Test Patterns

Lynn Hershman Leeson

1979, 10:25 min, color, sound

Test patterns refers to a television test signal, typically broadcast at times when the transmitter is active—most recognizable as bright strips of color shown on the TV screen when an image is not playing. In this video, what Hershman Leeson refers to as a “factional docudrama,” a “test pattern...

Test Room Containing Multiple Stimuli Known to Elicit Curiosity and Manipulatory Responses

Mike Kelley 

1999, 51:18 min, color, silent

Test Room Containing Multiple Stimuli Known to Elicit Curiosity and Manipulatory Responses documents Kelley's installation of the same name, in which visitors were invited to enter a caged area and interact with sculptural objects and "parental surrogate objects." Kelley creates a theatrical...

Test Room Containing Multiple Stimuli Known to Elicit Curiosity and Manipulatory Responses and A Dance Incorporating Movements Derived from Experiments by Harry F. Harlow and Choreographed in the Manner of Martha Graham

Mike Kelley

1999, 59:54 min, color, silent

Test Room... is a choreographic work that merges movements related to Martha Graham's mythological dance pieces, gestures derived from monkey behavior observed in Harry Harlow's 1960's experiments, and "cathartic" violent behavior evoking the films of psychologist Albert Bandura's studies of the...

Test Tube

General Idea

1979, 28:15 min, color, sound

Produced by De Appel, Amsterdam, while General Idea was in residence there, Test Tube was conceived as a program for television. Presented under the brand "The Color Bar Lounge," the program is a hybrid of popular television formats, including talk show, soap opera, news magazine, and infomercial.

The Adventures of a Nurse (Parts I and II)

Eleanor Antin 

1976, 65 min, color, sound

Part I: The artist, in the role of a nurse, fantasizes on romantic themes, using a set of foot-high, hand-painted paper dolls as actors. A fantasy within a fantasy. The "Nurse Eleanor" paper doll performs as a surrogate self for Nurse Eleanor Antin and is the much put-upon but brave heroine of a...

The Amarillo News Tapes

Doug Hall, Chip Lord, and Jody Procter.

1980, 27:44 min, color, sound

With the intention of "dissecting" television news, Doug Hall, Chip Lord and Jody Procter travelled to Amarillo, Texas to serve as artists-in-residence at station KVII-TV. Collaborating with local newsmen, they combined documentary, sociology and parody in this analysis of news gathering,...

The B.C. Corporate Story

Bernadette Corporation 

1996, 7 min, color, sound

This video examines the sorts of propaganda that a corporation might distribute internally to communicate an over-arching mandate or vision to its workers in order to boost morale. Bernadette Corporation slyly turns the notion inside out, yielding a document that at once subverts and expresses the form.

The Ballads of JT LeRoy

Lynn Hershman Leeson

2014, 14:49 min, color, sound, HD video

A short documentary centering the literary figure JT LeRoy, a persona embodied by the artist Laura Albert and portrayed by Savannah Knoop from 1996-2006. Hershman Leeson supplements interviews with Albert and Knoop with pieces from the popular press “uncovering” Leroy’s identity and pursuing...

The Banana Man

Mike Kelley

1983, 28:15 min, color, sound

Writes Kelley: "This is my only truly solo video project. The tape is an exploration of character and was done in direct reaction to my performance work at the time, which was characterless. Video seemed a good way, by virtue of it not operating in 'real' time, of dealing with character and...

The Baptism

Barbara Hammer

1968, 9:21 min, color, silent, Super 8mm film on HD video