Woody Vasulka studied documentary filmmaking at FAMU in Prague. He belongs to the first generation of experimenters with video technology. He left Czechoslovakia for the USA in 1965 with his Icelandic wife and collaborator, Steina in 1965. He soon abandoned the limitations of the cinematographic apparatus and smoothly transitioned to electronic material research. He was a co-founder of the electronic intermedia theater The Kitchen in New York (1971) and lecturer at the Center for Media Study at State University of New York in Buffalo (1973-79). Since 1980 he has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His act of disclosing of the mysteries of electronic media spans from early documentary experiments with the Portapak camera, to multiform inquiries into the transformative potential of video using in abstract tapes and installations, to the invention of new narrative practices in The Commission and Art of Memory, and ultimately to the complex robotic installation cycle The Brotherhood, which imbues found war machines from deserted military bases with a new potential for meaning. In the last years he has devoted himself to curatorial and archivist activity. He co-curated the exhibition Eigenwelt der Apparaten Welt for Ars Electronica Festival in Linz and was co-curator (with Peter Weibel) of the exhibition MindFrames in ZKM, Karlsruhe.

Biografická informace

Woody Vasulka, native of Brno, Czech Republic, and graduate of the Prague Film Academy, belongs to the first generation of experimenters with video technology. Soon after his emigration to the USA where he came with his Icelandic wife and collaborator, Steina, in 1965, he abandoned the limitations of the cinematographic apparatus and smoothly transitioned to electronic material research. He was a co-founder of the electronic intermedia theater The Kitchen in New York (1971) and lecturer at the Center for Media Study at State University of New York in Buffalo (1973-79). Since 1980 he has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His act of disclosing of the mysteries of electronic media spans from early documentary experiments with the Portapak camera, to multiform inquiries into the transformative potential of video using in abstract tapes and installations, to the invention of new narrative practices in The Commission and Art of Memory, and ultimately to the complex robotic installation cycle The Brotherhood, which imbues found war machines from deserted military bases with a new potential for meaning. In the last years he has devoted himself to curatorial and archivist activity. He co-curated the exhibition Eigenwelt der Apparaten Welt for Ars Electronica Festival in Linz and was co-curator (with Peter Weibel) of the exhibition MindFrames in ZKM, Karlsruhe.