Photo: Katherine Landman

 

Robert Wilson collaborated with Ralph Hilton for his first performance at The Kitchen, Spaceman, in 1976. Taking place within a tunnel of translucent plastic, the performance consisted of various objects and performers with eight sets of pre-recorded colored videotapes on twenty monitors interspersed throughout the set. Spaceman had a haunting quality that through video, performance, props, and lighting, explored the most basic principles of language and communication. Although the scale was modest compared to other productions by Wilson, his use of video was a groundbreaking development and directly preceded perhaps his most famous production, Einstein on the Beach, that same year.