The Image Con Text project when it commenced in 1978 was about interaction of the analogue kind, between the artist and an audience gathered for a screening. It presented a multiplicity of information, or contextualising material as it was called then, to provide for ‘new’ audiences not only a way into the artworks but also access to the conditions and processes which gave them the form and the content they adopted. This practice-based research, as it is now called, being pursued or produced during that period was rigorous as well as vigorous, but for the most part unrecognised as such.
The pro-active, interventionist strategy pursued was partly in response to schemes that had been initiated by funders such as the Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB)1, to subsidise screening venues for the cost of transporting, accommodating and paying a screening fee to artists invited to show their work to a local audience. A condition for accepting the subsidy was that there would be no admission fee. This ruled out many commercial or semi-commercial venues with overhead costs to maintain. The majority of venues were those who already had these costs covered such as colleges of art, universities and public exhibition spaces and screens. Consequently, many of the audiences were younger people who had little knowledge of the work or its context.
The screenings I undertook in the mid-70s followed a pattern adopted by many visiting artists – a few introductory words and then at the end of the screening, opening-up responses from the (usually) youthful audience. The Image Con Text project provided a context for viewing the film and video works I would often be invited to screen – it wasn’t exactly a history lesson, or about philosophy, or politics, or a tenuously connected series of anecdotes, but something of a mix of all these. It employed a format that combined different media forms, described variously as expanded cinema, film performance or simply, performance work. It was part of a process of convergence of media that had been occurring amongst practitioners throughout the 60s and 70s. It was not until later that ‘media art’ became the generally accepted term for this activity.
The Image Con Text project comprised three parts. The first, described some of the conditions that had been involved in giving the films the form they adopted. This took two distinct approaches as presentational performances – from the artists’ viewpoint in 1978, then later in 1981 from the audience viewpoint, (the film-maker being a section of the audience too). The second aspect of the project was as on-going research, regular live presentations to audiences, the feedback from which could be fed into subsequent presentations. Thirdly, a videotape version not only archived the presentation performance but extended its meanings to later audiences. This process was later extended following transfer to DVD, introducing the possibility of interactive study utilising the dynamic linking of the format.
