Contemporary Art Television Fund

The Contemporary Art Television (CAT) Fund was an initiative seed-funded for three years by the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, 1983-1986. The fund was a collaboration between the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and WGBH TV, and Boston’s Public Television Station.

Kathy Rae Huffman was appointed curator/producer with a mandate to create a context for artists to define television as a medium for personal expression. The Fund was to increase visibility of artists work in television, to create larger distribution markets for artists television/video, and to experiment with methods for funding and self-sustaining strategies for media arts production.

Projects
Events, meetings of producers, and presentations were conducted. The following projects were commissioned, and co-produced by The CAT Fund, 1984-1991 (in alphabetical order):


 * Laurie Anderson: What You Mean We?  (video, produced in collaboration with Alive From Off Center, 1986)
 * Burt Barr and James Benning: O Panama (video co-produced with New TV Workshop 1985)
 * Dara Birnbaum: Will-O'-The-Wisp (video/installation, 1985)
 * Peter D'Agostino: String Cycles (interactive work, 1991)
 * Ken Feingold: Irony (TV narrative, 1985)
 * Doug Hall: Storm and Stress (video, 1986)
 * Joan Jonas: Double Lunar Dogs (video, 1984)
 * Joan Logue: New England Fisherman: Spots (video portraits, 1985)
 * Chip Lord and Mickey McGowen: Easy Living (video, 1984)
 * Branda Miller: Time Squared (video for TIME CODE, 1987)
 * Jacques Louise and Daniele Nyst: L'Image (video and computer animation, 1987)
 * Marcel Odenbach: As If Memories Could Deceive Me (video and installation, 1986)
 * Tony Oursler: EVOL (video, 1984)
 * Tony Oursler and Constance DeJong: Relatives (video and performance, produced in collaboration with the exhibition BiNational: American Art of the Late 80’s, and toured internationally, 1988-1989)
 * Daniel Reeves: Ganapati / a spirit in the bush (video, 1986)
 * Raul Ruiz: Expulsion of the Moors The (installation with video, co-produced with IVAM (Valencia) and the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 1990)
 * Bill Seaman: The Watch Detail (interactive computer installation)
 * Bill Seaman: The Water  Catalogue (video, 1984)
 * Ilene Segalove: More TV Stories (video, 1985)
 * Michael Smith & William Wegman: The World of Photography (video, produced in collaboration with “Alive From Off Center”, 1986)
 * Bill Viola: I Do Not Know What it is I Am Like (video, video laserdisc co-produced with The Voyager Co., 1986)

In 1997, The DeCordova Museum presented The CAT Fund, as part of its HIstory of Video Art in Boston series. Part II: The 1980s.