Video C
/3
- Video C
- 1974
- video, b&w, sound
- 4min, 14sec
“Video C”, along with “Video P”, belongs to the “Video A–Z” series (1974–1976), prepared in 1974 and realized in 1975. This series presents a sequence of “cognitive” study cases (A, N, P, T, U, W) of a symbolic relationship between “‘man and camera” working in a television studio (being far beyond the famous “man with the camera”) and with access to the abilities of the new medium of television: the available equipment included trick mixers and a new editing/cutting table. According to Paweł Kwiek’s text “Video” (for a catalogue of Galeria Remont, Warsaw, 1976), “Video C” shows his hands manipulating a trick mixer, with the results of the mixer’s work immediately visible on the TV screen. “The effects consist in the appearance and disappearance of a shape of a little triangle. There are three relationships that can be observed simultaneously: between the picture of the hands and the triangle; between the manipulation of the mixer and the alternations of the triangle; and between situation 1 and situation 2. Thus, I obtain one continuous and two directional relationships between the active and the passive, the signified and the signifier, the objective and the subjective, both within the time of “Video C”’s realization and within that of its perception. In this context, certain acts are performed, leading to the following situations: pushing a triangle out of the screen by hand, moving the triangle against the background of the body, moving the body out of the triangle’s way, touching and drawing the outline of the triangle with a finger, touching and drawing the outline of the body with the triangle, appearance and disappearance of the triangle.” This film also revealed the “phenomenology of the medium,” as examined further in the subsequent “Video P”. But here, Kwiek’s critical gesture was more visible, possibly addressed to the Polish reality of the 1970s, where television was a medium of manipulation, propaganda and censorship. B.P.