“They Live and Breathe Video, So We Just Completely Fit in with the Fixtures”: Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir on her DOC NYC-debuting The Vasulka Effect

As a New Yorker who has long prided my ability to namecheck most of the experimental art pioneers of the 1960s, I’m embarrassed to say I’d never heard of Steina and Woody Vasulka before watching Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir’s The Vasulka Effect. Sure, I knew of The Kitchen, the legendary performance space the couple founded in 1971. And of course I was familiar with the work of the sound and visual visionaries that the Soho (now West Chelsea) institution provided a platform for — from Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson to Nam June Paik and Bill Viola. I’d just never connected a classically-trained Icelandic violinist and a Czech with a background in engineering — refugees from the Soviet takeover of Czechoslovakia — to the birth of it all. Fortunately, The Vasulka Effect, virtually premiering at DOC NYC (November 11-19), remedied this knowledge gap for me. The film not only showcases a wealth of archival materials, including Woody’s video of Jimi Hendrix performing at Fillmore East and footage of their raucous parties with the Factory family, but also dives into their later creations. (Woody passed away in December 2019, and Steina has since turned to interactive installations. She’s also been a force behind The Vasulka Chamber in Iceland and The Vasulka Archive in the Czech Republic, founded in 2014 and 2016, respectively.) The result is an exhaustive portrait of two fearless boundary-busters forever obsessed with melding abstract imagination with concrete technology. And, in their retirement in Santa Fe, with the grind of meeting financial obligations and securing their rightful place in art history. Filmmaker managed to catch up with the film’s Icelandic director, who likewise hadn’t heard of her iconic countrywoman until arriving on the West Coast to study, a week before the doc’s US debut.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.