This cultural intervention set the tone for Ant Farm's decadelong practice of activist installations and videos, including "Cadillac Ranch Show" (1974), "Media Burn" and "The Eternal Frame" (both 1975), which rank among the most poignant examples of early video art.
This isn't Abraham Zapruder's infamous home movie; it's actually The Eternal Frame, a brazenly irreverent reenactment of the Kennedy assassination, or more accurately, a reenactment of the Zapruder film itself.
"Now I ask you, my fellow Americans, haven't you ever wanted to put your foot through your television screen?" "The Eternal Frame," a 1975 video collaboration with another Bay Area media collective, T. R. Uthco, was a re-enactment of President John F. Kennedy's assassination as filmed by Abraham Zapruder.
Video recordings of "Media Burn" became staples of video art history classes, as did "The Eternal Frame," also made in 1975, a meticulous re-enactment of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, with Mr. Michels, in a pink suit and pillbox hat, playing Jacqueline Kennedy.
That was a few months before The Eternal Frame's reenactment, but, by then, Ant Farm and many others had already obtained bootleg copies of the film.
"Don't direct me, this is real life" says one subject, and another, "I don't give a shit what the public wants to see!" The Eternal Frame, 1975 by Ant Farm and T.R. Uthco, first installed at the Long Beach Museum of Art where much of the Getty's video collection originated.
On this view, for someone occupying an eternal reference frame two temporal events at different times can both be present, being ET-simultaneous, while not being simultaneous with each other.
Eternal time frames eliminated most of the incentive for credit-seeking politicians to push projects forward; they knew someone else would be cutting the ribbon.
Yorgos Patsas's modernistically spare set and costumes, accented by ancient accouterments of war, suggest an eternal world framed harshly by mortality.
Of course, the passage is biblical where the time frame is eternal — which was how long it seemed it would take the lowly Clippers to match the Lakers, local lords of all they surveyed.
Eternal Egypt remains eternally fascinating.
