Talking Heads1978

In 1977 whilst beginning to address the materiality of Video I became aware of a variety of media techniques including taking in the grammar of television and film such that I wanted to make a comment about what I felt was to come due to the invention of video. After all the term Video was derived from the latin meaning to look or to see. One of the techniques still at play in expressing the authorial voice within television was the Talking Head- the newsreader, the reporter, he or she who is to be believed because they are selected to represent the delivery of truth - or at least that’s how it was in the years leading up to 1977. So to begin: the television or film crew itself is being watched and they become aware of being scrutinised and tell the voyeur to stop watching them and instead look at the outside world. Eventually the camera finds a person and follows them, chases them - but that person turns on the camera and effectively says: "so you want to use me as content fodder - the you’re going to have to listen to how I see it". And what follows is a manifesto that describes the bubble we were in both then - and now. The interlocutor asks us the audience: "is it possible that we establish an ecology of the psyche such that we maintain a way of dealing with both society and the world we live in that is beneficial to both we humans and the world itself?" This work won a prize in the 1979 Tokyo Video Festival.