Electronic Arts Intermix is a media arts center in New York that serves as an international resource for independent video. EAl's Artists' Videotape Distribution Service is one of the leading distributors of videos by artists and independent producers and its collection is among the most comprehensive of its kind. Over 1600 works by 130 artists from across the USA, Europe, Australia, Latin America and Japan, are represented - a broad survey of independent media production from the 1960's to the 1990's. EAl's catalog "Artists' Video: An International Guide", was published in 1991. EAI is a pioneering organization in the history of the media arts field. Founded in 1971, after fhe landmark 1969 exhibition "TV as a Creative Medium", to encourage the use of video "as a means of personal expression and communication", EAI supports the alternative voices and visions of independent video-makers within the context of contemporary art, media and culture. Today EAI operates diverse projects and programs, such as in 1992: "Vital Signs: International Responses to the AIDS Crisis", a seven-hour program of international tapes that address the AIDS crisis. EAI also offers curatorial, educational and technical services, travelling exhibitions, and an archive of hundreds of historical works. In the EAI Screening Room, any tape in the collection can be viewed by appointment. EAl’s Preservation Program, a major effort to secure the physical preservation of tapes in the collection, has allowed many historically significant works to be available for the first time. In addition, EAI operates the Editing/Post-Production Facility, a small-format post-production workspace for artists, collectives and nonprofit organizations, and the Equipment Loan Service, a low-cost equipment access program for artists and exhibitors. Regarding Identity: Selections from the collection of Electronic Arts Intermix
These three thematic programs chart a rough chronology from the early 1970's to the 90's. Each program reflects a particular historical aspect of independent video's ongoing engagement with issues of identity. For three decades, video has served as s catalyst for artist's inquiries into how contemporary identity is constructed and perceived. From the conceptual performance exercises of the 70's to the multitextual collages ot the 90's, it has been a vehicle for charged examinations - psychodramatic, metaphorical, analytical - of issues confronting the self, the body, and the historical and cultural aspects of identity. These investigations engage in psychological examinations of the self in relation to the body; explore subjectivity in relation to media culture, language and image-making; question the fabrication of personal and cultural and mine the politics of identity in relation to sexuality, race, and gender. The artist's reflection in the televisual mirror remains one of video 's most powerful metaphors. Viewing these programs in 1993, it seems that video has come full circle to 1973: Thematically,the body in crisis is again the site for powerful investigations of the self. Technology seems also to have traced a circular trajectory, from the crudness of the early video to sophisticated computer imaging and back to raw, low- tech video again. Today the body is defined as a political battleground, identity is a political terrain; artists asser-tions of self are informed by the cultural analysis, media critiques and technical innovations that characteri-zed the I980's. These tapes represent only a brief selection from EAl's collection - nontheless they are emblema-tic of the provocative forms, that still define video as a radical mode of artistic practice and cultural activism.