Video Freex
In this day and age, as we easily record videos on pocket-sized devices, we stand on the shoulders of the Video Freaks who led the way using large, bulky, and primitive analog technology. "Before there was cable television, there was pirate television," explains Andrew Ingall, curator of a retrospective exhibition at the Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz about the pioneering video collective Video Freaks, whose origins date back to the 1969 Woodstock Festival. The Freex settled in the tiny hamlet of Lanesville, just outside Phoenicia in Greene County. At a time when most people didn't have access to any video equipment, the Freex captured everything from the most mundane aspects of daily life to important national events.
As member Bart Friedman commented while roaming around with their "Lanesville TV Newsbuggy" looking for action, "sometimes [you get] peanuts and sometimes shells." The group developed educational projects for children and created the first ever museum exhibition of video art. They documented social events such as the May Day protests against the Vietnam War in Washington DC which took place from May 3-5, 1971 and led to the largest mass arrest (12,000 people) in U.S. history. This short film by Stephen Blauweiss is part of the intriguing but lesser-known history of the Woodstock region and its impact on the culture at large.