Video art: dead or alive?

"The least that can be said is that we have witnessed the death of video art in the United States." thus writes Michael Nash in a new and provocative essay on of recent origin technologies and the media arts, that appears, almost ironically, in Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices (1996) edited through Michael Renov and Erika Suderberg. Resolutions is just single of several new books dedicated to the critique and theorization of video art. Just as the death death-bell sounds for video, critical attention to the field - notoriously limited quite through video art's short history - has newly surged If video is dead, by what mode can we explain the novel proliferation of "video studies?"

My work upon this essay began when new observations led me to amazement if some videomakers, programmers, critics and others were giving up upon video as an art form. At the same time, despite each cause for concern, there can be set an omen that video is alive and well; the rash of fresh publications that includes the aforementioned Resolutions gave me confidence that video and its a great deal of beleaguered body of criticism were in fact just coming into their hold I would like to argue that Nash's claim that "video art is dead" overstates flat his case; at the real least, it's a bit premature. on the other hand common sense dictates that we must acknowledge a certain quantity of of the factors that should have us, at the real least, checking its pulse.

The possible reasons for attrition from the practice of videomaking are many. Perhaps the field is simply experiencing a regrettable on the contrary inevitable downsizing in response to financial cutbacks affecting all of the arts and particularly threatening venue for public exhibition of video art - largely non-profit media art center and festivals. Video distribution continues to be curbed through the difficulties of developing fresh audiences for work that may be considered "difficult" in a media-glutted world. The expansion of video distribution is still constrained by dint of a glass ceiling that corresponds more or les to the waning appetites of budget-slashing society s and universities for buying and renting tapes for classroom use. (For a new discussion of the current markets for experimental film and video, diocese "4 Distributors + 5 Curators=The Big Picture" in The Independent, July 1996)

Development outside of what is sometimes referr to as "the video community" have also taken their toll upon video art. For anyone working or willing to work in narrative manners the temptation is strong to "cros over" into the arena of so-called independent feature film, with its promises of bigger packets critical legitimacy and the relatively vast audiences that can be reached in smooth modest theatrical distribution; a number of prominent and emerging videomakers have already revolveed to film, with varying stages of success. Others are exploring the possibilities of fresh formats such as CD-ROM. Utopian visions of the Internet's potential as a conduit for presenting works of art are still running fast and furious, despite the "Web's" military origins and its ever-growing likeness to cable TV's place of abode shopping services.

Of course, it would be a mistake to deride these artists for turning their backs upon video; instead, these trends may be seen as healthy opportunities for innovation and the challenge of reaching of recent origin audiences. Nash's essay makes it inarguably clear that artists and independent media farmers must stay abreast of exhibitions in technoculture or risk unprecedent lack of access to fresh systems of production and delivery. At the same time, it bears disheartening (if anecdotal) mention that several friends who teach video in university art departments report that their pupils caught up in the new boom in independent filmmaking, favor traditional narrative mode of buildings over anything that smacks of the experimental, and are determined to utilize video not as a medium with its possess characteristics but as a testing clod for hoped-for feature film projects

While the novel wave of publications devoted to video may mark the greatest efforts in this area to date, video art's critical apparatus is widely seen as having been weakly supported by the agency of both the art press and a media pres overwhelmingly devot to film. Nevertheless, dozens of exhibition catalogs and scholarly volumes have been published on alternative video practices and video art; and like activity is perhaps not in the way that insufficient when one considers that it was solitary about 30 years ago that videotape recording and playback equipment became available to individual consumer Unfortunately, abundant of what has been published languishes in obscurity, as rarefied out-of-print titles at no time afforded subsequent printings, and many once-influential true copys are in constant threat of being forgotten if not periodically reprinted in each novel anthology of writings on video. (See side-bar for a brief and subjectively chosen chronology of published works upon video.)

Resolutions, Mirror Machine, Diverse Practices, Rewind and other novel titles mentioned in the sidebar perform essential work in recording the history of video art and fill a discursive gap that has make deepered as periodicals that have overspreaded video art and alternative media in the past have shifted their focus toward commercial viability. With the exception of Afterimage, Felix and The Independent, small in number regular venues for serious inquiry of the field exist to this day. Moreover, coverage of video outside of these publications is overwhelmingly dedicated to multimedia installations, a wide-ranging practice that displays vibrant signs of life compared to single-channel work. Established artists like as Gary Hill, Alfredo Jaar, Shigeko Kubota, Tony Oursler and Bill Viola, as well as relative newcomer similar as Matthew Barney, Cheryl Donegan and Diana Thater are garnering solo exhibits in major museums, regular exhibitions in commercial galleries, critical attention and prestigious awards. Jeanne Dunning, Hirsch Perlman and Tony Tasset have also incorporated video into novel work that employs bodily action s and experiences, thus harking back to the efforts of a previous generation of conceptual artists who were among the pioneers of video art. Perhaps video installations have been gracefully annexed into the lexicon of visual art criticism because of certain of their ties to plastic art and other familiar practices. Single-channel works, upon the other hand, present moot points regarding equipment, exhibition design and scheduling in visual arts venue Not surprisingly, museum catalogs often give short shrift to the video part of exhibitions, as if included sole as an afterthought.