Allan Kaprow

An unreleased diary film shot during the Fairleigh-Dickinson Artist Seminar simultaneous to the production of Back and Forth by Michael Snow.

A comprehensive documentation of new art movements from 1945 to the present day. Beginning with the "Internationale Situationniste," "Cobra," "Spur," and "Wiener Gruppe" groups in Europe, and moving on to the international Happening and Fluxus movements, including the Viennese Actionists, and from 1970 onward to international Body and Performance Art, which also encompassed media art—film and video—the documentary presents film and photographic material from these art movements.

Filmed in West Berlin, WARM-UPS, by the American conceptual artist Allan Kaprow, is a recreation of a performance originally enacted in Boston, in which individuals assess the flow of body heat from hands, torsos, and feet to adjacent surfaces. As the film’s voiceover itself notes, “Using words and pictures it condenses the times and spaces of the real event into a graphic illustration of what happened.”

The influence of Jewish fathers on their sons and the complexity of familial relationships are explored in a witty, poignant portrait of two artists. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (whose father Louis was a poet in his own right) and performance artist/sculptor Allan Kaprow (whose father is a high-powered lawyer) are the sons who struggle with and against the influences of these patriarchal figures.

Produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, THE MEDIUM IS THE MEDIUM is one of the earliest and most prescient examples of the collaboration between public television and the emerging field of video art in the U.S. WGBH commissioned artists – Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, Otto Piene, James Seawright, Thomas Tadlock, and Aldo Tambellini – to create original works for broadcast television. Their works explored the parameters of the new medium, from image processing and interactivity to video dance and sculpture.

Investigates the central ideas of Marshall McLuhan using pictorial techniques and including his own comments. Examines the reaction of others to his views and points out that his interest is the impact of electronic technology on the contemporary world.

Filmed in West Berlin, WARM-UPS, by the American conceptual artist Allan Kaprow, is a recreation of a performance originally enacted in Boston, in which individuals assess the flow of body heat from hands, torsos, and feet to adjacent surfaces. As the film’s voiceover itself notes, “Using words and pictures it condenses the times and spaces of the real event into a graphic illustration of what happened.”

Produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, THE MEDIUM IS THE MEDIUM is one of the earliest and most prescient examples of the collaboration between public television and the emerging field of video art in the U.S. WGBH commissioned artists – Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, Otto Piene, James Seawright, Thomas Tadlock, and Aldo Tambellini – to create original works for broadcast television. Their works explored the parameters of the new medium, from image processing and interactivity to video dance and sculpture.

A film of a happening by Allan Kaprow.

Produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, the Medium Is the Medium is one of the earliest and most prescient examples of the collaboration between public television and the emerging field of video art in the U.S. WGBH commissioned artists — Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, Otto Piene, James Seawright, Thomas Tadlock and Aldo Tambellini — to create original works for broadcast television. Their works explored the parameters of the new medium, from image processing and interactivity to video dance and sculpture.