Inventing Video Art Distribution in the UK: Technology, Strategy, Funding

When the London Film-Makers' Co-operative started distributing underground films in 1966, its medium, 16mm film, was an established technological standard. However, when London Video Arts launched its distribution service in 1977, video was a cutting edge technology riven by competing and evolving standards, none of which had achieved significant public or institutional penetration. Thus, while LVA's initial distribution strategy closely resembled that developed by the film co-operatives - open access, works remaining property of the makers, non-promotional catalogue format - their defining medium left them in a significantly different situation. Though LVA quickly chose Umatic tape as its distribution standard, even this introduced a problem unknown in film - the incompatibility of PAL and the US NTSC formats - and ½ inch open reel tape works required different equipment. These issues and the certainty that further formats would emerge introduced an expense to artists' video that its DIY culture could ill-afford.

Though LFMC survived for nearly 10 years without regular cultural subsidy, by 1977 it annually received grants from several funders, and the Arts Council of Great Britain's (ACGB) Artists' Films Committee was already supporting video production and exhibition. In 1977 this committee received two video distribution proposals, and chose LVA's over that of the pioneer video workshop Fantasy Factory. Apart from expense, the committee found that Fantasy Factory's proposal related to Community Arts and thus was beyond their remit, while LVA's was certainly Artists' Video. Thus LVA was able to draw on significant cultural subsidy from the time it first found premises. However, by this time the ACGB's subsidised screening programme had provided an alternative point of access to the LFMC's collection, which rarely returned any rentals to the distributor. This was soon expanded to include video artists, and in the early 1980s four Videotheques - public access video libraries - were set up, providing another alternative point of access to LVA's collection. While LFMC and LVA evinced some hostility to this challenge to their distribution, the benefits to artists in the ACGB's schemes drove a wedge between artists and their own organisations - the LFMC and LVA.

Thus, while LVA's cultural-political position as an Artists' Video organisation allowed them to ameliorate the expense of video technology, this introduced institutional competition at the same time that a distribution strategy was being innovated and a market developed. This paper will examine the effects of technology, subsidy, cultural consecration and funder competition on video art distribution in the UK in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Dr Peter Thomas
Post Doctoral Research Fellow on the AHRB funded project 'Independent Film and Video Distribution in the UK, 1966-2000', University of Luton
peter.thomas@luton.ac.uk
(peter.thomas-1@sunderland.ac.uk)