The National Gallery of Iceland is pleased to acknowledge a recent gift to the Vasulka Chamber archive from the renowned photographer Robert Polidori. The gift of rare and never-seen film footage contains interviews with Steina and Woody Vasulka, taken over several sessions in their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The footage will be made available to scholars studying the artists' work as part of the museum's research center for the study of new media.
Polidori, a French Canadian American filmmaker and large-format documentary photographer, studied with Steina and Woody in the late 1970s, when they taught at in the Department of Media Study at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He was closely associated with the Lithuanian American filmmaker and poet Jonas Mekas, and worked with him at the Anthology Film Archives in New York. Polidori bore witness to and participated in the emerging avant-garde scene in film, video, and new media taking place in New York at the time and maintained close ties to Steina and Woody.