Antioch College Research Articles

A - 67 A Critical Analysis of EEG Neurofeedback Training Efficacy in Historically Disadvantaged Communities

Abstract Objective Electroencephalogram neurofeedback training (EEG-NFT) is gaining popularity as a way of supporting emotional regulation following traumatic brain injury (TBI; Dehghani et al., 2023; Bezmaternykh et al., 2021; Rajeswaran and Bennett, 2019), as well as mental disorders defined in the DSM-5-TR (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2022; Deiber et al., 2021; Micoulaud-Franchi et al., 2021; Neurofeedback Collaborative Group, 2023). EEG-NFT can extend well beyond TBIs and mental health disorders, especially in marginalized individuals facing ongoing trauma due to discrimination, hate crimes, and chronic stress as a result of frequent micro- and macroaggressions (Choi et al., 2022; Majeno et al., 2021; Moody and Lewis, 2019). One area not explored is the efficacy of EEG-NFT for individuals who have experienced racial or gender discrimination, especially if they are receiving training while continuing to experience microaggressions during the course of treatment. The authors commenced a review to determine (1) how often demographic data is shared in EEG-NFT research, (2) how frequently individuals who experience stigma enroll in neurofeedback, and (3) the efficacy of EEG-NFT specifically on marginalized individuals. Method Literature Review. Results Current literature reveals a deficiency in research amongst marginalized populations. Conclusions EEG-NFT shows promising results in emotional regulation for various mental disorders and TBIs, but there remains a significant gap in understanding its effectiveness for marginalized populations. The authors are moving forward with a detailed study, starting with an IRB proposal at Antioch University New England, to explore the efficacy of EEG-NFT in these underrepresented groups and plan to present preliminary results later this year.

Philip Cushman (1945-2022).

Presents a memoriam for Philip Cushman. Cushman worked for over four decades as a psychotherapist and served as a core faculty member at Antioch University (2009-2015) and the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP; 1994-2002) and taught as an adjunct at several institutions including the University of Washington and Seattle University. It is noted that Cushman was best known for his critical treatment of how the self was conceptualized in the field of psychology, along with his historically rich analysis of the moral and political horizons of psychotherapy. Cushman's academic career is summarized and work in APA's Divisions 24, 26, and 39 is noted. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Enhancing Vulnerable Groups’ Resilience to Climate Change: Lessons Learned from a Case Study with Older Adults

Certain groups are more vulnerable to climate change than others and will likely feel its effects more severely. These groups include children, older adults, refugees, minoritized racial and ethnic groups, and people living in poverty. To safeguard vulnerable groups, their knowledge and perspectives need to be integrated into climate change adaptation planning. Institutions of higher education have many resources to contribute to this effort. To inform and promote engaged scholarship focusing on adaptation planning in collaboration with vulnerable groups, this research presents a case study evaluation of a project conducted by researchers at Antioch University New England with the older-adult community of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The evaluation explores attributes of the project that contributed to both positive outcomes and challenges. Key themes include the value of developing a primary partnership with a local organization, fostering an accessible and inclusive process, connecting subject matter with participants’ concerns, using an iterative process to build capacity, collaborating with multiple other local organizations, recognizing ongoing community efforts, and generating initial actions. This evaluation also explores potential transferability to other contexts.

Massacre

Research Article| February 01 2020 Massacre Ana Maria Spagna Ana Maria Spagna Ana Maria Spagna (www.anamariaspagna.com) is the author of several books including Uplake: Restless Essays of Coming and Going, Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus, winner of the River Teeth literary nonfiction prize, and two previous essay collections, Potluck and Now Go Home. She teaches in the MFA programs at Antioch University, Los Angeles and Western Colorado University, and she lives in the North Cascades. This essay was supported, in part, by a grant from Washington State Artist Trust Grants for Artists Program and is excerpted from a longer work in progress. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction (2020) 22 (1): 11–24. https://doi.org/10.14321/fourthgenre.22.1.0011 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Ana Maria Spagna; Massacre. Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction 1 February 2020; 22 (1): 11–24. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/fourthgenre.22.1.0011 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressFourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © Michigan State University Board of Trustees Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Troy on Display: Scepticism and Wonder at Schliemann’s First Exhibition by Abigail Baker

Reviewed by: Troy on Display: Scepticism and Wonder at Schliemann’s First Exhibition by Abigail Baker Michele Ronnick Troy on Display: Scepticism and Wonder at Schliemann’s First Exhibition. By Abigail Baker. London, UK and New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Pp. xii + 263. Hardback, $115.00. ISBN: 978-1-78831-358-2. For those of us (and I include myself) who are still agog over the more than remarkable trajectory of Heinrich Schliemann’s life and career, we might in jest blame it all on Frank Calvert (1828–1908). If Calvert’s eye had not been drawn to the hill of Hisarlik, Schliemann in his quest to find Troy might well have remained digging at Pınarbaşı (17). Dr. Baker is assistant keeper of archaeology at the Great North Museum in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, and this book is based on a chapter, “Troy in London ” (131–137), from her 296 page thesis titled “Ancient Narratives in the Modern Museum: Interpreting Classical Archaeology in British Museums,” which was written at Birbeck College, University of London under the supervision of Dr. Caspar Meyer in 2015 (http://bbktheses.da.ulcc.ac.uk). It is a close study of the objects Schliemann brought from Troy and displayed at the South Kensington Museum in an exhibit that opened on January 28, 1877 and lasted until early 1880. The display was Schliemann’s response after being rebuffed by the British Museum which did not want to buy his objects (the $50,000 price tag was seen as too expensive) nor give them a short-term display, since exhibits at the British Museum were restricted to items in the Museum’s own collection. His arrangements resulted in one of the first “popular” museum shows. It was a “blockbuster” before the term was coined decades later to describe a show which took the world by storm, namely, “The Treasures of Tutankhamun” which opened on March 29, 1972 and ran to December 31, 1972 at the British Museum. When Schliemann’s show closed in early 1880 his collection left London for a three-year display at the Royal Museum in Berlin. The only other major exhibit in London on Troy occurred only recently when “Troy: Myth and Reality” went on display at the British Museum from November to March, 2020. Dr. Baker shows us the care with which Schliemann staged his exhibit, revealing a clear and calculating intent on his part to persuade the viewers that his views on Troy were the correct ones. Schliemann “had dragged Troy from myth to the [End Page 253] headlines” (2) and his manipulative showmanship rivalled that of his American contemporary P.T. Barnum (1810–1891). “He became an instant sensation. . .visitors poured into the Museum’s recently completed South Court” where they encountered “case after case of strange-looking pottery, crumbling metalwork, stone tools and thousands of spindle whorls” (2). There they experienced a “point of crisis at which people who knew only the imagined Troy of text” were confronted with “Schliemann’s material Troy” (5). His exhibit shook people’s “confidence in philological approaches to the ancient world” (5). The audience began to wonder began “what sort of truths” could be found “in an epic poem,” (16), and if Schliemann’s Trojans and their crude pieces of pottery were in fact Homer’s Trojans, then people would need to stop romanticizing the characters of the Iliad. Thus, the Victorians’ focus on texts shifted to a focus on objects and they were drawn “into contemporary debates about the relationship between Europe and Asia” or East versus West (163). One of the last reports published about the exhibit came from the British-American natural scientist Edward Waller Claypole (1835–1901), then teaching at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. “Dr. Schliemann’s collection of antiquities was one. which I was most desirous to see,” but after seeing a group of flat pebbles that Schliemann called “Minerva Ornaments” he felt that Schliemann was “trespass[ing] not a little beyond the due limit of the imagination when applied to science” (“Minerva Ornaments,” Nature, July 1880, 193). Dr. Baker has successfully shown us that “Troy with its untrustworthy excavator, archaeological complexity...

Exposure

Exposure Jordan Nakamura (bio) I abandoned the camera years earlier.I couldn't spare all I aimed to honor,was burnt by each moment feeling likea missed shot. What I did frame was also failure.Portraits doomed to their flatness. Stills of timethat still passed. Always the specter of betterways to render, to record. I ached to see a personlaugh again. Just see and not capture. To touch, to beempty-handed, having reached. When I felt I sawyou honestly, it seemed no response was fitting.I was too quiet. Your face seemed impenetrable. But your arms testify to how easily the skin can scar. Up close they are textured with accents of what seem like shadow, like a field beginning to reforest and what is healing isn't different than what is, in the end, darker.We are close enough to taste, whichmeans close enough to bemistaken—how at the rightdistance the sweetness of sweatis indistinguishable from the fumeof opened jasmine. Once, for onceI'm not too quiet and we share imperfectlyand actually. One nightyou say: we could keep talking orwe could—and we finish the rest with our hands. I tried—as in slipped into the ruse, neither chosen nor even noticedas effort, though it had been—to make you eternal in my mind. It's time, too, I try to fix when I pin you against the wall the way you ask for and we crash as tides grafting landslip from cliffs, your eyes daring me over [End Page 81] into nightsurf, where coming and going become twinned and become daylight. Like fitting the goddamn sea into a teacup you'd said before your exam, meaning to cram the lesson. Memory also is like that, only its cup is made of air and a little bone. Each pour is a given. A spill, a given. A misfire is still a fire.You asked me what I want, whatwe should do. Spent and half-lit, I look past you to the blackand white pictures on the wall,which depict a sea of rough wavescresting with spray—or no, a hilllined with gravestones. The lightclutching onto or being clutched byshade. It is never enough, to tell.This all leads to leaving. I know it.I know it, and open the same. [End Page 82] Jordan Nakamura Jordan Nakamura is a writer born and raised in Hawaii and living in South Central, Los Angeles. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Antioch University and his writing, interviews, and articles have appeared in the Adroit Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Zócalo Public Square, Lunch Ticket, and the Curator Magazine. Copyright © 2020 Middlebury College Publications

Abbott Lowell Cummings, 1923–2017

Abbott Lowell Cummings, 1923–2017 Richard M. Candee (bio) Abbott Lowell Cummings, the first president of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, died on May 29, 2017, in Elaine Center at Hadley, Massachusetts. He was ninety-four. Instrumental in guiding the VAF during its formative years, he was best known outside our organization as the leading authority on seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century First Period architecture in the American northeast. He will long be remembered as the author of The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay, 1625–1725, which won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award from the Society of Architectural Historians.1 Scholar, preservationist, and educator, he had a profound influence on many VAF members and others in the field of early American architecture, especially in his career as an outstanding teacher at Boston University, Yale University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he mentored dozens of young scholars. As I was one of his first acolytes, Abbott asked me many years ago to memorialize his life and scholarship at the end of his long and distinguished career. Born in St. Albans, Vermont, on March 14, 1923, the son of a Congregational minister and sometimes supporter of Norman Thomas, Abbott spent much of his youth living with his beloved paternal grandmother in Southington, Connecticut. This old Yankee helped form his love of genealogy and an appreciation of New England's past. It was she, too, who gave him a membership in the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA) at age fifteen. The budding art historian was educated at Hoosac School in New York (1936–1941), Oberlin College (BA 1945, MA 1946), and Ohio State (PhD 1950), then one of the few universities offering advanced degrees in American architectural history. He quickly learned discretion in speaking of his research after Professor Henry Russell Hitchcock published Cummings's new discoveries on the design and building of the Greek Revival Ohio state capitol in 1948, without credit. From 1948 to 1951, Abbott taught at Antioch College, while finishing his critical study of Federal-era architectural pattern books by New England builder Asher Benjamin. He drew upon this early interest in Benjamin in later research and publications focused on design in nineteenth-century New England. Following his stint at Antioch, he served as assistant curator for the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until 1955, when he was hired as assistant director of SPNEA (now Historic New England) and editor of its journal, Old-Time New England. We met in 1962, when I was an Oberlin sophomore in a summer program at Historic Deerfield, and Abbott was leading a fast-paced tour of Boston's buildings (known as the "Death March") for the group. Given our mutual history at Oberlin he encouraged me to seek out his old professor, Clarence Ward, and urge him to give me a class on American architecture. This set me on my own career in architectural preservation. At Oberlin in September 1946, Abbott's master's thesis, "Documentary Histories of Seventeenth Century Houses in Massachusetts Bay" observed that stylistic consistency over the seventeenth century and a time lag for adopting new [End Page 1] design ideas "are confusing to the historian in his attempt to establish a system of dating for the houses of the seventeenth century." He carefully sifted through the documentary evidence of seventy houses in the Commonwealth (many of them no longer standing) with detailed notes on the condition and plan development for those still extant. This was followed—in typical Abbott Cummings fashion—by an appendix of ten building contracts and similar documents, and a full secondary bibliography. I mention this first exploration of what would become his favorite topic to show how long ago his work on Framed Houses actually began. Over the next thirty-four years Abbott continued his research about what really happened to the (mostly) surviving houses and what changes in structure or style occurred. This was complimented by his work at the American Wing, where he documented all of the New England period rooms that George Francis Dow helped install in the 1920s. Joining the SPNEA in 1955, Abbott was allowed one day a month for personal...

Young Adults in Transition: Factors That Support and Hinder Growth and Change

A therapeutic model referred to as young adult transition programs has emerged to better address the unique developmental challenges found in this age group. This study examined 317 critical incidents that supported or hindered young adults in a therapeutic transition program. The research design used a combination of an instrumental case study and critical incident technique (CIT). Using interviews and the Outcome Questionnaire 45.2, the study explored in-depth the experiences of 17 young adults who were alumni of a young adult transition program. The objective was to better understand the transition experience from a participant perspective and, through the findings, inform program development and evaluation for young adult transition programs. Several significant findings emerged from the data, among them the importance of interpersonal relationships, experiential education and adventure, individualized programming, and community and culture. An understanding of these findings leads to a discussion on transformational mentoring and leadership as well as relational cultural practice and how this can support leaders of transition programs in further research and program development. The limitations of the study are discussed and suggestions for future studies are offered. Keywords: young adults, young adult treatment, critical incident technique, case study, mental illness, relational cultural theory, transformational leadership, transformational mentoring, anxiety, depression, failure to launch, emerging adulthood, transitions, young adult development AUTHOR NOTE: This paper summarizes a dissertation, written by Dr. Treadway and submitted to the Ph.D. in Leadership and Change Program of Antioch University in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Dr. Holloway served as the Dissertation Chair. The complete dissertation is available at: http://aura.antioch.edu/etds/336

A magical suicide

a magical suicide Dana L. Stringer (bio) his most difficult act is when he's high he transforms into houdini a black one who can make a handgun disappear while being frisked by uniformed masters of blue illusions who join in the spectacle of cuffing his hands behind his back confining him to the backseat of a squad car then turning and looking away while he twists his body like a contortionist frees himself and brandishes a loaded weapon then pulls the trigger and shoots himself in the chest and abracadabra no hocus pocus and just like that he's gone we all sit still spellbound speechless [End Page 145] Dana L. Stringer Dana L. Stringer is the author of the chapbook In Between Faith (Black Picket Fence, 2014). She holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, where she also serves as an instructional facilitator and instructor in the Inspiration2Publication online program. Copyright © 2018 Johns Hopkins University Press and Saint Louis University

The relationship between infertility, infertility treatment, psychological intervention, and post-traumatic stress disorder

The Relationship Between Infertility, Infertility Treatment, Psychological Interventions, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder by Antoinette Corley-Newman MA, Walden University, 2015 MS, Antioch University, 2005 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Clinical Psychology Walden University October 2016

The Diverse Contributions of J. Roger Bray and Gwendolyn Struik

The Diverse Contributions of J. Roger Bray and Gwendolyn Struik

New policies, procedures resolve disability discrimination complaint

Case name: Letter to: Antioch University New England, No. 01‐10‐2064 (OCR 12/22/10).

The Creation of a Selfobject “Communal Home” for Collective Trauma: Applications of Social Dreaming and Kohut's Group Self in Academic, Psychoanalytic, and Community Contexts

107 1 Director, Child and Family Specialization, Clinical Psychology Department, Antioch University Los Angeles. Correspondence should be addressed to George Bermudez, PhD, Antioch University Los Angeles, 400 Corporate Pointe, Culver City, CA 90230. E-mail: gbermudez@antioch.edu. This article describes and summarizes exploration of the unconscious group self (a self psychological–like configuration proposed by Heinz Kohut for group-level phenomena) by applying social dreaming (SDM), a group dreamwork practice developed by the neo-Bionian psychoanalyst Gordon Lawrence. A brief overview of the scant literature on the group self concept and social dreaming is provided, followed by a summary of several applications (SDMs on American xenophobia and Whiteness) with a focus on the creation of a communal home for witnessing, bearing, and integrating the dissociated affect related to collective trauma. In addition to the illuminating application of the group self concept, three other group self psychology concepts are proposed and defined: group self state dreams; the forward-edge function of social dreaming; and social dream moral witnessing, which promotes the emergence of a communal home for collective trauma.

The Hairy Ape

The Hairy Ape

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CULTURAL CHANGE AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES” / SOCIALINIŲ POKYČIŲ IR APLINKOS IŠŠŪKIŲ FENOMENOLOGINĖS PERSPEKTYVOS

On September 22–24, in 2011, the second international phenomenological conference took place in Vilnius, Lithuania. It was organized together with Antioch University of the USA and it was hosted in Vilnius Gediminas Technical University's Faculty of Architecture. Urbanists, philosophers, educators and other academic scholars had a chance to deepen their knowledge and present the results of their researches on the subject of “Phenomenological Perspectives on Cultural Change and Environmental Challenges”. More than 10 speakers from various countries had presented their speeches and afterwards actively indulged in group discussions on the most problematic issues. Due to a huge success that the event has proven to be, it is expected to be just a beginning of a new tradition to hold such conferences in the university regularly. Santrauka Antroji tarptautinė fenomenologų konferencija Lietuvoje įvyko 2011 m. rugsėjo 22–24 d. Ši konferencija, kitaip nei 2009 m. įvykusi jos pirmtakė, buvo organizuota kartu su JAV Antiocho universitetu. Vilniaus Gedimino technikos universitete, Architektūros rūmuose urbanistai ir architektai turėjo galimybę sužinoti daug naujo ir patys pateikti savo tyrimų rezultatus tema ,,Socialinių pokyčių ir aplinkos iššūkių fenomenologinės perspektyvos“. Daugiau nei 10 pranešėjų iš viso pasaulio parengė kalbas ir po jų aktyviai įsitraukė į diskusijas, kuriose buvo gvildenami problematiškiausi klausimai. Tikėtina, kad tokios konferencijos ateityje taip pat bus organzijuojamos ir pamažu virs pasididžiavimo verta tradicija.

Nature Kindergartens and Forest Schools, 2nd edition by Claire Warden

Children, Youth and Environments 23(2), 2013 Nature Kindergartens and Forest Schools, 2nd edition Claire Warden (2012). Perthshire, Scotland: Mindstretchers, Ltd., 144 pages. $32.50 as an e-book from www.childcareexchange.com; £29 from www.mindstretchers.co.uk. ISBN 978-1-906116-09-5. The current nature-based early childhood movement has at least two separate rootstalks. The Nature Preschool rootstalk emerged out of the environmental movement in the United States with programs developed at environmental centers as early as 1967. On a parallel course, Rain or Shine Schools emerged in the 1950s and 1960s in Scandinavia. As this impulse spread, the schools have become broadly identified as Forest Kindergartens. Like wind-dispersed milkweed seeds, the movement has drifted quietly from Scandinavia to Europe to the British Isles and has recently swept to Asia. There are now more than 1000 Waldkindergartens (forest kindergartens) in Germany and hundreds throughout the United Kingdom. One of the leaders of the movement in the UK is Claire Warden, who has developed two programs for young children in Scotland and helped spawn other preschool and elementary initiatives in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Warden also provides professional development for like-minded educators from around the world; many Americans are hopping across the pond to take advantage of her trainings. Her book Nature Kindergartens and Forest Schools compellingly captures both the core theoretical principles and the vivid daily practices of this approach to early childhood education. This book is sure to become a core text in the naturebased early childhood teacher education program we have initiated at Antioch University New England. First, this is a beautiful—dare I say, almost coffee table-worthy—book. A sprig of ivy graces the beginning of each chapter, the pages themselves have a handmade paper background, and there are hundreds of well-chosen illustrative photographs of children immersed in the natural world. The casual reader gets a clear understanding of the message of the book just from scanning the photographs of children wind-dancing on the beach, shucking peas, huddled up inside wooden stumps, peering intently at toads, and in the night-dark woods. The images alone make you long for your long-lost nature-bound childhood. (Or they convince you to provide this kind of nature saturation for your own students, children or grandchildren.) In the early chapters, Warden effectively identifies the unique features of this approach, enumerates the academic, psychological and health benefits quantified through research, and places the nature-based early childhood movement within© 2013 Children, Youth and Environments Book Review: Nature Kindergartens and Forest Schools 212 the context of other European progressive education impulses of the last two-anda -half centuries. The current movement owes much to Frederick Froebel, the German educator who created the first Kindergartens (German for “children’s gardens”) in the early 19th century. Froebel’s background as both a forester and an educator shaped his conviction that the forest should be an essential element of early education. The book also makes it clear that the current movement also draws inspiration from Pestalozzi, Montessori, and more recently from the pedagogistas of Reggio Emilia schools. It is this Reggio Emilia emphasis on artistic expressions of children’s thinking and the attention to careful documentation of emergent curriculum that brings a unique character to the book. Warden has devised an innovative methodology: creating Talking and Thinking Floorbooks. These are large-format books, made to be looked at on the floor or ground, which capture children’s thinking and problem-solving through drawings, children’s descriptions transcribed by teachers, photographs and teacher reflections. These Floorbooks are worked on daily, and reviewing them at the beginning of each day reminds children where they have been (literally and figuratively) and where they might want to go. This careful documentation (à la Reggio Emilia) becomes the basis for the hands-on, nitty-gritty case studies in each chapter. Because these ethnographically capture children’s play and wonderings, they provide portraits of one-of-a-kind moments. “Frozen Bandages” describes a group of 5-year-olds making frozen “plasters” out of sandy mud to fix their sore fingers. “Pheasant Death” describes the series of activities that followed the discovery...

Introducing Elizabeth M. Adler, JGP Executive Editor

![Figure][1] The JGP is very pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Elizabeth M. Adler as its new executive editor. Liz received her bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry from Antioch College and her PhD in physiology from the University of Pennsylvania, and she completed

Emergency! Resistance and recollection: Responses to closure at Antioch College.

Emergency! Resistance and recollection: Responses to closure at Antioch College.

"VT Is Not TV": The Raindance Reunion in the Digital Age

A REUNION OF THE RAINDANCE CORPORATION, the early 1970s video collective and think tank, occurred at Loyola University Chicago's Information Commons on 30 November 2010. A majority of the founding members-Ira Schneider, Frank Gillette, Paul Ryan, Michael Shamberg, and Beryl Korot-attended the event. Davidson Gigliotti, a founding member of the VideoFreex and an early video historian, served as moderator, and John Giancola, a funder for Raindance who worked with the New York State Council of the Arts (NYSCA), also participated. The reunion brought together Raindance members with Chicago-area academics, students, and artists to discuss the history and ideas of this video collective within the context of the digital revolution and online media distribution sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitter. I wish I'd thought of it [YouTube], said video activist and Hollywood producer Michael Shamberg. The reunion was significant at this point in time because of the digital explosion that has occurred with media and the extent to which Raindance anticipated the growth of an information- based society and the need to critique it. Paul Ryan, who studied with Marshall McLuhan at Fordham, wrote in the first issue of Radical Software, VT is not TV. If anything it's TV flipped into itself (12). Raindance members used the portapak to transform closed-circuit video practices into independent documentary videos, forums for community dialogue, and the new field that they helped to create-video art. The concepts of research and development were firmly embedded in the Raindance Corporation's name, as well as in the group's creative strategies to produce critical media work. Frank Gillette, who worked with Ryan in a McLuhan seminar, suggested the idea of a think tank around the newly accessible medium. Gillette chose the title to parody the Rand Corporation, a well-known government-sponsored R and D firm that soon became notorious through Daniel Ellsberg's leaking of the Pentagon papers in 1971. Gillette incorporated Raindance in 1969 with Ira Schneider and Michael Shamberg's help. Ryan, Beryl Korot, and other members were soon attached. After brainstorming ideas in a New York City loft apartment on 22nd Street, would leave their offices to record interviews with hippies in the East Village or troubled teens in Brooklyn-subjects who were often encouraged to turn the cameras and microphones back onto the camera operators (Boyle 6-12). In addition to these early vox pop experiments, Schneider, Ryan, and Shamberg created a series of Media Primers (1970-71), compilation tapes that would frame sociologists commenting on the facial expression of a news anchor, Abbie Hoffman waiting for his verdict in Chicago, or a composite image of the FCC commissioner holding up a handwritten information sign. Group members would carry their portapaks into classrooms at Antioch College and lecture halls in New York to explore significant ideas about communication-from Gregory Bateson to Buckminster Fuller. Raindancers transcribed these lectures as well as screened and distributed them to other groups. Video experiments happened concurrently with discussions and assessments of the day's recordings, a strategy that emerged as a result of Raindance's creative, investigative process. Direct interaction with recorded subjects, the use of special effects, and the free distribution of content are identifiable strategies in these first independent video recordings from 1968 to 1970. Feedback loops provided opportunities for more research. Because public interest in the subject of video was so widespread after the release of the portapak, Raindance created and published the first journal committed solely to the new medium of video, technology, and art-Radical Software (1970-74). The journal distributed the insights of this political and philosophical group, as well as other thinkers, writers, and artists connected to video, such as Nam June Paik and Gene Youngblood. …

Dialogue Across Decades: BLW and People’s Communication Network—Exercises in Remembering and Forgetting

am particularly interested in a discursive aesthetic based on possibility of a dialogical relationship that breaks down conventional distinction between artist, art and audience-a relationship that allows viewer to speakback to artist in certain ways, and in which this reply becomes in effect a part of work itself. (Kester) BLW's Re-Speaking Project and Invitation The artists collective BLW- Rozalinda Borcila, Sarah Lewison, and Julie Wyman-describes in a provocative 2007 kit, published in Journal of Aesthetics & Protest (BLW, I am going), its contemporary embodied response to 1973 video documentation of a speech delivered by activist and educator Audley Moore at Green Haven Federal Prison.1 The speech testified to first-person witnessing of tragic incidents of racism in South and brave and sustained resistance and offered a radical political analysis invoking importance of education. Queen Mother Moore spoke at invitation of a prisoners' group, Think Tank, and was recorded on video by production collective People's Communication Network for newly established medium of public access cable television in New York City. The tape by People's Communication Network was deposited in Free Video Library at Antioch College in early 1970s, and two decades later, it was selected for inclusion in Surveying First Decade, an extensive collection of documentary and artists' video projects from 1968 to 1980, distributed by Video Data Bank (Hill, Surveying). As curator of Surveying First Decade, am responding to invitation offered through BLW's re-speaking project: Our interest is in text and conditions and implications of recording, speech and conditions and implications of utterance. We are looking for resonance-not theater . . . We invite you to respeak Queen Mother Moore . . . with resources from your own . . . histories (BLW, I am going). BLW's 2004 re-speaking performance at a Pilot TV event in Chicago2 set stage for its sustained project of re-performing transcripts of spoken exchanges (a speech, an interview, a press conference), recorded on video by political activists from late 1960s and early 70s. Our re-speaking is a re-making and a playback of recording, a performative method of interrogating video as a repository for memory and a technology of (BLW, I am going). In their 2007 evaluation of Queen Mother Moore re-speaking project, they ask, [W]hat stories can we find that, by being told and retold, will produce collective recall, a gathering memory of what we need to do, and how we might learn to act together? (BLW, I am going). This article seeks to participate in BLW's call for an invigorated inquiry into conditions of speech and its recording, as well as its history of preservation and reamplification. The political and cultural acts of remembering and forgetting that have resulted in this remarkable tape's perhaps unlikely survival provide resonance for BLW's re-speaking practice. The tape's revival also repositions Queen Mother Moore's powerful embrace of an audience of mostly African American men, incarcerated in a federal prison, for reconsideration by a contemporary citizenry who might share BLW's desire to address the transfer and redistribution of power among heretofore powerless (BLW, I am going), including attention to contemporary US incarceration crisis, warehousing of a disproportionate number of people of color and nonviolent offenders in a criminal justice system that has all but abandoned responsibilities for rehabilitation. BLW's re-speaking projects (2004-09), which also include re-performances of a 1969 interview by seminal Videofreex collective with Black Panther Fred Hampton and a press conference challenging delivery of higher education during 1968 San Francisco State College (now University) student strike,3 dialogue across three decades with not only People's Communications Network but also a number of other late 1960s and early 70s video collectives, together with their recorded subjects and audiences. …