Peter Rubin, who is credited as one of the world’s first video mixers, or VJs, has a lot to say about the state of the world today. A filmmaker, author and video mix artist for over 30 years, Rubin has witnessed several generations of cultural movements and the ups and downs of the record industry. He was there at the birth of house music and the rise of the superstar DJ.
Now, as we enter the 21st century, he thinks there needs to be a rebalance of music and visuals in clubs – and that young people need to be inspired to use technology to send out positive messages to the masses.
Rubin believes that developments in technology mean that, more than ever before, young people have tools at their disposal to serve the social needs of society.
‘What I’m trying to do,’ says Rubin, over the phone from his Amsterdam base, ‘is to create a movement, an energy, a network if you like, of people who create video mixes, to start working with social organisations – whether local, regional or global organisations and interest groups.’
With clubs in every major city around the world, Rubin says the technology is in place in the club scene, for young people ‘to positively influence the social conditions throughout the world.’ The idea is to inspire young video artists to work with material and images that send out positive messages – an idea Rubin hopes will catch on at a meeting of VJ artists in Brighton this week.
Rubin is one of a number of VJ artists attending the AVIT UK 2003 event, a live audio visual arts festival which gets underway in the English seaside town tomorrow and runs until Sunday. The first AVIT took place in Leeds in 2002, and has grown to incorporate a sister event in North America, the first of which took place in Chicago in June this year. And it’s all thanks to the internet – the AVIT (Audio Visual IT) events have emerged from an online international community of VJs, vjcentral.com, and attract artists from around the UK as well as Germany, France, New Zealand, Croatia, Israel, the United States, and Holland.
‘I think the value of AVIT is that you’re bringing creators together to talk about situations that are very pertinent to everybody’s particular contemporary approach to their medium,’ says Rubin.
He also highlights the importance of an online community such as vjcentral.com. ‘This kind of organisation is very, very valuable, because it allows the opportunity for a dialogue within a particular artistic community. You’re talking about people that then go back and communicate to hundreds of thousands of people,’ Rubin explains, indicating the role of the VJ in mixing and projecting images at various club and outdoor dance events. ‘It’s important to get conversations going with people who are as influential as that in terms of their ability to communicate with large numbers of people.’
Rubin should know – he has been the official VJ for all thirteen of the annual German Mayday Raves, which attract around 30,000 people each year. He has also taken part in 12 of the Berlin Love Parade Love Nation raves, which in 1999 and 2000, drew crowds of more than one million to witness his projected video images.
Born in New York City in 1941, Rubin – a graduate of the New York University Film School – has lived in Europe since 1968. He has made a number of shorts and feature films, as well as documentaries, and was responsible for organising the first house parties in Germany and the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s.
Although Rubin is known as one of the first VJs, discussions at the Brighton event will include debate about other video artists who may have begun mixing around the same time in the mid-1980s. Rubin also hopes to spark discussion about creating a new term to describe VJs – a title he believes has become ‘hyper-commercialised’. He hopes to coin the term VMA – video mix artist – as a more generic term to apply not only to VJs, but more broadly, to video artists.
Having witnessed the explosion of house music in the 1980s, Rubin says the dynamic between the DJ and the VJ – the balance of music and the visuals – changed in the early 1990s. Suddenly, the DJ, who had spent years spinning vinyl in relative obscurity, was thrust into the spotlight, changing the whole dynamic of club culture.
‘The entire energy within the space shifted from: “Let’s be together”, to: “Let’s see somebody who is going to influence us”,’ Rubin remarks. ‘As soon as you do that you create the potential for a superstar and an entirely new way of manipulating people.’
‘The club itself used to be a place to inspire young people to go out into the world and make a statement,’ Rubin laments. ‘Now, the experience is one of escape.
‘Kids nowadays, go to clubs to escape. They can’t stand the world, it’s too big, it’s too complicated…the world represents a place that young people feel is alienating and they don’t want to be a part of it.’
But Rubin also believes the September 11 terrorist attacks and related events have shaken a generation that had become complacent about standing up to governments to bring about change.
But: ‘We have reached a technological point in our history that is more powerful and has more potential for power than any other time in history,’ Rubin says, although adding at the moment technology such as computer hardware and software, especially in the music industry, is still being used in a consumerist fashion.
‘If you get young people involved in a creative way, of approaching life and their own positions towards life, you have a much greater possibility to work out solutions that could be acceptable to the greatest majority of people on the planet.’
AVIT UK 2003 takes place in Brighton from October 23-26. For further information CLICK HERE to read a related article or HERE to visit the festival website.
Related Websites
www.avit.info
www.avit.us
www.vjcentral.com
www.maxavision.com