Considerations on the Subject of Interference

The Video special issue of Studio International, published in London and edited by Richard Cork, was a landmark publication in effecting the acceptance of video as an art form in Britain, some years behind the rest of the world. Following The Video Show at the Serpentine Gallery in the previous year, a group of practitioners were asked to submit a one-page article. My contribution referred to an earlier work where the physical manipulation of the videotape passing over the recorder head created immediate breakup of the image recording the procedure. The image of intervention references 'television interference' (caused by poor broadcast reception) as a rhetorical statement about television state-licensed monopolies.