Cadillac Ranch 1974/1994

Ant Farm 

1974/1994, 16:40 min, color, sound

Ant Farm's well-known site-specific installation, the Cadillac Ranch, was commissioned by Texas millionaire Stanley Marsh III. Ten Cadillacs, vintage 1948 to 1963, were buried fin-up in a field off Route 66 in Amarillo as an ironic celebration of the "grotesque and wonderful" tail-fin as the ultimate expression of wasteful design in American culture. In a 1984 postscript, the artists address the piece's evolution from a conceptual sculpture to a public roadside attraction, rusted and graffiti-covered.

Inflatables Illustrated

Ant Farm 

1971-2003, 21:20 min, b&w and color, sound

In the late 1960s and early '70s, the Ant Farm collective pioneered the idea of inflatable structures as alternative architecture. Inflatables Illustrated offers a visual primer on how Ant Farm prepared and constructed their utopian, experimental inflatable-plastic architecture. This tape is a corollary to Ant Farm's seminal 1969 publication The Inflatocookbook, a do-it-yourself guide to inflatable architecture. Promoting interactivity, ephemerality and access through collective practice, the book and the video can be seen as early examples of what is now termed "open source."

Media Burn

Ant Farm: Chip Lord, Doug Michels, Curtis Schrier, Uncle Buddie 

1975, 23:02 min, color, sound

Media Burn integrates performance, spectacle and media critique, as Ant Farm stages an explosive collision of two of America's most potent cultural symbols: the automobile and television. On July 4, 1975, at San Francisco's Cow Palace, Ant Farm presented what they termed the "ultimate media event." In this alternative Bicentennial celebration, a "Phantom Dream Car"—a reconstructed 1959 El Dorado Cadillac convertible—was driven through a wall of burning TV sets.

The Eternal Frame

T.R. Uthco and Ant Farm: Doug Hall, Chip Lord, Doug Michels, Jody Procter

1975, 23:50 min, b&w and color, sound

The Eternal Frame is an examination of the role that the media plays in the creation of (post)modern historical myths. For T.R. Uthco and Ant Farm, the iconic event that signified the ultimate collusion of historical spectacle and media image was the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. Using a few frames of the event as their starting point, T.R. Uthco and Ant Farm construct a multilevelled event that is simultaneously a live performance spectacle, a taped re-enactment of the assassination, a mock documentary, and a simulation of the Zapruder film itself.