Sticky Impulse
Messages from the Revolution(s) 1971-1973
September 29 – October 12. 2020
Messages from the Revolution(s) features anti-racist and anti-fascist communiqués and speeches by US activists recorded during the Nixon years and circulated through underground and non-conventional channels in Canada.
An influx of US-produced video by activists and media democracy advocates made its way to their counterparts in Vancouver where there was a significant population of transient youth and American draft resisters who both featured prominently in social and political change movements on the west coast. Two of the ways these communities connected and shared video content specifically was through emerging, informal networks of video producers and community organizations like the Video Inn Library.
Traces from that season of intracontinental exchange are represented in this program. Spokespersons from the American Indian Movement, Black Panther Party International Division (Algeria), Dialogue: Conspiracy radio show, and Operation PUSH are represented.
It should be noted that, in all but one, these documentations of Black and Indigenous struggles were produced by white settlers. The Portapak 1/2″ video recorder was affordable in comparison to broadcast equipment, but it was still a tool of privilege. Where video was produced within and by marginalized communities for organizing or educational purposes, it tended to, rightfully, remain there. The majority of videos on race, gender and sexuality issues in the Video Inn Library from the first years of this technology reflect this.
Acknowledgement
The Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive (CDMLA) is situated on the Unceded Coast Salish Territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Local Strategies Towards an International Exchange Network
International Video Exchange Network
One mechanism for the circulation of non-commercial video from south of the border was a video exchange network facilitated from Vancouver on the Unceded Coast Salish Territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
In 1971, Michael Goldberg – an artist with the Vancouver-based Intermedia collective, and under the aegis of Image Bank (a mail art project of Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov) – sent 1000 postcards worldwide to groups and individuals working with small-format video suggesting a means to connecting with each other. People responded with their contact information, details about the tech they had access to, and whatever they felt was relevant to communicate about their practice. This data was published in the “Video Exchange Directory Bottin Video International”, the first of eight such directories published between 1971 and 1981.
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Matrix International Video Conference & Festival
Matrix was a video conference and festival held in January 17-21, 1973, in Vancouver, organized by Michael Goldberg, Patricia “Trish” Hardman, and Noelle Peltier (Vancouver Art Gallery). 160 delegates from Europe, Japan, the United States, and Canada attended, many participants in the exchange network.
Matrix delegates were asked to contribute videos to a future video library proposed by Michael Goldberg as one concrete response to ideas coming out of the conference. Seventy-nine 1/2″ open reel tapes comprised that original deposit to the Video Inn Library.
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The Video Inn Library
The Video Inn Library opened to the public on the main floor of a rooming house at 261 Powell Street in the Downtown Eastside shortly after Matrix. It is most simply described as “a free drop-in centre open to one and all”. (Making Video “In”: The Contested Ground of Alternative Video on the West Coast. Ed. Jennifer Abbott).
The publics in closest geographic proximity to the Library were the relatively transient political left, art, and counter-culture populations, drawn to the inexpensive housing; the historically situated Chinese and Japanese communities; and First Nations, on whose unceded territories the DTES was built, and from nations outside those territories.
Videos and publications were freely available for in-house use. Viewers were trained in the use of open reel playback equipment so they could self-program and start and end viewing at will – a new concept. It was still four years before the first video rental store was opened or the first VHS home recording unit was sold in North America.
Putting video recorders in the hands of the public and the free and autonomous access to video technology and sharing networks, were early strategies to spread alternative viewpoints and information through this new medium of small-format video.
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Images
Video Exchange Directory postcard. Publisher: Image Bank. c1970.
Video Exchange Directory introduction page. Publisher: Intermedia. 1971.
Delegates at Matrix International Video Conference. Vancouver, Canada. 1973. Photo credit: Murray Skuce
Video Inn, 261 Powell Street, Vancouver, Canada. c.1977. Photo credit: S.V.E.S.
The Bust of Timothy Leary
Eldridge Cleaver, Guy Pignolet, Revolutionary People’s Communications Network
Algeria 1971 33:39
Recorded on September 12, 1971, at the compound of the Black Panthers in exile in Algeria following Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver’s split from the original party. The video explains the decision to place Timothy and Rosemary Leary under house arrest. Leary had initially been given sanctuary at the request of the Weathermen, who had facilitated Leary’s September 1970 prison break. Cleaver articulates the reasons for Leary’s house arrest including the Panther’s opposition to Leary’s proposition that LSD was a useful tool for revolution, the severing of the Panthers International’s alignment with white U.S. activist groups such as the Yippies, Leary’s racism and delusions, and his endangerment of the Black Panthers International Division.
In a 1971 interview in L.A., Kathleen Cleaver talked about the new Revolutionary People’s Communications Network (RPCN) – “not an organization but a network of communication and coordination link-ups between various worldwide organizations of struggle,” and called for “a united front around the issue of prisons and political prisoners.”
Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998): Cleaver returned to the US in 1975, denounced the Panthers, joined the Republican Party, and in 1983, became a member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.
Guy Pignolet (1942-): Between the years he worked as a field engineer in the oil industry in the Middle East, Africa and Indonesia (1964-1971) and his career as an educator (from 1981 for the French Space Agency CNES), Pignolet was the Founder and Manager of CERCAV- Réunion Center for Audio-Visual Communication and a self-proclaimed pioneer of portable video arts (1972-1973).
More About Accession #139
Goldberg recalls that The Black Panther Party International Division were the first to return information via the Video Exchange Directory inaugural postcard solicitation. The image below is the BPP’s listing in the 1971 Video Exchange Directory.
The Bust of Timothy Leary was the most watched video at the Video Inn Library between 1974 and 1976.
Wounded Knee Dispatch
Peter Berg
Wounded Knee, South Dakota 1973 28:30
Recorded onsite during the Wounded Knee occupation on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation by Oglala Lakota and the American Indian Movement in early 1973. AIM spokespersons, founder Dennis James Banks (Chippewa, 1937-2017), Oglala Sioux activist Russell Means (1939-2012), and others are represented. They go into the reasons of the occupation and the conflict between traditional Oglala Sioux and the BIA tribal council chairperson Richard Wilson.
Peter Berg (1937-2011) was an American video producer interested in counterculture activities, human rights, and the environment. In the early 1960’s he was a performer with San Francisco Mime Troupe and is credited with coining the term “guerrilla theatre”. Members of the troupe, including Berg, formed the Diggers, creating a Free Store and distributing food. In 1969 Berg and his family caravaned across the US fueling his interest in environmentalism. In 1973 he founded the Planet Drum Foundation.
More About Accession #84
Berg attended Matrix and contributed Trucker Caravan (Accession #12) and Postcards (Accession #29) to the fledgling video library. Wounded Knee Dispatch was deposited in 1975.
The original intent of the production was to sell copies as a fundraiser in support of the occupation at Wounded Knee but it ended before the tape could circulate.
The video was on the Top Ten most-watched List at the Video Inn Library in 1975, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983.
The Video Inn Library had a large Indigenous viewership, a direct result of its location. The tape’s popularity was matched by other tapes relevent to the local Indigenous community during VIVO’s years at Powell Street (1973-1984). Also in the Top Ten over those years were:
Burning of Custer: The War in South Dakota
(Native American Video, US, 1973, Accession #401)
Why Wounded Knee?
(Miles Mogulescu/AIM, US, 1974, Accession #144)
Leonard Peltier Trial
(Crow Dog & Leonard Peltier, US, 1978, Accession #719)
Leonard Peltier Demonstration/Extradition
(Alma House, Canada, 1976, Accession #504)
Jesse Jackson at National Tenants Organization AGM. Chicago. 1973.
New World Communications, Steve Sweitzer
Chicago 1973 28:33
Jesse Jackson Sr. calls for a more aggressive fight for better housing by the Black community, argues that financial need transcends race and gender as it relates to political power, and that “progress is in proportion to the organization of the poor, not the goodness of the President…It will not be the absence of Nixon, but the presence of us, that liberates us.”
Recorded at the Pick-Congress Hotel (now The Congress Plaza Hotel) during the National Tenants Organization AGM (August 31-September 3, 1973).
Jesse Jackson Sr. (1941-) was one of The Greensboro Eight, participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches, worked with Martin Luther King Jr., and in 1973, he was with Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity). He served as a shadow U.S. Senator for the District of Columbia (1991- 1997).
About New World Communications
NWC was an Indianapolis non-profit. They advocated for community cable as an educational tool, offered video recording support to community groups, and trained students and others on the video portapak and camera operation for community cable.
Accession #191
Producer description from Video Inn Tape Catalogue c.1975:
J.J. says he’s tired of applying to judges and getting no result. Time for rent strikes. Progressive legislation doesn’t come from presidents voluntarily – they must be prodded. Talks about causes of slums…and attitudes towards abortion.
Angela Davis U.C.L.A. Lecture
Leni Goldberg
California 1973 48:00
Documentation of Angela Davis’ lecture at U.C.L.A. following her acquittal for the charge of aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder in the death of Judge Harold Hale.*
The tape opens with a brief speech by Davis’ lawyer, civil rights attorney Leo Branton Jr. (00:35-09:10). He paraphrases portions from his final arguments at Davis’ trial.
00:00-00:34 Misc. announcements read by Davis.
00:35-09:10 Davis’ lawyer, civil rights attorney Leo Branton Jr.
09:10-11:40 Resetting the stage.
11:41-51:50 Angela Davis (first 5 seconds silent)
Angela Davis (1944-) a member of the Communist Party USA, an affiliate of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Black Panther Party, LGBTQ activist, and an acting assistant professor of Philosophy at UCLA from 1969.
*The exact date of this video is unrecorded, however, based on information in the video,it was recorded between June 5 and 9, 1972.
More About Accession #53
Leni Goldberg first engaged with the network through his listing in the 1971 Video Exchange Directory. He attended Matrix in 1973 and also shot the only video footage at the archive of the event, The Matrix Tape, Accession #69.
Angela Davis U.C.L.A. Lecture was listed in the Video Exchange Tape Catalogue (1977)and was on the library’s Top Ten in 1979.
Mae Brussell: Conspiracy
Focus On Media (Sue Fox & Mae Brussell production)
Santa Cruz, California 1972 26.10
Brussell explains her most recent research into Watergate, the CIA, and monopoly power.
This video was recorded on September 13, 1972: 19 days after Nixon announced that John Dean’s internal investigation into the Watergate break-in had s found no evidence of White House involvement, and 10 days before The Washington Post reported that the Attorney General, John Mitchell, had controlled a secret fund to finance intelligence gathering against Democrats.
Mae Brussell was a prolific anti-fascist political researcher who had been inspired by the assassination of President Kennedy. She was noted for her radio program, Dialogue: Conspiracy (later World Watchers International) on KLRB-FM, Carmel, California. She became known as “The Queen of Conspiracy” by her fans and “The Bionic Researcher” by Paul Kassner, (member of the Yippie Party, one of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters) publisher of her first article in his magazine, The Realist – “Why Was Martha Mitchell Kidnapped?” and her twice-monthly Conspiracy Newsletter ( financially supported by John Lennon and Yoko Ono).
More About Accession #44
This video was brought to the Matrix Conference by producer Sue Fox, a delegate for Focus On Media, San Jose, California. The video (with Earthmeet ’72 w/Cap’n Fourtrack, Accession #3) was left with the organizers, one of the deposits to the future Video Inn Library.
Fox notes this is a co-production between herself and fellow-Monterey Bay resident, Brussell. Like Brussell’s radio show, the video style is that of a communique. Fox likely intended it for immediate distribution through whatever video networks were accessible to Fox.
