This video was included in the Allen’s 1984 exhibition New Voices 4: Women and the Media, New Video, 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 became leaders in harnessing the new platform to critique mass media, surveillance, and American imperialism. Arnold merged television coverage of her subjects with the novel capabilities of the home video camera, inserting herself into national narratives. Here, this work addresses a growing unease over safety and privacy by referencing instances of assassination and state surveillance, concerns that consumed politics and popular culture through the 1980s.

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

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