Andy gets a haircut (1972)

Thinking of Doug Michels made me think of Andy Mann, the person who introduced me to Doug, and the whole history of video art, for that matter. Andy, an early video pioneer, left his entire video collection to Aurora Picture Show, the organization I founded. We were close friends from the time we met (circa 1996) till his death from pancreatic cancer in 2001. This winter, the Andy Mann Video Tree was lovingly recreated by friends at Discovery Green Park.

There is no question that Andy Mann was one of the seminal figures in the early video scene, in particular for his remarkable “street tapes” which continued and amplified a tradition in film history marked by such works as Helen Leavitt’s In the Street.–Gene Youngblood, author Expanded Cinema

Andy Mann’s videotapes are classic examples of the “street tape” genre-a video equivalent of “cinema verite,” drawn directly from life, with a minimum of staging, acting or editing. The direct, candid style of Mann’s tapes reflects the enthusiasm sparked by the new equipment amongst a whole generation of first-time video users; the possibility of capturing subjective experiences and details of the world in which one lived was tremendously exciting at that time, and was reason enough to go out and shoot a video.–Video Data Bank, Chicago

The late media artist Andy Mann (1947-2001) was born in Manhattan, grew up in Yonkers, and, as an alternative to completing a high school term paper on Ayn Rand, joined the Navy in 1965. During his time in the Navy, he worked on several submarines as a sonar technician, which introduced him to electronics and a different way of looking at video. Mann described the images as being “like watching a kind of abstract television,” and credits his technical training as his introduction to good camerawork.

In 1969 Mann moved to Manhattan and began attending NYU, where he quickly became associated with several historic video collectives such as Global Village, Raindance, Perception, Videofreex, and TVTV (Top Value Television), as well as a contributor to the video art magazine Radical Software, founded in 1970. Mann also acted as video documentarian for performances by artists Hannah Wilke and Chris Burden, and interviewed subjects such as Phil Ochs, Mark Lombardi, and Fennie Shakur.

Recognized for his groundbreaking camerawork, Mann was one of the earlier artists in the US to receive grant funds from the National Endowment for the Arts to produce video art (1975 and 1978). His videos were included in the 1973 and 1975 Whitney Biennials at The Whitney Museum of American Art; the 1973 Sao Paulo Bienal; the 1977 Documenta VI, Kassell, Germany; as well as exhibitions at the Walker Art Center; Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art; and Leo Castelli Gallery. Mann moved to Houston in the 1980s and began working in video installation and public sculpture. He was a producer for Access Houston cable since its 1987 inception, hosting a hybrid live video art program/talk show. Mann continued to produce videotapes until a few weeks before his death in 2001.

There is an excellent interview with Andy on Davidson Gigliotti’s site “The Early Video Project.”