Educational Media Reviews Online

On the one hand, this compilation of 30 short experimental films from Dennis Oppenheim is a valiant effort, providing us with a historical record/document of what one artist was doing with nascent video technology in the early 1970s.

On the other hand this collection also serves to point out one of the unspoken truths about a lot of experimental video from the early 1970s, and let us not mince words here: most of it is dull, repetitive, unimaginative and uninteresting—bordering on rubbish.

The artist-becoming-the-canvas trope is one of the oldest on the books and so Oppenheim is himself the object of much of the material here, whether he’s using his own body or someone else’s to explore “boundaries of personal risk, bodily transformation, and interpersonal communication”. But looking at it now nearly 40 years on, filming oneself methodically eating a gingerbread man cookie, or taking repeated slow-motion punches to a rather doughy midsection — which Oppenheim in fact does in (you guessed it) “Gingerbread Man” and “Slow Punch” — is a good deal less “risky” than “risible”.

Given the age of the original source video material and subsequent transfers over the years, there is a certain rough-hewn, grainy, even lurid visual quality to the proceedings. Kudos are in order for the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia, for producing a beautifully mastered and packaged DVD, with gatefold cover, and glossy booklet featuring an essay by Slought’s Senior Curator Aaron Levy, and a reprint of Willoughby Sharp’s 1971 interview with Oppenheim originally published in Studio International.

A preview of the DVD is available at the Microcinema website and more about Oppenheim’s life and work can be found on this Dennis Oppenheim site.

Recommended with reservations.