The Downtown Pop Underground

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Mary Curtis Ratcliff was one of the three founding members of the Videofreex, which began in the downtown loft she purchased while working as a teacher before the group expanded and moved into a larger loft in SoHo. [more]

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Nancy Cain joined forces with the Videofreex after CBS contracted them to produce the pilot television show, Subject to Change, and she stayed with the group after it was cancelled and the 'freex moved to Upstate New York. [more]

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Rudi Stern produced light shows for LSD guru Timothy Leary  before cofounding the video-making collective Global Village, one of the many video groups that coalesced downtown that included the Videofreex, Raindance, and People’s Video Theater. [more]

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Shirley Clarke began as a dancer before becoming a headstrong filmmaker who directed The Connection and The Cool World; by the late 1960s she had largely abandoned the film world to become a video pioneer, forming the Tee Pee Video Space Troupe with her daughter Wendy Clarke. [more]

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Skip Blumberg joined the Videofreex after they had moved into their SoHo loft on Prince Street, which was still being built, and he slept on a mattress on a pile of sheet rock while construction proceeded. [more]

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Wendy Clarke is the daughter of Shirley Clarke, and together they began experimenting with video in the late 1960s—forming the Tee Pee Video Space Troupe and collaborating with other pioneering video artists, such as the Videofreex. [more]