Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast; installations viewed in galleries or museums; works either streamed online, or distributed as video tapes, or on DVDs; and performances which may incorporate one or more television sets, video monitors, and projections, displaying live or recorded images and sounds.[1]
Video art is named for the original analog video tape, which was the most commonly used recording technology in much of the form's history into the 1990s. With the advent of digital recording equipment, many artists began to explore digital technology as a new way of expression.
One of the key differences between video art and theatrical cinema is that video art does not necessarily rely on many of the conventions that define theatrical cinema. Video art may not employ the use of actors, may contain no dialogue, may have no discernible narrative or plot, and may not adhere to any of the other conventions that generally define motion pictures as entertainment. This distinction also distinguishes video art from cinema's subcategories such as avant garde cinema, short films, or experimental film.
Early history
Nam June Paik, a Korean-American artist who studied in Germany, is widely regarded as a pioneer in video art.[2][3] In March 1963 Nam June Paik showed at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal the Exposition of Music – Electronic Television.[4][5] In May 1963 Wolf Vostell showed the installation6 TV Dé-coll/age at the Smolin Gallery in New York and created the video Sun in your head in Cologne. Originally Sun in your head was made on 16mm film and transferred 1967 to videotape.[6][7][8]
Video art is often said to have begun when Paik used his new SonyPortapak to shoot footage of Pope Paul VI's procession through New York City in the autumn of 1965[9] Later that same day, across town in a Greenwich Village cafe, Paik played the tapes and video art was born.
Prior to the introduction of consumer video equipment, moving image production was only available non-commercially via 8mm film and 16mm film. After the Portapak's introduction and its subsequent update every few years, many artists began exploring the new technology.
Much video art in the medium's heyday experimented formally with the limitations of the video format. For example, American artist Peter Campus' Double Vision combined the video signals from two Sony Portapaks through an electronic mixer, resulting in a distorted and radically dissonant image. Another representative piece, Joan Jonas' Vertical Roll, involved recording previously-recorded material of Jonas dancing while playing the videos back on a television, resulting in a layered and complex representation of mediation.
A still from Jonas' 1972 video
Much video art in the United States was produced out of New York City, with The Kitchen, founded in 1972 by Steina and Woody Vasulka (and assisted by video director Dimitri Devyatkin and Shridhar Bapat), serving as a nexus for many young artists. An early multi-channel video art work (using several monitors or screens) was Wipe Cycle by Ira Schneider and Frank Gillette. Wipe Cycle was first exhibited at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York in 1969 as part of an exhibition titled "TV as a Creative Medium". An installation of nine television screens, Wipe Cycle combined live images of gallery visitors, found footage from commercial television, and shots from pre-recorded tapes. The material was alternated from one monitor to the next in an elaborate choreography.
In Europe, Valie Export's groundbreaking video piece, "Facing a Family" (1971) was one of the first instances of television intervention and broadcasting video art. The video, originally broadcast on the Austrian television program "Kontakte" February 2, 1971,[11] shows a bourgeois Austrian family watching TV while eating dinner, creating a mirroring effect for many members of the audience who were doing the same thing. Export believed the television could complicate the relationship between subject, spectator, and television.[14][15] In the United Kingdom David Hall's "TV Interruptions" (1971) were transmitted intentionally unannounced and uncredited on Scottish TV, the first artist interventions on British television.
As the prices of editing software decreased, the access the general public had to utilize these technologies increased. Video editing software became so readily available that it changed the way artists worked with the medium. Simulteanously, with the arrival of independent televisions in Europe and the emergence of video clips, artists also used the potential of special effects, high quality images and sophisticated editing (Gary Hill, Bill Viola). Festivals dedicated to video art such as the World Wide Video festival in The Hague, the Biennale de l'Image in Geneva or Ars Electronica in Linz developed and underlined the importance of creation in this field.
From the beginning of the 90's, contemporary art exhibitions integrate artists' videos among other works and installations. This is the case of the Venice Biennale (Aperto 93) and of NowHere at the Louisiana Museum, but also of art galleries where a new generation of artists for whom the arrival of lighter equipment such as Handycams favored a more direct expression. Artists such as Pipilotti Rist, Tony Oursler, Carsten Höller, Cheryl Donegan, Nelson Sullivan were able, as others in the 1960s, to leave their studios easily to film by hand without sophistication, sometimes mixing found images with their own (Douglas Gordon, Pierre Bismuth, Sylvie Fleury, Johan Grimonprez, Claude Closky) and using a present but simple post-production. The presentation of the works was also simplified with the arrival of monitors in the exhibition rooms and distribution in VHS. The arrival of this younger generation announced the feminist and gender issues to come, but also the increasingly hybrid use of different media (transferred super 8 films, 16mm, digital editing, TV show excerpts, sounds from different sources, etc).
At the same time, museums and institutions more specialized in video art were integrating digital technology, such as the ZKM in Karlsruhe, directed by Peter Weibel, with numerous thematic exhibitions, or the Centre pour l'Image Contemporaine with its biennial Version (1994-2004) directed by Simon Lamunière.
By the end of the century, institutions and artists worked on the expanding spectrum of the media, 3d imagery, interactivity, cd-roms, Internet, digital post production etc. Different themes emerged such as interactivity and nonlinearity. Some artists combined physical and digital techniques, such as Jeffrey Shaw's "Legible City" (1988–91). Others by using Low-Tech interactivity such as Claude Closky's online "+1" or "Do you want Love or Lust" in 1996 coproduced by the Dia Art Foundation. But these steps start to move away from the so called video art towards the New media art and Internet art.
After 2000
As the available amount of footage and the editing techniques evolved, some artists have also produced complex narrative videos without using any of their own footage: Marco Brambilla's Civilization (2008) is a collage, or a "video mural"[16] that portrays heaven and hell.[17]Johan Grimonprez's Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y is a 68 minute long interpretation of the cold war and the role of terrorists, made almost exclusively with original television and film excerpts on hijacking.
More generally, during the first decade, one of the most significant steps in the video art domain, was achieved with its strong presence in contemporary art exhibitions at the international level. During this period, it was common to see artist videos in group shows, on monitors or as projections. More than a third of the works presented at Art Unlimited (the section of Art Basel dedicated to large-scale works) were video installations between 2000 and 2015. The same is true for most biennials. A new generation of artists such as Pipilotti Rist, Francis Alys, Kim Sooja, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Omer Fast, David Claerbout, Sarah Morris, Matthew Barney, were presented alongside the previous generations (Roman Signer, Bruce Nauman, Bill Viola, Joan Jonas, John Baldessari).
In 2003, Kalup Linzy created Conversations Wit De Churen II: All My Churen, a soap opera satire that has been credited as creating the video and performance sub-genre[18] Although Linzy's work is genre defying his work has been a major contribution to the medium. Ryan Trecartin, an experimental young video-artist, uses color, editing techniques and bizarre acting to portray what The New Yorker calls "a cultural watershed".[19][20]
Performance art and video art
Video art as a medium can also be combined with other forms of artistic expression such as Performance art. This combination can also be referred to as "media and performance art"[21] when artists "break the mold of video and film and broaden the boundaries of art".[21] With increased ability for artists to obtain video cameras, performance art started being documented and shared across large amounts of audiences.[22] Artists such as Marina Abramovic and Ulay experimented with video taping their performances in the 1970s and the 1980s. In a piece titled “Rest energy” (1980) both Ulay and Marina suspended their weight so that they pulled back a bow and arrow aimed at her heart, Ulay held the arrow, and Marina the bow. The piece was 4:10 which Marina described as being “a performance about complete and total trust”.[23]
Other artists who combined Video art with Performance art used the camera as the audience. Kate Gilmore experimented with the positioning of the camera. In her video “Anything” (2006) she films her performance piece as she is constantly trying the reach the camera which is staring down at her. As the 13-minute video goes on, she continues to tie together pieces of furniture while constantly attempting to reach the camera. Gilmore added an element of struggle to her art which is sometimes self-imposed,[24] in her video “My love is an anchor” (2004)[25] she lets her foot dry in cement before attempting to break free on camera.[26] Gilmore has said to have mimicked expression styles from the 1960s and 1970s with inspirations like Marina Abramovic as she adds extremism and struggle to her work.[27]
Some artists experimented with space when combining Video art and Performance art. Ragnar Kjartannson, an Icelandic artist, filmed an entire music video with 9 different artists, including himself, being filmed in different rooms. All the artists could hear each other through a pair of headphones so that they could play the song together, the piece was titled "The visitors" (2012).[28]
Some artists, such as Jaki Irvine and Victoria Fu have experimented with combining 16 mm film, 8 mm film and video to make use of the potential discontinuity between moving image, musical score and narrator to undermine any sense of linear narrative.[29]
As an academic discipline
Since 2000, video arts programs have begun to emerge among colleges and universities as a standalone discipline typically situated in relation to film and older broadcast curricula. Current models found in universities like Northeastern and Syracuse show video arts offering baseline competencies in lighting, editing and camera operation. While these fundamentals can feed into and support existing film or TV production areas, recent growth of entertainment media through CGI and other special effects situate skills like animation, motion graphics and computer aided design as upper level courses in this emerging area.
Nam June Paik was a Korean artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" to describe the future of telecommunications.
Madeline Charlotte Moorman was an American cellist, performance artist, and advocate for avant-garde music. Referred to as the "Jeanne d'Arc of new music", she was the founder of the Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York and a frequent collaborator with Korean American artist Nam June Paik.
Valie Export is an avant-garde Austrian artist. She is best known for provocative public performances and expanded cinema work. Her artistic work also includes video installations, computer animations, photography, sculpture and publications covering contemporary art.
A video synthesizer is a device that electronically creates a video signal. A video synthesizer is able to generate a variety of visual material without camera input through the use of internal video pattern generators. It can also accept and "clean up and enhance" or "distort" live television camera imagery. The synthesizer creates a wide range of imagery through purely electronic manipulations. This imagery is visible within the output video signal when this signal is displayed. The output video signal can be viewed on a wide range of conventional video equipment, such as TV monitors, theater video projectors, computer displays, etc.
Shigeko Kubota was a Japanese video artist, sculptor and avant-garde performance artist, who mostly lived in New York City. She was one of the first artists to adopt the portable video camera Sony Portapak in 1970, likening it to a "new paintbrush." Kubota is known for constructing sculptural installations with a strong DIY aesthetic, which include sculptures with embedded monitors playing her original videos. She was a key member and influence on Fluxus, the international group of avant-garde artists centered on George Maciunas, having been involved with the group since witnessing John Cage perform in Tokyo in 1962 and subsequently moving to New York in 1964. She was closely associated with George Brecht, Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, Joe Jones, Nam June Paik, and Ay-O, among other members of Fluxus. Kubota was deemed "Vice Chairman" of the Fluxus Organization by Maciunas.
A video sculpture is a type of video installation that integrates video into an object, environment, site or performance. The nature of video sculpture is that it utilizes the material of video in an innovative way in space and time, different from the standard traditional narrative screening where the video has a beginning and end.
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is a nonprofit arts organization that is a resource for video and media art. An advocate of media art and artists since 1971, EAI's core program is the distribution and preservation of a collection of over 3,500 new and historical video works by artists. EAI has supported the creation, exhibition, distribution and preservation of video art, and more recently, digital art projects.
The American Film Institute Award for Independent Film and Video Artists, subtitled and generally known as the Maya Deren Award, was an award presented to filmmakers and video artists by the American Film Institute to honor independent filmmaking. Named for the avant-garde experimental film artist Maya Deren, it was given from 1986 through 1996.
Aldo Tambellini was an Italian-American artist. He pioneered electronic intermedia, and was a painter, sculptor, and poet. He died at age 90, in November 2020.
The and/or alternative space was an exhibition, project, and performance space founded by Anne Focke in Seattle, Washington. The first alternative art exhibition and performance space in the Pacific Northwest, and/or was located at 1523 Tenth Avenue in Capitol Hill, and included an art library, a video editing and viewing facility, and an electronic music facility.
Wulf Herzogenrath is a German art historian and art curator. He is a leading expert in the fields of Video Art, New Media Art and the Bauhaus. He has assembled a large collection of artist's books.
Experimental Television Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit electronic and media art center.
John G. Hanhardt is an American author, art historian, and curator of film and media arts. Hanhardt was the Consulting Senior Curator for Media Arts at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, where he developed exhibitions, collections, and archives in film and the media arts. He is considered to be one of the leading scholars on video artist Nam June Paik.
Larry Miller is an American artist, most strongly linked to the Fluxus movement after 1969. He is "an intermedia artist whose work questions the borders between artistic, scientific and theological disciplines. He was in the vanguard of using DNA and genetic technologies as new art media." Electronic Arts Intermix, a pioneering international resource for video and new media art has said, "Miller has produced a diverse body of experimental art works as a key figure in the emergent installation and performance movements in New York in the 1970s... His installations and performances have integrated diverse mediums [sic] and materials."
Sondra Perry is an interdisciplinary artist who works with video, computer-based media, installation, and performance. Perry's work investigates "blackness, black femininity, African American heritage" and the portrayal or representation of black people throughout history, focusing on how blackness influences technology and image making. Perry explores the duality of intelligence and seductiveness in the contexts of black family heritage, black history, and black femininity. "Perry is committed to net neutrality and ideas of collective production and action, using open source software to edit her work and leasing it digitally for use in galleries and classrooms, while also making all her videos available for free online. This principle of open access in Perry's practice aims to privilege black life, to democratize access to art and culture, and to offer a critical platform that differentiates itself from the portrayal of blackness in the media". For Perry, blackness is a technology which creates fissures in systems of surveillance and control and thus creates inefficiency as an opportunity for resistance.
John Sanborn is a key member of the second wave of American video artists that includes Bill Viola, Gary Hill, Dara Birnbaum and Tony Oursler. Sanborn's body of work spans the early days of experimental video art in the 1970s through the heyday of MTV music/videos and interactive art to digital media art of today.
Zhang Peili is a Chinese contemporary artist. Considered the father of video art in China he works mainly with installation and video.
Nam June Paik Art Center is an art gallery in Giheung-gu, Yongin, Seoul Capital Area, South Korea. It opened in 2008 and hosts both permanent and temporary exhibitions. It is named after the Korean American artist Nam June Paik, whose work is included in its permanent collection.
TV Buddha is a video sculpture by Nam June Paik first produced in 1974, but exists in multiple versions. In the work, a Buddha statue watches an image of itself on a TV screen. The screen's image is produced by a live video camera trained on the Buddha statue.
Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, commonly referred to as Electronic Superhighway, is an art installation created by Nam June Paik in 1995. Since 2006, the work has been on display in the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in Washington, D.C. The large video artwork is composed of over 300 television sets, neon tubing, and 50 DVD players, which form a map of the United States. The map contains video clips that Paik associated with each state. Some of the states display images that are commonly associated with them, while others play video clips of people and scenes that are more thought-provoking.
Moving Layers: Contextual Video in Art & Architecture, edited by Alexandro Ladaga, Silvia Manteiga (Rome, Edilstampa Press, 2014). ISBN 9781291852295
The Electronic Civilization", in Screencity Lab Accademic Journal, edited by Alexandro Ladaga, Silvia Manteiga n.1, 2012, pp. 4, 11, 37-42. ISBN 978-88-9637-010-0
Video Art: A Guided Tour by Catherine Elwes (I.B. Tauris, 2004).
"REWIND: British Artists' Video in the 1970s & 1980s", (Sean Cubitt, and Stephen Partridge, eds), John Libbey Publishing, 2012.
Reaching Audiences: Distribution and Promotion of Alternative Moving Image by Julia Knight and Peter Thomas (Intellect, 2011)
Wulf Herzogenrath: Videokunst der 60er Jahre in Deutschland, Kunsthalle Bremen, 2006, (No ISBN).
Rudolf Frieling & Wulf Herzogenrath: 40jahrevideokunst.de: Digitales Erbe: Videokunst in Deutschland von 1963 bis heute, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006, ISBN978-3-7757-1717-5.
NBK Band 4. Time Pieces. Videokunst seit 1963. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2013, ISBN978-3-86335-074-1.
Demolden Video Project: 2009-2014. Video Art Gallery, Santander, Spain, 2016, ISBN978-84-16705-40-5.
Valentino Catricalà, Laura Leuzzi, Cronologia della videoarte italiana, in Marco Maria Gazzano, KINEMA. Il cinema sulle tracce del cinema. Dal film alle arti elettroniche andata e ritorno, Exorma, Roma 2013.
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