Woody Vasulka, Artist in distribution, Czech Republic, 1937 - 2019

Woody Vasulka was born in 1937 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, until his death in 2019. He studied at the Industrial Engineering School of Brno from 1952-1956 and at the Faculty of Film and Television at the Prague Academy for Performing Arts from 1960-1965. In the late 1960's he shifted his focus from poetry and commercial film to video, creating a number of solo works and collaborations with wife Steina Vasulka which have been shown all over the world. Woody Vasulka's solo pieces are highly produced and carefully edited, combining some of the experimental 'image-processed' effects of their collaborative works with more recognizable landscape shots and acted scenes. The videos have non-linear narrative structures that explore how truth-effects are created through the continual retelling of stories. This is connected to the way that memory is recuperated and experienced by the individual, and hence the works often play with elements of biographical and autobiographical narrative.