VIDEO 50 is a televised artwork made in 1978 that depicts the dream life of television, while anticipating the flexibility of video in the computer age. The work is 50 minutes long and consists of 100 episodes, each 30 seconds in length. As per Wilson’s intentions, each episode can be viewed separately or in groups, in any order, for any duration of time.
In the age before infomercials and 24-hour programming cycles, VIDEO 50 was frequently used as late night filler on TV stations in Germany, France, Belgium and Switzerland. While it has been screened in numerous film festivals and museums, its from these random and unannounced appearances on late night European television that the majority of people have seen VIDEO 50; in fragments, without any way of figuring out what they were looking at.
There is something incredibly romantic about this. It’s as if Wilson colluded with broadcasters to provide a visual representation for the dream cycle of a TV station after it has signed off for the day and gone to sleep. The sense that you’re watching a TV dream is underscored by the absence of dialog and a soundtrack composed almost entirely of music and sound effects. As in a dream, what’s seen and what’s heard frequently do not match up, creating weird half-jokes that are funny in a way that’s difficult to describe after the fact.
Another way to describe VIDEO 50 would be as a Sesame Street episode for the adult mind. Like Sesame Street, it’s episodic and two-track with a narrative that incorporates longer, recurring elements and characters, along with standalone, one-off clips to convey a single joke or idea. Watching VIDEO 50, viewers enter a childlike state of anticipation: expectation mounts, and is then rewarded or subverted. In this way it’s drug-like and, like drugs, VIDEO 50 is worth experimenting with at least once.
Tonight there will be a screening of VIDEO 50 at 92Y Tribeca. The event will be introduced by Noah Khoshbin, producer of Robert Wilson’s Voom portraits, and a discussion featuring Katharina Otto Bernstein (director of Absolute Wilson) and Carlos Soto of Girlmachine will follow the screening. This is not one you want to miss.
92Y Tribeca and Cinebeasts present VIDEO 50
200 Hudson Street
May 11
8pm
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