"Media Burn" employs performance and spectacle in service of media critique, featuring the explosive collision of two of America's most potent cultural symbols: the automobile and television. On July 4, 1975, at San Francisco's Cow Palace, Ant Farm presented what they termed the "ultimate media event." In this alternative Bicentennial celebration, a "Phantom Dream Car"—a reconstructed 1959 El Dorado Cadillac convertible—was driven through a wall of burning TV sets.

 

The spectacle of the Cadillac crashing through the burning TV sets became a visual manifesto of the early alternative video movement, an emblem of an oppositional and irreverent stance against the political and cultural imperatives promoted by television and the passivity of TV viewing.

 

"Media Burn" appears courtesy Electronic Art Intermix.

http://www.eai.org/index.htm

 

Ant Farm: Chip Lord, Doug Michels, Curtis Schreier, Uncle Buddie

Artist-President: Doug Hall

Executive Producer: Tom Weinberg

Editors: Chip Lord, Skip Blumberg, Doug Michels, Tom Weinberg

 

Interviews directed and edited by Peter Kirby 

 

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