Trapped inside a haggard and taped-up videotape case is an account unseen from Yoko Ono’s 1971 exhibition. It is art unseen. Only the words scrawled on a piece of tape hint at what lies inside: Videofreex, Yoko, B/W 1/2, 30 MINS.

Videofreex, a group of nine ragtag artists in their 20s, exemplified the video art former Everson Director Jim Harithas introduced to the Everson during the 1970s. While living at a 60-acre farm in Lanesville, N.Y., the group traveled up and down the New York State Thruway practicing and teaching video art. During the time period, the group documented many exhibitions at the Everson, including the Ono exhibition.

The recently discovered video acts as the tangible thread connecting the past to the present.

‘This is something that we have on our list and wanted transferred for the 40th anniversary,’ said Deb Ryan, the Everson Museum’s senior curator. ‘We want to show it, whether it is inside or outside.’

But what might be on the tape? Until Ryan and others find the equipment necessary to watch the film and digitally transfer it to DVD, what’s on the video is lost to history.

‘It’s just a mystery to me,’ said Parry Teasdale, member of the Videofreex.

In Chicago, their 1,600 tapes sit in a climate-controlled room. When each roll of half-inch, A-V format Sony tape needs to be transferred, it must be baked in a closet-sized oven to remove mold from the brittle tapes. The same would need to be done with the Ono tape — the only one that has evaded Chicago for its original home, the Everson.

The Videofreex said the video is probably one of two things. Most likely, it’s the documentary-like video that Freex member Nancy Cain took part in. It could also be the very Ono-like video art piece Academy Award-winning filmmaker Shirley Clarke directed.

Clarke hoped to impress Ono with her video art contraption, a bracelet sleeve-like wire with a small camera that tethered Freex member Parry Teasdale to Clarke. Wrapped around the wrist, the contraption was meant more for its inherent art than the video it captured. But if it did capture anything it would have been Clarke’s flawed attempt to impress Ono.

‘Shirley was screaming, ‘Oh, Yoko! Oh, Yoko!’ and she was dragging me behind her,’ Teasdale said. ‘But the video equipment was holding her back.’

Cain recalls documenting the event, but no memory sticks out more than when she caught Ringo Starr on tape.

‘Someone shouts: ‘There he goes! Hi Ringo!,” Cain said. ‘And there he was. It was a beautiful shot, clear the light was on him, and it lasted about three seconds. I felt it was the best thing we shot all weekend.’

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Published on October 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm