Underground Networks

Artists' Television in New York City

By: Benjamin Olin

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Paperback | 1 September 2026 | Edition Number 1

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Paperback
292 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
2.29 x 1.52 x 2.0

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New York City's downtown scene of the 1970s and 1980s is synonymous with underground film, video, and performance art. Many of the artists who would come to define this period also dabbled in public access cable televisionâ"which was then a very new technologyâ"as host, producer, guest, or studio audience member. Drawing on archival research and personal interviews, this book, the first full-length study of this vibrant body of work, explores how poets, painters, and filmmakers produced talk shows and soap operas that warped the heteronormative conventions of prime-time fare. Working outside the established art world, artists screened their shows in lofts and nightclubs and aired them live on Manhattan Cable, provoking frequent tabloid censure. Affirming the importance of cable television to the downtown art scene, Underground Networks recovers an essential strand of avant-garde screen culture and a user-driven media ecology with uncanny contemporary resonance.

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