Monday June 3, 7:30pm
Hank Linhart
Struggles with the Cyclops (Videos 1978-2004)
Artist in person

Still from “Onomato” (1979) by Hank Linhart – Image courtesy of the artist

We are very pleased to present a screening of video works by Brooklyn-based artist Hank Linhart made in the years 1978-2004.

Linhart, a student of Steina and Woody Vasulka and Tony Conrad at SUNY Buffalo, made most of his early video work starting in 1978 through artist residencies at The Experimental Television Center, a few years before moving to Brooklyn, NY and becoming involved in a media collective battling environmental degradation and gentrification in the Williamsburg community. 

This program of rarely screened videos by Linhart spanning 26 years finds the artist, especially in the earlier works, testing the visual potentialities of the analog video camera and closed circuit systems through the electronic tools he had access to, starting from images often shot from daily life and featuring himself performing for the camera. Over time, the content and subject matter of Linhart’s work becomes increasingly diaristic, documentarian, and politically engaged, such as in “Across el Agua”, which was made in response to the US intervention in Nicaragua by the Reagan administration in the early 1980s and features hand-drawn images by the artist.

In other videos he uses sound to trigger sudden shifts of viewpoints, stages a DYI TV game show, positions his video camera as a lover, and documents areas in his neighborhood where filming is prohibited or protected by fences. The screening includes “Pigeons without Content”, a mesmerizing video collage alternating colorized panning shots and sound bits, and “Between the Banks”, a Super 8mm document of an action and installation Linhart staged on May Day 1980 in which he arranged approximately 200 army helmets throughout Chase Manhattan Plaza in NYC.

Linhart will be in attendance and available for Q&A following the screening.

General admission $8
Students & Members $6

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Hank Linhart is a media artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. His early work explored abstraction with specialized video tools during Artist Residencies at The Experimental Television Center in Binghamton and Owego, NY. He was a founding member and coordinator of the public access cable channel in Ithaca, NY. Upon moving to Brooklyn in the early 1980’s he continued to produce and exhibit videos, while curating several shows of media works in local galleries and other art venues. He became involved with the Williamsburg community and a media collective fighting environmental degradation and gentrification, presenting videos at City Hall, NY State Assembly, and the US District Attorney’s office, among others. His work has been shown at Anthology Film Archives, New York, Hunter Gallery, New York, UnionDocs, Brooklyn, NY, New-York Historical Society, NY, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, UK, Pleasure Dome, Toronto, CA, among others. He is a recipient of the NYFA Fellowship, as well as NYSCA and Brooklyn Arts Council grants. Linhart studied at the Center for Media Studies, SUNY Buffalo, and formerly was a professor of media arts at NYU, School of Visual Arts, and Pratt Institute.

Still from “Pigeons Without Content” (1980) by Hank Linhart – Image courtesy of the artist

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Microscope Gallery Event Series 2019 is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).