Open Circuits Revisited

EVENTS REGISTRATION

Open Circuits Revisited

The groundbreaking Open Circuits: An International Conference on the Future of Television, held at MoMA in 1974, brought together artists, theorists, curators, arts administrators, and critics to discuss the challenges and opportunities of artists' television and video. The atmosphere was electric, and every session sparked lively debate about participants’ distinct viewpoints on the aesthetic and cultural impact of video.

On the 50th anniversary of this landmark event, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), NYU's Center for Disability Studies, and the NYU Steinhardt Department of Media, Culture, and Communication (MCC), which is celebrating its own 50th anniversary, present a series of public lectures and events to mark this watershed moment in the history of the burgeoning medium of video. 

Open Circuits Revisited includes a series of free open events, commissioned texts and oral histories published online, and closed discussion sessions bringing together artists and practitioners to address contemporary issues of video art. During public events, media studies scholars Susan Murray and Fred Turner will address historical relationships between video and television technologies and democracy in the United States, and artist-scholars Whit Pow and Alexander Galloway will discuss randomness, noise, and error in media practices. 

Public Events Schedule

Thursday, October 17
Susan Murray and Fred Turner in Conversation, with introductions by Rebecca Cleman and Nick Mirzoeff
Television utopias of the 1970s and their continued relevance to our current political, cultural, and technological landscape.
7:00-9:00pm
NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts
16-20 Cooper Sq., Ground Floor Studio, New York, NY, 10003

Friday, October 18
Book Launch and Reception
The New Television: Video After Television (MIT Press)
7:00-9:00pm
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)
264 Canal Street, #3W
New York, NY 10013

Saturday, October 19
Alexander Galloway x Whit Pow: Error, Noise, & Randomness
Alexander Galloway and Whit Pow explore the history of video art through the lens of the glitch.
3:00-5:00pm
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)
264 Canal Street, #3W
New York, NY 10013
Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for Disability Studies

Presenter Biographies

Rebecca Cleman, Electronic Arts Intermix
Rebecca Cleman is Executive Director of Electronic Arts Intermix and a writer. She has programmed screenings and special projects for such venues as the International House Philadelphia; the Museum of Art and Design, Anthology Film Archives, and Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City; and the Julia Stoschek Collection, Germany.

Alexander R. Galloway, New York University
Alexander R. Galloway is a professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. His most recent book is Uncomputable: Play and Politics In the Long Digital Age (Verso, 2021).

Nicholas Mirzoeff, New York University
Nicholas Mirzoeff is Professor and chair of the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU. He is the author of several foundational books on Visual Studies, including The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality and White Sight: Visual Politics and Practices of Whiteness.

Susan Murray, New York University
Susan Murray is Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU. She is the author of Bright Signals: A History of Color Television and was a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow.

Whit Pow, New York University
Whit Pow is an assistant professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Their work focuses on queer and transgender (trans) histories of games, computational media and electronic art. Their latest article, "How the Computer Taught Us to See," is published in Camera Obscura by Duke University Press.

Fred Turner, Stanford University
Fred Turner is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University. He is the author most recently, with Mary Beth Meehan, of Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America.

If you have any accessibility needs or questions about our access plans for these events, please contact cstrange@eai.org. We can accommodate requests for ASL interpretation up to two weeks prior to October 17. HEPA filters will be on the premises for all events, provided by Artists in Resistance NYC.