Vasulka Chamber
Vasulka Chamber
Vasulka Chamber - the center of electronic and digital art in Iceland
With the establishment of the Vasulka Chamber, the National Gallery of Iceland directs its attention to the preservation of video and multimedia art, which has been a neglected area thus far.
As a leading museum in visual art, the National Gallery plays a critical role in the preservation of Icelandic visual art.
For some years the National Gallery of Iceland has been preparing the way for the opening of the Vasulka Chamber, a department to house works, data and documents relating to Steina and Woody Vasulka, who are among the most respected international video artists and who are both Icelanders, although Woody was born in Brno, Moravia.
A brief foreword cannot suffice to describe the colorful and successful career of the Vasulkas, yet it has to be mentioned that in 1971 they founded The Kitchen in New York, the legendary multimedia center which is still flourishing more than four decades later.
Their art can, however, be traced back to the sixties, when they began to examine the possibilities and nature of video technology, both the camcorder and the monitor, and all the intermediate- are functions, whether in form of feedback or image and sound synthesizers, which they fashioned, designed or had made in accord with their ideas.