Toots Zynsky talks about the excitement of working with a material that did not yet have its own history as an individual artist’s medium. Oral history interview with Toots Zynsky, March 22, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:14.

Toots Zynsky: But I think when we came in, I mean I know when I started, it was like, one of the things that was so exciting about it was that there weren’t any galleries. So there weren’t galleries that were already filled with all the artists above you. It was no one above us. It was like—just blue sky, you know [laughs]. And that was so exciting, the possibilities were vast; and not having a huge tradition sitting on top of your head meant you could do anything you wanted with it. And then—it also, like, became evident that because it hadn’t been an individual artist medium, it had missed going—being carried through and developed through some of the great art movements of the twentieth century, you know, like Cubism, Dadaism. I mean, it’s perfect for Dada [laughs] right? You know, on and on and on, Arte Povera, I mean you name it and it had—and so it was like we had to run it through all of that fast to catch up and be current. So, we did, or some of us did.