Art on television: 1967-1976

This dissertation provides an account of artists’ residency programs at two American public television stations in the earliest years of video art, arguing that the institutional context of the television station demands a reorientation of video art history. The collaboration between artists and television professionals in an historical moment of rapid change in public media, visual arts, and social ideals illustrates the importance of institutional histories and dialogue between artistic and extra-artistic cultural spheres in post-war American art. ❧ The residency programs at WGBH-TV in Boston and KQED-TV in San Francisco, both initiated in 1967, were very similar on the surface, but the differences between the two offer insight into the history of post-war modernism and the emergence of post-modern practices. At WGBH-TV in Boston, artists and television professionals collaborated closely to produce a number of artworks for broadcast. These works often undermined the ideals of individuality and autonomy that are treated as foundations of visual art production by openly exploring the ways in which the collaborative environment of the television station and the conventions of public broadcasting shaped the practices of participating artists. At KQED-TV in San Francisco, on the other hand, artists tried to retreat from the television world even as they inhabited it, by eschewing broadcast and embracing modernist ideals of medium specificity. Despite a desire for autonomy, however, artists at KQED found their practices instrumentalized, as the television studio became a creative laboratory that merged the cold-war culture of collaborative research and development and the contemporaneous lionization of expressive abstraction. ❧ These residency programs had an effect beyond the boundaries of the art world and the new genre of video art. In a number of television shows produced at WGBH, KQED and WNET-TV in New York, art practices spilled over into regular programming. As art galleries began to buy television monitors on which to display video art, a handful of television shows introduced the strategies and techniques of video art as a bridge to the counterculture, in order to connect with the increasingly powerful babyboomer demographic. These television shows are not categorized as artworks, but they show significant points of overlap with those products of the residencies that have been, existing as genuine hybrids of art and television. ❧ The activities and works documented in this dissertation demonstrate a clear point of overlap and entanglement between cultural spheres that are often kept at arms length from one another.

本论文聚焦视频艺术（video art）初创时期美国两家公共电视台的艺术家驻留项目，提出电视台的制度语境要求我们重新审视视频艺术史的研究路径。在公共媒体、视觉艺术与社会理想均经历剧烈变革的历史语境下，艺术家与电视从业者之间的合作，阐明了战后美国艺术中制度史研究，以及艺术与非艺术文化领域对话的重要价值。

波士顿的WGBH电视台与旧金山的KQED电视台均于1967年启动艺术家驻留项目，二者表面上相似度颇高，但二者间的差异却为战后现代主义史与后现代实践的兴起提供了重要洞见。在波士顿WGBH电视台，艺术家与电视从业者紧密协作，产出了多部面向播出的艺术作品。这些作品往往通过直面探讨电视台的协作环境与公共广播的行业惯例如何塑造了参与项目的艺术家的创作实践，进而解构了被视为视觉艺术创作根基的个性与自主性理念。而在旧金山KQED电视台，艺术家们虽身处电视行业之中，却试图抽身其外——他们规避播出环节，转而信奉媒介特异性的现代主义理念。然而，尽管艺术家们渴望保有创作自主性，KQED的艺术家却发现自身的实践被工具化：电视台演播室成为了融合冷战时期协作研发文化，与当时对表现性抽象艺术推崇的创意实验室。

这些驻留项目的影响远超艺术界与新兴的视频艺术品类范畴。在WGBH、KQED以及纽约WNET电视台制作的多部电视节目中，艺术创作实践逐渐渗透进常规电视节目内容之中。随着美术馆开始购置电视显示器以展示视频艺术，少数电视节目将视频艺术的创作策略与技法作为对接反主流文化的桥梁，以期与日益壮大的婴儿潮一代受众群体建立联结。这些电视节目并未被归类为艺术作品，但它们与驻留项目产出的作品存在显著的重叠之处，二者均属于艺术与电视的真正融合产物。

本论文所记录的各类活动与作品，清晰展现了本应彼此隔绝的文化领域之间存在的重叠与交织关系。