statement from the original Festival website:

Monitor was made in 1975 and exploits the visual feedback phenomenon when a video camera is pointed at its own monitor. However in this work the feedback is simulated and the image actually a replay of the visual space within the monitor. An active diagonal line across the framed space, repeated in the chain of monitors, is now dynamic rather than assertively flat. The logic of tautology or self-embedded system is at the core of the piece. In this version, first presented at TATE Modern in  2009, the work is performed live and with a live relay to a projector and another layer of ‘feedback’ added.

Biography, updated February 2020:

The original work, Monitor was acquired by TATE Britain in December 2014 as part of the permanent collection.

Stephen Partridge is an artist and academic researcher. He is the principal investigator on the research projects REWIND and REWINDItalia, which have been awarded successive grants in 2004, 2008 and 2011 from the AHRC and in 2012 the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Currently Stephen is co-investigator on the AHRC-funded European Womens’ Video Art (EWVA) research project, led by his colleague Prof. Elaine Shemilt and Richard Demarco | The Italian Connection, also funded by the AHRC.

Stephen was in the landmark video shows of the 1970s including The Video Show at the Serpentine in 1975, The Installation Show at the Tate gallery in 1976, Paris Biennalle de Jeunes in 1977 and a solo exhibition at The Kitchen in New York in 1979. During the eighties he exhibited widely and also became interested in works for broadcast television and was commissioned by Channel 4 television to produce Dialogue for Two Players in 1984. With Jane Rigby he formed Fields and Frames Ltd – an arts projects, and television production company that produced the innovative Television Interventions project for Channel 4 in 1990, with nineteen works by artists for television (including his own piece in the series – The Sounds of These Words. He also co-produced a short series of student and artists work, Not Necessarily, with BBC Scotland for BBC2 network television in 1991. He has curated a number of influential video shows: Video Art 78 in Coventry; UK TV New York; National Review of Live Art 1988-90; 19:4:90 Television Interventions; and the touring tape packages Made in Scotland I, II, Semblances, Passages.

He has worked with the artist and composer David Cunningham, whose sound-works and structural approach has enriched many of his works since 1974. Other major collaborations include the artist Elaine Shemilt on a series of works including the installations Chimera, Rush, Quattro Minuti di Mezzogiorno.  

He established the School of Television & Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (University of Dundee), and was Professor of Media Art and Dean of Research from 2000-2017. He is currently a Professor in the Transtechnology Research Group at University of Plymouth.

stephenpartridge.org

rewind.ac.uk