Digital art has a long history and comes in many flavors. Some, such as Johnson, have chosen to integrate the techniques and tools from both traditional, analog and even physical art, along with the more fluid and dynamic capabilities of the digital vernacular. A writer, director, photographer, musician and performer, she had the heart and soul of an artist along with the mind and hands of an engineer. She could write computer code, fabricate objects and inspire all those around her to do their best and always strive further upwards.
Sometimes artists are not recognized for their greatness until they have departed. Now that digital art is becoming more widely appreciated, there are those who came before, and whose efforts are worth remembering. Kate Johnson was nowhere near among the first digital artists. But some believe that she may ultimately be seen as among the most significant.
In 2021, the City of Santa Monica, where Johnson’s EZTV studio ( eztvmuseum.com) has been located at 18th Street Arts Center since 2000, created an annual Fellowship Grant in her honor, “The Kate Johnson Digital Arts Fellowship.”
Kate Johnson was a hyphenate. An Emmy-award winning filmmaker, and she created some of the region’s largest-scaled digital projections. She worked in both expressionistic and poetic visual art works as well as informative documentaries, always bridging the two with a blending of her unique visual vocabulary with the best-practices of established film iconography. She was also a writer/performer, creating evocative performance pieces that combined her various media into performance art experiences.
Live Performance Artists:
Danielle Winkler – reading the writings of Kate JohnsonR Dance Company (Roberta Wolin-Tupas & Robert Whidbee) doing a dance duetCally Lindle- musical performance- crystal singing bowlsTwo more to be named.
About The Series:
Video Capital of the World: 45 Years of EZTV in L.A. is an expansive weeklong screening and performance series programmed by Elizabeth Purchell and Hollywood Entertainment. The series honors both the diverse range of artists, videomakers, and communities that have found a home at Los Angeles’s EZTV over the course of its first 45 years of existence and the global influence that it has had on the development of video, digital, and performance art. Featuring a wide range of unique events at REDCAT, Brain Dead Studios, Whammy! Analog Media, 18th Street Arts Center, the Velaslavasay Panorama, Los Angeles Filmforum, and online, Video Capital of the World: 45 Years of EZTV in L.A. is a first-of-its-kind tribute to a still under-understood L.A. institution.
