Beryl Korot was born in
1945 in New York, where she continues to live and work. An early
video-art pioneer and an internationally exhibited artist, her multiple-channel
(and multiple-monitor) video
installation
works explored the relationship between programming tools as diverse
as the technology of the loom and multiple-channel video. She has
commented: “Just as the spinning and gathering of wool serve
as the raw material for a weave, so the artist working with video
selects images to serve as the basic substance of the work.”
For most of the 1980s, Korot concentrated on a series of paintings
that were based on a language she created that was an analogue to
the Latin alphabet. Drawing on her earlier interest in weaving and
video as related technologies, she made most of these paintings
on hand-woven and traditional linen canvas. More recently, she has
collaborated
with her husband, the composer Steve Reich, on “Three Tales,”
a documentary digital video opera in three acts and a prologue.
It began in 1998 with “Act 1 - Hindenburg.” While the
Prologue contains biblical text about human creation, Act 1 begins
with documentary footage of Paul von Hindenburg, last president
of the Weimar Republic (who made Hitler chancellor in 1933), and
ends with footage of the Hindenburg zeppelin and its explosion at
Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. “Act 2 - Bikini,” is based
on footage, photographs, and text from the atom bomb test on Bikini
Island and the subsequent removal of the Bikini people. “Act
3 - Dolly,” explores the issues revolving around the first
cloning of a sheep in Scotland, in 1997. Together, the three individual
acts form a progressive investigation of the way technology creates
and frames our experience. In the
context
of Korot’s body of work, which began with her early video tapestries,
“Three Tales” extends and deepens her interest in both
technology as a material in which to make work—video, weaving—and as a relevant exploration of history in which to base
her work. She lives in Vermont and New York.
More projects:
Dachau 1974 website
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