The Computer-Laser-Videos of Raphael Montañez Ortiz
A key figure in the Destruction in Art movement of the 1960s, American conceptual artist Raphael Montañez Ortiz is best known for his object-based work and performance art, most notably his piano destruction concerts. However, his expansive oeuvre of time-based media art also merits revisiting. Ortiz experimented with film starting in the late 1950s, creating found-footage films that deconstruct/reconstruct conventional Hollywood, newsreel and instructional films as a means of combating the xenophobia, classism and repression manifested within them.
Decades later, Ortiz revisited this practice of partition and random reassembly; 1984 to 1997 was a fruitful period resulting in over 50 works Ortiz termed “computer-laser-videos.” The rise of consumer video formats and new technologies brought renewed opportunities for deconstruction — this time, in a realm that merged analog and digital. These videos were made by using films on laserdiscs (mainly titles from the 1930s to 1940s), selecting segments ranging from one to 10 seconds, editing and distorting clips via computer, and using joysticks to move footage back and forth at various speeds. Once it was finalized, Ortiz would transfer the footage to 3/4 in. videotape. This practice resulted in a new visual landscape of disjointed movement that was further heightened by the use of a wave-form generator to alter sound, creating a cacophony of words, music and disembodied noises. In expanding the length of these clips, Ortiz dissects and scrutinizes the whiteness, hegemony and gendered behaviors presented on-screen, reconstructing them as satire, performativity and artifice.
These four selected works are Ortiz’s final computer-laser-videos, marking a significant point in his career as an interdisciplinary artist and pioneer of the Destructivism movement.
Selected works:
– That’s Too Much (R. Montañez Ortiz, 1996).
– Ring Ring Ragtime (R. Montañez Ortiz, 1996).
– Busy Bodies (R. Montañez Ortiz, 1997).
– It’s Coming Up (R. Montañez Ortiz, 1997).
Introduction by UCLA Distinguished Professor Chon Noriega, School of Theater, Film and Television, and Processing Conservator Yesenia Perez.
Co-presented by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.
* Still image: That’s Too Much