Exhibition dates subject to change.

This selection of videos is drawn from the Allen’s 1984 exhibition New Voices 4: Women and the Media, New Video, which was organized by the pioneering curator and scholar Bill Olander.

The political climate at the end of U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s first term converged with the rapid development and ubiquity of affordable video technologies. Women artists were leaders in harnessing the new media to critique mass media, surveillance, and American imperialism. Arnold and Kramer merge television coverage of their subjects with the novel domestic capabilities of the video camera, inserting themselves into national narratives. These two works deal with a growing unease regarding safety and privacy, referencing instances of assassination and state surveillance that consumed politics and popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s.

This exhibition is presented in conjunction with The land is a being who remembers everything.

Images:

Margia Kramer (American, b. 1939), Freedom of Information Tape 1: Jean Seberg (still), 1980. Video (color, sound), 18 min. Special Exhibitions Fund, (1984.36).

Anna-Marie Arnold (American, b. 1960), Ghost Dances (still), 1983. Video (color, sound), 9.05 min. Special Exhibitions Fund, (1984.38).