ReelNewYork - Overview

Home	On REEL NEW YORK By Kathy High Independent Series Curator Page 4 of 4

An Independent Media Programmer'S View Of Television

When thinking about the challenges and choices involved in curating REEL NEW YORK, I was attracted to those works that are on the outside edge of independent production. The people pictured, the subject matter, the visual "treatment" or form that the pieces take on, forecast the emergence of a new wave of alternative television.

". . .[The films in REEL NEW YORK] are designed to provide insight or provoke, to amuse and be absurd in ways that are very particular to these individuals. . ."

Most of the films/videos in REEL NEW YORK are made by individual makers; not a studio of people, but a small crew of one or two people who are following their own ideals, dreams and challenges. Thus, the works don't have the same relentless polish of the network programs. They are designed to provide insight or provoke, to amuse and be absurd in ways that are very particular to these individuals, not a system or network of people.

These makers maintain control of all decisions -- from how to frame and compose a specific shot, to how to put two sequences together in an edit. They also have to suffer the angst of raising the money themselves. Some of them work in very "homegrown" ways, shooting in their homes with a Hi8 camera borrowed from a friend, or working another job to pay for the post-production of this work. Their individual creative decisions together create the many voices, visions and dreams shown in this year's REEL NEW YORK---helping to define the independent media cycle once again.

Kathy High is a media artist, curator, and teacher living and working in New York City. She teaches in the Visual Arts Department at Princeton University, and at New York University. She has received numerous awards for her video works including grants from The Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is currently working on a musical about human genome mapping, called "The 23 Songs of the Chromosomes". High is also the founder and editor of the critical journal, "FELIX: A Journal of Media Arts and Communication," which encourages dialogue among alternative media makers.

Footnotes:

1. 1/2-inch reel-to-reel videotape was a smaller gage format than what was generally used at television stations then. At that time, 2 inch was the standard tape format used. This example could be likened to the first time Hi8 video was broadcast on television.

2. "Introduction: Television and Art: A Historical Primer for an Improbable Alliance," by Allison Simmons, THE NEW TELEVISION: A PUBLIC/PRIVATE ARTS, eds. Douglas Davis and Allison Simmons, MIT Press, 1978, p. 12.

3. THE ELECTRONIC DISTURBANCE, by the Critical Art Ensemble, Autonomedia, Brooklyn, NY, 1994, p.27, p. 125.