37,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Video Art Theory: A Comparative Approach demonstrates how video art functions on the basis of a comparative media approach, providing a crucial understanding of video as a medium in contemporary art and of the visual mediations we encounter in daily life.
- A critical investigation of the visual media and selected video artworks which contributes to the understanding of video as a medium in contemporary art
- The only study specifically devoted to theorizing the medium of video from the perspective of prominent characteristics which result from how video works deal with time, space, representation, and narrative
- The text has emerged out of the author’s own lectures and seminars on video art
- Offers a comparative approach which students find especially useful, offering new perspectives
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 408
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
Ähnliche
Video Art Theory
A Comparative Approach
Helen Westgeest
This edition first published 2016 © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Registered OfficeJohn Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
Editorial Offices350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.
The right of Helen Westgeest to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Westgeest, Helen, 1958– Video art theory : a comparative approach / Helen Westgeest. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-118-47544-7 (cloth) – ISBN 978-1-118-47546-1 (pbk.) 1. Video art. I. Title. N6494.V53W47 2015 777–dc23
2015004067
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: Lynn Hershman, Tillie the Telerobotic Doll, 1995. Interactive networked installation. © Lynn Hershman, courtesy of the artist.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
References
Chapter 1: Immediacy versus Memory:
Video Art in Relation to Television, Performance Art, and Home Video
Gillian Wearing's
Trauma
(2000) Juxtaposed to Joan Jonas's
Vertical Roll
(1972)
Video Art Dealing with the Constant Movements of Audio-Visual Electronic Media, and the Immediacy and Socio-Cultural Aspects of Television
The Appeal of Immediacy: Video in Performance Art and Performance in Video Art
The Application of the Mnemonic Ability of Video and the Relationship with Activist-Videos and Home Video
Notes
References
Chapter 2: Immateriality versus Three-Dimensionality:
Video Art as Sculpture, Installation Art, Projection, and Virtual Medium
Lynn Hershman's
Tillie the Telerobotic Doll
(1995) Juxtaposed to Andy Warhol's
Outer and Inner Space
(1965)
Television as an Object: Sculpture or Part of Architecture
Spatial Video Installations and the Relationship with the Space of the Visitor
Projections on Spatial Positioned Screens, the Space of Sound, and Interaction with the Visitor
Immaterial Projections Interfering in Darkened Sites and Immersing the Viewer
Interacting in the Merged Physical and Digital Space
Notes
References
Chapter 3: Moving Images Mediating as Contemplative Images:
Video's Challenge of Photography, Drawing, and Painting
Kudzanai Chiurai's
Iyeza
(2012) Juxtaposed to Thierry Kuntzel's
Été – double vue
(1988)
Video Art and Photography
Video Art and Drawing
Video Art and Painting
Notes
References
Chapter 4: Repetition and Fragmentation in Narrative:
Video's Appropriation and Subversion of Classical Cinema
Candice Breitz's
Mother + Father
(2005) Juxtaposed to Rodney Graham's
Vexation Island
(1997) and Keren Cytter's
Corrections
(2013)
Aspects of Narrative in Video Art Reacting to Hollywood Films, and Views on Compulsive Repetition
The Tension between Images and Verbal Language as Dialog, Voice-over, Voice-off, or Text
References
In Lieu of a Conclusion
Index
EULA
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 Gillian Wearing,
Trauma
(video still), 2000. Color video with sound, 30 minutes. © Gillian Wearing, courtesy Maureen Paley, London.
Figure 1.2 Joan Jonas,
Vertical Roll
, 1972. One-channel analog video, black-and-white, sound, 19:38 minutes. © Joan Jonas, courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, New York.
Figure 1.3 Nam June Paik,
TV Cello,
1971. Video-television performance. © Ken Hakuta, courtesy Nam June Paik Estate.
Figure 1.4 Keren Cytter,
Video Art Manual
, 2011. One-channel digital video, color, sound, 14 minutes. © Keren Cytter, courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias, London.
Figure 1.5 Martha Rosler,
Semiotics of the Kitchen
, 1975. One-channel analog video, black-and-white, sound, 6:9 minutes. © Martha Rosler, courtesy of the artist, and Electronic Arts Intermix, New York.
Figure 1.6 Johan Grimonprez,
Double Take
, 2009. One-channel digital film novel, black-and-white, sound, 80 minutes. © Johan Grimonprez, courtesy of the artist.
Figure 1.7 Vito Acconci,
Centers
, 1971. One-channel analog video, black-and-white, sound, 22:28 minutes. © Vito Acconci c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2014. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, New York.
Figure 1.8 Simon Leung,
Squatting Project/Guangzhou
, 2008. Two-channel digital video installation (projections facing each other), color, sound, nine variations on two-minute segment of film
Center Stage
. © Simon Leung, courtesy of the artist.
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 Lynn Hershman,
Tillie the Telerobotic Doll
, 1995. Interactive networked installation. © Lynn Hershman, courtesy of the artist.
Figure 2.2 Andy Warhol,
Outer and Inner Space
, 1965. 16mm film, black-and-white, sound, 66 minutes or 33 minutes in double screen. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Film still courtesy The Andy Warhol Museum.
Figure 2.3 Bruce Nauman,
Wall Floor Positions
, 1968. One-channel analog video, black-and-white, 59:25 minutes. © Bruce Nauman c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2014. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, New York.
Figure 2.4 Bruce Nauman,
Lived/Taped Video Corridor
, 1969–1970. Closed-circuit installation: wallboard, video camera, two monitors, videotape player. © Bruce Nauman c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2014.
Figure 2.5 Mike Kelley,
Switching Marys
, 2005, mixed media installation with video projection. © Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. All Rights Reserved/VAGA, NY /Pictoright Amsterdam 2015.
Figure 2.6 Shirin Neshat,
Turbulent
, 1998. Production Still. Two-channel video installation, black-and-white, sound, 10 minutes. © Shirin Neshat, courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.
Figure 2.7 Krzysztof Wodiczko,
Guests
, 2009. Five synchronized video projectors with sound system, Polish Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. Curated by Bożena Czubak. © Krzysztof Wodiczko, courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York.
Figure 2.8 Rabih Mroué,
The Pixelated Revolution
, 2012. Photograph: Ernesto Donegana. © Rabih Mroué, courtesy of the artist.
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 Kudzanai Chiurai,
Iyeza
, 2012. One-channel digital video, color, sound, 11 minutes. © Kudzanai Chiurai, courtesy of the artist.
Figure 3.2 Thierry Kuntzel,
Été – double vue
, 1988. One screen of the two-channel video installation, color, no sound, two 7 minutes loops. All rights reserved.
Figure 3.3 Ute Friederike Jürss,
You Never Know the Whole Story
, 2000. Three-channel digital video, black-and-white, no sound, 10 minutes. © Ute Friederike Jürss c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2014, courtesy of the artist.
Figure 3.4 Gillian Wearing,
Sixty Minute Silence
(video still), 1996. Color video for projection with sound, 60 minutes. © Gillian Wearing, courtesy Maureen Paley, London.
Figure 3.5 William Kentridge, Drawing for
Felix in Exile
, 1994. Charcoal on paper. © William Kentridge, courtesy of the artist.
Figure 3.6 Harun Farocki,
Parallele I
(
Parallel I
), 2012. Two-channel digital video, color, sound, 17:10 minutes. © Harun Farocki 2012, courtesy of the studio.
Figure 3.7 Bill Viola,
Catherine's Room
, 2001. Color video polyptych on five LCD flat panels mounted on wall. 15 × 97 × in (38.1 x 246.4 × 5.7 cm). 18:00 minutes. Performer: Weba Garretson. Photo credit: Kira Perov. © Bill Viola, courtesy of the artist.
Figure 3.8 Woody and Steina Vasulka,
Golden Voyage
, 1973. One-channel analog video, color, sound, 14:20 minutes. © Woody and Steina Vasulka, courtesy of the artists.
Figure 3.9 Yang Fudong,
No Snow on the Broken Bridge
, 2006. Eight-channel installation, 35mm black-and-white film, music by Jin Wang, 11 minutes. Exhibition view in Hangzhou, China 2013. Photograph: Fay Yeong. © Yang Fudong, courtesy of the artist, ShanghART gallery and Marian Goodman Gallery.
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 Candice Breitz,
Mother
, 2005. Six-channel installation, color, sound, 13:15 minutes.
Father
, 2005. Six-channel installation, color, sound, 11 minutes. Installation View: Italian Pavilion, 51st Venice Biennale, 2005. Photograph: Alexander Fahl. Ed. 3 + A.P. © Candice Breitz, courtesy of the artist.
Figure 4.2 Rodney Graham,
Vexation Island
, 1997. 35mm film transferred to DVD, color, sound, 9 minutes projected on continuous loop. © Rodney Graham, courtesy Lisson Gallery, London.
Figure 4.3 Keren Cytter,
Corrections
, 2013. One-channel digital video, color, sound, 8 minutes. © Keren Cytter, courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias, London.
Figure 4.4 Johan Grimonprez,
Double Take
, 2009. One-channel digital film novel, black-and-white, sound, 80 minutes. © Johan Grimonprez, courtesy of the artist.
Figure 4.5 Gary Hill,
Primarily Speaking
, 1981–1983. One-channel analog video, color, sound, 18:40 minutes. © Gary Hill c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2014, courtesy of the artist.
Figure 4.6 Omer Fast,
The Casting
, 2007. Video installation, four-channel video projection, color, 35mm film transferred to video/video/sound, projection with hard disc players, 14 minutes. Edition of 6 + 2 APs. © Omer Fast. Courtesy the artist, Zabludowicz Collection, and GB Agency, Paris. 4.6b: Photo Stephen White during
We Will Live We Will See
exhibition at the Zabludowicz Collection in 2011.
Figure 4.7 Keren Cytter,
Video Art Manual
, 2011. One-channel digital video, color, sound, 14 minutes. © Keren Cytter, courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias, London.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
1
Pages
vii
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
193
194
195
196
197
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank editor Jayne Fargnoli, project editor Julia Kirk, copy editor and project manager Fiona Screen, and text editor Ton Brouwers. Thanks also to the peer reviewers for their valuable suggestions. She is indebted to her students, enrolled in the Master's Program in Film and Photographic Studies and the Bachelor and Master courses in Modern and Contemporary Art History at Leiden University, for their contributions to discussions about research into various media. A special word of thanks as well to her colleagues at Leiden University who made it possible for her to concentrate on the manuscript, and in particular to film scholar Peter Verstraten for his frequently useful advice with regard to Chapter 4.
She also wants to thank all artists and other copyright holders for their permission to reproduce the selected works in this book.
Introduction
It is hard to imagine a world today without cameras, which for widely divergent reasons record all sorts of events and activities, and without screens or monitors on which these recordings are presented. This camera-based culture has meanwhile pervaded the world of art as well. Most exhibitions of contemporary art will feature artworks that consist of moving images, a form of art to which we refer as “video art.” As a result of the ubiquitous presence of images in our daily life and culture, we almost forget to interrogate critically how moving images mediate the world they present to us and what the consequences are for the contents of the visual communication involved. Fortunately, in recent decades artists have provided us with an array of video artworks, which aim at critically interrogating not only the visual language of video, but also the common language of television, photography, and cinema that surrounds us on a daily basis. Furthermore, some video artworks reflect on the relationships with other artistic visual media, such as painting and spatial arts. These concerns have turned video art into a highly fascinating topic for theoretical reflection on questions and issues associated with visual mediation in today's world. This volume aims to contribute to our understanding of video not only as a significant medium in contemporary art but also in the larger context of the visual mediations that all of us increasingly encounter in daily life. This second concern is pursued indirectly by investigating critical reflections on visual media in the video artworks that will serve as basis for a discussion of the relevant theoretical issues involved.
Key characteristics of video art
Authors on video art agree that video is a most difficult medium to define. Although it is a young medium that came into being only half a century ago, it underwent drastic technical changes already. Contemporary digital video is a quite different proposition from video in the late 1960s, when the first portable black-and-white reel-to-reel systems were introduced. Moreover, contrary to Marshall McLuhan's famous insight that a new medium at first looks like a familiar medium before it develops its own specificity, video has continued to challenge other visual media by experimenting with and pushing the boundaries among them.
Nevertheless, some characteristics of video are still and quite constantly mentioned by specialists, although they may use slightly different terms. Yvonne Spielmann, in Video: The Reflexive Medium, has described several major characteristics of video, including these three: video is an electronic medium, video signals are generated inside a camera and can circulate between recording and reproduction equipment (closed circuit), and the recordings can be variously modified by processors and keyers (2008 [2005], 1). In her more recent essay “The Visual Flow: Fixity and Transformation in Photo- and Videographic Imagery,” Spielmann in particular stresses that video has transformed the notion of an “art object” into something fluid and changeable, turning processuality and transformativity into its medium-specific features (2013, 106–107). Her characterization of video is closely related to that of Philippe Dubois, who in his La question vidéo defines video not as an object, but as an experimental condition (état expérimental) that instead of providing answers gives rise to questions and pondering (2011, 8). As he stresses, video is not just immaterial in a double sense (both in recording and projecting, as is true of film), but the image has even dissolved, turning video into a process only, one that is quite similar in a way to the wind (71–73). Moreover, as Dubois notes, other artistic media can be conceived in terms of an activity and a product, or a noun and a verb (as in “a painting” and “to paint”), but video is rather a means of communication (79, 81).
It is possible to sum up the most often mentioned features of video as a technology as follows (based on Berghaus 2005, 183):
Electronic (magnetic) recording.
Immediate live feedback: the recording and playback of the image occur simultaneously.
Continuous flow of electromagnetic signals (as opposed to individually framed images on celluloid film).
The monitor is a picture and light source in one (as opposed to the projected celluloid image that is reflected from the film screen, even though many videos are also projected by beamers).
(Increasing) possibilities for image transformation and manipulation in the recording or post-production process.
Storage of images on inexpensive cassettes, chips, or drives that can be erased and reused.
Images can be read as electronic signals and transmitted via cable for long-distance broadcasts.
Simplicity and flexibility of the portable video cameras has rendered recording crews and operators superfluous (individual work replaces team work).
On a more detailed level, Stephen Partridge explains in “Video: Incorporeal, Incorporated” (2006) that originally video referred to an electrical analog waveform produced by scanning the light (the latent image) focused onto a photosensitive plate in the video camera that is subsequently re-created into the pattern (or raster) of horizontal scanning lines made by an electron beam onto the photosensitive surface of a cathode-ray-tube, and this in turn creates the image that appears on a monitor. This waveform in the digital domain is now essentially bit-mapped or sampled to appear on a contemporary TV set, computer screen, or flat display panel. Partridge adds to this characterization that from the start video was a bastard medium that inherited a collection of conventions and properties from earlier media including radio, theater, and, to a lesser extent, film (in Hatfield 2006, 181).
Video's relationship with earlier audio-visual media is particularly addressed in publications dealing with video from the pre-digital age. Roy Armes, for instance, in On Video, argues that an understanding of video demands that it be seen within the whole spectrum of nineteenth- and twentieth-century audio, visual, and audio-visual media, including radio and photography, the gramophone, and the tape recorder (1988, 1). At one level, video is merely a neutral recording device, with little more evident scope for creativity than a copying machine. It can record and reproduce the systems developed within the film industry and the broadcasting institutions to depict reality and to create meaningful combinations of sounds and images.
The digitization of video quite radically changed the technical characteristics of the medium, rendering obsolete one of the most striking characteristics of video as magnetic tape and flow of scanlines. Regarding the differences between analog and digital stages of the lens-based media (photography, film, and video), Mark B.N. Hansen, in New Philosophy for New Media, identified two equally problematic positions in the discourse on new media art: those who feel that digital media have changed everything and those who remain skeptical, wondering whether anything in new media is truly new (2006 [2004], 21). In this textbook I will pursue a balance between both extremes. If photography and film changed from a chemical into an electronic medium, which meant from visibility of images on film reel into invisible numeric codes, video changed from invisibility of images on electronic magnetic tape into invisibility of images in electronic numeric codes in chips. Video always needed a machine to make recordings visible. Digitization, however, has radically increased the possibilities of manipulation.
Some scholars, such as Yvonne Spielmann, consider the digitization of video merely as a step in its development. Spielmann stresses that although as an electronic medium video first rested on analog recording technology, it also established the essential features common to electronic digital media, such as transformativity. In this respect, the electronic principle of the processual image type has found a way forward in the more highly complex digital image type with unlimited possibilities (2008 [2005], 5). Digitization has probably brought lens-based media more closely together. Ming-Yuen S. Ma and Erika Suderburg, for instance, in the introduction to their anthology Resolutions 3, suggest that with the merging of multiple media production processes (video, film, photography, sound, interactive media, games) onto a single digital platform, some of the material differences that distinguished film and video are becoming less and less relevant to the study of contemporary media (2012, xx). In the form of moving image editing software and sound editing software, the digital platform facilitates the mixing of video and film footage in postproduction with increasing ease, as well as presentation of the completed work in a wide range of media, both digital and analog. As my argument in this textbook will demonstrate, the consequences of digitization for video art can be found in particular in the increasing diversity in the nature of video works. Digitization certainly also made it more difficult to decide which part of new media art has to be addressed in this book as digital video art. Rather than drawing a strict boundary, for each chapter I selected digital works for closer examination that well illustrate particular insights into the chapter's theme.
Regarding the efforts aimed at defining video art, Marc Mayer's quite exceptional characterization of video in “The Emergence of Video Projection” is important as well (1996, 30). He observes an analogy to consciousness and, by extension, to being. Although the electro-chemical source of human consciousness has infinitely more complex ramifications in both nature or culture than a mere electro-magnetic mechanism, we have never come closer, according to Mayer in the mid-1990s, to creating a complete plastic surrogate of life than through the various elaborations on basic video art that we have seen over the last few years. Like man, video is entirely dependent upon a precarious life-support system for its existence, in its case, electronic circuitry and electricity.
Given that “video” is derived from the Latin “I see,” the notion appears to ignore the sound aspect, but video originally was the shortened term for videotape-recording systems, distinguishing it from the audiotape recording. The two were not just technically closely related: video served as an addition to sound rather than as a replacement for it.
The training of art historians is geared to the analysis of pictures, and therefore many of them have tended to analyze video art primarily as pictures, if moving ones. Likewise, many early video artists were trained in the visual arts, and for this reason many of their video works do not contain sound, or only modestly. Today, video artworks rely as often on silence as on sound. Although this textbook gives priority to the visual aspects of video works, it also pays attention to sound from different perspectives. Chapter 1 discusses video art in the historical context of the sound of radio, television, and audiotape as early electronic audio (-visual) media. Chapter 2, which focuses on spatial characteristics of video art, also explores spatial features of sound. And Chapter 4, which is devoted to narrative and filmic conventions of video art, pays attention to the role of sound in dialog, voice-over, and voice-off.
Problem of general characterization of video art
The described multiformity of video explains why it is impossible to capture video or video art in a single, all-inclusive definition. The variety in the definitions that can be found in the literature about video art can be traced back to the specific focus of publications. As a result, some definitions, when applied to this volume's individual chapters, will fit better than others.
Recently, Lucas Hilderbrand characterized video art as defined by electronic signals and as being technology based, suggesting that there is some specificity but not one specificity. This would explain why some authors prefer the term “media art” because the boundaries among video, film, and computer-based forms have become ever more blurred in the past decade or so (in Ma and Suderburg 2012, 2). I agree, though, with Katja Kwastek who in Aesthetics of Interaction in Digital Art argues that if we consider “media art” as an artistic category defined by technical or formal features, this implies that it is open to the common criticism that, generally speaking, “all art is media art, insofar as all art seeks to convey a message by means of a medium of some kind” (2013, 1).
Already in 1976 Davidson Gigliotti emphasized how hard it is to define video art, even if for other reasons. In his view, a single critical framework will not cover the whole practice of video art because of the wide variety of video artworks. As an example of this diversity he mentions the difference between videos that refer to the broadcast environment, and videos that do not. In addition, Gigliotti distinguishes interactive works (works predicated upon a direct relationship between camera, monitor, and viewer, and fully appreciable only by direct experience) from works that make no participatory demands (in Schneider and Korot 1976, 214).
Video's pluriformity itself has triggered a great variety of questions. Gregory Battcock, in the introduction to his anthology New Artists' Video, sums up several general questions to which video art gives rise: “What is video art? How does it differ from commercial television? Is video art linked to such traditional art forms as painting and sculpture? Is it a totally new phenomenon?” (1978, xiii). This list is followed by questions on aims of video artists, the kind of equipment needed, and on video art's first appearance and further development. As Battcock indicates, a large number of artists trained in visual media such as painting, sculpture, printmaking, and performance have turned to video. They have discovered ways in which the television format can complement their ideas and lead to new discoveries. Battcock suggests that in order to determine what video art is and what it is not, many writers and thinkers have found it useful to compare it to established art forms, as well as to the new forms that have appeared in the twentieth century. He predicts that those who bring with them a background in the fine arts will feel very much at home with this new medium. Similarly, those versed in other fields, such as psychology, sociology, cinema, and even the sciences, will find their expertise suitable for intelligent explorations within it. Thus practically anybody could work in video, according to Battcock, as it offers a fertile format for effective communication in all areas (xiv–xxi).
In an attempt to define video art in the same volume, David Ross characterizes it as “any artwork involving video tools,” such as television cameras, video sets, videotape recorders or projectors, and a variety of image processing devices. But he immediately adds to that the importance of the context. In his view, the term “video” might be applied to videotapes shown in the closed-circuit context of a museum, the commercial gallery, or a collector's home, while the same videotape shown through open-circuit transmission via broadcast or cable television is perhaps called television, purely as the result of the basic socioeconomic difference between the two (in Battcock 1978,141).
To an increasing extent, scholars and critics consider replacing “video art” with another, more appropriate term, but there is hardly any consensus about such alternative name. Some propose to integrate video art within the concept of “expanded cinema.” Yet there seems to be hardly any consensus about the exact definition of “expanded cinema.” Using this term rather than “video art” would only add to the confusion. Gene Youngblood, in his Expanded Cinema (1970), basically foresaw another form of spectatorship that can certainly be applied to video art: perceptually heightened synesthesia of new electronic technologies. This caused Youngblood to define expanded cinema as expanded consciousness. Apart from synaesthesia and intermediality, he also predicted in 1970 that in the future there would be a global public. After Youngblood some authors shifted the emphasis in the definition of expanded cinema to more spatial presentations of cinema. I will discuss some definitions of “expanded cinema” in Chapter 2.
In “Moving Image in the Gallery since the 1990s,” Michael Newman has claimed that because today images are often shot in film, edited in digital, and then shown as DVD we have all reason to favor a more general notion such as “moving image” instead of film or video art. He defines the moving image as an art that implies both time and a spatial display in a gallery (in Comer 2009, 88). Not only Newman, but also Tanya Leighton as editor of Art and the Moving Image (2008) voiced a preference for the term “moving images” over video art. I do not share their enthusiasm for “moving image” because many video works cannot be sufficiently characterized by a focus on movement. Time passing by, after all, is not the same as movement.
Medium as a concept and the comparative and interdisciplinary approach of media
In this book, I will use the notion of medium mainly to refer to particular capabilities and conventions in mediation: with what means can or usually do video artworks communicate their contents to the beholder? As such, the medium is part of the “visual strategy” of the artwork, but also relates to the expectations and experiences of the spectators. This approach to medium as a term partly relates to Rosalind Krauss's statement that the internal plurality of any given medium makes it impossible to think of medium as nothing more than its physical characteristics, and that particularly the heterogeneity of video demonstrates the end of this kind of medium-specificity (1999, 6, 31). In this respect, Jacques Rancière has reflected on the notion of medium in art theory in “What Medium Can Mean” (2011, 35–37). His starting point is that we understand the word medium as that which holds “between”: between an idea and its realization and between a thing and its reproduction. The medium thus appears as an intermediary, as mediality, as the agent of an operation. He elaborates on the relationship between technology, the notion of art, and the formation of a milieu marked by a specific sensibility. The current volume does not so much focus on the role of the idea of art because video art as an artistic medium cannot be discussed independently from video as part of the mass media of communication, such as television. This implies that this book also deals with the notion of medium as defined – for instance by Henry Jenkins (2006, 8) – as both a technology that enables communication and a set of interconnected social and cultural practices that have grown up around that technology.
Both video and video art are called “medium” in this book. Video refers to the audio-visual medium in general, whereas video art indicates the use of video as artistic medium in the context of art, although sometimes “video” is used as shorthand in the latter case as well. Based on an inventory of the technological options and artistic conventions in mediation in video art in relationship with social and cultural practices throughout the five decades of its existence I selected four focal points. These concerns – which also relate to the most-often mentioned characteristics of video by scholars, critics, and artists – are based on how video art in its mediation deals with aspects of time, space, representation, and narrative. The flexibility of video as a medium becomes particularly clear in the range of applications: from a temporal angle video deals with immediacy and real time, but also with past and remembered time; from a spatial perspective video can apply three-dimensionality or its immateriality; from the vantage point of its contents it can represent a world not only as a sequence of moving images but also as static contemplative images; and from a concern for narrative, video can simultaneously appropriate and subvert conventional film stories.
My selection of these four focal points in part followed from comparative research of video art and other media. Most video works relate in one way or another to other media, testifying that each medium has increasingly become part of a larger cultural ensemble of media. The ongoing integration and convergence of different media especially applies to media in the contemporary visual arts and in contemporary culture at large. As Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin have argued: “A medium in our culture can never operate in isolation, because it must enter into relationships of respect and rivalry with other media. … we cannot even recognize the representational power of a medium except with reference to other media” (2000 [1999], 65). Yvonne Spielmann rightly stresses that from the beginning video has developed cross-medial characteristics, starting with interventions into television, while at the same time video had to defend its relative specificity (relative because of shared properties with television) against film and television as established media (2013, 107).
My comparative media approach implies among other things that I draw a connection between, on the one hand, how video artworks deal with time and comparative research of video in this respect with television, performance art, and home videos, and, on the other hand, how video deals with space and the analysis of video as a kind of spatial installation art and “projection medium.” Furthermore, I discuss how video works represent their contents in relationship to how issues of representation play out in photography, drawing, and painting. Finally, I consider how experiments with narratives in video are related to the approach of video as cinema.
Importantly, the comparative media approach provides insights into the possibilities and characteristics of video as a medium, but also yields new perspectives on interrelated media such as television, film, spatial arts, photography, and painting. Another valuable feature of this approach, in particular given the virtual absence of theoretical literature about video art, is that it facilitates productive juxtaposition of debates on these interrelated media with the scarce discussions on the most prominent characteristics of video.
A focus on the concepts of time, space, representation, and narrative in relation to video requires an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, in part because these concepts have been profoundly investigated outside the fields of video art and art history. For example, media theorists have written countless publications about television and other mass media; visual and cultural studies offer reflections on representation theories; the field of psychology provides interesting studies about people's compulsion to repetition; and questions on narrative in moving images are at the center of film studies. The application of views and theories from these various academic fields adds an extra interdisciplinary level to this book's interdisciplinary nature, which automatically results from the comparative media approach adopted. Ming-Yuen S. Ma and Erika Suderburg have noted that the discourse on video was interdisciplinary from its inception (2012, xxi). Already the first generation of video artists had diverse backgrounds in visual arts, dance, performance and body art, conceptual art, avant-garde music, counterculture, writing, political activism, and a plethora of other practices. Likewise, the first generation of critical writing on video has drawn from film theory, art criticism, poststructuralist theories, and other disciplines.
Although the argument in this book focuses on media, content and medium are always interrelated. A video about a subject is not the same as the subject itself. What changes when something is presented as a video? How does “being a video work” (rather than, for instance, a photograph, television show, or cinema) influence the meaning of a specific subject? Which aspects of the medium influence the interaction with the spectator? Insights into how videos mediate and generate meanings may give rise to a better understanding of how we deal with the world around us, and how the world deals with us.
Historiography of video art
Although this book does not aim to offer a historical survey of video art, it is impossible to ignore its relevant technical innovations, the changing cultural contexts in which video artworks are produced, and specific artistic developments in this art discipline. In the literature on developments in video art two approaches come to the fore. One approach highlights the distinction between early analog video art of the 1970s and contemporary digital video art from the early 1990s to the present (while in the intervening decade of the 1980s artists seemed to display less of an interest in video art). The other approach focuses on video art's continuous development since its inception in the 1960s by zooming in on parallel categories of video art that could be characterized, for instance, as critical response to television or cinema, as socio-political documentary, as spatial interaction with its spectator, as stressing the usage of a reproduction device, and as reflection on imaging. Although my discussion of major differences between the video works in Chapter 1 and Chapter 4 seems in line with the first approach, my decision to combine discussion of early works and contemporary works in each chapter betrays my preference for the latter approach. Works by Johan Grimonprez and Keren Cytter, for instance, are discussed in both Chapter 1 and Chapter 4.
The organization of the chapters of this textbook makes it possible to discuss some relevant issues in a more or less historical, chronological order. This means that I will first concentrate on (1) connecting video's relationship with television to debates on the nature of video in the late 1960s and 1970s, and debates on technical developments in time-based media toward the present. This is followed by a discussion of (2) the concern with space in the presentation of video as projection in a space, often on multiple screens, which started in the 1970s and via debates on installation art continued into the present; (3) debates on video's common features with painting and photography, which mainly started with the digitization of photography and video in the late 1980s, and the subsequent introduction of flat LCD-screens; and (4) the relationship between video and cinema, which also grew more close after the digitization of both media and particularly since the 1990s when more video artists began to reflect on the tradition of cinema in their videos.
Even if I do not aim to offer a history of video art, a brief consideration of the discussion on its year and date of birth seems appropriate here. According to William Kaizen, Andy Warhol was the first well-known artist to acquire a video camera, in July 1965, presenting its first results that same summer, several months before video art pioneer Nam June Paik obtained his first video equipment in October 1965 (in Leighton 2008, 258–259). Yet according to Ken Hakuta, Paik already experimented with the Sony Portapak in 1962 or 1963 while living in Tokyo, being a friend of Nobuyuki Idei, an executive at Sony who later became its president. Paik took his Sony Portapak with him to New York when he moved there in 1964; on 4 October 1965 the first public presentation of his video work took place (in Hanhardt and Hakuta 2012, 20). In both versions 1965 can be considered the year of video art's entry into the public domain. However, some authors do not agree, for instance Wulf Herzogenrath who claims that video art was born in March 1963 in Wuppertal, Germany, with an exhibition of TV assemblages by Fluxus artists such as Wolf Vostell and Paik (1983, 26).
Regardless of which account is embraced, most authors agree that the availability of the video camera in the mid-1960s coincided with radical changes in modern art as well as in society. Laura Cottingham emphasizes that in the years 1965–1975 video art took off simultaneously in the US, Germany, and Japan – the three nations that in that period emerged as dominant economic powers – albeit on a smaller scale in the latter two countries (in Ravenal 2002, 4).
Several critics have commented on the climate and circumstances that allowed video art to emerge. Marc Mayer emphasizes the major political changes that took place in particular in New York in 1965: at the height of the war against communist regimes, this city was the center of anti-war, civil rights, feminist, gay liberation, and minority rights movements (1996, 26). Hermine Freed has identified the mid-1960s in the arts as the period when pure formalism had run its course, when it became politically embarrassing to make objects (but ludicrous to make nothing), and when many artists were doing performance works but had nowhere to perform. At that time, when it became clear that television communicates more information to more people than any other medium, video proved to have several qualities that made it particularly useful for dealing with some of the difficult social and philosophical issues raised (in Schneider and Korot 1976, 210). An additional argument is brought in by Anja Osswald, who in Sexy Lies in Videotapes characterizes avant-garde artists in the mid-1960s as longing for more objectivity in artistic means; for them the video camera was just what they needed (2003, 9). Stuart Marshall, when commenting on the popularity of the video camera among social activists in “Video: From Art to Independence” (1985), suggests that for those excited by the radical potential of the Portapak camera it was easy to forget that “the development of this particular consumer commodity was underpinned by a vast investment in new commercial, military and managerial technology” (quoted by Armes 1988, 116).
As is true for any other medium, views also differ on the roots of video art. Some scholars argue that video art implicitly existed already in experiments of artists with TV sets and productions on broadcast television. Others are of the opinion that video art came into being as part of avant-garde filmmaking in the 1950s or even as far back as the 1920s. From a yet wider historical perspective, Marc Mayer has suggested that if we consider video primarily as a tool for mass communication, then it belongs to the sequence of innovations in mechanical reproduction that began in the 1840s, the formative years of photography (1996, 16).
As an artistic medium, video art is primarily rooted in art history of course. John G. Hanhardt proposes to discuss video art as a response to two issues: its opposition to the dominant institution of commercial television and the art practices of an international constellation of artists during the late 1950s and early 1960s (in Hall and Fifer 1990, 71). Martha Rosler, however, in “Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment” (1985), situates video art practices mainly in the history of avant-garde art of the early twentieth century. In particular early video art, which involved acts of profound social criticism in the late 1960s, is related by Rosler to critical works by Dadaists, Expressionists, and Surrealists (in Hall and Fifer 1990, 31). The disruptive efforts by this avant-garde intended to provoke not just the art world but also that of everyday life (39). Moreover, these artists expressed a deep ambivalence toward the social power of science and technology, seeking to counter and destroy the institutionalization of art in the “machine society,” and to merge art with everyday life. Although this attempt certainly failed, subsequent avant-gardes, in Rosler's view, including those that began to use or address television technology through video art, pursued similar objectives (46).
Classification and selection of video artworks
In an effort to put different video artworks into separate categories, authors have come up with various solutions. Already in 1976 Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot observed three basic approaches to the video image: video in which the artist/performer is subject; video in which the environment is subject; and video in which the abstract synthesized image is subject (1976, 3). Two years later, Gregory Battcock identified two categories of video artists: those producing videotapes and those producing so-called installation video (1978, xiv). Although in the four chapters of this book some more classifications by other authors will be mentioned in passing, classification of video art as such is not a major objective here.
The selection of key video artworks for this book was based on their quality as “theoretical positions” with respect to both reflection on their being a video work and their challenge of another visual medium. This makes it possible to present works by famous video artists and those by less well-known artists side by side. Regarding its geographical spread, my selection of video artworks largely follows this art form's historical development: examples of early video are mainly produced by American artists, whereas more contemporary video works are by artists from a variety of countries worldwide.
After having described the main issues and complexities of video art in the context of comparative media research, I develop this study's central research concern: what insights can be provided by comparative media research into how video artworks “work”? In this investigation the comparative media approach consists of comparing quite diverse characteristics of video regarding time, space, representation, and narrative with characteristics of other media to which video works relate or on which they reflect. Given this context, the question of how video artworks “work” calls for a consideration of the implications of particular applications of video's characteristics and its references to other media for the construction of meanings.
The central focus of the first chapter pertains to insights provided by comparative research of video art – in relation to television, performance art, and home video – into video's complementary characteristics of immediacy and memorizing, and the consequences of particular applications for generating meanings. The second chapter's basic concern is how the comparison of video installations and particular views on spectatorship in installation art contribute to our understanding of video's complementary characteristics of immateriality and physical presence, and what the consequences are of the explicit usage of various spatial qualities in video art for the production of meanings. The third chapter focuses on how modes of representation in the selected video works relate and react to such modes in photography, painting, and drawing: how do views on representation implied in these various still media provide insights into the workings of video art? The last chapter mainly raises the issue of how specific insights about narrative theory from film studies can enhance our understanding of the video artworks discussed. Particularly the role of temporal aspects, the perceptual activity of the spectator in creating a narrative, and discussion on Hollywood conventions appear to be interesting for closer examination of strategies such as repetition in generating meanings in these video works.
Literature on video art
Most of the books available on video art present historical or thematic overviews of this medium or focus on the oeuvre of a specific video artist. Currently there is no study that is specifically devoted to theorizing the artistic medium video from the above-described perspectives. The kind of studies that come closest to this study, but which differ from it at the same time, are works devoted to video in general, focusing on technical aspects and socio-cultural functions of videos in society, and readers on theories of moving images that usually consist of a variety of case studies by many authors.
Different from the field of photography, where almost every scholarly text refers to seminal publications such as Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida or Walter Benjamin's two famous essays on photography, video art does not have such seminal sources. Rosalind Krauss's “Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism” (1976/1978), one of the rare early critical essays on video art, is most quoted in texts on early video art.
The first substantial books on video art mainly dealt with video art in the US. For example, video artist Michael Shamberg, in Guerrilla Television (1971), paid attention in particular to the characteristics of the production process and the intentions of activist video artists with whom he is affiliated. Shamberg was also editor of the first issue of the magazine Radical Software in 1970. Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot, who were also involved in this magazine, edited in 1976 the first seminal anthology about video art, entitled Video Art: An Anthology. Video artists as well as critics and curators contributed to this volume, dealing with issues of which many are topical to this day. Two years later, in 1978, Gregory Battcock edited New Artists' Video: A Critical Anthology, which is a less ambitious compilation of texts on video art but which contains some interesting reflections on the medium. As response to the still rather limited critical discourse regarding video art by the end of the 1980s, Douglas Hall and Sally Jo Fifer collected critical writings on video art at that time, resulting in their anthology Illuminating Video
