Thanks for this. In the mid 70s I found 'Expanded Cinema' to be extremely inspirational.
joly On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 1:21 AM nettime's_expanding eulogist < [email protected]> wrote: > < https://www.artforum.com/news/gene-youngblood-1942-2021-85439 > > > April 07, 2021 at 4:14pm > > GENE YOUNGBLOOD (1942-2021) > > Visionary media arts theorist and critic Gene Youngblood, > whose prescient 1970 book Expanded Cinema reshaped the > fields of art and communications, predicted technological > advances in filmmaking, and offered the first serious > recognition of video and software-based works as cinematic > art forms, died on April 6 in Santa Fe at the age of > seventy-eight. > > Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1942, Youngblood spent > most of the 1960s in Los Angeles variously working as a > reporter and film critic for the Los Angeles > Herald-Examiner, as a reporter for KHJ-TV, and as an arts > commentator for KPFK. In 1967, he was hired at $80 a week as > associate editor at the Los Angeles Free Press, the first > and most influential countercultural organ of its time. > > He would remain at the publication until 1970, when he began > co-teaching at California Institute of the Arts, with video > artist Nam June Paik, one of the first college courses on > the history of video. That summer, his "Call to Arms" was > published in the inaugural issue of the crucial journal > Radical Software. The piece manifested Youngblood's unending > drive to democratize the media, announcing, "The media must > be liberated, must be removed from private ownership and > commercial sponsorship, must be placed in the service of all > humanity." > > A few months later, Youngblood published Expanded Cinema, > much of which was based on his columns for the LA Free > Press. Though the volume took as its title a term coined by > Stan VanDerBeek, "it was Gene Youngblood who put it on the > cover of a book, filled it with rocket fuel, and sent it > buzzing through the late-1960s art world like a heat-seeking > missile," wrote Caroline A. Jones in Artforum in 2020, on > the occasion of the book's fiftieth anniversary. Expanded > Cinema -- in which Youngblood limned concepts ranging from the > Paleocybernetic Age to the videosphere to "new nostalgia," > all in context of what he termed the "global intermedia > network" -- is considered a seminal work in the field of > communications. "I thought maybe four hippies would read > it," Youngblood wrote decades later. The book sold nearly > fifty thousand copies in seven years. > > Youngblood lectured on media arts theory at more than four > hundred higher-learning institutions. In 1988, he founded > the moving image arts department at the College of Santa Fe, > where he remained a professor for years (the institution, > which in 2010 was rechristened the Santa Fe University of > Art and Design, closed in 2018). Though the rise of the > internet hardly led to the utopian mediascape Youngblood had > hoped for -- "The architecture of tyranny is in place," he > wrote in 2013; "truth-telling and dissent are > criminalized" -- he continued to advocate for a counterculture > media characterized by radical democracy. "Anything less," > he wrote, "is a betrayal of us all." > > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected] > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: > -- -------------------------------------- Joly MacFie +12185659365 -------------------------------------- -
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected] # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
