Open Circuits Revisited

The groundbreaking Open Circuits: An International Conference on the Future of Television, held at MoMA in 1974, brought together artists, theorists, curators, arts administrators, and critics to discuss the challenges and opportunities of artists' television and video. On the 50th anniversary of this landmark event, EAI is thrilled to collaborate with NYU's Center for Disability Studies and Department of Media, Culture, and Communication to present a series of public lectures and events, paired with closed discussion sessions convening artists and practitioners in the field.

Open Circuits was a watershed moment in the history of the burgeoning medium of video. The conference brought together a vibrant array of artists, theorists, curators, arts administrators, and critics including Shigeko Kubota, Vilém Flusser, Jorge Glusberg, and Stan VanDerBeek, to discuss the challenges and opportunities of artists' television and video. Illustrious presenters shared new works and works-in-progress, including the first sections of Nam June Paik’s landmark Global Groove, which rolled into the panel proceedings. The atmosphere was electric, and every session sparked lively debate about participants’ distinct viewpoints on the aesthetic and cultural impact of video.

Organized by the artist Douglas Davis, media scholar Gerald O’Grady, and WGBH producer Fred Barzyk, the event reflected the experimental and enterprising spirit of early video art and its possibilities to reach wider audiences through television. The conference is also an essential part of EAI’s early history and a catalyst for the institutionalization of video art. Shortly after the conference, MoMA curator and conference participant Barbara London established the museum’s first video program. EAI’s founder Howard Wise oversaw Open Circuits’ funding initiatives, and the list of conference participants are now integral to EAI’s distribution catalogue, such as Joan Jonas, Vito Acconci, Richard Serra, and John Baldessari.

Open Circuits Revisited includes a series of free open events, commissioned texts and oral histories published online, and closed discussion sessions bringing together artists and practitioners to address contemporary issues of video art. During public events, media studies scholars Susan Murray and Fred Turner will address historical relationships between video and television technologies and democracy in the United States, introduced by Rebecca Cleman and Nicholas Mirzoeff, and artist-scholars Whit Pow and Alexander Galloway will discuss randomness, noise, and error in media practices. Simultaneous closed sessions will address the topics of preservation, distribution, and accessibility.

Presenter Biographies

Rebecca Cleman, Electronic Arts Intermix
Rebecca Cleman is Executive Director of Electronic Arts Intermix and a writer. She has programmed screenings and special projects for such venues as the International House Philadelphia; the Museum of Art and Design, Anthology Film Archives, and Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City; and the Julia Stoschek Collection, Germany.

Alexander R. Galloway, New York University
Alexander R. Galloway is a professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. His most recent book is Uncomputable: Play and Politics In the Long Digital Age (Verso, 2021).

Susan Murray, New York University
Susan Murray is Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU. She is the author of Bright Signals: A History of Color Television and was a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow.

Whit Pow, New York University
Whit Pow is an assistant professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Their work focuses on queer and transgender (trans) histories of games, computational media and electronic art. Their latest article, "How the Computer Taught Us to See," is published in Camera Obscura by Duke University Press.

Marita Sturken, New York University
Marita Sturken is Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU. She is the author of multiple books addressing American and Visual Culture, including Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (University of California Press, 1997), and Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (with Lisa Cartwright, Oxford University Press, Third Edition 2018).

Fred Turner, Stanford University
Fred Turner is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University. He is the author most recently, with Mary Beth Meehan, of Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America.

NYU Center for Disability Studies (CDS)
NYU CDS promotes disability scholarship, artistry, and activism through public events, community collaborations, grant-funded research, an undergraduate Disability Studies Minor and Disability Student Union, and the launch of a Provostial Working Group addressing issues campus of Disability, Infrastructure and Accessibility on NYU's campus.

NYU Media, Culture, and Communication (MCC)
NYU MCC specializes in the study of media and technology in their cultural, social, and global contexts. MCC faculty research and teach on media topics spanning the globe, generating rigorous international scholarship.