Category: psychedelic light shows

Some real history of psychedelic video. These are videos by 1960s experimental psychedelic film maker Jud Yalkut. Here a quote from a dissertation about Yalkut by psychedelic historian Chris Elcock.

USCO also collaborated with the filmmaker Jud Yalkut, who produced disorienting films allegedly in an attempt to ―find another way to hit people, to dislocate them, and then re-center them at the end – very much a trip analogy.‖102 Masters and Houston described his art as ―a torrent of hurtling colors and lights, forms blinking, whirling, and surging. Image follows image in rapid-fire succession, distorting awareness of time and space as the sensory bombardment continues.‖103 For Gerd Stern, a testimony of Yalkut‘s use of psychedelics is apparent in his heavy use of the in and out zoom,104 as can be seen in his collaborations with the polka-dot artist Yayoi Kusama.105

On March 1, 1968, Kusama presented her ―Self Obliteration‖ at the Cooper Square Arts Theater in front of a crowded audience. To accompany the happening, a band composed of late-teenagers called ―The Dayz Beyond‖ played psychedelic rock. Kusama entered from behind the stage, ―dressed in red leotards with white dots sporadically covering her outfit and wears a long-furred black coat.‖ She was soon followed by three semi-nude men who wore US flags around their waists. As she began to paint dots on their skin, more naked or near-naked participants joined in. Then, a fake policeman arrived on stage, swinging his club and shouting that everyone was under arrest. He was wrestled down to the floor and stripped. Kusama then produced a print of the Mona Lisa and began painting dots on it, while a film partly made and edited by Yalkut appeared on a screen, just above the band. The whole event was intensified by flashing strobes.106

(From:Elcock, Chris. “High New York: The Birth of A Psychedelic Subculture in the American City.” PhD thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 2015.)