Series: Artist's Showcase
Program: Chant A Capella
Date: 1978-01-01
Subject: Performance art; Singing
Copyright Holder: Copyright holder is unidentified.

Clip Description
Performance artists, musicians, and poets stage works for the camera in this video by Davidson Gigliotti. Stuart Sherman arranges card games, chess pieces, foliage, and miniatures. Julia Heyward delivers a singing monologue, incorporating bird songs and noises. Jean Dupy and Olga Adorno sing a repetitive song in French about Magaritta, who loves "les frites." They carve their way through a paper backdrop and eat a plate of fried potatoes on the table before them, continuing to sing despite the fact that their mouths are increasingly full. Both wear blonde wigs and blue eye shadow. Don Cherry sings a composition comprised of wordless sounds, looking at the camera dead-on. The naked body of Olga Adorno, shown from the waist down, tiptoes percussively across a floor, issuing shrill cries. The poet Jackson Mac Low recites a wordless composition. There is no credit information on the tape.

This was acquired and broadcast as part of "Artist's Showcase."

"Artist's Showcase" was a series designed to showcase video art and experimental work from WGBH. The program ran on Sunday evenings at 11 P.M., from the fall of 1976 through 1982. In the early 1970's, "Artist's Showcase" was the only consistent broadcast outlet for many of the Workshop productions. Most materials of broadcast quality created at WGBH in the mid-1970's were shown as part of this series. Additionally, earlier video art experiments and segments of related shows, such as "Mixed Bag" or "What's Happening Mr. Silver" were broadcast under these auspices. This series was also a broadcast outlet for a handful of works by video artists that were not created at WGBH but only acquired for this purpose. Some compilation reels showing highlights of Workshop activity were also broadcast.

Program Description
Performance artists, musicians, and poets stage works for the camera in this video by Davidson Gigliotti. Stuart Sherman arranges card games, chess pieces, foliage, and miniatures. Julia Heyward delivers a singing monologue, incorporating bird songs and noises. Jean Dupy and Olga Adorno sing a repetitive song in French about Magaritta, who loves "les frites." They carve their way through a paper backdrop and eat the a plate of fried potatoes on the table before them, continuing to sing despite the fact that their mouths are increasingly full. Both wear blonde wigs and blue eye shadow. Don Cherry sings a composition comprised of wordless sounds, looking at the camera dead-on. The naked body of Olga Adorno, shown from the waist down, tiptoes percussively across a floor, issuing shrill cries. The poet Jackson Mac Low recites a wordless composition. There is no credit information on the tape.

This was acquired and broadcast as part of "Artist's Showcase."

"Artist's Showcase" was a series designed to showcase video art and experimental work from WGBH. The program ran on Sunday evenings at 11 P.M., from the fall of 1976 through 1982. In the early 1970's, "Artist's Showcase" was the only consistent broadcast outlet for many of the Workshop productions. Most materials of broadcast quality created at WGBH in the mid-1970's were shown as part of this series. Additionally, earlier video art experiments and segments of related shows, such as "Mixed Bag" or "What's Happening Mr. Silver" were broadcast under these auspices. This series was also a broadcast outlet for a handful of works by video artists that were not created at WGBH but only acquired for this purpose. Some compilation reels showing highlights of Workshop activity were also broadcast.

Series Description
The New Television Workshop originated at WGBH, a public broadcasting station in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1974 to support the creation and development of experimental video art. This experimental programming included dance, drama, music, performance and visual arts on video and film. As early as 1968, WGBH was committed to the development of video art through residency programs, with artists such as Nam June Paik, and the "Rockefeller Artists-in-Television" project. Many of these early works (pre-1974) were broadcast both locally and nationally.

As an umbrella for arts related programming, the Workshop included "Artist's Showcase, " "Frames of Reference, " "Dance for Camera, " "Poetry Breaks," and "New Television," as well as acquired arts programming. Individual works were created for "Visions," a series produced by WNET (New York), and "Alive From Off Center," a series produced by KTCA (St. Paul - Minneapolis). The Contemporary Art Television (CAT) Fund was co-founded by the Workshop and Boston's Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in the 1980's, to commission works by video artists. In 1993 the Workshop ceased production at WGBH.

See also: http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/NTW/FA/TITLES/Chant182.HTML