Entering

part 2 of the The Creation Cycle.
1974, 8 minutes

Entering is a classic videotape, representing something of a milestone in British broadcasting and art history. It was the first independent “art” videotape and the first completely abstract work to be commissioned and broadcast nationally on television in the UK – in May 1974 in an Arts magazine programme “Second House” hosted by Melvyn Bragg. The BBC producer was Mark Kidel. Entering was selected as part of Tate Britain’s “Century of Artists Film in Britain” exhibition in 2003 and has been shown widely around the world at a variety of venues.

It was recorded by the BBC as an outside broadcast from the Royal College of Art television studio in Kensington, London, on 15th April 1974. Pictures and sound were transmitted via a microwave link to the Television Centre at White City via the Crystal Palace transmitter on the other side of London (as no direct line of site was available between the two sites just two miles apart!)

The imagery is non-representational, and the tape’s theme is an allegory of the experience of birth in the physical sense and re-birth in the metaphysical sense. The tape’s structure is in three sections separated by moments of darkness. The first section suggests the security of a womb. The second section develops through a series of contractions leading to the expansion of birth itself. The final section suggests the quiescence of rest and sleep.