[FISEA 1988] Keynote: John Sanborn — Technologies and Story Writing

Abstract n.a.

  • John Sanborn  (USA, 1954) is an award-winning, world-renowned media artist whose body of work reaches from the technological stone age of the 1970’s to the digital high-tech bleeding edge of today. His media work has manifested as television, installations, games, Internet experiences and plain old video art. His work has been shown at every major museum in the world; including the Whitney Museum; MOMA, New York; the Prado, Madrid; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Tate Gallery, London; and the Seibu Museum, Tokyo. Electronic Arts Intermix distributes his video art and has since his first project, “The Last Videotapes of Marcel Duchamp. Sanborn’s television programs have been broadcast worldwide, including works with Robert Ashley, Bill T. Jones, John Zorn, Nam June Paik, Philip Glass, Twyla Tharp, Mikhail Baryshnikov, David Gordon, and The Residents. In the 1970s Sanborn was one of the artists-in-residence at The Television Laboratory at WNET/13, a groundbreaking environment started by the Rockefeller Foundation and Nam June Paik as a playpen for video artists to create works for broadcast. He also created works for the VISA series (started by Paik) and showed installations at the Whitney Museum, participating in 2 biennial exhibitions. In the 1980s Sanborn was an artist-in-residence at the 1980 Winter Olympics as well as one of the first directors with work appearing on MTV (music video with King Crimson). He produced hours of performance-based video for the PBS series “Alive TV” and directed “Perfect Lives”, the seminal opera for television, by composer Robert Ashley. [source: johnsanborn-video.com]