Please join EAI for a special launch event celebrating the publication of the new Vital Signals DVD anthology and 100-page catalogue on early video art from Japan. Selections from the Vital Signals program will be screened during the event. The anthology and catalogue publication are available through EAI's distribution service for use in educational institutions and will be available for purchase during the launch.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010
6 - 8 pm

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10011
www.eai.org

Please RSVP: info@eai.org

Vital Signals is a survey of the vibrant, interdisciplinary video art scene in Japan in the 1960s and '70s. While early video art from the U.S. and Europe is internationally recognized, the parallel activities of artists working in Japan—the birthplace of the camcorder and other technological innovations—are not widely known. The Vital Signals DVD anthology features video works by fifteen Japanese artists, including key figures such as Takahiko Iimura, Mako Idemitsu, Toshio Matsumoto and Kohei Ando.

The DVD anthology is accompanied by a 100-page bilingual (English and Japanese) catalogue. Essays by Barbara London, Glenn Phillips, and Hirofumi Sakamoto draw out the unique art historical and cultural contexts of early Japanese video art, and its relation to film and other visual art forms.

Vital Signals is organized in three parts: The Language of Technology, Open Television, and Body Acts. In technical experiments, activist statements, and conceptual performances, Japanese artists of the 1960s and '70s transformed the intangible—time, gesture, the electronic signal—into rich art-making material. Vital Signals illuminates this fertile period of creative engagement and experimentation in Japan.

The DVD and catalogue publication are available for purchase by educational institutions for classroom use for $150. For more information, please click here.

The Vital Signals anthology and catalogue emerge from EAI's touring video exhibition of the same name. Organized by EAI in collaboration with the Yokohama Museum of Art and a team of Japanese curators and scholars, the three-part screening program brings together rarely screened early Japanese video alongside seminal works from the EAI Collection. Vital Signals has traveled to venues across the globe, including Japan Society, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Aurora Picture Show, Houston, Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art; Yokohama Museum; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo; and the University of London; among others. For more information about the touring program and upcoming screenings please visit: www.eai.org.

Vital Signals has been organized and produced by Ann Adachi of EAI. The video programs were curated by Ann Adachi and Yukie Kamiya, Chief Curator, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan, and Hirofumi Sakamoto, Professor, Wakkanai Hokusei Gakuen University, Hokkaido, Japan.

The Vital Signals DVD and catalogue were funded by the the Japan-US Friendship Commission.

About EAI

Founded in 1971, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is one of the world's leading nonprofit resources for video art. A pioneering advocate for media art and artists, EAI's core program is the distribution and preservation of a major collection of over 3,500 new and historical media works by artists. EAI fosters the creation, exhibition, distribution and preservation of video art and digital art. EAI's activities include a preservation program, viewing access, educational services, extensive online resources, and public programs such as artists' talks, exhibitions and panels. The Online Catalogue is a comprehensive resource on the artists and works in the EAI collection, and also features extensive materials on exhibiting, collecting and preserving media art: www.eai.org

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