Aldo Tambellini
1930 - 2020
Black Plus X
Aldo Tambellini
Tambellini here focuses on contemporary life in a black community. The extra, the “X” of Black Plus X, is a filmic device by which a black person is instantaneously turned white by the mere projection of the negative image. The time is summer, and the place is an oceanside amusement park where black children are playing in the surf and enjoying the rides, quite oblivious to Tambellini’s tongue-in-cheek “solution” to the race problem.
Black Plus X
Blackout
Aldo Tambellini
This film, like an action painting by Franz Kline, is a rising crescendo of abstract images. Rapid cuts of white forms on a black background supplemented by an equally abstract soundtrack give the impression of a bombardment in celestial space or on a battlefield where cannons fire on an unseen enemy in the night.
Blackout
Black TV
Aldo Tambellini
Black TV is the title of Tambellini’s best-known videographic film, which is part of a large intermedia project about American television. Compiled from filmed television news programs and personal experimental videotapes, Black TV has been seen in many versions during the four-year period in which Tambellini constantly re-edited it (1964-68).
Black TV
The Day Before the Moon Landing
Aldo Tambellini
The Day Before the Moon Landing (1969) is the first in a series of videos Tambellini made to capture broadcast television as it was experienced live. Unlike more involved works such as Black TV, the video simply records Tambellini channel surfing between the networks on July 19, 1969, the day before Apollo 11 landed.
The Day Before the Moon Landing
Black Gate Cologne (Ein Lichtspiel)
Otto Piene, Aldo Tambellini
Often cited as the first television program made by artists, "Black Gate Cologne" is a live event involving films, light objects and the participation of the studio audience, comprised of footage from two consecutive 45-minute broadcasts with different audiences filmed at the WDR "Electronic Studio' in Cologne, Germany.
Black Gate Cologne (A Light Play)
6673
Aldo Tambellini
It was difficult to find labs where I could make copies of my first tape; however, I found a place near LaGuardia Airport called Video Flight. They agreed to copy my tape. And while they were doing this I saw test patterns and other electronic images on the monitors that excited me. I spoke with the young engineers and decided to collaborate with them, returning to make a second tape of the electronic images. This manipulation of the test patterns became my second tape. The sound heard on the tape was from an oscilloscope, which I controlled, and through the sound I manipulated the images; later in the tape there is the sound of my own voice improvising as I reacted to the images. In 1973, Public Television in New York City, Channel 13, opened a new television lab and gave some artists access to it. The 55-minute black and white tape from 1966 described above was reprocessed in 1973 at Channel 13 using the Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer; thus the title 6673.
6673
Cathodic Works
Aldo Tambellini
"Presenting, for the first time, a selection of the cathodic experimental works from the seminal Italo-American artist Aldo Tambellini; a selection of classic documents of one of the first pioneers of video art and audiovisual experimentation from New York east side scene of the 60s and 70s. Unreleased and classic works available for the first time. Curated by Pia Bolognesi e Giulio Bursi." -Black Video 1 -Black Video 2 -Black Spiral -Black Video 1 Projections -6673 -Minus One -Clone -Interview at the Black Gate Theatre
Cathodic Works
The Medium Is the Medium
Otto Piene, Allan Kaprow
Produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, the Medium Is the Medium is one of the earliest and most prescient examples of the collaboration between public television and the emerging field of video art in the U.S. WGBH commissioned artists — Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, Otto Piene, James Seawright, Thomas Tadlock and Aldo Tambellini — to create original works for broadcast television. Their works explored the parameters of the new medium, from image processing and interactivity to video dance and sculpture.
The Medium Is the Medium
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Aldo Tambellini, Anthony Tenczar
Winner of the New England Film Festival, Best Experimental Film 2005; Winner of the Syracuse International Film Festival, Best Experimental 2006. As a survivor of WWII in Italy, when at the age of 13 ½, my neighborhood was bombed by the B-23 on the Day of the Epiphany, 44. Twenty-one of my neighbors were killed and many wounded. LISTEN to the collateral damage of war! The killing fields, the young soldiers wasted lives.. Why War? Asks a child.
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