina] But neither of us has any inclination

for professorship, or interest.

- Steina, I wish you had said that.

- So, we kind of said, okay, we'll be professors.

And we felt that we were just lost.

That might be interesting, all right.

That could an honor, especially if you

expose the camera like that.

This is so cute, you know?

And then go around like that.

You would start from far away,

and you actually would see the whole camera, at this stage.

Buffalo was very good, because it had all kinds of artistry.

It was good, and we liked it there.

And we met everybody, more so even than in New York.

Oh yeah, I make my tapes in Iceland.

I am from there.

I am born there.

- [Woody] You're one of them.

- I'm one of them.

I am born there, I grew up there until I was 17,

and I go there for vacation.

And when I go there for vacation, to see my family,

I also go picture gathering.

Shall I show the pictures I gathered there?

- [Woody] Indeed, indeed.

(device thudding)

Now, I go there with a portable camera.

I went to this spot, and I dropped acid.

So, when I saw this landscape, it was very magical.

And then, I came back a day later with my portable camera,

and I taped it, and the tape didn't show

what I thought I had seen there.

But then, when I worked with it at home,

I felt I brought back some of this halogenic qualities

that I had experienced there, and it has sounds, too.

(distortion blaring)

- Come, we need to hurry up. - One, two, three.

- [Steina] And then, we had this teaching, and we had

quite brilliant students, and quite a few of them.

- It's dark.

It's really not where you see, it's a little bit ill.

Oh, okay.

- [Steina] Especially one, who built a whole device for us,

and is still a very good friend.

And in the summer of 1978, we decided

to build a digital image tool.

Jeffrey took the challenge to design such a tool,

which took 18 months from its inception to where it is now.

Some 20,000 connections were wired by Woody, and the device

expanded from the planned four boards to eight.

And this is the device.

If just one bit of information is used,

we get only two densities, on and off.

Two bits give us four slices,

three bits, eight, and four, 16 densities.

(static buzzing)

- And if it turns out that, when you mix arithmetic

and Bouillon logical functions,

the patterns become more interesting

than just logical and arithmetic alone.

- We have connected this video signal

with a sound synthesizer, which is right here.

- [Steina] Video was very difficult and very challenging

in the beginning, and we just needed each other.

- By interrupting or changing the video level here,

we can induce the modulation of this sound synthesizer.

And then, it can, of course, change the pitch.

- [Steina] And it was very often the collaboration

was rather that Woody set up something, and then

he would walk away, and I would go and play with it.

So, we are very, very different

in the way we approach the material.

- And in that sense, it's like

a very primitive electronic organism.

It can live on its own, and it can stay alive

as long as we don't cut the electricity.

(soft, ambient music)

- [Steina] Yeah, you are visible

in the frame, also, but that's okay.

And we were all innovative in our ways.

I mean, there was a rush.

So lot of people thought that they were gonna

save the world, or at least challenge commercial television.

And then, they would look at our stuff,

and they would say, but you are just playing.

And I understood that that was a great compliment.

What I think,

- [Woody] Why don't you scan me, Steina.

Scan me, and I'm just gonna shoot.

- [Steina] But I'm also trying to get the progress.

- First of all, let me get you up.

It is softer, hmm.

- Woody, this was so beauty.

You didn't even notice what I was doing, huh?

- [Woody] No, what was doing?

- I lighted the cigarette.

- I saw that.

- Yeah, but then I throw the smoke,

and instead of having it finished, you started

(humming)

- [Woody] Okay, do it again.

- And then, when people said, but are you gonna show it?

Sure, we show it.

It'll be showed up somewhere

with monitors, and we showed it.

So, we should try this lens

here now. - Okay, please,

just put it on.

(static buzzing)

- [Steina] So, we had a very good time.

But the snow was unbearable.

(soft, ambient music)

So, when Woody got a Guggenheim grant,

we just said, let's go to Santa Fe.

(engine humming)

So, this is room number one.

In here.

Full of junk, of course.

So, this is our window outside.

And this is our yard.

What are you cooking, love?

- Dumb question.

- [Steina] Cauliflower.

- [Woody] Making salad, honey, salad.

- [Steina] For us, after this Buffalo, was the sun.

That you over 300 days of sunlight

a year, it's a new luxury.

And then, there were these landscape

that made me into landscape artist.

(gravel crunching)

(camera rattling)

It's such a cliche to move to the Southwest

and become a landscape artist.

It was just too much.

But of course, I got seduced, like anybody else.

There was a solution, and the solution for me

was to take just a part of it,

take the texture, take some details,

and farm them out of notable images.

(soft, ambient music)

That we are just Vasulkas, but we don't do

even things similar to each other.

So, we are very, very different

in the way we approach the material.

This idea that I be Steina is much more

to do that I'm Icelandic.

I just looked always at this name, Vasulka, perfectly nice

name, and I said, I have nothing to do with this name.

- It feels like I'm right into it.

Like it's bringing me in there.

And is that the sort of effect

which you're trying to grasp there?

- No, uh-huh.

Well, this is an installation that I did of all vision.

If you look at the thing here,

theoretically, each camera should take 180 degrees,

and together, they should become 360 degrees.

It's total surveillance.

(engine humming)

Okay? - Stopping.

- [Steina] It is fabulous.

- Yeah, it's absolutely fabulous.

But of course, you should see it on top

of the sky. - Yeah, but

do you think you found this place, or I found this place?

(soft, ambient music)

Out of Memory was to separate dramatic space

by certain physicality of a syntax, of a barrier.

But then, I failed in constructing that barrier properly.

It became like edit, cut between the scenes,

but it wasn't meant that way.

It was meant to have a third element in between,

like a solid dramatic syntax.

And that means I only went halfway

through my personal assignment.

(distortion blaring)

But again, it was more a personal work,

because it incorporates the only time

I've ever looked back at history

and my kind of direct life during the war.

This is some of the footage I recall, still remember,

as a scene in the movie house during the Nazi era.

But it was also very disturbing, because

the first time I realize how a century,

how bloody this century was.

And I was also trying to find some responsibility in that,

and who carried the responsibility.

And I found it beyond the human dimension.

(birds chirping)

(soft, ambient music)

(coffee beans clinking)

(grinder whirring)

- [Steina] It's totally miraculous that he could stay

out of employment all those years.

Woody was employed at the Buffalo University for six years.

Hated it, knew that he had to get out of there.

We just have always manage, and we apply for this and that.

And for some reason, we would go down and we would go

into debt, and then, we would make it out of the debt.

And we got fellowships, and we've just been

enormously lucky in that sense.

But that's over.

We knew it was over, we were facing

old age with Social Security.

(soft, ambient music)

I've always had it in our minds

that this house would be worth something.

So, we started looking into this legendary reverse mortgage.

(electricity softly humming)

It happened, I think, twice,

or maybe three times, different banks.

And they would come in, and they would say,

there are no walk-in closets.

You sell houses because there's a walk-in closet there.

Then, there was the bathroom.

Whoever bought this house would have

to totally demolish this bathroom,

and build it nicely, and hopefully get a whirlpool in there.

So, I was disqualified.

(soft, ambient music)

(soft electronic music)

I'll look into it, but we are so far out of it now.

- Yeah. - We just sit in front

of the computer those days, we don't do anything.

That we were being shown less and less,

and finally, it basically stopped.

- [Man] Focus on the important stuff.

- Yeah, right.

Like dying.

Dying is a very important stuff.

(chuckling)

It's a project that very few people dare tackle, you know.

- [Man] That was it, Steina.

Be well, and I'll catch you down the road somewhere.

- [Steina] Excellent.

I had to decide it like a project,

everything was a project.

So, that project was to die a million dollars in debt.

And there was nothing anybody could do about it.

We were just dead, both of us,

and there million dollars owed to various banks.

And I would always use one card to pay for the next card,

and then another card to pay for that card, and so on.

Juggling.

And I slowly, then, paid them all off,

so I was kind of good that way.

But there was just zero money in the bank.

Doris is gonna give you an interview.

- Oh, Doris, you give me an interview.

That wasn't meant to be. - Yeah, but change the roles.

- Okay.

I'd love that.

(chuckling)

Panic.

- [Steina] That's gonna be ci-pan.

(chuckling)

Say it backwards.

Doris herself, she said,

- Pan-pan. - What do you call this piece?

And I said, Lilith.

(shrieking)

(soft, ambient music)

(distortion blaring)

And she didn't know Lilith, because she was Jewish.

Didn't know the legend of Lilith.

So then, she calls me back, because she was

a dictionary freak, you know, and says, you are a witch.

And I said, no, no, no, Doris, I'm not a witch.

You are the witch.

(chuckling)

(distortion blaring)

(soft, ambient music)

(engine humming)

- So, this was like a second home for me.

I would go and get what I could, but by now,

it's so much that one kind of loses

this kind of control over this life.

Hey, do you want something like that?

But anyway, this was my foraging area.

I would just recall the late 60s where, in New York City,

the great resource for a generation of artists

working with technology at that time was Canal Street.

And Canal Street was this junkyard,

a technological junkyard of New York City.

See, this is a beautiful turning turntable.

(metal clanging and creaking)

It's the right radar.

- There is surplus, especially the military surplus,

which is very generous, because military has large budget,

so when they are through with a project, they throw it out.

It's like another grant.

Look at this.

It's the same thing we have at home.

But I can have it for 10.

Yeah, then you just put it on a table,

and you look, and you see the images.

(lock clanging)

Okay.

There are six or so installations called The Brotherhood.

They always are of some of the stuff

that he got from these surpluses

that he has collected over a long period of time.

And they all take space.

- Can I go straight?

(soft, ambient music)

(contraption whirring)

- [Steina] Start from here, Woody.

(alarm softly blaring)

- Maybe I can start from here.

This is overhead.

(electronic music)

(machine rattling)

(woman chanting)

I like the sound.

Okay, so let's see what the sounds like, sound.

(metal clanging and reverberating)

- It's interesting about Woody.

He had no problem in explaining.

But in this explanation was also lack of vocabulary.

And he just started making sentences, and so it started.

And I realized that this thing called

speaking in tongues was a known phenomenon.

- Speech into an

(speaking in tongues)

(scatting)

(humming softly)

Didn't lick it, that's what it is.

(soft, ambient music)

(computer beeping)

(dial tone ringing)

- [Woman] Hi.

(speaking in a foreign language)

(machine whirring)

- You are frozen.

- Hey.

(speaking in a foreign language)

(laughing)

Kristin Scheving is the lady who found me.

She was studying in Strasbourg,

was getting very bored there.

She wanted to see something,

and she knew that I was just across.

(soft, ambient music)

- And then, I walk into Borealis,

this famous Borealis.

And I didn't know Steina, and I didn't anything about it,

but I accept that probably, I don't know,

in my mind, I was there for a whole hour,

and I was so homesick.

And it's a beautiful work.

And I was like, this is just Iceland for me.

And then, I start to read about this lady.

And I was really interested,

and I was like, she's Icelandic.

This must have been filmed in Iceland.

So, I connected totally.

And I started to write to Steina.

Student, like a young,

I don't know, 22-year old. - Good for you.

- And she answered me, which is so sweet and beautiful.

- [Steina] Now, this is the optical device.

This just screws on to the lens.

And now that I take it off, you see

it is just a glass tube with a half-sphere mirror in it.

(engine humming)

How did you get this picture?

- Oh, this picture was complete by accident, you see?

I came here, and pushed this button, you know.

- [Steina] No, don't push it.

- And then, it was a man like me.

This would be good to record it,

and anybody who comes when I'm dead.

And I would make it that they talk to the person.

Or, you came here, and then I mean,

I know who you are, but I didn't know it all.

Because I'll be dead.

(giggling)

- [Steina] Go take a shower.

- I'm an enigma to myself,

because I have these two versions.

One is me, and other to looking at the sky.

And, am I real or not?

Am I myself, or just pretending?

(water splashing) (groaning)

(chuckling)

Oh, God, it is cold.

It's cold.

Steina.

It is so hot.

- [Steina] Just put it into--

- You have to do it.

- [Steina] Ah.

- Jesus Christ.

I'm naked and stupid.

You have to go to the eye doctor.

- Eye doctor?

- Right now.

- What? - Right now.

It won't take long.

Yeah, you look great.

- Can I be just like that, yeah?

- Yeah.

I'll start up the car.

- Because I need,

(speaking in a foreign language)

No, I need my eyes, my goodness.

- So go and get them, hell, you can see.

Looks amazing.

- And we will go.

(engine humming)

(car clanking)

- [Steina] Police.

(groaning)

Ah, Woody.

- What's happened?

- He had something better to do.

What was the hurry?

Yes.

We make it.

- Woody the thing was, in order to open the door

with the tape, we talked about the tanks.

So, they sent me that saying yes, that we want to do a show,

that doing a show with Woody and Steina in a priority.

- [Steina] Okay.

- Okay, so-- - They really said that?

- They also confirmed--

- [Woody] They all lie in the same way, you know.

- That they will come to Le Frenoir

while we're there to work with us on the show.

And they have their own ideas of what they want to do, too.

- That's terrible. - It's not just what we

proposed, they want to discuss all of this.

- [Steina] This is, of course,

always the problem with those curators.

They have their own ideas.

- [Man] Yeah.

- Yes.

- [Woody] We could start right now,

because we have so much material.

- And I met them virtually through Jerry O'Grady

at Media Study Buffalo.

And we talked, and he said, you've got

to get in touch with the Vasulkas.

So, that's what I did.

Because I was going to Paris the same year

they were creating the Kitchen.

So, all the tape that I showed in Paris

through all those years, I got from Steina.

But it took me a while to get the work itself,

because I was used to looking at experimental film

and video as a thing in itself,

without really taking into consideration

the whole process that produced it.

And what the Vasulkas do is make you think of the process,

and by making you focus on the process,

they're actually making you look at

the whole communication system,

and the implications of the communication system.

And that's why I think they're so important.

'Cause they were actually investigating, as Woody said

many times, the artistic potential of the tools,

and inventing tools when they needed to.

And that was extremely Important,

because that was an introduction

to a whole new way of communicating

that's become very dominant in our society.

I'll get back in touch with you

when I get back from London, then.

- Okay, and bring good news, but not

too much work, and not no money, you know?

- [Don] No, there's work until the money comes in.

Don't worry about it, there's nothing to prepare.

(chuckling)

- Okay, bye-bye Don.

- Okay.

That'd be nice.

She does know I have to beg for money from Steina.

He really doesn't know that.

He thinks I'm a boss.

(soft piano music)

(speaking in a foreign language)

(chuckling)

- And slowly, the word was leaking out

that we had enormous archives,

and we had the archives of the early video,

which is now seen as historical and important.

(distortion blaring)

Our dear colleague, Stan Brakhage, dies

and all his collection is going to the Boulder archives.

So, there is a suggestion from the Boulder people

that they have not only Stan, but other people.

- [Man] The aesthetics of video influencing your own work.

Let's try that.

- Well, it influenced my own ego

in a very certain manner.

Like,

(static buzzing)

(laughing)

We were just, in retrospect now, I realize,

we were just there in an alternate reality, up on 3rd floor.

And one day, there, in the evening,

when Woody came home from work, honey, I'm home.

(audience chuckling)

And I was there,

(speaking in a foreign language)

supposed to have a hot meal.

I said, I have a hot tape for you.

We made another one this afternoon.

And in a very short time, Woody said,

I can't stand this, I quit work.

And so, now we were there, both of us,

happy in our little cocoon, and no income,

and that's how it has been since.

Sound loud.

("California Dreamin'" by The Mamas and the Papas)

But they were focused on winners,

because we got our tapes transferred.

(audience applauding)

- [Woman] Welcome into video art.

(soft, ambient music)

- I don't know how they decided to have a Vasulka

(speaking in a foreign language)

I'm not in on that story, I just know

it was certainly there, and we were invited

like everybody else, and all our friends were showing up,

because Kristin had gotten some money

and invited everybody to fly to Iceland.

(soft, ambient music)

(speaking in a foreign language)

And there was a big, beautiful exhibition there.

- [Don] Is that Buffalo, that picture?

- Yeah, this is Buffalo.

- That's what I thought.

I thought I recognized that.

- [Woody] Young happy couple.

(chuckling)

We were still having sex, you know?

(soft, ambient music)

- [Steina] Kristin says, everybody wants to get big prints,

and I cannot handle this anymore, I am not a sales person.

I cannot deal with that, we have to find a dealer.

So, we went to see a dealer, and it was just a dealer.

Nice people, but they were into prinkling

and into hanging pictures on walls, and everything.

We walk out of there, and she said, there's a lady

gonna come here, and she wants to be a dealer.

And I said, goddamn, spare me from this.

And she walks in.

(speaking in a foreign language)

And that her husband is a pianist, plays every day.

And that was the moment I knew these were good people.

But I let her talk for 15 more minutes time to tell me.

She was trying to push this idea

that she could be our dealer.

(speaking in a foreign language)

(soft, ambient music)

And I knew that she would be our dealer.

So, since then, we have financially been okay.

More than okay.

And they are great people, and we are connected

to Iceland, and it's one of these happy endings, you know.

(groaning)

- [Woody] Put it in.

(speaking in a foreign language)

This one. - This one, I like.

It's a beautiful one.

- [Woody] Yeah, I know, I know.

- Very interesting. - Yeah, exactly.

- [Ingibjorg] And this one, too.

- [Woody] Slides are actually artifacts of early masks,

of electronic circuits, which I found

as anthropologist in Los Alamos junkyard.

And they are very precisely manufactured,

and they represent first level of integrated circuits.

This is a war material, actually.

And then, I put it into a bucket, took it home.

And by error, I left it outside.

And that was cooked for a year in the sun.

And that sun is pretty good in Santa Fe.

(soft, ambient music)

- [Steina] That was the beginning

of Woody's printing career.

So, that was how we came to be invited to Frenoir.

- This is a sketch.

I have maybe several thousand, of course,

pictures like that, or maybe even more.

Some of them I lost.

Because my life was long enough.

These pictures, they are television frames,

and each of these pictures is made out of 525 lines

that you can bend as it would be piece of material

- The Vasulka Effect, this is an effect of the time.

That's why I think this is a historical artist,

because there is a brain.

They have made something that we can't find today.

This is like sculpture.

And the size, it's okay.

- [Woody] Oh yeah, I think it's nice.

- You happy?

- Of course, I feel it before, you know.

But as big like that, I've not seen, except projected.

But no, this is like,

- This is quite,

- Has its own identity.

So, thank you very much, sir.

(chuckling)

(soft, ambient music)

- [Woman] We have Steina and Woody coming here.

- For instance, even just at the Loop Festival,

you can see so many of the stories that are being told

by younger artists, and by pioneer artists.

They all root back to the Vasulkas, in some way.

Whether it has to do with image processing,

or with things like The Kitchen,

that were promoting the earliest exhibitions.

So many people have these stories

that go right back to the Vasulkas.

In a sense, they're the generators,

maybe even the shoulders, that most

of video art has stood upon and grown from.

(soft, ambient music)

The art world never cared for us,

and that was our luck, I think,

because they swayed a lot of people into making art.

And since we weren't artists, we could do

whatever we goddamned wanted, you know?

So, we were always on the outside.

(chuckling)

Can you believe this?

- Yeah, this is pretty good.

This is pretty good.

- We never had it so good.

It's beautiful.

(soft piano music)

- Wow, wow, wow.

(cameras clicking)

And this place is, actually, very beautiful.

(cameras clicking)

- So, in Iceland, you have a chamber,

and here, we have a kitchen.

- I'm so glad to come here.

(chuckling)

(distortion softly blaring)

- That they've created infrastructures

and platforms for people to be able

to come together, and I think that's really

one of the driving principles behind founding

the Vasulka Kitchen, is not so much looking at it

as a legacy project, but looking at it as a way

to really be inspired by their work, and move forward.

- And there will be, of course, videos from archive.

And there will be archive from The Kitchen.

Because Steina has a similar chamber

which inspired us in Iceland in Rekjavik.

So, we decided, naturally, to make

the similar center in Woody's hometown.

(speaking in a foreign language)

I think the youngest generation of artists

are really admiring theirs work,

and it is iconic, so I think it's important.

(audience applauding)

- I should have more respect.

The man is now a certified artist.

- [Woman] Yes.

(soft, ambient music)

(speaking in a foreign language)

(traffic bustling)

- Grant?

Another right

(car horn honking)

- [Man] Where are you going?

- The Whitney Museum.

(speaking in a foreign language)

- I just found that the Whitney had put

my installation for a lot of money,

but I didn't even pay attention to it.

So, I didn't know they had this installation.

And they said, they owned it.

And I said, they owned it?

And they even showed me a paper that I had signed.

And it was quite a bit of money.

They never showed it.

And now, they're gonna show it,

because we are showing up in the art magazines.

And they say, hey, we have a Vasulka.

Not that they know what the hell it was, you know?

(speaking in a foreign language)

(soft, ambient music)

- Look who's here, Karen?

Vasulka. - Hi.

- Hello. - Pleasure to meet you.

- We met a long time ago.

- We did?

- We're all the head hanchos.

- I'm not the head hancho.

(laughing)

- The work still feels very fresh.

Because now, through digital technologies,

we see many of these effects, or manipulations

of image spaces that Steina explored at a much

earlier time through more analog technologies.

(soft, ambient music)