Interpolation

John Sanborn American
1979
Not on view
Interviewed on MTV in 1982, Kit Fitzgerald maligned the straightforward search for meaning in her work. “What is it about? There’s no puzzle, there’s no trick, it’s about itself,” she maintained, urging viewers to experience her videos abstractly, as they might a symphony. In this set of short pieces from a few years prior, she and collaborator John Sanborn interpose sound and image with disarming asynchronicity, making strange a series of everyday scenarios. Sharp cuts and staccato gestures, adapted from the toolbox of commercial television, are here exaggerated and intensified with unsettling skill. Fitzgerald and Sanborn’s critical engagement with TV was reciprocated by the stations themselves—they were among the firsts video artists to win commissions from PBS and the BBC.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Interpolation
  • Artist: Kit Fitzgerald (American, born 1953) and
  • Artist: John Sanborn (American, born 1954)
  • Date: 1979
  • Medium: Single-channel digital video, transferred from video tape, color, sound, 25 min., 32 sec.
  • Classification: Variable Media
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Henry Nias Foundation Inc. Gift, 2023
  • Object Number: 2023.24
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

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