Striking the Heart of Information: Criticism and Artistic Practice for a Correct Militant Use of the Videotape

Abstract

This article delves into the "militant" use of videotapes in the 1970s. Starting from the intuitions of Pio Baldelli, who promoted the use of this tool as an element capable of creating a "counter-information" communication practice, we analyze the intellectual position that Roberto Faenza had towards videotape. As Faenza claimed in his text Senza chiedere permesso. Come rivoluzionare l’informazione, through videotapes it was possible to create not merely a practice of counter-information - as it was for Baldelli - but a more ferocious practice of informational antagonism, going beyond the duality of theory and practice  of the information world. These theses will then be applied, as a specific case study, to the artistic work of the Laboratorio di Comunicazione Militante, which used the videotape both to create an alternative sociality to institutional artistic practices - in this case, the exhibition Ambiente come sociale of the Venetian Biennale of 1976  is analyzed - and as an element to create confusion in the logic of everyday information.