Jud Yalkut

Jud Yalkut (1938-2013) was an experimental film and video maker and intermedia artist.

Jud Yalkut was born in New York City in 1938. In 1973, he moved to Dayton, Ohio, where he lived until his death at the age of 75 in Cincinnati, Ohio on July 23, 2013.

He was married to Peg Rice.

Yalkut attended McGill University, Montreal, where he studied poetry, before returning to his place of birth, New York to take up film-making.

New York

In 1965 Yalkut became resident film-maker for USCO ('The Company of Us', a media arts collective).

In 1966 he started collaborating with Nam June Paik, a working partnership that would continue into the 1970s. Together, Yalkut and Paik produced hybrid film-video works that combined moving image technologies, electronic manipulations, performance and installation. These works include Videotape Study No. 3 (1967–69), Beatles Electroniques (1966-72) and Cinema Metaphysique (1966–72).

As well as Paik, Yalkut worked with many other New York-based performance artists. For example, in 1967 he made a film of the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, Kusama’s Self-Obliteration. In 1968, Yalkut collaborated with the dancer and choreographer Trisha Brown, contributing a film to the dance, Planes, for projection onto the performance space. The film included found aerial footage of New York City, rockets launching and microscopic imagery.

During his time in New York, Yalkut organised film programs for Charlotte Moorman's New York Avant Garde Festivals. He also taught film-making courses at New York University, School of Visual Arts, and the Millennium Film Workshop.

Dayton

In 1973, Yalkut left New York and started a film and video program at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio.

He was one of the founders of Dayton Visual Arts Center. He taught at Sinclair Community College in Dayton and at Xavier University in Cincinnati.

• Dream Reels: VideoFilms and Environments by Jud Yalkut, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2000.
• Jud Yalkut: Visions and Sur-Realities, University of Dayton, Spring 2013 - a career retrospective.

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Yalkut received six Individual Artist Fellowships and three Artist's Project Grants from the Ohio Arts Council. The Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District honoured him with a Master Individual Artist Fellowship and a Lifetime Achievement Fellowship in 2003.