Writing

Selling Out, Buying In: Brakhage, Warhol, and BAVC

Originally published in Convergence Media History, edited by Janet Staiger and Sabine Hake, Routledge, 2009.

Essay on Brakhage, Warhol, and the Bay Area Video Coalition and the idea of “selling out” and “buying into” the notion of industrial or corporate media production. Brakhage represents a hardcore artisanal hands on production model. Warhol, while seemingly also artisanal in his production approach, mimics the factory model of Hollywood production. And BAVC begins as an artist run alternative media space and ends up as a training center for corporate and business media (with a side menu of non-profit media production). Which model serves media-makers best?

Checkout Line circa 2005

Micro-Ethnographies of the Screen: The Supermarket

Shopping for food and interacting with screens in Los Angeles 2005.

Originally published in Flow Journal, Department of Radio-Film-Television, University of Texas at Austin.

Approaching the Summit

Micro-Ethnographies of the Screen: The Last Screen on Earth

Visual Essay on the images found on a pocket camera after my friend’s final ascent up Mt. Fuji in Japan.

Originally published in Flow Journal, Department of Radio-Film-Television, University of Texas at Austin.

An American Flag pictured on a snowy distortion field from an old tube television.
Old Glory

Micro-Ethnographies of the Screen: Sign-Off

Late night movies, sentimental patriotism, and the infinite snow of the six hours of dead air on TV in the 1960s. Oh, and Andy Warhol’s Empire (1964).

Originally published in Flow Journal, Department of Radio-Film-Television, University of Texas at Austin.