Nicolas Holt is a first-generation student from the United States, soon to begin the third year of his art history PhD at McGill University in Montreal under the supervision of Christine Ross. His doctoral research focuses on the artistic practices and theoretical concerns of the early video art journal Radical Software, published from 1970 until 1974. He was introduced to this body of work by his master’s adviser, Ina Blom, while at The University of Chicago. It was here he was introduced to more media-inflected studies of art history, and has continued in this methodological direction since then. Currently in the early stages of his thesis, he is working on telling a different story of Radical Software – not one that figures it solely as an anti-television movement. Rather, by focusing on the themes of cybernetics, general ecology, electromagnetism, and topology, Nicolas is interested in locating Radical Software as an early locus of new materialist experimentation in the arts of the 1970s; one that flew mostly under the radar of the poststructuralist, discursively-oriented art critical discourses of the time. If it is the case that the new materialisms are enjoying popularity today, can Radical Software serve as a much-needed source of art historical contextualization? Nicolas’s presentation for Media Art Histories 2019 emerged from his thesis research and he’s grateful for the opportunity to share it.