Please Turn Us On Pt II // until 31 May 2017
Please Turn Us On Pt II
Gallery 3
8th April – 31st May 2017
Carole Roussopoulos
Heather Phillipson
Stansfield/Hooykaas
Susan Mogul
Please Turn Us On pt II continues the dialogue between early video art and international countercultures. Stansfield/Hooykaas’ What’s It To You (1975) and Heather Phillipson’s You Can Use Your Smartphone (2014) remain from Please Turn Us On pt I and are accompanied by two works exploring video technology’s importance to radical feminist groups in the early 1970s.
What’s It To You? is a pioneering work by artist duo Elsa Stansfield and Madelon Hooykaas. Made in Glasgow, using the Third Eye Centre’s video equipment, What’s It To You? allowed the local community to directly respond to this groundbreaking technology.
Original photographs and archive materials from the project offer insight into artists’ approach to early video. Alongside are two politically engaged and unconventional films whose relevance in the political climate of 2017 should not be underestimated.
Carole Roussopoulos’s Le F.H.A.R. (1971) and Susan Mogul’s Feminist Studio Workshop Videoletter (1975) explore how important social and political groups grabbed hold of video tech to capture, chronicle and share their message.
The commission by British artist Heather Phillipson questions the place of countercultures in the 21st century and how the normalisation of video recording has affected the contemporary society.