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Animating the periphery: Studio of the Streets and the politicization of the Buffalo community through public access television and media literacy

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Animating the periphery: Studio of the Streets and the politicization of the Buffalo community through public access television and media literacy

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ANIMATING THE PERIPHERY:
STUDIO OF THE STREETS AND THE POLITICIZATION OF THE BUFFALO
COMMUNITY THROUGH PUBLIC ACCESS TELEVISION AND MEDIA LITERACY

by

COREY MANSFIELD

A Thesis Presented to the
Faculty of the USC Graduate School
University of Southern California
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
(Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere)

May 2014

i

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Broadcasting America 4
Chapter 2: Rust Belt Roots 11
Chapter 3: Setting up the Soapbox 15
Chapter 4: A Postmodern Purview 24
Chapter 5: Revising the Algorithm 30
Chapter 6: Community Stammering 38
Conclusion: Bodying Back 47
Figure Appendix 54
Bibliography 60

ii

Acknowledgements

I would first like to thank my thesis readers John Tain, Rhea Anastas, and Jennifer West for their
valuable time, insight, and support during this process. I am also more than appreciative of the
assistance and encouragement that Noura Wedell and Dwayne Moser continue to provide within
our MA program.

Thank you Vera Alemani, Ed Cardoni, Michael Cohen, Douglas Dreishpoon, Chris Hill, Cheryl
Jackson, Alexandra Juhasz, Andrew Lampert, Barbara Lattanzi, Andrea Mancuso, and Brian
Springer for sharing your memories and insights with me. Thank you Tony Conrad for
welcoming me into your home and archive. In particular, thank you Carolyn Tennant for your
friendship and mentorship over the years. I would never have come this far if it were not for you.

Thank you to all of my technical advisors: Jax Deluca, Mark Longolucco, and the rest of the
Squeaky Wheel crew, John Klacsmann at Anthology Film Archives, and Christopher Richmond.

Much love to my family and friends, especially to my parents for supporting all of my many
journeys, to my inspiring sister Nicole, and to Logan Miller for his love and patience.

Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude towards the amazing, dedicated practitioners that
make up Buffalo’s past and present media community.

iii

Abstract

This essay provides an historical contextualization of Studio of the Streets, a public
access television program produced by the artists Tony Conrad and Cathy Steffan in Buffalo, NY
from 1990 to 1993. Originally conceived as a recorded demonstration on the steps of City Hall
for increased cable television provisions, the project developed over the years into a means for,
in Conrad’s term, “animating” the politicization of the city’s marginalized inhabitants through
the two-fold processes of face-to-face conversation and video witnessing. The producers’
developing activist ethos and investment in collectivity moreover reflects the prevalence of such
postmodern discourses as identity politics and globalization during that period, in addition to
revealing the radical changes brought about by concurrent and fluctuating shifts in video
technology. In this manner, the significance of Studio of the Streets ultimately reveals itself not
only through its unique theoretical underpinning but also through its placement within the history
of video activism both nationwide and in Buffalo. While the project ultimately failed in its
principal intention of inspiring a new legion of local media producers, Studio of the Streets
maintains relevance today as a model for the issues involved with properly recontextualizing past
activist public access television endeavors either within the art gallery or across the disparate
network of such online video platforms as YouTube.

1

Introduction

Suddenly it becomes possible that there are just others, that we ourselves are an “other” among
others.
1

—Paul Ricoeur

Your first television production is a critical phase in the evolution of our multicultural society.
—Studio of the Streets Pamphlet

It is 7:30 PM, April 16, 1991, in Buffalo, New York. On public access channel 32, Living
Coulour’s 1990 funk on safe sex, “Under Cover of Darkness,” plays over the simple opening
credits for a local program called Studio of the Streets. A man’s voice is heard off screen, “Isn’t
it a beautiful day!” Meanwhile, the text on-screen situates the scene “at 65 Niagara Square on the
steps of City Hall” as the credits fade into a medium close-up of a middle-aged white man in
glasses and a down jacket, with a Band-Aid awkwardly placed across his forehead, speaking to a
white woman wearing a matching pink hat and scarf in front of the building’s sunlit marble
columns. People mill behind them, traversing or relaxing on the stairs, as they casually discuss
the show’s recent episode at the nearby Broadway Market. “Well, we better get started on the
program today,” the man soon announces. “Let’s see who’s around to talk to,” as he turns to
survey the surrounding scene. The simple introduction then segues into sixty minutes of
impromptu conversations with various passersby including, but not limited to, a Viennese art
curator, a Jewish cab driver, a female factory worker, and three young African American sisters.
While recorded rapidly in a do-it-yourself manner with only two handheld camcorders and Hi8
videotape, these compiled voices transmit clearly through the television screen. The candid
discussions of such immediate issues as unemployment and racial tension animate the viewers’

1
Paul Ricoeur, “Civilization and National Cultures,” in History and Truth, trans. Chas A. Kelbley (Evanston, IL: Northwestern

2

homes with the politicized language of the community just outside their door. “This city is so full
of surprises, I can’t even believe it,” the man tellingly chuckles just before the episode ends.
Entitled Studio of the Streets, this weekly segment for public access television was
produced by local media artists Tony Conrad and Cathy Steffan from 1990 to 1993. Conrad, a
university professor with roots to New York City’s avant-garde music and film scenes during the
1960s and 1970s, connected with the documentarian Steffan as a likeminded media advocate.
They originally conceived of Studio of the Streets as a filmed, collective demonstration on the
steps of City Hall to obtain contractual public access funding from the area’s cable provider. The
project soon after evolved, however, into an explicitly political process for, in Conrad’s words,
“animating” discourse amongst under-represented members of the community such as the
unemployed, women, and youth. Further energized by advancements in video technology,
Buffalo’s vibrant media history, and the prevalent discourse of postmodernism, Conrad and
Steffan appropriated existing modes of activist video and media literacy in order to deconstruct
television’s marginalizing images and to transform passive viewers into active producers. As
they asserted in an early pamphlet, “if you are going to participate in our country’s discourse,
you have to get started by first entering into it.”
Through this unique, open system of unmediated dialogue, Studio of the Streets aspired to
develop affirmative commonalities between participants and audiences. Conrad and Steffan
recognized the importance of free speech within productive, democratic societies, a right then at
risk under both the misguided attacks of conservative politicians and the vacillating agendas of
government arts funding. They therefore sought to correct the city’s one-sided political discourse
by not only revealing the biased tropes of media production, but by also adding to the
conversation. This interest in recording Buffalo’s quotidian hum evokes the act of “stammering”

3

discussed within the linguistic paradox of Roland Barthes’s essay “The Rustle of Language.”
Counter to the silent “rustle” achieved through collective pleasure, stammering equals the
auditory “misfires” of an agitated mass.
2
Similarly, the disparate speeches provoked throughout
Studio of the Streets subtly, yet powerfully, expose community unease and municipal
malfunctioning, ultimately positing a dialectic process for effecting change via media.
While Conrad and Steffan failed in engaging a new legion of local public access
producers to continue this mission after three years of near weekly segments, their project
continues to hold relevance within not only Buffalo’s media history but also the ongoing
narrative of activist video. In particular, Studio of the Streets witnessed a recent revival of
curatorial interest due to its seemingly enigmatic presence within Conrad’s celebrated, individual
oeuvre. Such attention affords contemporary audiences both spatial and temporal distance
unbeknownst to its original, community viewership. This retrospection elucidates connections
between Studio of the Streets and earlier public access and video projects that developed both
within and outside of Buffalo. At the same time, with the rise of the Internet and new modes of
virtual circulation and distribution, it also compels a questioning of public access televisions
appropriation by YouTube, an online video network that similarly proffers itself as a platform for
multiculturalism and free speech. Through this contextualization, Studio of the Streets may
regain relevance beyond Conrad’s celebrity as an inspiring example for contemporary media
activism.

2
Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 76-77.

4

Chapter 1: Broadcasting America
Conrad and Steffan’s conception for Studio of the Streets during the early 1990s was not
an isolated vision. Instead, their particular agenda descends from the parallel histories of public
access television and video, commencing in the late 1940s with the development of Community
Antenna Television (CATV), or cable television. In order to assist smaller municipalities unable
to receive broadcast television signals due either to remote locations or to terrain interference,
operators developed a technique of situating antennas in areas with good reception and then
redistributing the signals to individual subscribers via coaxial cables. The first successful
installation of CATV occurred in Astoria, Oregon in 1948. Two years later, 70 cable systems and
around 14,000 subscribers existed throughout the United States. By 1986, 7,471 systems served
more than 41.3 million national subscribers.
3

Capitalizing upon this rapid rise in popularity, a cable franchise operating out of Dale
City, Virginia, allotted the first channel for community use in 1968, the simply named Dale City
Television channel (DCTV).
4
This sanctioning of a broadcast channel specifically for local
issues soon after found an influential ally in the so-called “Father of Public Access Television,”
George Stoney. A North Carolina native who worked as a photo intelligence officer during
World War II before transitioning into documentary production, Stoney was at that time the
Executive Producer of Canada’s Challenge for Change, a national project supporting the socially
engaged work of both film and video directors. After realizing that most cable operators used
only three to four of their available eight to twelve channels, Stoney advocated filling these gaps
with Challenge for Change productions so as to share important, local narratives with a larger,

3
Barry T. Janes, “History and Structure of Public Access Television,” in Journal of Film and Video 39, n. 3 (Summer 1987), 15.

4
Ibid., 15.

5

more diverse, audience. “The films and tapes were not important in themselves,” he later
remarked on this venture. “It was the process and the ideas.”
5

Stoney exported this revolutionary model of public access television to New York City
when in 1971 he, alongside media advocate Red Burns, founded the Alternative Media Center at
New York University. The center’s influential Video Access Center offered training, equipment
loans, and production assistance for any community member seeking to create either video or
public access projects. “We look on cable,” Stoney shared, “as a way of encouraging public
action, not just access.” “It’s how people get information to their neighbors, and their neighbors
can get out on the streets to organize.”
6
Such thinking ultimately inspired the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) to issue The Cable Television Report and Order in 1972,
ordering cable operators within the top 100 markets to provide three access channels. Known as
“PEG,” these channels were to separately serve each community’s public access, education, and
government agendas.
7
The FCC particularly defined public access as a noncommercial channel
available for free programming on a first come, first served basis.
8

The popularization of PEG channels and non-profit organizations like the Alternative
Media Center across America relied, however, upon another equally important development
during the 1970s—the commercialization of video technology. In stark contrast to the
cumbersome and costly 2 inch video systems utilized by broadcast news networks, the marketing
in 1967 of the relatively inexpensive and lightweight ½ inch reel-to-reel CV Sony Portapak
9

spurred what historian Deirdre Boyle likens to “a media version of the Land Grant Act, inspiring

5
Marita Sturken, “An Interview with George Stoney,” Experimental Television Center, 1984, accessed January 15, 2014,
http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/interview-george-stoney.

6
Paul Vitello, “George C. Stoney, Documentary Filmmaker, Dies at 96,” The New York Times (New York, NY), July 14, 2012.

7
Janes, 14.

8
Lauren-Glenn Davitian, “Building the Empire: Access as Community Animation,” in Journal of Film and Video 39, n. 3
(Summer 1987), 35.

9
The Portapak weighed only twenty pounds and cost less than $2,000. While this price point still inhibited purchase by the
everyday consumer, it offered a realistic option for the more serious video producer.

6

a heterogeneous mass of American[s]… to take to the streets… to stake out the new territory of
alternative television” (see Figure 1).
10
Video required no formal training, thereby enabling
everyday citizens to learn the basics of production.
Moreover, since costly, high-tech editing suites still remained inaccessible to most
individuals, producers disavowed film’s finished aesthetic for more “laissez-faire” glimpses of
modern life.
11
This created an immediacy that mirrored both the rebellious realism of the
period’s celebrated New Journalism authors like Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson and the
defiant concern with process over product popularized through such contemporaneous art
movements as Earth Art and Conceptualism and the discourse of second-wave feminism. Non-
profit organizations including The Kitchen, founded in New York in 1971 by the artists Steina
and Woody Vasulka, similarly challenged fine art’s aesthetic restrictions by screening new,
experimental video pieces by pioneers like Nam June Paik, Vito Acconci, and Mary Lucier.
Producers likewise focused on either expanding the medium or challenging the assumed
authority of mainstream media. “Video represented a new frontier,” Boyle remarked regarding
this latter interest, “a chance to create an alternative to what many considered the slickly
civilized, commercially corrupt, and aesthetically bankrupt world of Television.”
12
Cable
television’s PEG channels provided the perfect conduit for realizing this critical agenda.
The collectives that arose during the late 1960s and early 1970s, first around New York
City and later nationwide, eagerly adopted these symbiotic advancements to help spread their
discourse of media criticism. In addition to such predecessors of Studio of the Streets as the
Videofreex (active 1969-1978), People’s Video Theater (founded 1970), and TVTV (active

10
Deirdre Boyle, “Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited,” Art Journal 45, n. 3 (Autumn, 1985), 228.

11
Deirdre Boyle, “From Portapak to Camcorder: A Brief History of Guerrilla Television,” Journal of Film and Video 44, n. 1/2
(Spring and Summer, 1992), 68.

12
Boyle, “Subject to Change,” 228-9.

7

1972-1979), Raindance Corporation, a “countercultural thinktank” [sic] founded in 1969 by
Frank Gillette, Ira Schneider, and Michael Shamberg, most actively promoted the concept of
guerrilla television amongst a burgeoning network of independent video producers nationwide.
13

“I personally don’t want everyone to look, act, and feel like me,” Shamberg asserted in 1971,
voicing both the period’s counterculture values and Stoney’s vision of media literacy.
“Translated into TV this means many different types of programming made by many different
types of people. As only people themselves ultimately know how they feel, they must have
access to television tools without mediators.”
14
Influenced by Marshall McLuhan’s proclamation
that technologies of communication, not economics, would affect social change, Raindance
Corporation utilized both their videos and their self-published journal Radical Software to teach
the basics of production and to challenge the information infrastructure of “Media America.”
15

Despite this initial collectivity around television, a startling wellspring of government
funding soon created an unfortunate divide amongst video and public access practitioners.
Specifically, in 1970 the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) began granting money
to video artists. While a positive benchmark for the medium, it also favored individuals and
fostered competition.
16
As a result, collectives disbanded and the field, once accepting of both
experimentation and realism, split into two seemingly irreconcilable focuses. The “video artists”
upheld Raindance Corporation’s guerrilla spirit by focusing on technological innovation and
media deconstruction. Meanwhile, the “video activists” pursued the medium as a grassroots tool

13
“Raindance Corporation,” Video Data Bank, accessed December 5, 2013, http://www.vdb.org/artists/raindance-corporation.

14
Michael Shamberg, “Official Manual,” in Guerrilla Television, ed. Michael Shamberg and Raindance Corporation (San
Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 9.

15
Paul Ryan, “A Genealogy of Video,” Leonardo 21, n. 1 (1988), 42.

16
Boyle, “From Portapak to Camcorder,” 74.

8

for social change and advocacy. Due to these shifts in media funding and production, the original
interest in “people’s television” fell to the wayside.
17

McLuhan’s envisioned utopia of a global village connected via widespread, unmediated
technological access, however, rematerialized with the explosion of video in the mid-1980s.
18

Specifically, the influx of affordable camcorders and videocassette recorders on the market
enabled everyday consumers previously excluded from media production to instantaneously
record and share their lives. “This was a time coming right off of the stunning development
where you’d be walking down the street and there’d be a television camera in the store window
pointed at the sidewalk,” media artist Brian Springer reminisces. “You would walk by the
camcorder and immediately see your image!”
19
Unlike the closed, edited structures of network
television and film, public access and video allowed for immediate feedback. As video
practitioner Dan Graham theorized: “film constructs a ‘reality’ separate and incongruent to the
viewing situation; video feeds back indigenous data in the immediate, present-time environment
or connects parallel time/space continua.”
20
The resulting shift away from passive spectatorship
encouraged audiences to instead create their own alternative media visions.
21

This ubiquity of video inevitably changed the cultural landscape as the divide between
amateur and professional rapidly blurred. Moreover, the tirades of right-wing politicians like
Senator Jesse Helms and Republican Presidential Candidate Pat Buchanan against government
funding for the arts realigned video artists and video activists in a fight for self-preservation.
22

Within such an increasingly neo-conservative nation, public access television emerged as a

17
Ibid., 67-74.

18
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962).

19
Brian Springer in telephone conversation with the author, August 18, 2013.

20
Dan Graham, “Essay on Video, Architecture and Television,” in Video-Architecture-Television: Writings on Video and Video
Works, ed. Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (New York: New York University Press, 1979), 62.

21
Barbara Lattanzi in conversation with the author, Alfred, NY, August 11, 2013.

22
Boyle, “From Portapak to Camcorder,” 75-78.

9

welcoming refuge for free speech.
23
Recognizing this sea change, New York City’s weekly cable
program Paper Tiger Television (founded 1981) began transmitting their tapes via satellite to
more than 250 cable providers and public access channels across the country in 1986. Deep Dish
Television quickly evolved to become the first national series showcasing both socially engaged
and experimental video works.
Stimulated by these developments in technology, politics, and access, media practitioners
like Conrad and Steffan excitedly reactivated once-unobtainable projects from the 1960s and
1970s. “All that happened with the invention of the camcorder,” media activist and theorist
Alexandra Juhasz notes, “is that the goals that had already been articulated by earlier collectives
were realized in a much larger way.”
24
However, further radicalized by both the volatile socio-
political climate of the Reagan administration and such global crises as AIDS, developing
collectives like DIVA TV (founded 1989) and Studio of the Streets expanded upon Shamberg’s
deconstruction of hegemonic media structures to address new parallel, discourses of identity
politics and multiculturalism. “It is precisely at the legislative frontier between what can be
represented and what cannot,” theorist Craig Owens remarks, “that the postmodern operation is
being staged—not in order to transcend representation, but in order to expose that system of
power that authorizes certain representations while blocking, prohibiting, or invalidating
others.”
25
For example, as Paper Tiger Television co-founder DeeDee Halleck writes in 1989,
“our art can be… the arms to defend the exploited and oppressed… the wings to carry the
information we need to share.”
26
Video offered everyday citizens the ability to counter media

23
Chris Hill and Barbara Lattanzi, “Media Dialects and Stages of Access,” Felix 1, n. 2 (1992), 99.

24
Alexandra Juhasz in conversation with the author, Highland Park, CA, August 23, 2013.

25
Craig Owens, “The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism,” in Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and
Culture, eds. Scott Bryson, Barbara Kruger, Lynne Tillman, and Jane Weinstock (Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1994), 168.

26
DeeDee Halleck, “History Will Dissolve Us, or, Time Base Correction in a Post-Cold War World,” in Hand-held Visions: The
Impossible Possibilities of Community Media, ed. DeeDee Halleck (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 24.

10

images with their own, unmediated footage. Such consequent acts of video-witnessing first
attracted national attention when news networks repeatedly broadcast a home recording of the
1991 Rodney King beating in Los Angeles, CA (see Figure 2). In the hands of the decade’s
emerging activists, camcorders matured from an absorbing hobby into “a tool, a weapon, and a
witness;” a now-prevalent fixture within on-the-street battles for a myriad of humanitarian
issues.
27

27
Boyle, “From Portapak to Camcorder,” 78.

11

Chapter 2: Rust Belt Roots
While the majority of earlier video collectives sprung from within the New York
metropolitan area due to such influential organizations as NYU’s Alternative Media Center and,
later, Paper Tiger Television, the shifts in technology and public access television that occurred
during the 1980s enabled alternative practices to spread across the United States.
28
As the second
most populous city in the state, situated within close proximity to not only NYC but also to other
cultural loci like Chicago, IL and Toronto, Ontario, Buffalo garnered particular recognition for
its significant media output. Such standing stemmed largely from both the vision and the
generosity of Gerald O’Grady, a film professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) at
Buffalo
29
who previously taught at renowned establishments including the University of Texas,
New York University, and Columbia University. O’Grady vitalized the city’s media community
by importing such talented practitioners as Conrad and by promoting the spirit of regional
solidarity that inspired later collective projects like Studio of the Streets (see Figure 3).
In 1972, O’Grady founded the Center for Media Study at SUNY Buffalo—a pioneering
program that, for the first time, integrated media art and theory into the traditional fine arts
curriculum.
30
Designed “both for viewers narcotized by the mass media’s visual pleasure, and for
other avant-garde artists who have lost track of the social purpose of media experimentation,”
O’Grady’s pedagogy mirrored the period’s accepted amalgamation of video art and video
activism.
31
The Center’s unique structure also attracted a reputable coterie of international
professors, including, at various times, such filmmakers as Hollis Frampton (1973-1984), Paul

28
Examples of other non-profit media arts centers that opened during the late 1960s to 1980s include Appalshop, Whitesburg,
KY (funded 1969), the Experimental Television Center (ETC), Owego, NY (founded 1971), Intermedia Arts of Minnesota,
Minneapolis, MN (founded 1973), the Bay Area Video Coalition, San Francisco, CA (founded 1976), and the 911 Media Arts
Center, Seattle, WA (founded 1984). For a complete list of active centers today, please visit the ETC’s “Video History Project”
website at http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/video-history-project.

29
The university has been renamed the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.

30
The Center was renamed the Department for Media Study in 1982.

31
Richard Herskowitz, “Being In Between,” in Media Buff.: Media Art of Buffalo, New York, ed. Richard Herskowitz (Ithaca,
NY: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 1988), 14.

12

Sharits (1973-1992), James Blue (1972-1980), and video practitioners like the Vasulkas (1977-
1979) and Peter Weibel (1984-1989). In his preface to the seminal anthology of this history,
Buffalo Heads: Media Study, Media Practice, Media Pioneers, 1973-1990, Weibel recapitulated
that the department’s “overarching artistic and democratic goal was to improve media
competence, for it is only possible to participate fully in society if one understands its channels
and codes of communication.”
32
This mission clearly echoes the interest in media access and
literacy espoused by earlier practitioners like Shamberg and that later resurfaced within Studio of
the Streets.
In 1973 O’Grady also founded the independent community facility Media Study/Buffalo.
This simple storefront became the city’s “primary cultural organization,”
33
offering affordable
public workshops and equipment rentals in addition to hosting regular film and video screenings.
“The relationship between Media Study/Buffalo and Media Study [at the university],” Conrad
later elaborated, “was enhanced by the fact that people would go to school at [SUNY Buffalo],
graduate in media, not get a job, stay in Buffalo, hang around, and do cool shit.”
34
While not a
student himself, Conrad first taught at Media Study/Buffalo while on break from a professorship
at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH, where he succeeded Sharits in the undergraduate film
department.
35
O’Grady, aware of Conrad’s already-lauded reputation within both the Minimalist
music and Structuralist film scenes,
36
and eager to encourage his burgeoning interest in video,

32
Peter Weibel, preface to Buffalo Heads: Media Study, Media Practice, Media Pioneers, 1973-1990, ed. Woody Vasulka and
Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008), 15.

33
Tony Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.
34
Ibid.

35
Conrad began teaching at Antioch College in 1974.

36
For an in-depth survey of this particular history within Conrad’s oeuvre see Branden W. Joseph’s Beyond the Dream
Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage (New York: Zone Books, 2008).

13

quickly enlisted Conrad for a full-time teaching position at SUNY Buffalo. Conrad readily
accepted the offer and moved to Buffalo in 1976.
37

Despite attracting esteemed practitioners like Conrad in this manner, Western New
York’s art community remained perpetually at risk during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Minimal political and financial support hampered individual practices while also forcing
O’Grady to abandon Media Study/Buffalo in 1985. Anxious to sustain the generous state arts
funding previously allocated to this organization, new resident Conrad encouraged his colleagues
to attend a routine town meeting held by NYSCA’s Media Division. “Everything [was] up in the
air,” he recalls, “and everybody [was] really eager to make sure the money still [came].”
38
The
extraordinary turnout impressed the council and inspired Conrad to organize an autonomous
grant-writing committee. Once again roused by the city’s enthusiasm, NYSCA helped this new
committee establish itself as a non-profit organization suitable for government funding in 1985.
Squeaky Wheel (“because we wanted the grease!”
39
) utilized their financial award to procure a
facility, film and video equipment, and to establish a national newsletter, The Squealer. They
also installed a public editing suite in order to provide local producers access to expensive
technology: “people didn't have to think of themselves as artists to access the equipment there
and edit… They could [produce] any kind of video, whatever they were into.”
40
The suite often
attracted, however, conservative religious groups whose ideologies directly conflicted with that
of the liberal space.
41
This issue clarified the need for a non-affiliated public production facility.
Alongside other local artist-run organizations CEPA Gallery and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts

37
Tony Conrad continues to teach in the Department of Media Study as a “SUNY Distinguished Professor.”

38
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.

39
Ibid.

40
Ed Cardoni in conversation with the author, Buffalo, New York, August 16, 2013.

41
Cheryl Jackson in conversation with the author, Buffalo, New York, August 16, 2013.

14

Center (both founded 1974), Squeaky Wheel continued Media Study/Buffalo’s dedication to
cultivating new producers and audiences.
42

While these non-profits provided much-needed financial and technical support to
Buffalo’s independent media practitioners, local artwork remained marginalized due to
restrictive categorizations of “fine” art, limited distribution channels, and national censorship
debates.
43
This latter issue became especially apparent after a catalytic spree of arrests on
September 1, 1990 at Artpark State Park in nearby Lewiston, NY. When park officials canceled
an upcoming event by the San Francisco-based performance collective Survival Research
Laboratories due to rumors of potential Bible-burning, Conrad and a number of his enraged
colleagues decided to demonstrate for free speech. The group intended to stage an absurdist
auction of Artpark but, as they did not possess proper permits, the police arrested eighteen of the
protestors on such gratuitous charges as disorderly conduct. The dramatic proceedings
temporarily divided Buffalo over the tenuous definitions of obscenity and censorship. “The
larger outcome was that this completely radicalized the entire independent media community,”
Conrad recalls. “It brought us together. It created a political spin that had not existed before.”
44

After witnessing this revocation of their assumed right to free speech, the demonstrators eagerly
banded with others throughout the area to protect artistic expression.
45

42
Herskowitz, 15.

43
In 1989, prominent Republican Senators and Christian figureheads publicly declared as obscene Andres Serrano’s photograph,
Piss Christ (1987), an image of Christ submerged within a vial of urine. That same year, Republican representative Dick Armey
succeeded in revoking National Endowment for the Arts funding for the Corcoran Museum of Art’s exhibition of Robert
Mapplethorpe’s sexually-explicit photography portfolios. The museum ultimately canceled the show; thereby instigating a heated
battle to protect federal arts funding that lasted throughout the 1990s.

44
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.
45
Ibid.

15

Chapter 3: Setting up the Soapbox
The video collectives that consequently developed in Buffalo during the 1990s evidence
an activist ethos appropriate to the city’s unstable political climate. The three groups of particular
influence upon Studio of the Streets—the Media Coalition for Reproductive Rights, the 8mm
News Collective, and the First Amendment Network for Public Access Television—also echoed
Shamberg and McLuhan’s utopic belief in public access television as the most efficient medium
for both alleviating such issues and fostering media literacy. Presented locally both on television
and within the screening rooms of Hallwalls and Squeaky Wheel, their video work directly
inspired the concept of “animation” later developed by Conrad.
Founded in 1989, the Media Coalition for Reproductive Rights (MCRR) included artists
and activists like Ed Cardoni, Cheryl Jackson, Jody Lafond, and Armin Heurich who all held ties
to both SUNY Buffalo and local non-profit arts organizations.
46
The group videotaped pro-life
protestors at health clinics throughout the city as a way to help protect both patients and doctors
from intrusive acts and threats. “It was pretty boring,” Cardoni admitted. “Someone would have
to commit to be there all day Saturday and usually nothing happened.” However, the moments of
harassment that they did witness on videotape, like the infamous King recording, often wound up
as important evidence in trials, in this case against the pro-life advocates.
47
Broadcast on
Hallwalls’ public access program Artwaves, their documentary “Spring of Lies” (1992) also
provided a counter narrative to the media’s generally one-sided and damaging representations of

46
While a Ph.D. English candidate at SUNY Buffalo, Cardoni joined Hallwalls in 1984 as the Director of the Literature Program.
He eventually became Executive Director in 1991. Jackson graduated from the Department of Media Studies (DMS) at SUNY
Buffalo in 1990. After working in the Education Department at Hallwalls from 1987 to 1989, she acted as the Executive Director
of Squeaky Wheel from 1989 to 1997. Heurich likewise graduated from DMS in 1985 and worked as the Technical Director at
Squeaky Wheel from 1986 to 1992. Lafond studied within the Media Studies & Theater program at SUNY Buffalo in addition to
producing Hallwalls’ public access program Artwaves from 1989 to 1991.

47
Cardoni in conversation with the author, Buffalo, New York, August 16, 2013.

16

abortion issues. However, despite this later theoretical element, the MCRR remained less a
critique of the media than a direct attempt to protect Buffalo citizens.
48

In contrast to the MCRR’s social interventions, the 8mm News Collective, founded a
year later in 1990, lampooned news media production. Under the unofficial direction of Conrad,
the group included a number of MCRR participants like Jackson and Lafond, in addition to such
local media artists as Meg Knowles, Richard Wicka, Barbara Lattanzi, Hill, Springer, and
Steffan.
49
According to Cardoni, “on one level it [was] an activist project, on another level it
[was] a media critique project and a conceptual video art project.”
50
Mirroring the inclusive
agendas of media collectives during the 1990s, the project combined the formulae of both
grassroots activism and regional video art into a humorous upending of television’s assumed
objectivity. “I put into play the idea that the kind of things that we could do in Buffalo were just
as important as the things that could happen elsewhere,” Conrad remembers. “As such, we didn't
need to deal with large-scale news. We didn't need the spectacle of Hollywood.” The framing
question, instead, became, “is our news imported or is it truly ours?”
51

Dressed in costumes of matching seersucker suits, the merry pranksters followed and
videotaped the local Channel 2 news crew record stories at mundane locations like the Niagara
River and the Buffalo Bills’ training camp (see Figure 4). The compiled footage was then edited
using the suites at either Squeaky Wheel or Hallwalls and broadcast on Artwaves as a four-part
commentary. Ultimately, News Diaries: Parts 1-4 unveiled the spectacle of news production by

48
Ibid.

49
Knowles graduated from DMS in 1994 and later worked as the Technical Director at Hallwalls from 1996 to 1997. Wicka
pursued a BA in Philosophy from SUNY Buffalo in addition to founding a media studio within his residence, “The Home of the
Future.” He served as Board President at Hallwalls from 1991 to 2001. Hill served as the Video Curator at Hallwalls from 1986
to 1996. Lattanzi graduated from DMS in 1980 and worked at Hallwalls as the Film Curator from 1981 to 1983 and the Technical
Director from 1983 to 1987. She also worked alongside Hill as a co-Video Curator from 1987 to 1991.

50
Cardoni in conversation with the author, Buffalo, New York, August 16, 2013.
51
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.

17

highlighting the simplicity of video recording and by questioning reporters over their biased
commentaries. The group disbanded as participants pursued separate projects.
52

Studio of the Streets descended from both the MCRR and the 8mm News Collective as a
similarly collective project concerned with issues of citizen witnessing and media production.
Conrad explains that during this period in the early 1990s, “there was an ample background of
quasi-activist participants standing in the wings ready to get things going, and issues that pitted
us against [Buffalo] in regards to financial and cultural needs.”
53
Studio of the Streets capitalized
upon the energy of these participants in order to fulfill the need for greater public access
television support within the city—a need first vocalized through the multifaceted project, the
First Amendment Network for Public Access Television (FAN-PAT).
Conrad, Springer, and the local poet Akua Kamau developed FAN-PAT in 1990 in
response to a series of municipal setbacks regarding public access funding. Specifically, in
February of that year, the Buffalo Common Council voted against renewing their contract with
the current public access television provider, Sunship Communications. This action exasperated
leftover tension from the prior year when Mayor James Griffin (in office 1978-1993)
controversially vetoed the provision of additional funding for Sunship’s media facility, as well as
other local cultural and civic organizations.
54
Exacerbating this situation, while Buffalo’s New
York-based cable provider Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) agreed to air local video work on
the sole public access channel, Channel 10, they continued to ignore a contractual provision to
allot $80,000 annually for both a public production facility and rental equipment. FAN-PAT
consequently demonstrated both for a replacement public access operator and funding for a

52
Ibid.

53
Ibid.

54
George Gates, “Griffin Vetoes Council Grants, Members Hoping for Override to Restore Funds for Cultural, Civic
Organizations,” The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY), June 1, 1989.

18

public space “where people could walk up and plug in immediately.”
55
“The Common Council is
in violation of the people’s First Amendment rights,” they charged at local rallies, evoking the
city’s rising apprehension over free speech after that September’s Artpark arrests.
56
With the
support of David P. Rutecki, Chairman of the Common Council’s cable television committee,
FAN-PAT urged Buffalo politicians both to fulfill the above promises and to increase media
access through a variety of activist meetings and staged events.
57

Studio of the Streets originated as one such side-project under the initial auspices of
Conrad and Springer. Frustrated by the media community’s inability to gain the above
government funding, the two decided to appropriate City Hall as an open site for media
production. “I said, ‘Ok, let's have a studio in the street already! We'll do it now, start it now!
Let's not put it off. Let's do it right now!’” Conrad reminisces.
58
“Like, ‘Take notice Buffalo;
we’re actually doing TV right on your stoop here. And we’re gonna actually produce programs
right here and now.’”
59
Playing upon this reference to both the artist studio and the television
studio, on Friday, May 25, 1990, Conrad, Springer, and a number of FAN-PAT supporters
descended upon the downtown building’s steps with the intention of video recording a
demonstration for later broadcast on public access. They combined the spectacle of the 8mm
News Collective and the directness of the MCRR into what fellow supporter Hill termed an
“agitprop” performance—“it was really pushing the agenda to get the public access decision and
the studio made.”
60

55
Brian Springer in telephone conversation with the author, August 18, 2013.

56
Carl Allen, “Three Say Council Violates Rights in Dispute over Public Access TV,” The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY), May 10,
1990.

57
Kevin Collison, “City Pushed for Action on Cable Access, Citizens Group, Rutecki Assail TV Channel Delay,” The Buffalo
News, (Buffalo, NY), May 13, 1990.

58
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.
59
“Tony Conrad Interviewed by Michael Cohen,” in Tony Conrad: Doing the City/Urban Community Interventions, ed. Michael
Cohen (New York: 80WSE Press, 2013), 48.

60
Chris Hill in conversation with the author, Venice, CA, August 19, 2013.

19

According to Lattanzi, who also assisted with the development of Studio of the Streets,
Conrad single-handedly visualized the opening day agenda. “It was going to be a press
conference sort of style,” she recalled.
61
Around noon, the group headed downtown and taped
large cardboard signs splayed with such crudely painted accusations as “Where is the
$6000/month going?” across City Hall’s impressive gray columns (see Figure 5). A bright green
beach umbrella propped upon the steps provided a welcome respite of shade and designated the
home base. At 12:30 pm, the participants took turns voicing their demands via a megaphone,
passing out information, and conversing with passersby as two volunteers videotaped the
proceedings. These conversations neither followed a set outline nor attempted to answer any
specific question: “people were asked to come up to the microphone to talk about what they
thought about public access… A few wanted to talk about [this issue] itself and some people
were just saying ‘hi.’ It started out really simply and really kind of awkwardly.”
62
Around fifty
individuals spoke on camera, the majority consisting of unsuspecting bystanders intrigued by the
commotion.
63
“[We’re] just getting up there and asking people what they want to say on
television,” Conrad explained. “They’ve never been confronted by this opportunity before, and
the main feature about public access is outreach.”
64
At 1:30 pm, as lunchtime drew to an end and
the building’s employees returned to work inside, the group stopped recording, packed up their
equipment, and left.
Conrad’s simplistic plan mirrored both the style of first-person journalism favored by
other local practitioners and the do-it-yourself ethos of past video collectives from the late 1960s
and early 1970s. “The Studio of the Streets, like most demonstrations (and art works) is more

61
Lattanzi in conversation with the author, Alfred, NY, August 11, 2013.

62
Ibid.

63
Joseph Boris, “ ‘Street’ Video Pushes Public-Access TV,” The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY), May 27, 1990.

64
Ibid.

20

important in its symbolic ramifications than it is as entertainment,” he argued.
65
From the
beginning, the project resisted the limitations of the news’ polished aesthetic and narratives,
favoring, instead, the more reflexive sights and vernacular of everyday experience on the streets.
This conscious avoidance of censorship or a fine art presentation remains especially evident in
the footage. Many of Conrad and Springer’s camera crew did not possess experience in on-the-
spot video recording. Consequently, in direct contrast to the news’ invisible camerawork, the
first tapes from Studio of the Streets contain such distractions as unsteady shots, gratuitous pans,
and out-of-focus zooms. Conrad and Springer embraced this amateur style however, hoping that
such transparency might dispel the myth of media production as requiring expertise. They then
quickly combined this unedited interview material together with B-roll of City Hall’s
surrounding scenery into an hour-long episode that then aired the following Tuesday, May 29,
1990 at 7:30 pm on Buffalo’s public access channel, Channel 32.
The following Friday demonstrations and Tuesday broadcasts from the project’s early
stage continued this dual emphasis on public access discourse and a deconstructive aesthetic. For
example, an episode broadcast a few months later on September 21, 1990 begins abruptly with
Lattanzi sitting on City Hall’s steps amidst a jumble of cardboard signs listing their demands,
contact information, and confrontational questions like “Who’s running public access?” In the
upper right corner, Conrad, dressed all in black, fidgets intently with a camera. A rap song added
in post-production plays distortedly while Lattanzi sarcastically intones, “Here we are, another
day of public access. Of no public access in Buffalo.” As she excuses the crew’s late arrival, the
title band of red and blue stripes with the project name and location crosses over the shot (see
Figure 6). Lattanzi apologizes for only having one camera that day: “since our studio is in the

65
Tony Conrad and Cathleen Steffan, “Studio of the Streets XXVII,” in Video Witnesses Festival of New Journalism: February
15 – March 4, 1991, eds. Chris Hill and Barbara Lattanzi (Buffalo, NY: Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 1991), 29.

21

streets, we really don’t have the resources to adequately do a public access cable series.” She
continues ad-lib on the issue of public access funding, reiterating the signs hanging behind her.
“You can also exercise your right to free speech,” she addresses the viewer, “by coming down to
The Studio of the Streets.”
This sober introduction then segues into a series of more animated conversations with
passersby. The visibly sunny weather seems to attract a diverse crowd on City Hall’s expansive
portico—families relax on the steps, teenagers cheerfully mill around, older individuals wait
patiently for the bus, and businesspeople reluctantly return to work. Conrad first attracts the
attention of a young African American man dressed in a red silk suit who used to valet the
Mayor’s car at a nearby restaurant. “Everybody in Buffalo deserves the chance to become
something and do something,” he asserts in support of Studio of the Streets. After briefly chatting
with the man’s younger female companion about a local food festival, Lattanzi then enters into
an almost twenty-minute long discussion about local public access opportunities with a middle-
aged African American man who studied television production at college in Chicago. Brief audio
issues during this conversation are covered up in post-production with comically dramatic organ
music.
Meanwhile, in the background, local supporter and unofficial co-producer Ann Szyjka
wanders around with a notebook and pen, often walking in between Lattanzi and her guest.
Szyjka possessed neither a university nor arts background. She heard about Studio of the Streets
while attending events at Hallwalls and simply started showing up each Friday of her own
accord. Conrad, however, realized the representative potential of Szyjka’s inquisitive, yet
slightly naïve, disposition and encouraged her participation in the project:
Ann had a role of just charming the audience. She wasn't a charmer in the sense of
being really great looking or having a bubbly personality. It was more homey or

22

something. Maybe she can be seen as a kind of stand-in, an iconic presence for
the audience… You can’t reference her in terms of type.
66

Similar to the talk-show sidekick, Szyjka counters Conrad’s often-spectacular viewpoints with
charismatic, yet accessible, anecdotes. Her presence discreetly symbolizes the potential of public
access television as an egalitarian platform for community expression.
After a brief, humorous interlude to chase the windblown beach umbrella, a lull in
passersby forces the group to continue the dialogue on public access themselves. “Maybe we
need another report from Ann,” Conrad suggests. Szyjka stands diligently with her arms crossed,
her hair unkempt, and her face noticeably blemished, while she discusses her reaction to the last
episode and her classes at the local Equal Opportunity Center. Her lack of self-consciousness
makes her immediately relatable. Unlike Lattanzi and Jackson’s more verbose statements, she
speaks in a simple, straightforward manner. “Oh, we have people,” Lattanzi soon interjects after
noticing Jackson point towards a nearby family of four. Szyjka politely steps aside, accepting her
role as a temporary distraction. “Hi! Do you know about public access cable television,”
Lattanzi diligently asks her news guests.
The above conversations are first videotaped using a single camcorder disposed to shaky
zooms and sporadic pans. However, around fifteen minutes into the episode, a shot reveals
Conrad recording the same scene, apparently having fixed the camera that he was fiddling with
in the beginning. Conrad then later mimics this conceit to reveal Jackson as the original camera
operator. This consciously reflexive exposé exemplifies the project’s parallel operation as an
instruction manual for viewers interested in learning about media production. In a similarly
deconstructive bent, Conrad and Jackson’s framing continues to uncover the various gazes at
play. For example, the two often zoom into speakers’ eyeglasses to reveal the camera lens’

66
Lattanzi in conversation with the author, Alfred, NY, August 11, 2013.

23

reflection (see Figure 7). Unlike traditional news programs, they also avoid direct shots, opting
instead to play around with angles. At one point, for example, a medium close-up of a
conversation cuts to the speakers’ reversed shadows on the sidewalk, emphasizing their minute
body language.
Overall, this unique combination of public access activism and deconstructive
camerawork proffers the early episode as a compelling case for the unlimited potential of local
media productions. However, a failed encounter near the end of the program points to an
interesting problematic that soon caused Conrad to move Studio of the Streets in a new direction.
An older, white male dressed in a business suit and sunglasses hurriedly inhales a cigarette while
passing Lattanzi on his way inside City Hall. He rejects her invitation to speak on public access
television with a curt “no.” Conrad suggests that perhaps the man is already familiar with the
medium. However, it remains obvious to the viewer that the man is simply uninterested. The
reasoning behind such dismissals continued to intrigue Conrad as the year waned. He started to
comprehend that, while the fight for funding remained an important issue, the purport of Studio
of the Streets could extend beyond the actual content of the conversations to the animation of
continual, expanded discourse throughout the community.

24

Chapter 4: A Postmodern Purview
After enacting these demonstrations every week throughout the summer of 1990, the
group’s enthusiasm started to diminish as winter approached.
67
Conrad begrudgingly admitted
that lackluster attendance levels, especially on colder days, weakened the project’s efficacy—the
megaphones, pamphlets, and posters were useless if those inside City Hall continued to ignore
their demands. Consequently, he worked to redefine the mission of Studio of the Streets from a
public access program simply documenting a demonstration to one concerned with witnessing
and circulating the community’s politicization via the approachable medium of video. As Robert
H. Devine, a communications professor at Antioch College whose writings greatly influenced
Conrad, noted, “in many cases those who might most benefit from accessibility to this arena of
public discourse are the least likely to know of or to avail themselves of that opportunity.”
68

“The average people of Buffalo,” Conrad similarly surmised, “did not believe in their ability to
produce television shows, or even to be on TV, until they saw how good they and others actually
looked.”
69
He consequently sought to realize this radical transformation via Studio of the Streets.
This shift in agenda mirrored both Conrad’s personal inquiries starting in the 1980s and
the parallel discourses of identity politics and globalization prevalent within the art world.
“Through postmodernism and that kind of discursive shift,” he explains, “it was possible to
reposition questions of identity at the center of theoretical discourse.”
70
Additionally, as the
government redefined funding requirements to favor artist collectives concerned with issues of
race, gender, and sexuality over individual practitioners, Conrad became acutely aware of his
financial and critical standing. “Being a white, American, middle-class, male, heterosexual, etc.,”

67
“Tony Conrad Interviewed by Michael Cohen,” 48.

68
Robert H. Devine, “Marginal Notes: Consumer Video, the First Amendment, and the Future of Access” (presentation, The
1990 National Convention of the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers, Washington, D.C., July 26, 1990).

69
Tony Conrad, “Studio of the Streets,” accessed August 7, 2013, http://www.tonyconrad.net/studio.htm.

70
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.

25

he admitted, “positioned me in a way that identified me, automatically and without critical
review, as ‘part of the problem’ rather than part of the answer.”
71
Due to the assumed, albeit
biased, limitations of such cultural roles, Conrad retracted his past, solo engagements with avant-
garde music and film in order to focus on more socially engaged and collaborative projects that
also better attracted the attention of grant committees.
Upon moving to Western New York to teach media at SUNY Buffalo in 1976, this self-
criticality found further provocation through the feminist discourse gaining popularity amongst
his students, as well as the camaraderie of artists investigating similar political issues.
72
Inspired
by such texts on the intersection of communication technology and Western identity as Herbert I.
Schiller’s Culture Inc. and Video the Changing World, a collection of essays compiled by the
Canadian collective Vidéo Tiers-monde, Conrad started to question cultural and economic
development at the local level.
73
“I had fantasies at the time that maybe Buffalo should secede,”
he confessed, “or that maybe Buffalo should invade Canada!”
74
While silly, this daydream
reveals Conrad’s growing awareness over the city’s imbalance of payments as jobs continued to
relocate and exports dwindled. He realized that economic revitalization required the creation of
new, viable employment opportunities within the rapidly developing media and communication
fields. However, he also understood that effecting such large-scale change required a first-hand
understanding of those most at-risk within the current economic climate: “We needed to see what

71
Genevieve Yue, “Loose Ends: An Interview with Tony Conrad,” Film Comment, accessed August 7, 2013,
http://www.filmcomment.com/entry/loose-ends-an-interview-with-tony-conrad.

72
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.
73
Herbert I. Schiller, Culture Inc. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). Video the Changing World, eds. Nancy Thede and
Alain Ambrosi (New York: Black Rose Books, 1991).

74
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.

26

was happening on the edge of the community.”
75
Conrad consequently decided to “devote [his]
attention to the concerns of adequate representation among subaltern people.”
76

This investment in Buffalo’s periphery communities prompted a burgeoning interest in
decentralization that echoed Conrad’s previous disavowal of more solitary aesthetic endeavors.
“It [is] inevitable,” he declared, “that the very fact that one lives outside the great cultural centers
(that we don’t live in New York City) forces us to embolden our cultural assault.”
77
Appalled by
the term “regionalism” and its derogatory differentiation between the high art of cultural
metropolises and the alleged folk art produced elsewhere, Conrad and his local colleagues sought
to replace the few, imaginary centers with new, infinite sources of innovation. “We understood
that what we were producing was in a dialect that might be different than in Rochester or
Syracuse or New York City,” Hill shared. “We felt that there should be other dialects in Buffalo
that got developed though and we saw ourselves as potentially facilitating that and producing
something authentic.”
78

Conrad further theorized this facilitation of subaltern production under the unique
concept of “animation.” In order to dislodge the “ego-centered conception of media art as an
esoteric expression of the privileged self,” he positioned public access television as a stage upon
which he might instead empower others.
79
“I want art to stand strong, to display how it
manipulates its audience,” Conrad explained in 1988. “I want it to take up their expectations,
their sense of the world, their predisposition toward the way that they think or use their language,
and then to use those things perversely, politically, colorfully, ‘expressively.’”
80
While this
transition from the insensitive artist to the selfless “animator” suggests an attempt at assuaging

75
Ibid.

76
Yue, “Loose Ends: An Interview with Tony Conrad.”

77
Tony Conrad, “Dolomite: Having No Trust in Readers,” in Media Buff, 8.

78
Hill in conversation with the author, Venice, CA, August 19, 2013.

79
Tony Conrad, “Studio of the Streets.”

80
Conrad, “Dolomite: Having No Trust in Readers,” 8.

27

Conrad’s personal identity-based anxieties, it also evokes the deconstructionist ethos of his
earlier, avant-garde experimentations. For example, in the Structuralist series’ “Yellow Movies”
from 1973, Conrad created “films” by hanging up large sheets of white paper coated in house
paint and decorated with painted-on, black, rectangular “frames” and allowing them to slowly
discolor over the years. This absurdist gesture symbolically upended the artist’s “genius” by
instead acquiring meaning through the durational, subjective temperaments of time and space.
Conrad’s even earlier work from the 1960s with the drone music group the Theatre of Eternal
Music reflects a similar disregard for the single composer in favor of collaborative sound
mediations.
81

A number of multimedia projects realized by Conrad while living in NYC during the
1960s and 1970s also reveal his long-held interest in both media activism and public
intervention. For example, Bryant Park Moratorium Rally (1969) combines audio from that
year’s October 15
th
protest against the Vietnam War, recorded from his Midtown loft, with
another recording of the event’s simultaneous television news coverage. Despite its medium, the
resulting mélange presents itself less as a musical piece than an auditory documentation of reality
and representation. The short 16mm film Waterworks for the Summer Solstice (1972/2011)
depicts a summer solstice celebration that Conrad and his then wife Beverly Grant staged around
an uncapped water main in the middle of Times Square.
82
The spectacle of such counter-culture
pageantry in the midst of the location’s overwhelming advertisements for middle-class
consumption propels a questioning of cultural normativity (see Figure 8).
This deconstructive, pedagogical emphasis reveals itself again not only in Studio of the
Streets, but also in the later related project, Homework Helpline (1993-1994). A live call-in

81
The Theatre of Eternal Music, often nicknamed The Dream Syndicate, was formed by La Monte Young during the mid-1960s
and featured such performers as Conrad, John Cale, Angus MacLise, and Marian Zazeela.

82
While shot on June 21, 1972, Conrad did not finish editing Waterworks until he returned to the project in 2011.

28

program broadcast on Buffalo public access television during the mid-1990s, Homework
Helpline featured local students from Grades 8 to 12 attempting to solve callers’ homework-
related queries. At the beginning of the show’s development, Conrad’s young assistants
expressed concern over their inability to always possess the answer. Conrad’s response was to
calmly explain that if they needed extra help, they could simply ask the at-home viewers. While
this insight temporarily assuaged the children’s concern, it concealed his ulterior motive:
There are going to be people out there in the audience [that] are going to feel empowered
because they're going to think about how cool it may be, or how challenging it may be,
to have to confront these questions themselves. Or how confident they may be because
they've already mastered them. This is the larger audience. This isn't the person who
called in… The real issue is that this program was what you might call an infomercial for
homework, which I regarded as the most hated institution in America. Everybody hates
homework and I wanted to promote it. The way to promote it is to let people in the
audience understand it as exciting, challenging, and different, and relate it to them and
their ability to engage.
83

Conrad’s focus with Homework Helpline was not upon the active participants but upon the
potential audience. He eschewed a final, aesthetic product for a politicized process of animation
and empowerment.
Conrad realized that, similar to Homework Helpline, Studio of the Streets no longer
needed to overtly stress the politics behind public access funding; the process was political in
itself. Alongside his other previously discussed critical inquiries, this insight inspired Conrad to
transform the project from a simple demonstration into a channel for disseminating the symbiotic
skills of media production and political agency. “The way that we're going to get them to make
television,” he announced, “is that we're going to position people so that they're already making
television. In order to do that, we [have] to figure out what they can already do well.”
84
Perhaps

83
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.
84
Ibid.

29

influenced by his experiences as a single father and university professor, Conrad concluded that
the most efficient means for effecting such change was through positive reinforcement:
I have a conviction that teaching or behavioral change occurs through situations in which
people are already doing whatever they're doing and we simply pull them towards
improvement or betterment. It's a process inaugurated by recognizing and encouraging
people's existing strengths, versus, say, a disciplinary approach. What do people do well?
The thing that you can be assured that they usually do well is talking to each other.
They've been doing this well since they were three! They are really, really good at it and,
through talking, they come across in all the multiplicity of ways that they can. If we let
them speak on camera and stay out of their way, then they're making television!
85

This simple technique of supportive listening attempted to encourage marginalized members of
the Buffalo community to not only speak their mind without censorship or reprove, but to also
then witness this empowerment via television broadcast. As Juhasz explains, “part of why [a
project of representation] is political is that it engages human beings who have historically
thought of themselves as outside of systems where meaning and power are made to become
participants inside of these systems. That's the process. In a certain sense, it doesn't matter what
you make but that you're making something!”
86
Conrad likewise realized that the act of voicing
new, subjective representations within their media-driven society embodied a powerful process
of political engagement, regardless of the outcome.

85
Ibid.

86
Juhasz in conversation with the author, Highland Park, CA, August 23, 2013.

30

Chapter 5: Revising the Algorithm
Conrad’s desire to animate media literacy using this process became the center of what
Lattanzi terms the “algorithm” of the second phase of Studio of the Streets. While many of the
original group members like Springer, Hill, and Lattanzi lessened their involvement at this
important juncture in order to pursue individual practices, Steffan seamlessly stepped in to co-
produce by the end of 1990. A later student of Conrad’s who graduated with a BA from the
Department of Media Studies at SUNY Buffalo in 1996, Steffan periodically assisted with the
earlier demonstrations but, by the beginning of 1991, appears on the show almost weekly as both
a camera operator and an interviewer. Her personal interest in documentary video production
undoubtedly influenced this commitment since Studio of the Streets provided excellent training
for the latter genre’s fly-on-the-wall cinematography style and direct aesthetic. Other local media
advocates, however, still continued to assist Conrad and Steffan throughout the project’s duration
with both the live recordings and the video editing.
Important breakthroughs within Buffalo’s cable politics around this time further enabled
the producers to move past their original, demonstrative intentions towards a more critical
agenda. Specifically, in 1990, the Common Council awarded the newly formed Buffalo Cable
Access Media (B-CAM) a five-year contract for operating TCI’s public access channel, Channel
32, under Executive Director Sharon L. Mooney and Hill, President of the Board of Directors. A
number of media artists including Conrad and Jackson also acted as chairmen. Through both the
organization’s efforts and Heurich’s technical expertise, the long-awaited public production
facility finally opened on October 15, 1992 as the Community Communications Center at 101
LaSalle Avenue in downtown Buffalo. “It's about people finding their voice and not having to
rely on the powers that be," Hill explained the center’s mission to The Buffalo News. "This is an

31

education project." In this vein, B-CAM offered training sessions wherein members learned the
ins-and-outs of television production before gaining approval to rent equipment and use the
studio on their own.
87
One of the center’s first classes taught by Heurich included local students
ranging in age from 14 to 59 eager to develop their public access program ideas. Two twenty-
year old security guards, for example, planned to create a conservative political talk show called
“National Target.” Meanwhile, two high school students worked on “Teen Concepts”—a 13-part
series interviewing teenagers about such issues as drugs and gangs. “After the four weeks you
can create the most amazing public-access program," Heurich encouraged the class. "The only
thing you require is a little practice."
88

Due to these practical successes, Conrad and Steffan were free to focus their energy on
creating a single, simple algorithm for both recording and editing the weekly Studio of the Streets
episodes. Lattanzi explains, “you develop a structure and you commit yourself to it and you see
what happens from that.”
89
The resulting process sustained the project’s original investments in
political activism and media literacy through the deconstructive aesthetic of what film theorist
Bill Nichols terms the “reflexive documentary.” “If the historical world is a meeting place for the
processes of social exchange and representation,” Nichols explains, “…the representation of the
historical world becomes, itself, the topic of cinematic meditation in the reflexive mode.” Unlike
other documentary modes that force specific readings of the filmic content, reflexive producers
avoid both distracting post-production effects like text and manipulative editing techniques like
montage. They instead combine multiple, and often contradictory, messages into a
“metacommentary” on representation and the fallacy of the “real” image.
90
As Nichols argues,

87
A year membership at B-CAM cost $25 per person in order to help cover the organization’s costs.

88
David Montgomery, “In Public-Access TV, Freedom Hits the Airwaves,” The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY), October 7, 1992.

89
Lattanzi in conversation with the author, Alfred, NY, August 11, 2013.
90
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991),
56.

32

“at best images may illustrate a point that must finally return to words for its meaning or
implications.”
91
Reflexive documentarians, in this vein, present unmediated discursive footage
that privileges the audience with the responsibility of subjective analysis.
While Nichols cites the contemporary filmmakers Errol Morris and Jean-Pierre Gorin as
model practitioners of this hyper-aware style, the list may extend further back to include the
unfiltered investigations of everyday life recorded by such activist video collectives as
Raindance Corporation, the People’s Video Theater, and Broadside TV. Active from 1973 to
1978 under founder Ted Carpenter, this latter group, for example, distributed videos from the
Appalachian region that covered a wide and paradoxical range of viewpoints on such topics as
high school basketball and strip-mining reform. “I almost never tape any situation unless the
people involved first learn about the machinery,” Carpenter stated, “-fool with it themselves, and
then listen to a tape by someone else in the mountains who shares their experience.”
92
Steffan
and Conrad shared Broadside TV’s focus on politicizing a community through the analogous
processes of media training and public access programming.
Every Friday at noon, the producers, and any extra assistants, collected their equipment—
two video cameras, two wireless radio microphones, and either 8mm, Beta, or Hi8 videotapes—
and drove downtown to City Hall where Szyjka inevitably stood waiting. “It was like this chore
every week,” Springer remembers. "Ok, where are the cameras? Who has the mike?"
93
While
later episodes witness the team occasionally venturing to such other locations as a Save-a-Lot
grocery store (April 9, 1993) and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (May 18, 1993), they shot the
majority within walking distance of City Hall. Completed in 1931 by the architectural firm
Dietel, Wade & Jones, this Art Deco edifice remains a symbolic remnant of Buffalo’s illustrious,

91

Ibid., 3.

92
“Broadside TV,” Video Data Bank, accessed February 24, 2014, http://www.vdb.org/artists/broadside-tv.

93
Springer in telephone conversation with the author, August 18, 2013.

33

industrial past, a beacon of power amidst the otherwise forlorn streets of downtown. Moreover,
as Lattanzi elaborates, it subtly embodied the project’s investment in the periphery:
First of all, it wasn't just any old space. It was something everybody recognized and saw
as a center. But [the producers] weren't in City Hall; they were on the steps of City Hall.
A stairway is a transit area. It's a place that is between places. That immediately gives
you a sense of it as a process. There's a process of getting to and from places. Of course,
where people were going was every which way but the flow had to go up the steps into
City Hall … It's that passage that I think is really important. What happens in edge
locations, at a boundary, at a transit area between two places, is the greatest amount of
information.
94

City Hall not only mirrored the project’s process orientation, but also constantly attracted a range
of community members and tourists who provided Conrad and Steffan with unlimited sources of
material. They could never obtain such direct glimpses of everyday Buffalo through the
confining private space of an actual production studio.
Situating themselves on these symbolic steps, they videotaped from 12:30 to 1:40 PM.
While one camera dutifully followed the speakers, the other freely captured the surrounding
scene. Unlike the highly edited productions of the network news and the Hollywood movie
studios, the resulting footage retains an unapologetically rough, do-it-yourself aesthetic that
opposes the myth of video expertise. Shots often wander from the conversations to linger on the
other camera operator, functioning not only as a visual training manual for intrigued viewers, but
also revealing that “it’s nobody special [behind the camera].”
95
Conrad and Steffan furthered this
transparency by occasionally offering simplified instructions on diverse production skills
including loading videotapes or attaching a wind-guard to a microphone (see Figure 9). Later on
in the project, the two likewise decided to move from multiple cameras to a single operator since
the unseen editing process necessary for combining tapes still represented both an educational
and a financial hurdle for burgeoning producers. “Let's literally use what people already own!”

94
Lattanzi in conversation with the author, Alfred, NY, August 11, 2013.

95
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.

34

Conrad reasoned, realizing the unlikeliness of at-home audiences owning more than one
camcorder.
96

The episodes’ conscious avoidance of gratuitous post-production effects again reflects
Nichols’ concern for found dialogue over fictitious visuals. Conrad and Steffan furthered this
dedication to unmediated footage by also never allowing the cameras to discriminate in focus.
Everything exists as revelatory points of interest. For example, the cameras quickly shift from
showing the person speaking to zooming in on an uninterested passerby or to surveying the
background. This tactic contextualizes the specific time and place in Buffalo while, more
importantly, prioritizing the auditory content of the conversations over the corresponding visuals.
In a related vein, the camera operators deliberately eschewed the distanced three-quarter framing
favored in broadcast news media interviews for tighter close-ups. "It's [the speakers’] time,”
Conrad explained. “We want them to be seen."
97
This focus encourages viewers to read minute
facial expressions as an equally important, unmediated text: “when we zoomed in to people... we
see the animation of their emotions and the movement of their eyes and face, the details of their
conduct. It's incredibly animated and fascinating to watch. They're acting without acting and they
do it so well!”
98

During these recordings, Szyjka corralled interested individuals off-camera in order to
help avoid awkward standstills. “Ann would buttonhole passersby,” Conrad recalled, “and nail
them to the spot by gabbing with them about, well, I'm sure they wondered what they were
talking about sometimes!”
99
Throughout Studio of the Streets, she is often spotted in the
background chatting excitedly with these new acquaintances. However, if neither Szyjka nor the

96
Ibid.

97
Ibid.

98
Ibid.

99
Ibid.

35

producers could procure a speaker, Conrad and Steffan often filled airtime by updating viewers
on their continued efforts to gain public access television funding. At other times, they simply
discussed the weather.
After successfully piquing the interest of a passerby, Conrad and Steffan generally
commenced each conversation on the topic of public access television production. This subject
operated as a sort of verbal prop that orally sanctioned the project’s interest in, and intrusion into,
the quotidian routines of their guests. “[It] gave us the legitimacy to approach people and try to
start a conversation—what do you think about public access? What do you know about public
access?” Lattanzi recalled. “It was just fishing for something. It was like this blind search for
what to say. But, at least you could hold onto this thing about public access.”
100
Moreover, the
guiding question of “what kind of public access show would you like to see on TV?” stimulated
responses that not only exemplified the public’s interest in continued public access funding but
that also revealed a shared talent for imagining viable program concepts. “What’s the purpose of
filming us?” a father of two young girls asks Lattanzi at one point during the September 21,
1990, episode. She encouragingly replies, “You’re living proof that public access cable is for
everyone!” Studio of the Streets welcomed their guests’ diverse ideas as representative of public
access television’s egalitarian mission. Conrad at one point even extends the question to a
passing dog. “Maybe she wants to have a dog-a-vision show!” he jokes with the owner (April 23,
1991). Anybody, including animals, could potentially produce a program for public access.
Conrad estimates that, through this focus, they spoke with around 1,000 individuals during the
project’s duration.
101

However, despite this shared talking point, many of the project’s assistants still found it

100
Lattanzi in conversation with the author, Alfred, NY, August 11, 2013.
101
Conrad, “Studio of the Streets.”

36

difficult to initiate impromptu, yet insightful, conversations. For example, during the August 27,
1991 episode, Squeaky Wheel’s first Director Julie Zando (1986-1989), while visibly eager to
listen, emits a palpable anxiety that prevents her subjects from speaking openly. At one point,
she unknowingly resorts to racial stereotypes in order to forge a connection with two African
American men in their early twenties. “This is sort of our community soapbox,” she explains
before bringing up Director Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever, a controversial film about interracial
relationships. The men immediately recognize her posturing and awkwardly laugh. Zando
retorts, “Why are you laughing at me? Did I do something embarrassing?” While they kindly
attempt to assuage her discomfort by sharing their opinions about the movie, she remains
flustered throughout the remainder of the conversation. Despite the awkward nature of such
lapses, they remain in the program as honest portrayals of the city’s underlying issues.
The wireless radio microphones used to record all the conversations enabled both the
producers and assistants like Zando to easily move around City Hall’s portico. More importantly,
the technology’s unintimidating lavalieres encouraged guests to speak candidly. “If you have a
very small microphone and you're forthright about holding the microphone up close but not
letting it get in the way of eye or verbal contact that works pretty well,” Conrad explains.
102

While the device never recorded perfectly—wind and rain provide an almost minimalist drone to
many conversations—the effect audibly parallels the producers’ interest in process over product.
The editing technique utilized for Studio of the Streets likewise furthered Conrad and
Steffan’s deconstructive agenda. After each Friday shoot, the two worked with Heurich to edit
the footage using either his in-home suite or Squeaky Wheel’s public facilities.
103
Since only the
notoriously labor-intensive process of analog video editing existed at this moment, Conrad

102
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.
103
During our August 18, 2013 phone conversation, Springer mentioned that Conrad rarely helped with editing, saying that he
was instead “more of an on-air talent.”

37

developed a unique shortcut using the controllers insert-editing capability. Since each camera
started recording at the same time, once he synced the audio tracks, he could then toggle between
footage on the two videotapes, plopping in visual material indiscriminately:
We would do this on the fly—we would sit down, start with one camera, and, when we
felt that it was time for the other camera, we would push the button and it would come in.
We would then push the button again and it would switch back to the first camera. We
didn’t plan ahead; we were doing it blind! We didn’t know what was on the other tape at
any given moment… Sometimes though we would get crappy editing! I would say, "Push
the button!" and it would turn out that the footage was of the camera pointed at the sky.
Too damn bad. We could change it if it was spectacularly awful but then we would have
to go back, sync everything up, and start over again. That was a little more complex than
what we usually wanted.
104

The spontaneous aesthetic that this technique produced excellently mirrored the mission of
Studio of the Streets—the final product mattered less than the process itself. Conrad and Steffan
welcomed mistakes as a way to highlight the fact that media productions did not need to be
perfectly polished.
After editing the 70-minute footage from each camera into one, 60-minute episode, the
producers then added simple opening and closing titles that listed their contact information. They
superimposed additional text only if they wanted to share a pertinent phone number or address
with their audiences. Finally, they “sweetened” the episodes by adding music. “We wanted to
hear about community concerns and other things that engaged in a cyclic relationship with the
viewing community,” Conrad explained. “Music may not be a direct function of that but it's
related.”
105
After handing these edited tapes off to the public access channel staff, the episodes
aired the following Tuesdays from 7:30 to 8:30 PM on Buffalo’s public access channel, Channel
32.

104
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.
105

Ibid.

38

Chapter 6: Community Stammering
While the reflexive algorithm of Studio of the Streets often tested Conrad and Steffan’s
self-discipline and commitment, it also engendered fascinating, uncensored conversations that
subtly revealed the community’s underlying political issues. Through their depiction of quotidian
discourse, the project deconstructed powerful stereotypes codified by the media, leading to the
emergence and distribution of new representational models. This effect is clearly seen
throughout the episode from April 30, 1991, broadcast at the peak of the project’s success.
The episode begins with the title credits fading to Steffan talking to a middle-aged white
man about public access. Paul Simon’s “Graceland” plays in the background as the man admits
to coming to City Hall for “political business.” She jokingly asks him if it is “good political
business,” to which he nervously replies, “I don’t like to tell. I’m uncomfortable. Good to see
you though.” Reminiscent of the exchange with the older, white businessman from the
September 21, 1990 episode who briskly refused Lattanzi’s invitation to speak on television,
such instances of apprehension led Conrad to an important realization regarding self-expression
and employment. “It turns out that a job inhibits your ability to initiate a dialog,” he surmised.
“A lot of the things that you might say may be construed by the people paying your ticket as
either unconstructive or actively destructive in relation to the project of their company.” The
censorship that he and his colleagues encountered briefly during the Artpark arrests appeared to
exist daily for many Buffalo citizens. In another example, a young African American woman
enrolled at a local community college at first seems excited to speak on camera about her
concern over pending school budget cuts. However, her friend, silently watching from the
background, soon waves to her from off screen. Her once-happy countenance rapidly shifts to
that of alarm. “I think I kinda messed up,” she stammers. “I have to go back to work” (April 23,

39

1991). Meanwhile, again in the April 30th episode, a white man visiting from Boston similarly
deflects Conrad’s request to talk about his hometown’s economic issues, stating, “I’m not gonna
be the spokesperson for that.” “We’re gainfully employed,” his friend adds. Through such repeat
occurrences, Conrad dejectedly theorized that employment, and its promise of financial freedom,
conversely hampered free expression.
After the “political business” incident, Steffan catches the attention of a retired African
American construction worker walking towards the street. Their ensuing conversation
exemplifies another trend that developed within Studio of the Streets—the frank discussion of
assumedly cultural taboos regarding appearance. The man proudly shares with Steffan that he is
on a walk and that he recently lost four pounds. “Last week I was 193,” he cheerfully calculates,
“and today I’m 189.” Steffan expresses surprise at this information and asks if a doctor told him
to diet. She does not shy away from the delicate issue of weight and her nonjudgmental coaxing
leads to a lighthearted discussion of “belly fat” and exercise routines. In this manner, unlike the
unobtainable ideals of beauty propagated via traditional media, Studio of the Streets highlighted
and appreciated diversity:
At the most profound level, I came to a different conclusion about the presentation of self
in relation to people whose bodies might be considered embarrassing or delicate to
approach. If I engaged with someone who, say, had a disability or was enormously obese,
I found it within myself to say, "I see that you have trouble walking… What is it like to
be so heavy?" I justified this approach to myself through a kind of internal imaginary
narrative, which was, in effect, that this is a person who wakes up in the morning and the
first thing that they have to deal with is that they're too damn fat. Whatever their problem
is, that's the thing that chases them throughout everything they do. However, no one talks
to them about it. Everyone that they know and everyone that they encounter shies away
from this fact. I say, "I see that you're really heavy and you must have a lot to cope with
that other people don't understand or know about." No one has asked them this before!
Yet, suddenly, here's this guy who wants to talk about it! Often these people would just
open up.
106

This hypothetical insight of Conrad’s not only helped to foster connections, but also led to

106
Ibid.

40

insightful exposés regarding Buffalo’s marginalized community members. As Shamberg noted
years earlier, “most people who live out on the street have something to say and no one to say it
to. However, even people not normally predisposed to talking will pick up and give you a
monologue.”
107
Steffan returns to this powerful tactic later on in the episode when she asks a
female attorney picking up tax receipts if she experienced difficulty finding a job as a single
woman. “Did you have a family? Were you trying to go to school at the same time?” Steffan
presses about her past, clearly hoping both to position the woman as a role model for younger,
female viewers and to discuss the pertinent issue of labor inequality.
Steffan ends this brief conversation to discuss building permits with a white, middle-aged
general contractor attempting to get into his parked car. This more staid commentary then shifts
once again to show a celebratory exchange between Steffan and an African American man who
just bought a house and registered for a marriage license. “Excellent!” Steffan exclaims as she
shakes the man’s hand and waves to his new wife off-screen. A few minutes into their
discussion, he admits to once watching the show and saying “I’d like to come on and tell them
what I think!” As Studio of the Streets gained recognition through both word-of-mouth and the
local newspapers’ coverage of the public access debate, supporters started to visit City Hall
during the Friday recording sessions in order to express their admiration, address a particular
issue, or simply get their face on television. Conrad and Steffan appreciated such enthusiasm but
also recognized the need to represent as many voices as possible and avoided speaking with a
person more than once.
While Studio of the Streets features a wide range of participants, this act of selection
inherent to the project’s algorithm often problematizes the producers’ utopic mission of
democratic representation. Within the episode from April 30th, the cameras frequently captured

107
Shamberg, 53.

41

people milling around, undoubtedly delighted by such a sunny spring day. Steffan, Conrad, and
Szyjka accordingly experience little trouble finding guests and, in addition to the conversations
already discussed, speak with two girls running errands with their mothers, a white man in his
thirties who used to work for TCI, a younger Hispanic man interested in community ownership,
a white, epileptic, father of two filing for divorce, an older African American man discussing the
law on concealed weapons, and another African American auto mechanic with a unique solution
to the city’s drug problem. Despite their different backgrounds, these individuals still do not
form a representative sample of the Buffalo population. Of course, as previously discussed, it
remains possible that certain individuals ignored the producers’ approaches to speak on
television that day. However, whether or not conscious of this occurrence, the producers likewise
ignored others in their attempt to select the most unique voices, an attempt undeniably based
upon superficial factors. For example, during the exchange with the Boston tourists, Conrad
walks away to attempt to flag down an old woman hidden under a babushka and speeding down
the sidewalk on a mobility scooter (see Figure 10). While this woman exudes an eccentric
facade, another more simply dressed woman might also offer a similarly, or perhaps even more,
interesting viewpoint. This example shows that selection requires an inherent disavowal of
equalized representation.
Steffan and Conrad endeavor to offset this problem, however, by adhering to particular
guidelines regarding their self-presentation. As evidenced throughout the April 30
th
episode,
Steffan exudes a more reserved, respectful persona. She avoids loaded questions and expertly
steers the conversations according to her guests’ responses. For example, while she cheerfully
joked with the retiree about his weight, she recognized her first speaker’s discomfort with
discussing his “political business” and immediately apologized for the intrusion. Steffan also

42

avoids forming judgments and instead follows others’ statements with affirmations like “that’s
great” to show that she is both listening and understanding. More importantly, she does not shy
away from sharing personal experiences in order to establish trust. This does not occur within the
April 30
th
episode but, while discussing issues of identity politics with a lesbian mother from the
suburbs during the August 13
th
broadcast a few months later, Steffan candidly recounts her
frustrations as a single, white mother. Similarly, in other episodes, she openly discusses mature
topics like sex and AIDS with teenagers in addition to adopting terms from their vernacular like
“cool.” This approachability encourages Steffan’s guests to open up and to use the project’s
platform to contest potential misperceptions regarding their marginalized roles. After asking an
African American teenager about his experience with such racially discriminative problems as
drugs and gangs, for example, he proudly states, “Right now, I’m out here. I’m sober. I’m drug
free” (August 13, 1991). A network news segment might forgo this positive statement in favor of
a more sensational sound bite on addiction and violence.
Steffan’s wardrobe throughout Studio of the Streets similarly deflects media-propagated
gender stereotypes. During the episode from April 30, she wears a simple uniform of black jeans,
a white t-shirt, simple earrings, minimal makeup, and keeps her hair swept up in a loose braid.
The look is appropriate to the job’s physical demands and encourages viewers to focus on
Steffan’s role as a producer rather than on her appearance. The androgynous attire also eschews
the common misconception of femininity as tied up in image. Ultimately, Steffan’s both
respectful persona and understated appearance refocuses the viewers’ attention onto her guests’
symbolically powerful voices and appearances.
In contrast with Steffan’s reserved presentation, Conrad actively provokes responses
through a combination of mischief, humor, and insatiable curiosity. Hill identifies this as a

43

performative aspect in line with the project’s agitprop agenda while also stressing his neutrality
in that “ he was very open to having conversations with anybody.”
108
While Conrad appears tired
during the April 30
th
episode and leaves most of the conversations to Steffan, other episodes find
him, chameleon-like, adopting shifting roles depending upon the given situation. For example,
during an earlier exchange with a firearms advocate from a rural town outside of Buffalo, Conrad
neither patronizes nor casts off the man’s opinions. He does present hypothetical scenarios about
gun use, though, that force the man to consider both sides of the issue (April 23, 1991).
However, later that same episode, Conrad seamlessly assumes a more provocative
interview style. After speaking with an African American family about their attempt to get
working papers for their thirteen-year-old son, Conrad abruptly, yet jokingly, insinuates that he
could sell drugs. Despite being a seemingly irrational comment considering the boy’s
established, industrious nature, it exemplifies Conrad’s desire to address prevalent stereotypes
about Buffalo’s African American community. As Conrad intended, the kid’s parents promptly
fragment this bigoted suggestion by proudly stating that he won a certificate for writing a story
about drug use: “No, he’s not into no drugs.” “Good,” Conrad responds. “I’m glad to hear it.”
While such provocations enable Conrad to uncover latent racial stereotypes they also objectify
the unknowing participant as an example, thereby creating a troubling problematic throughout
his representations of the subaltern. This ultimately invalidates Conrad’s desire to mask his
unique privileges as a white, male artist.
Conrad’s theatrical presence similarly confuses the mission of Studio of the Streets.
Unlike the neutral ensembles that Steffan typically sports, Conrad’s often-jarring outfits attract
attention and provoke specific reactions. In their conscious avoidance of more gendered dress
codes, they may be seen as attempts at dispelling the stereotypes associated with his role as a

108
Hill in conversation with the author, Venice, CA, August 19, 2013.

44

white, middle-class, and male academic. For example, during the April 30
th
episode, he wears a
black, double-breasted blazer atop a denim button-up and navy, silk pants. Despite its subdued
color palette, this mixture of casual attire and eveningwear contrasts with both the outside
location and the midday timeframe. In a later episode from October 8, 1991, Conrad sports a
more blinding get-up consisting of a cherry red polo shirt, khaki chinos, silver high top sneakers,
and a fluorescent orange baseball cap. This look immediately instigates a sense of play amongst
passersby that livens up the ensuing conversations. “Are those silver?” a younger African
American woman shrieks while pointing at his shoes. “He’s crazy on TV! He’s a riot!” While
such interactions add comedic relief to otherwise often serious conversations, they also position
Conrad as a spectacle that distracts his participants.
Conrad and Steffan ultimately disregarded these underlying issues of selection and
spectacle to instead focus on the overall process inherent within Studio of the Streets. “There has
been a lot of talk about multiculturalism, about empowering minorities, women, and those at
society’s margins,” the two explained early on in the project. “However, if these persons are to
be part of the discourse, they must first get started by entering into it. Entering into participation
in television production is a critical phase of the evolution of a multicultural society.”
109
As
previously discussed, the project’s final aesthetic and minute details did not matter so much as
their effectiveness in inspiring a new legion of local media producers through the recording and
the witnessing of the subaltern via public access television. “Images are at the heart of our
construction of subjects,” Nichols conceded, agreeing with the prophesies of early media
activists like Shamberg and McLuhan regarding the dominant role that communication and
technology would play in the hyper-connected modern world.
110
Similarly cognizant that the

109
Conrad and Steffan, 29.

110
Nichols, 8.

45

“struggle around television representation is a struggle to have a public existence, a
materiality,”
111
Conrad and Steffan’s uncensored reflections of everyday life discussed above
subtly revealed the passive, daily censorship of such voices while presenting more realistic,
positive, and politicized subjectivities.
112

In addition to attempting to animate the politicization of their marginalized participants
through this process of witnessing, the conversations broadcast throughout Studio of the Streets
simultaneously functioned as an effective barometer for gaging the socioeconomic atmosphere of
Buffalo’s periphery communities. “What happens every day,” an early Studio of the Streets
pamphlet reads, “is ordinary and special, peculiar and plain, simple and complex, and has no
criteria of quality.” Despite lacking in fine arts aesthetic criteria, the expression of such quotidian
events through language creates a powerful text that exposes underlying tension. Roland Barthes
terms such discourse “stammering” in his 1986 essay “The Rustle of Language:” “stammering is
a message spoiled twice over: it is difficult to understand, but with an effort it can be understood
all the same; it is really neither in language nor outside it: it is a noise of language comparable to
the knocks by which a motor lets it be known that it is not working properly.”
113

Unlike a single, planned message, stammering occurs simultaneously from multiple
sources. It creates an overwhelming din through which shared connections are difficult to discern
unless parsed out via a manageable, isolating algorithm like that used within Studio of the
Streets. The examination of stammering in this manner enabled the project’s producers and
viewers to compile issues of shared anxiety amongst Buffalo’s often-ignored inhabitants, ranging
from, for example, drug use, education, gang violence, and gentrification to the overriding

111
DeeDee Halleck and Nathalie Magnan, “Access for Others: Alter(native) Media Practice,” in Hand-held Visions: The
Impossible Possibilities of Community Media, ed. DeeDee Halleck (New York: Fordham Univeristy Press, 2002), 159.

112
During his April 4, 2013 lecture at Pomona College, “The Death of the Artist: A Postmodern Postmortem on Complicity and
Resistances,” scholar Jonathan Katz defined “passive censorship” as the everyday negation of dissonant voices through either
silencing or avoidance.

113
Barthes, 76.

46

concern over public access funding. The prevalence of these topics within the individual
conversations culled from the community’s total discourse revealed the local political system’s
deficiencies. As Barthes explains, stammering is a misfire, or the “auditory sign of a failure
which appears in the functioning of the object.” “Stammering (of the motor or of the subject) is,
in short, a fear: I am afraid the motor is going to stop.”
114
If Buffalo politicians adequately
provided for its citizens, the resulting sense of security would quell such stammering into a
utopic “rustle,” “the very sound of plural delectation.”
115
Consequently, by broadcasting the
city’s stammering, Studio of the Streets not only revealed citizens’ underlying agitation, but also
posited public access television and media literacy as potential means for effecting political
change.

114
Ibid.

115
Ibid., 77.

47

Conclusion: Bodying Back
By 1993, Studio of the Streets boasted a substantial audience of Buffalo cable access
subscribers. A popular downtown dive bar aired the program weekly and viewers often
recognized both Conrad and Steffan while in public.
116
In 1992, the global contemporary art
exhibition documenta IX in Kassel, Germany, also screened the series. However, despite the
project’s success in this regard, it never entered Buffalo’s mainstream discourse. After three
years, the local newspaper’s television listings still obliquely referred to the program as either
“Anything” or “News.”
117
“I could go to a doctor's office or another professional place or
business and they wouldn’t know anything about it,” Conrad recalls. “It was [only] the people at
the bottom of the system who knew all about it.”
118
While he always intended to reach this
subaltern community, Conrad still understood that change required support among other
segments of the population.
Subsequently, Buffalo’s dishonest politics only amplified the producers’ growing
frustration. Despite actively supporting the opening of the promised production facility in 1992,
Mooney’s later policies swayed according to the financial incentives of corporate television
producers uninterested in sharing the space with the public.
119
Repetitive political propaganda
soon dominated the three PEG channels originally intended for local innovation.
120
Mooney
eventually relocated to Houston after an unpleasant employee review and the city replaced her
with another woman who systematically pushed out all the artists on the board during the next B-
CAM election. “We were just sitting there like, ‘Are you kidding?’ After ten years of working on
this!’” Jackson recalls. “After that it all went downhill.” Hastened by such unscrupulous business

116
Conrad does not remember the name of this bar.

117
Tony Conrad and Cathy Steffan, “Letter to the Editor: Public TV,” The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY), November 29, 1991.

118
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.

119
Ibid.

120
Cardoni in conversation with the author, Buffalo, New York, August 16, 2013.

48

and the new director’s soon after embezzlement conviction, local public access supporters
eventually backed down defeated from their cause.
121

Due to both these political setbacks and Conrad and Steffan’s personal issues with their
inability to animate more media producers, Studio of the Streets officially disbanded in 1993.
Since Steffan left a few months earlier in order to pursue individual projects, the last episodes
reveal Conrad’s exasperated attempts at restructuring the program’s collective algorithm into a
new, one-man production, Studio from the Streets. “It’s not in the street,” Conrad attempted to
explain this conceptual and locational shift, “it’s just from the street.”
122
He recorded the
program using professional video equipment and with the help of young trainees at the
community production facility.
Broadcast December 1, 1993, on Buffalo’s now sole public access channel, Channel 18,
the final episode of Studio from the Streets reveals a marked difference from its original premise.
The opening credits cut to Conrad, wearing a puffy vest and cowboy hat, roaming around a small
set decorated sparsely with four chairs. A ragtag group of teenagers meanwhile stage an
absurdist reimagining of a network talk show (see Figure 11). After they tire of such play, their
leader Brian, alias “Elvis,” speaks with Conrad about the studio’s limitations. “It’s like being
trapped,” Brian/Elvis remarks, “it’s like detention.” “When you do it in the studio, it starts to
become like a job,” Conrad agrees before ranting about his inability to inspire more public access
producers within Buffalo. “They sit out there and they watch the show,” he laments, “but they
don’t do anything!” After this longwinded eulogy, the end credits roll off a ridiculous text of
“Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Happy Kwanza!” in various kitschy fonts. Conrad’s voice
is heard off screen—“I think we’re out of here folks.” The screen goes black.

121
Harold McNeil, “Public-Access Channel Might Shut Down BCAM Board Votes to Suspend Operations if Budget Isn’t
Approved,” The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY), July 20, 1993.

122
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.

49

After this abrupt demise, Conrad refocused his attention on the production of new,
individual video pieces like the aforementioned Homework Helpline. While enrolled in the
undergraduate Media Study program at SUNY Buffalo, Steffan likewise worked on separate
projects. However, perhaps unable to obtain continued funding for such individual endeavors,
she later relocated to Southern California where she translated her documentary skills into
wedding videography with her new company Parallel Media Productions. Seemingly forgotten,
Studio of the Streets remained an obscure remnant of Buffalo’s public access and media
histories, only occasionally referenced in regard to Conrad’s oeuvre.
123
However, the last few
years witnessed a revival of interest in the project, catalyzed by his decision to digitize a number
of the original, mastered tapes for inclusion in the collection at New York’s Anthology Film
Archives. “I see [Studio of the Streets] as a powerful project because it contains the ideas that I
deal with most trenchantly and of which I'm the most fond,” Conrad explains. “There's the
surface seduction, which is the ability to engage with all of these mysteriously intriguing people.
Then there's also another level of understanding to be reached through reflecting upon what's
actually involved in this whole enterprise.”
124
Anthology’s Curator of Collections Andrew
Lampert fervently supported this reexamination in similar terms: “I found [Studio of the Streets]
immediately captivating because it was yet another facet of Tony's personality and work. When
you look at Tony as a whole, things don't line up. I was really interested in the diversity of his
output.”
125
Conrad’s rising celebrity within the art world and representation by the prestigious
Galerie Buchholz (Berlin, Germany) and Greene Naftali Gallery (New York) no doubt abetted
this revitalization by providing both a guaranteed critical audience and financial support.

123
Between 1993 and 2012, Studio of the Streets was only shown publically during a 2005 film and video program at Anthology
Film Archives under Curator of Collections Andrew Lampert and within the 2006 Hallwalls exhibition “Pioneer of the Minimal:
A Tony Conrad Retrospective,” curated by Joanna Raczynska.

124
Conrad in conversation with the author, Buffalo, NY, August 14, 2013.
125
Andrew Lampert in telephone conversation with the author, August 22, 2013.

50

Inspired by these congruent occurrences, Conrad utilized Curator Michael Cohen’s
invitation to show at New York University’s 80WSE Gallery in 2012 as the perfect opportunity
for reexamining Studio of the Streets within the particular context of a formal gallery setting.
“Doing the City: Urban Community Interventions” (September 12 – November 3, 2012)
consequently showcased Conrad’s engagement with the local by exhibiting earlier films like
Loose Connections (1973/2011) and Waterworks for the Summer Solstice (1972/2011) alongside
compiled, digitized clips from Studio of the Streets.
126
While the catalogue
127
provides a more in-
depth discussion of this latter work, the exhibition itself only briefly alluded to Conrad and
Steffan’s public access agenda via wall text listing their early demands (see Figure 12). Cohen
included little in the way of either a historical contextualization or an explanation of the political
circumstances surrounding the project’s development. “[The clips from Studio of the Streets]
were very interesting but they did not invite a linear viewing,” Lampert concedes. “Viewers
would just drop in and out and dropping in and out of local Buffalo politics for an art gallery
audience presents a myriad of challenges.” Moreover, he continues, “[the project] defies
expectations, even if you are familiar with Tony's video work.” “It forces one to know a little bit,
or learn or care about, Buffalo.”
128
Lampert and Cohen collectively attempted to quell these
issues by allowing Conrad to introduce a number of complete episodes during an evening
screening at Anthology on Wednesday, October 10, 2012.
Despite Cohen’s inability to sustain audience engagement with Studio of the Streets, his
exhibition did successfully resituate the project as an underappreciated aspect of Conrad’s artistic
and theoretical development. “It was a slow burn,” Cohen admits in regards to this revived

126
Greene Naftali Gallery Director Vera Alemani soon after worked with curator Ilaria Bonacossa to restage the show at the Villa
Croce Museum of Contemporary Art in Geneva, Italy. “Farsi La Città: Interventi, comunità e partecipazione” was on view from
March 9 to April 28, 2013.

127
See Tony Conrad: Doing the City/Urban Community Interventions, ed. Michael Cohen.

128
Lampert in telephone conversation with the author, August 22, 2013.

51

interest.
129
However, positive reviews focused increasingly on Studio of the Streets while Cohen
also came to recognize the importance of exposing people to this rediscovered project.
130
Conrad
himself credits this enthusiastic critical response to the fact that “things have their time.” He also
realizes, however, that his celebrity as an individual artist similarly encouraged this engagement.
His acknowledgment underscores an underlying dilemma within the project’s recent, and past,
exhibition history—the disavowal of its collective origins. Conrad’s outspoken nature and
undeniable intelligence often overshadows the more understated, yet still important, efforts of his
colleagues. For example, past screenings of Studio of the Streets at Hallwalls and documenta IX
focused entirely on Conrad as producer, forgetting the important roles held not only by Steffan
but also by Szyjka, his rotating cast of supporters from Buffalo’s media community, and, of
course, the diverse individuals represented on-camera.
Increased emphasis on the collective algorithm for Studio of the Streets within future
exhibitions will help to alleviate this issue. Likewise, the provision of a parallel historical survey
will better foster sustained critical engagement amidst contemporary audiences and will help to
properly situate the project in the lineage of cable access and video experimentation outlined
above. “There are several layers [of Studio of the Streets] that are still attainable, that can still be
evoked,” Conrad agrees. “They are now pushed into some kind of closet by the fact that the
Internet has supplemented public access.”
131
His interest in the aestheticizing, often elitist gallery
site as an experimental replacement for cable, however, problematizes the project’s original
emphasis on unmediated, subaltern access. By objectifying the public project as an artwork
within such a confined space, Conrad ultimately risks nullifying its potential activist layers. As
the artist Seth Price argues, “the problem is that situating the [public art] work at a singular point

129
Michael Cohen in Skype conversation with the author, August 22, 2013.

130

Ibid.

131
Ibid.

52

in space and time turns it, a priori, into a monument.” “What if it is instead,” he asks, “dispersed
and reproduced?” “We should recognize that collective experience is now based on simultaneous
private experiences, distributed across the field of media culture, knit together by ongoing
debate, publicity, promotion, and discussion.”
132
Following Price’s line of reasoning, it is
interesting to consider resituating Studio of the Streets away from the constraints of the gallery
and now-defunct public access television channels towards a new, global site of simultaneous
production and reproduction—YouTube.
Like its cable predecessor, YouTube’s online video network proffers itself as an
egalitarian site for individual expression. It realizes, to an extent, the goals of earlier theorists
like McLuhan and Shamberg for providing citizens with open access to media technology.
Similar to the reflexive formula used within Studio of the Streets, YouTube also continuously
critiques and builds upon the distribution models of mainstream media. However, unlike public
access television, YouTube remains a corporation. It often propagates commercial
advertisements under the guise of user-generated content and replaces the empowered voices of,
for example, Studio of the Streets with impotent appropriations of the self. It replaces the search
for identity and empowerment inherent to earlier activist video projects with vapid, individual
quests for celebrity amidst the Internet’s anonymous inhabitants. Ultimately, instead of
producing content, “you” become content.
133
This focus on the self and continuous image
consumption sublimates subjective expression into narcissistic consumerism.
Notwithstanding these inadequacies, YouTube retains potential for reanimating the
activist ethos of earlier video and public access collectives.
134
“We were given this technological

132
Seth Price, “Dispersion,” 2002 – present, http://www.distributedhistory.com/Dispersion2008.pdf, 10.
133
Matthew Mitchem, “Video Social: Complex Parasitical Media,” in The Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, edited
by Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2008), 274.

134
For more on Juhasz’s critique of YouTube, refer to her 2011 video-book, Learning from YouTube, published by The MIT
Press and available online at http://vectors.usc.edu/projects/learningfromyoutube/.

53

tool,” Juhasz notes, “but we haven't written it into this larger infrastructure that was always part
of the project—the ‘Nice to meet you,’ ‘How are you?’ ‘Here's your neighbor, let's work
together.’”
135
Price shares a similar understanding: “with more and more media readily available
through this unruly archive, the task becomes one of packing, producing, reframing, and
distributing; a mode of production analogous not to the creation of material goods, but to the
production of social contexts, using existing material.”
136
Juhasz’s proposed solution relies upon
“bodying back” to the project’s original context. In order to abet the formation of politically
active off-line communities, online videos must provide not only adequate information about the
producers’ ideologies but also a clear set of goals. Through such contextual “stickiness,” Juhasz
concludes, “video material is then understood in the richness of its production, the richness of its
history, the richness of its moment. It is about artists who don't just make the video but make the
world around them.”
137

Via this method of bodying back, YouTube and other similar websites may more
effectively reinvigorate Studio of the Streets than gallery exhibitions by providing new
audiences, creating new networks, and inspiring new producers. While Conrad and Steffan
initially developed the project for the Buffalo community, the widespread, uncensored dispersal
of its narratives online may also be seen as an important continuation of its reflexive, critical
process. In this manner, properly contextualized viewings of Studio of the Streets may move
beyond the confines of Conrad’s art world celebrity to directly challenge entrenched media
representations of subaltern communities. In addition, the project’s revitalization may reveal the
latent, political potential of todays even more affordable and user-friendly video and online
technology to once-again inspire a new, now global, legion of media producers.

135
Juhasz in conversation with the author, Highland Park, CA, August 23, 2013.
136
Price, “Dispersion,” 13.
137
Juhasz in conversation with the author, Highland Park, CA, August 23, 2013.

54

Figure Appendix

Figure 1

The advantages of the Portapak over the network news video equipment.
Images taken from Michael Shamberg and Raindance Corporation’s 1971 publication Guerrilla
Television.

Figure 2

George Holliday, still from the Rodney King video as broadcast on ABC News, March 1991.
Accessed March 3, 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW1ZDIXiuS4.

55

Figure 3

Gerald O’Grady on the cover of the Buffalo Courier Express, June 1979.
Photo: Mickey Osterreicher

Figure 4

Still featuring Steffan from the 8mm News Collective. Date unknown.
Photo courtesy: Carolyn Tennant.

56

Figure 5

Still featuring the signs and megaphones used during an early Studio of the Streets
demonstration.

Figure 6

Title credits from Studio of the Streets.

57

Figure 7

Still of Steffan’s reflection in a speaker’s sunglasses from Studio of the Streets.

Figure 8

Still from Tony Conrad and Beverly Grant’s Waterworks for the Summer Solstice, 1972/2011,
16mm film.

58

Figure 9

Still of Springer showing his video camera to Conrad from Studio of the Streets.

Figure 10

Still of Boston tourists, an old woman, and Conrad from Studio of the Streets.

59

Figure 11

Still from the last episode of Studio from the Streets, December 1, 1993.

Figure 12

Installation view of Studio of the Streets from “Doing the City: Urban Community
Interventions,” curated by Michael Cohen, 80WSE Gallery, New York University, September 12
– November 3, 2012. Photo: Jean Vong.

60

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conrad.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This essay provides an historical contextualization of Studio of the Streets, a public access television program produced by the artists Tony Conrad and Cathy Steffan in Buffalo, NY from 1990 to 1993. Originally conceived as a recorded demonstration on the steps of City Hall for increased cable television provisions, the project developed over the years into a means for, in Conrad’s term, “animating” the politicization of the city’s marginalized inhabitants through the two‐fold processes of face‐to‐face conversation and video witnessing. The producers’ developing activist ethos and investment in collectivity moreover reflects the prevalence of such postmodern discourses as identity politics and globalization during that period, in addition to revealing the radical changes brought about by concurrent and fluctuating shifts in video technology. In this manner, the significance of Studio of the Streets ultimately reveals itself not only through its unique theoretical underpinning but also through its placement within the history of video activism both nationwide and in Buffalo. While the project ultimately failed in its principal intention of inspiring a new legion of local media producers, Studio of the Streets maintains relevance today as a model for the issues involved with properly recontextualizing past activist public access television endeavors either within the art gallery or across the disparate network of such online video platforms as YouTube.

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Creator Mansfield, Corey (author)

Core Title Animating the periphery: Studio of the Streets and the politicization of the Buffalo community through public access television and media literacy

School School of Fine Arts

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere

Publication Date 04/22/2014

Defense Date 04/22/2014

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Buffalo,camcorders,Cathy Steffan,community access television,Department of Media Studies Buffalo,marginalization,media art,media literacy,OAI-PMH Harvest,public access television,Squeaky Wheel,Studio of the Streets,Tony Conrad,video activism,video witnessing,Western New York,YouTube

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Tain, John (committee chair), Anastas, Rhea (committee member), West, Jennifer (committee member)

Creator Email cmansfie@usc.edu,coreymmansfield@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-382745

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