Zen for Film (1964)
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=8z1sOsIrshU
In 1964, Nam June Paik made Zen for Film (referred to as Fluxfilm No. 1), which consisted of nothing but clear film leader running through a projector. This film action, as it might be called, was made in the anti-art, anti-commercial atmosphere of Fluxus performances. Paik eliminated the film image completely, partly in jest, but mostly as an act of defiance against the highly aesthetic zed filmed image of even such experimental filmmakers as Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger. About forty Fluxfilms are on record, ranging from Dick Higgins’s Invocation of Canyons and Boulders for Stan Brakhage (Fluxfilm No.2 1963) to Wolf Vostell’s Sun in Your Head (Fluxfilm No.23, 1963) to Paul Sharits’s Word Movie (Fluxfilm No.30, 1966). The Vostell film has particular significance for the history of Video art in that he used his 8-millimeter film camera to shoot videotaped material from television programs, thus displacing both the ‘revered’ film image (by focusing his camera on already videotaped material) and the ‘direct’ video image (by re-recording it with film). This type of subversion of social and artistic structures was hallmark of Fluxus.
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