Raindance

ESSAY
CHECKLIST
EXHIBITION BROCHURE
INSTALLATION VIEWS
CONVERSATIONS AT DIA:BEACON: Nancy Holt, Joan Jonas, Anthony Ramos, and Paul Ryan with Lori Zippay
PRESS: New York Times, Frieze Magazine, Bullett
PHOTOS: Circa 1971 Gallery Talk with Lori Zippay, February 2012

Dia Art Foundation presented Circa 1971: Early Video & Film from the EAI Archive at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries. Circa 1971 brought together 20 moving image works from EAI's collection of over 3,500 media artworks. Celebrating EAI's 40th anniversary, the exhibition was organized by guest curator Lori Zippay, Executive Director of EAI.

Circa 1971 included pieces by Vito Acconci, Eleanor Antin, Ant Farm, John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Shirley Clarke, Dan Graham, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, Joan Jonas, Gordon Matta-Clark, Nam June Paik, Raindance, Anthony Ramos, Carolee Schneemann, TVTV, Steina and Woody Vasulka, and others.

Taking the year of EAI's founding as its point of departure, the exhibition set in dialogue a series of diverse works created in and around 1971, which are linked by alternative artistic and activist impulses. Circa 1971 exposed the generative encounters among these artists and influences and initiates unexpected correspondences between seemingly disparate works.

This was the first program in ALL CIRCUITS ON, a series produced in collaboration with Anthology Film Archives. Exploring both institutions' archives, the series presents rarely-screened works from the early days of video art. The first program looked at early artists' experiments with television. Works in the program examined at how television and video work, presented new ways of critiquing the medium, and proposed new uses for the technology. Viewers learned how video can be used as a tool, for the freeing of information and the creation of a healthy media ecology.

As the keystone of EAI's 30th anniversary events, Museum of Modern Art presented First Decade: Video from the EAI Archives, a major retrospective that looked at the early days of video through EAI's historical collection. Featuring 60 works, the twelve-part program explored themes and issues ranging from performance and the body; narrative; cultural essays; activism, and poetics.