Scratch Video was a British video art movement that emerged in the 1980s. It was characterised by the use of found footage and challenged many of the established conventions of broadcast television. Arising out of a turbulent decade that saw amongst other things the miners take on the Thatcher government of the day, Scratch was an appropriate and accessible visual expression for dealing critically and directly with the impact of mass communications on society. These videos tended to critique the institutions making broadcast videos, specifically those commercialised for young audiences, such as MTV.
Today Scratch Video continues to be a popular historical form, maintaining a cult following in contemporary art video circles. For these screenings, Street Level have teamed up with Rewind to bring to Glasgow a selection of some of the groundbreaking works in this genre, including the Gorilla Tapes, the Duvet Brothers and George Barber. Other artists include John Maybury, Kim Flitcroft & Sandra Goldbacher, Jeffrey Hinton, John Scarlett-Davis, Akiko Hada & Holger Hiller, Chris Meigh-Andrews, Nick Cope.
Throughout the 80s various venues across London screened Scratch videos, including the Ambulance Station, the Fridge nightclub and the Brixton Ritzy Cinema, which housed a large amount of recycled colour televisions. These screening were also an opportunity to significantly distribute works on VHS tapes. Scratch in many ways set the ground for the later manifestation of V-J’s.
Scratch Video is one of a number of collaborations between Street Level Photoworks and Rewind.
The Greatest Hits of Scratch Video Vols 1 & 2. Producer: George Barber
Artists: George Barber, Kim Flitcroft & Sandra Goldbacher, Jeffrey Hinton, The Duvet Brothers, John Scarlett-Davis, John Maybury, Gorilla Tapes. 60mins, 1985
‘The Greatest Hits of Scratch Video’ compilation, according to Prof Michael O’Pray at the Edinburgh Film Festival 1996, is the most widely seen independent video ever, being featured in The Sunday Times, Face, Honey, 19, NME, Melody Maker, Sounds, Time Out, City Limits and Zig Zag. Furthermore, extracts were shown internationally on TV. BBC1, BBC2 and BBC Bristol, KQED San Francisco, MTV 1989, 1992, 1995 RAI Italy 1990, Canal Plus, Channel 7 1991, USA Cable Network, 'Nightflight' and ORF Austrian TV.
Interlude: Homage To Bugs Bunny
Artist: Chris Meigh-Andrews. 4 mins, 1983
“Interlude: Homage to Bugs Bunny was intended to be a comment on watching TV, the endless repeats and a reference to the concept of ‘flow’ (separate programmes being part of a continuous stream of entertainment). I also enjoyed the rhythmic momentum it built up, being at the time (1983) entirely under the spell of minimal music.” Chris Meigh Andrews, Some Notes on Single Screen Video Work: 1978-88, Lancashire Polytechnic
Suffer Bomb Disease
Artist: Nick Cope. 4 mins, 1985
“Following 'Amen:Survive the Coming Hard Times' being picked up by the Film and Video Umbrella touring programme 'Deconstruction: British Video Art engages with the Mainstream' in 1985, I continued to produce a few pieces of Scratch based work at the time. Suffer Bomb Disease was one of these pieces, drawing heavily on the influential 'Atomic Cafe' film from that time, and using a soundtrack from experimental sound and music outfit, This Heat. 'Suffer Bomb Disease' takes its title from a translation from the original Vietnamese of This Heat's soundtrack and was very much a reaction to the apocalyptic forebodings of a time when nuclear cold war rumblings were a daily shadow under which CND constantly campaigned, and the UK government of the time were complicit with US bombings of Libya from UK airbases and the US nuclear airstrike programme was based on British soil at Greenham Common.” Nick Cope 2008.
Ohi Ho Bang Bang
Artists: Akiko Hada & Holger Hiller. Music: Karl Bonnie, Holger Hiller & Akiko Hada. 6 mins, 1988
“In 1988 we collaborated on two audio-visual pieces for a music performance in Karlsruhe. These two "visual songs" were created on a video edit suite, solely from sounds (and accompanying images) originating on video footage. ‘Ohi Ho Bang Bang’ was produced as a natural development of this work, to further experiment with this method of composition - an audio-visual equivalent of music sampling. Throughout the post production of the piece, both the video editing and the musical composition developed in parallel to each other.” Akiko Hada 1989.
The video was released as a CDV single on Mute Records in 1989, as well as shown extensively on MTV and other broadcast channels.
The Commander In Chief
Artist: Gorilla Tapes. 4 mins, 1985
“Gorilla Tapes was the collective name of Scratch Video artists Jon Dovey, Gavin Hodge and Tim Morrison. With simple video editing equipment and images recorded from television, Gorilla Tapes made sharp satirical and political videos in the early 1980s. 'Commander in Chief reveals the true message behind the manufactured mediation of news and politics.” Gorilla Tapes Group statement 1996.
Limelight Club, Multiscreen Show (Edit)
Artists: The Duvet Brothers. 20 mins, 1986 / 2008
“We toured a live multi-screen show for 3 years. We played out from three sources into as many TVs as we could get; minimum 9, maximum 25 but usually 18 or 21. They were built in an architectural shape on a scaffold structure. Multi-Screen installation on this scale had only really happened previously in the art world.
This show was performed to a packed Limelight club in London, mainly full of suited execs from the TV Commercials and Music industry that came to see what all the scratch video fuss was about. It is significant in that it demonstrated the crossover of the Duvet Brother’s style to the commercial world.
This show includes specifically made for multi-screen pieces like ‘Horses’ and ‘Strickly Trigalig’ which was a commission from London Video Arts to create a nine screen installation in their windows. The hand-held cameras and fast cut music promos, shot on Super-8 film were also just starting to have an influence. Now, of course, this style is part of the common language of contemporary television and movies.” Rik Lander and Peter Boyd MacLean, 20
Street Level would like to thank: Adam Lockhart, Rewind, Dundee, and the artists: George Barber, Nick Cope, The Duvet Brothers, Akiko Hada, Tim Morrison, Chris Meigh-Andrews and Nadia Rossi.
REWIND| Artists’ Video in the 70s & 80s is a research project that is providing a research resource that addresses the gap in historical knowledge of the evolution of electronic media arts in the UK, by investigating specifically the first two decades of artists’ works in video. There was a danger that many of these works might disappear because of their ephemeral nature and poor technical condition. The project is conserving and preserving them, and enabling further scholarly activity.
ARTISTS BIOGRAPHIES
George Barber, declared the ‘Henry Ford of independent video’, studied conceptual sculpture at St Martin's School of Art and The Slade School of Fine Art. His video release entitled 'THE GREATEST HITS OF SCRATCH VIDEO' became internationally known in the late 80's and was featured on television right across the world and similarly in many magazines, including The Face, The Independent and Sunday Times. Barber has also had work shown in a variety of high profile venues such as The Tate Britain, ICA, the Museum of Modern Art, Barcelona, The World Wide Video Festival, Holland, The Kitchen, New York and Pompidou Centre, Paris.
The Duvet Brothers are Peter Boyd MacLean and Rik Lander. Lander and MacLean met at The Colchester Film Workshop and began collaborating in 1983.Thier most well known work is ‘Blue Monday’ 1984. The piece was screened on Channel 4 in 1985 and featured on George Barber’s compilation ‘The Greatest Hits of Scratch Video Volume 1’.Both Rik Lander and Peter Boyd MacLean currently work as directors. Lander has worked for Channel 4, covering events such as the Turner Prize and Boyd MacLean has directed animation pieces including ‘Crapston Villas’ and ‘Greaseland’.
John Scarlett-Davis was born in 1950. He studied Geology at University of Swansea, and then at Goldsmiths College of Art, London. He worked as an editor and assistant director for Derek Jarman, including Jarman's first music video, and was a prolific tape maker in the early 80s, importing the tempo of Scratch video into his art pieces. Following a successful career in music videos and commercials, he now lives in Cornwall, exhibits photographs, and is writing a novel.
John Maybury was born in 1958. He studied at North East London Polytechnic, and designed sets for Derek Jarman's Jubilee, and worked with him on The Last of England and The Tempest. Initially associated with Super8 filmmaking, his mastery of video technology was quickly evident in a series of music videos and long-works for television such as Remembrance of Things Fast 1993. Following the success of his fictionalised life of Francis Bacon Love is The Devil 1998; he is now working on feature films.
Gorilla Tapes was founded in Luton by artists Jon Dovey, Gavin Hodge and Tim Morrison. They made an immediate impact with their sharp political tapes, collaged from old film footage and the TV news imagery of the mid-Thatcher years. Gorilla Tapes have exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Highlights include participation in Tate Britains ‘A Century of Artists Films’ in 2003.They are currently working separately in academia and documentary filmmaking.
Born in Essex, England in 1952, Chris Meigh-Andrews then lived in Montreal, Canada. Working with video in a fine art context since 1977, his single channel video tapes have been screened in the UK, Europe, North & South America, Australia and Japan. Establishing an artist's post-production facility and independent video production company, he worked as a freelance director and cameraman, video editor, and animator to fund his own experimental video work throughout the 1980's. An active member of London Video Arts, he was chairman of the Council of Management from 87-89.
Nick Cope has worked in film and video production collaborating with Cabaret Voltaire, the Butthole Surfers, O Yuki Conjugate and Electribe 101 amongst others. His practice is informed by the canon of experimental and avant-garde film and video practice from early last century to the present. He currently works as Senior Lecturer in Video and New Media Production at the University of Sunderland.
Holger Hiller is a musician who studied art in Hamburg, where he met Walter Thielsch and Thomas Fehlmann and recorded his first works with them. With Fehlmann he later founded the band Palais Schaumburg in 1980. At the same time his solo career began. Hiller was one of the first musicians in Europe to use the sampler as his main or sole instrument. From 1984 on he lived in London, eventually working as producer for Mute Records. In 1988 he recorded "Ohi Ho Bang Bang" with Akiko Hada, a Japanese experimental video artist and photographer based in Berlin, Germany.
Sandra Goldbacher and Kim Flitcroft began showing their re-cut versions of television commercials and Hollywood films on old TV sets at the Fridge Club in Brixton in 1984. Flitcroft went on to make mainly documentaries, among the most recent of which is ‘Cutting Edge: Girls Αlone and Boys Alone’ and ‘Guyana, Trouble in Paradise’, a short series about the role of a third-world government. Goldbacher directed many major commercials for Absolute Vodka, The Observer, Philips, Evian, Wella, Johnny Walker and Baileys. She also directed various arts documentaries for the BBC series 'Building Sights' and two documentaries on the world of boxing for Channel Four. She wrote and directed her first feature film The Governess in 1998. For that film she was nominated for a BAFTA for best newcomer and won a Hitchcock Award at the Dinard British Film Festival.
Jeffrey Hinton has been cited as being largely responsible for the ‘trash’ aesthetic attached to the infamous Taboo nightclub in London. An associate of Taboo founder, Leigh Bowery, Hinton used cut-ups of Blondie videos, gay pornography and Bollywood films, which were projected onto the dance floor. Hinton went on to have a successful career as a DJ, although little is known about his career as a video artist after the 1980s.
