The starting point for Michael Druks’ work in video and television was unrelated to film materials, like the avant-garde work of Raffi Lavie, Yair Garbuz, Henry Schlezniak and other artists active in “The Midrasha” scene. Unlike them, Druks did not engage with the film materials (erasing the image or scratching the film itself), and the sensual possibilities of manual editing, but rather disrupting the cinematic narrative (used manipulatively for political and commercial purposes) and his subversion of the Zionist ethos1.
Nor was his work in the context of conceptual art, of the kind known in Israel from the artists surrounding “Bezalel” in Jerusalem, such as Yehoshua Neustein, Moti Mizrahi, and others.
Druks’ works were distinguished by the fact that they dealt with the political and cultural consequences of new media technologies in the early 1970s, and by the middle of that decade, his work had become a landmark in the field of international art. Druks was considered among the second generation of international pioneers who brought a consciousness of television and video consciousness into the heart of their work2. Druks worked across diverse fields of media and his sensibility of performance art finds its way into all of his works and actions before the camera.
Discourse on broadcast and reception provided the broader context for his work, the roots of which can be traced back to the 1920s with the development of radio technology. From media history we can see that at the dawn of these technologies, there was faith in the medium’s potential for innovation and democracy, and alternative groups were given space within it, but that with the growth of economic profitability, capitalist interests increasingly took over.
The technical possibility of presenting artworks through channels that serve commercial television broadcasts first reawakened at the beginning of the 1970s and rekindled a utopian vision of two-way communication. The notion of ‘guerrilla television’ was soon adopted by reformist movements, which believed in the new technology’s redemptive potential to influence the industry of mass cultural production, to humanize the media and create new communal values. Video was perceived as advancing self-awareness and as a medium that supported coping with the brainwashing of television broadcasts which are subject to commercial logic. The reformist movements imagined that for the first time in history it would be possible to rescue critical art from the elitist ivory tower and deliver it to every home, integrated into general broadcasts.
Druks’ statement at the beginning of the 1970s and a summary text published in 1976 indicate that he was influenced by this atmosphere, and called for a deepening of the dialogue between art and society, enriching the language and creating new communication possibilities through the new technology — even if he himself was reserved about “speculation regarding video’s potential,” as “a new futuristic mythology” and “technological mysticism.”3
Marxist and neo-Marxist thought was by no means unfamiliar to Druks, who already in the 1960s was associated with communist circles active in Tel Aviv in the fields of literature and theater. In the Israeli context, this scene was characterized by unusual openness to criticism of political and social movements, and in an ironic approach to the political and military leadership. In London, Druks internalized neo-Marxist trends and contemporary ideas. Although his research was not, strictly speaking, academic, the conceptual, inter-disciplinary integration left its mark on his thinking and work. Druks claimed, “This worship of the new medium may make us forget that video is nothing but a human invention and that changes are driven not only by technological innovations but, first and foremost, by people.” Technology does not create social values either, as these too are mobilized by people.
His work referred to the television receiver, situated in the everyday environment, as an item integrated among an apartment’s furnishings and located in the exhibition space, contiguous with the viewer’s space, so not creating a disconnect (also inherent in Avantgarde film art) in the everyday environment. His video emphasized the viewer’s control over their environment and the device and the actions captured in his work are characterized by the ease of movement in a private space.
In all of his work, Michael Druks engaged with the individual recipient and nature of interpreting the information, thus undermining the gradual transformation of the human environment into an abstract world of agreed-upon concepts. In this regard, Michael Druks did not give in to the romantic or utopian perspective of technology, and his innovative works remain relevant even after the flourishing of the early days.
Text by Galia Bar Or
1 The viewing conditions created a distinct cinematic dialogue; projection on a screen with the lights off creates a disconnect from the daily environment that is built into the cinema experience. The works were filmed on Super 8 mm film, accompanied by an asynchronous soundtrack - only later works, beginning at the second half of the 1980s, were filmed on VHS format.
2 Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell were among the first generation of video-television artists at the start of the 1960s.
3 See Michael Druks, “Research on the subject of video in London,” typewritten, mid-1970s, Mishkan Museum of Art Archives, Ein Harod.
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
