U B U W E B - Film & Video: Terry Fox

UbuWeb

Terry Fox

Children's Tapes
1974, 30 min, b&w, sound
Produced by Art/Tapes/22

Children's Tapes is a classic early video work, a seminal investigation that translates the aesthetics of minimalism, performance, perception and real time into the vernacular of the everyday. With ingenuity and wit, Fox constructs phenomenological dramas from the science of the quotidian. Suspense and surprise suffuse a series of anecdotal episodes that demonstrate basic physical phenomena. Fox builds dramatic tension and mystery with an extreme economy of means, focusing a stationary black-and-white camera on ordinary household objects. With the camera close to his still-life subjects, Fox constructs a series of elementary experiments that illustrate fundamental principles of physical science: A piece of fruit is placed under a tin lid held up by a single match, as an unsuspecting fly approaches the bait; a spoon, balanced on a fork, holds a piece of ice until the melting water topples it; a candle in a pan of water is extinguished when a pot is placed over it. The intimate scale, magnified view, and suspenseful unfolding of minute events in real time all serve to intensify the viewers' perceptions and expectations in these engaging mini-narratives.

Biography Terry Fox was a central participant in the West Coast performance art, video and Conceptual Art movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Working in the San Francisco Bay Area, his political, site-specific performance actions explored ritual and symbolic content in the objects, places, and natural phenomena of everyday life.

Fox's work in video is an extension of these concerns. His 1974 Children's Tapes is a classic early investigation of the medium. With wit and ingenuity, Fox used the intimate scale and time-based properties of video to translate the aesthetic and formal tenets of minimalism, real time, perception and performance into the realm of the everyday. These engaging phenomenological dramas, which illustrate basic principles of physical science with household objects, unfold as anecdotal narratives of the quotidian.

Living and working in Europe for the past several years, Fox has continued to produce multi-media installations, performances and sculptures.

Terry Fox was born in 1943. He studied at the Cornish School of Allied Arts in Seattle and the Accademia di Belli Arti in Rome. His performances and works have been seen throughout the United States and Europe, at festivals and institutions including the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse; Documentas 5 and 6, Kassel, Germany; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; De Appel, Amsterdam; Modern Art Gallery, Vienna; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum Folkwang, Essen, West Germany; Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris; Het Apollohuis, Eindhoven, Holland; and Gallerie L'A, Liege, Belgium. Fox lives in Liege.

RESOURCES:

Terry Fox in UbuWeb Sound