Beryl korot biography
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Beryl Korot was born in 1945 in New York City, where she lives and works. She graduated from Queens College in 1967 with a BA in English literature. In her practice, Korot explores how information is encoded and transmitted through systems of lines, grids, and patterns throughout human history. Drawing upon traditions and strategies found in weaving, print media, and video recording, the artist develops artworks that uniquely visualize the intersections of history, language, and technology.
A pioneer of video art, Korot founded the video magazine Radical Software with Phyllis Gershuny and Ira Schneider in 1970, shortly after the release of the first commercially available portable camera, Sony’s Portapak. The magazine served as a way for artists working in the medium to exchange information about the new tools that were available to them. “I always had the attitude towards technology that the more intimate you are with the tools that you ge
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Beryl Korot is a pioneer of video art, and of multiple channel work in particular. By applying specific structures inherent to loom programming to the programming of multiple channels she brought the ancient and modern worlds of technology into conversation. This extended to a body of work on handwoven canvas in an original language based on the grid structure of woven cloth and to a series of paintings on canvas based on this language. More recently she has created drawings which combine ink, pencil and digitized threads, as well as large scale “tapestries” where threads are printed on paper and woven.
Two early multiple channel works, Dachau 1974 and Text and Commentary have been installed in exhibitions on both the history of video art and textiles.Documenta Politik und Kunst, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin (2021/22), Core Memory, Newcomb Museum (2022), Key Operators Kunstverein Munchen, Fall, 2024; Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991, Kunsthalle Wi
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Biography
Beryl Korot is the Raindance member most consistently associated with the leadership of Radical Software. She first met Schneider whilst studying English Literature at the University of Wisconsin, and they later collaborated together to produce »Video Art: An Anthology« (1976), a seminal publication documenting early film art history. Also a Guggenheim fellow, Korot has been recognised for her multichannel works »Dachau 1974« (1974) and »Text and Commentary« (1977), which are in the Kramlich and Thoma Art Collections and the MoMA NYC collection respectively. Her works, which brought film technology into conversation with the ancient hand loom, have been shown in venues including The Kitchen (1975) Documenta 6 (1977), the Whitney Museum (1980 / 2002), Tate Modern (2014) and SFMOMA (2016). She later collaborated with composer and husband Steve Reich to make »The Cave« (1993) and »Three Tales« (2002), the former of which was shown in the ZKM »Me