Liza Bear

In the late 1970s Liza Bear, in collaboration with other artists, created an intriguing body of work that consistently focused attention on communications issues especially satellites and public access cable, and the disempowered role of the public in communications policy. Central to Bear's early work was a desire to tie the means of production (technology) to the reasons for production (capitalistic advantage, national ideology, etc.). While Bear's concerns are global, her approach is always personal and experimental-collapsing the norms of narrative and documentary, subjective authorship and objective document. She was the co-founder of Communications Update, an artists' TV show on public access cable TV in Manahttan. Her short films include "Oued Nefifik: A Foreign Movie", 1982, 27:30, a post-colonial comedy of manners filmed near Casablanca; Lost Oasis, 1982, 10:00, a desert fantasy and "Earthglow", 1983, 8 min, a character animation in which the only images are words