Video Art Historicized: Traditions and Negotiations 9781472449757, 9781472449764, 9781472449771

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video art historicized Video art emerged as an art form that from the 1960s and onwards challenged the concept of art – hence, art historical practices. From the perspective of artists, critics, and scholars engaged with this new medium, art was seen as too limiting a notion. Important issues were to re-think art as a means for critical investigations and a demand for visual reconsiderations. Likewise, art history was argued to be in crisis and in need of adapting its theories and methods in order to produce interpretations and thereby establish historical sense for moving images as fine art. Yet, as this book argues, video art history has evolved into a discourse clinging to traditional concepts, ideologies, and narrative structures – manifested in an increasing body of texts. Video Art Historicized provides a novel, insightful and also challenging re-interpretation of this field by examining the discourse and its own premises. It takes a firm conceptual approach to the material, examining the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological implications that are simultaneously contested by both artists and authors, yet intertwined in both the legitimizing and the historicizing processes of video as art. By engaging art history’s most debated concepts (canon, art, and history) this study provides an in-depth investigation of the mechanisms of the historiography of video art. Scrutinizing various narratives on video art, the book emphasizes the profound and widespread hesitations towards, but also the efforts to negotiate, traditional concepts and practices. By focusing on the politics of this discourse, theoretical issues of gender, nationality, and particular themes in video art, Malin Hedlin Hayden contests the presumptions that inform video art and its history. Malin Hedlin Hayden is Associate Professor in Art History, the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University.

Studies in Art Historiography Series Editor: Richard Woodfield, University of Birmingham, UK The aim of this series is to support and promote the study of the history and practice of art historical writing focusing on its institutional and conceptual foundations, from the past to the present day in all areas and all periods. Besides addressing the major innovators of the past it also encourages re-thinking ways in which the subject may be written in the future. It ignores the disciplinary boundaries imposed by the Anglophone expression ‘art history’ and allows and encourages the full range of enquiry that encompasses the visual arts in its broadest sense as well as topics falling within archaeology, anthropology, ethnography and other specialist disciplines and approaches. It welcomes contributions from young and established scholars and is aimed at building an expanded audience for what has hitherto been a much specialized topic of investigation. It complements the work of the Journal of Art Historiography.

Video Art Historicized Traditions and Negotiations

Malin Hedlin Hayden

© Malin Hedlin Hayden 2015 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 without the prior permission of the publisher. Malin Hedlin Hayden has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Wey Court East Union Road Farnham Surrey, GU9 7PT England

Ashgate Publishing Company 110 Cherry Street Suite 3-1 Burlington, VT 05401-3818 USA

www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Hayden, Malin Hedlin. Video art historicized : traditions and negotiations / By Malin Hedlin Hayden. pages cm. -- (Studies in art historiography) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-4975-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-4976-4 (ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-4977-1 (epub) 1. Video art--Historiography. I. Title. N6494.V53H39 2015 777.072’2--dc23 

ISBN 9781472449757 (hbk) ISBN 9781472449764 (ebk – PDF) ISBN 9781472449771 (ebk – ePUB)

2014040729

Contents

Acknowledgements  

vii

INTRODUCTION  

1

The past versus history  

4

Texts of/on the past: theory, reconstruction, meaning production (and then what?)  

6

Video Art Historicized: traditions and negotiations  

13

1 HESITANTLY ART: Great expectations of a medium  

19

An emerging art form  

19

Early video art in context  

25

Changing paradigms of art  

37

Art or not: concepts, institutions and ontology  

45

2 ART HISTORY OR NOT: Stories of reluctance and crisis  

67

The status of art history  

67

Art history or not?  

71

Origins: art and/or technology  

85

3 CANON: An unresolved issue  

101

There is no canon in video art history  

106

Canon and canonicity as art historical traps  

115

4 COMPULSIVE CATEGORIZATIONS: Gender and heritage   Recycling an old trope: the founding father and his heirs  

135 137

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Calling ‘mothers’  

142

Feminist video art: by historical happenstance or a genre of its own?  

149

5 AND ALSO: Making stories, thinking through thematic space  

165

History, histories and narratives: a retake  

166

Technology as thematic space  

174

Plurality, critical engagements and subversion: a future site of criticality?  

182

Bibliography   Index

193 213

Acknowledgements

I thought I would write this book at the speed of light. But I didn’t. Reconsiderations, new ideas of how to proceed, what to leave out – that is, the ordinary process of research and writing – kept the project from a too hasty closure. The initial idea of this project was to focus more on feminist and gender issues, but as my work continued, my focus changed and, instead, I divided it into two different projects. This, then, is what was supposed to be part one, but is now a book of its own. As an art historian, I often tend to think in relation to art works, and not necessarily those about which I am explicitly writing. This book is not really about art works per se. Yet three works have been crucial for my thinking, visualizing different aspects of what it means to reconsider. Firstly, VALIE EXPORT’s Adjungierte Dislokationen (1973) is a work that is intriguing in many ways; here it has worked as a reminder not only to look back but to seriously engage with issues of the past scrutinized in the present tense of thinking (/filming); that is, of constructing art history about past events, in the present, for future readers. Secondly, Robert Morris’ performance 21.3 (1964) is ingenious and succinct in the way it complicates and disrupts the idea of history as synonymous with ‘the past’; revealing that historians cannot return to the actual sites, precise times and situations long gone. And finally, the illustration on page 78 by Laura Cottingham – ‘After Alfred Barr: Video Art’ (2001) – is a poignant map of the discourse I have investigated. To think in relation to specific art works is neither a theory nor a method, yet it affects the outcomes of intellectual labour – at least mine – and I hope this will somehow have improved the following. The research and writing of this book were initially supported by a particularly generous post-doctoral scholarship, 2006–2009, from the Åke Wiberg Foundation, for which I am very grateful. Working then as Senior Lecturer at the Department of Art History, Uppsala University, my most sincere gratitude must therefore also include Hedvig Brander-Jonsson, head of the department, for nominating me. At the same time that I was

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granted this scholarship, I began working part-time as Senior Lecturer at the Royal College of Fine Arts, Stockholm – a context which, in so many ways, challenged my ways of thinking about art and theory, practice and history. I am very grateful for that. While the research extended in time, I changed position once more, finishing the manuscript as Assistant Professor at the Department of Art History, Stockholm University. Still here, I have the best colleagues imaginable, making every work day a privilege. I especially thank my peers Magdalena Holdar and Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe – for reading and commenting on versions in various states, pep talks, running companionship and friendship. I am also indebted to Professors Hans Hayden, Tomas Björk and Margaretha Rossholm-Lagerlöf for engaged reading, advice and suggestions for improvement, and for encouraging me at various stages of the project. In my department, I am also especially thankful to Professor Peter Gillgren (head of the department), Anna Bengtsson-Alzén (head of administration) and Nina Engholm (administrator) for both encouragement and assistance regarding various issues that come with research and publication. Teaching and advising students and PhD candidates provides me with continuous and highly valued situations of self-improvement and rethinkings, without which scholarly life would be not only tedious but also lonely. Furthermore, I wish to thank PhD candidate Pamela Marston (now a lecturer at the University of Gävle) for correcting my English (again); Patrick Cole, for polishing my English in the final phase of the book’s production; Richard Woodfield (series editor of Studies in Art Historiography) for including my book in this series and much good advice, not least regarding the formalities of the post-writing phase; Jacqui Cornish, production editor at Ashgate; and, not least, Ashgate commissioning editor Margaret Michniewicz for attentively guiding me through the production process. A close friend with a sharp mind is Annika Olsson, who generously shares both these qualities with me, having read earlier drafts of this project. During a period of convalescence, delaying the actual finalization of this book, Annika even took care of me in co-operation with the dearest of friends, Erika Josefsson and Katja Jahn, and my mother Karin. For this the word grateful is too vague. Family and friends: you are, needless to say, the ones making my life such an appreciated site to inhabit. And then, there is the person who means the most in the world to me: my funny, smart and wonderful son. Your tremendous patience with a mother working too much too often is simply outstanding. I dedicate this book to you, Milton: the love of my life. heARTfully yours, Malin Hedlin Hayden, Stockholm

INTRODUCTION

‘Video has been plagued by the notion of its own history.’1 Marita Sturken In 1964 Robert Morris made a performance entitled 21.3, its point of departure being the essay ‘Iconography and Iconology’ from 1939 by Erwin Panofsky.2 For this piece Morris had recorded himself reading a passage from the essay. In the performance he appeared ‘masquerading as an art historian’ (which meant wearing spectacles and a grey suit) while reading the same part of the Panofsky essay. Lip-synched with the previously made recording, the text was thus simultaneously performed and doubly audible: the live speech and the playing tape. In the beginning the two readings, the doubled voice of the artist, were synchronized. Slowly the two voices were then overlapped, but out of time with each other, since Morris took pauses by drinking water and correcting his glasses, and therefore – purposely – fell behind the recording, so to speak.3 What I think this work brilliantly illuminates is the discrepancy regarding the situation of art as it happens and the (necessarily) delayed art historical interpretation and account of art as made in the past but of relevance in the present as it is interpreted and narrated, hence informed by theories and ideologies. For many practitioners and advocates of the emerging art forms of the 1960s this delay per se between art and the interpretation of it – as in art history writing – showed art and interpretation to be unavoidably noncoincidental, but still paradoxically intertwined as the one, seemingly, could not exist – or be appositely communicated, that is, narrated – without the other. If art history, perhaps even as a plausible definition, always arrives late to the party of the present, it may still have a raison d’être for producing histories in narrative form of past events in order to understand on what premises and ideologies those events were inscribed as well as performed. Or perhaps

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art historical practices are only relevant when their inevitable delay is selfreflexively accounted for in the same critical terms as that which they aim to investigate? The present book examines ‘the history of video art’ as it has been constructed, repeated and sometimes (fairly) altered in narrative form. However, as this project evolved it became increasingly focused on a cluster of concepts and how these are employed, hence both affecting and being affected by the various contexts in which they come to play. That is, how they direct and produce alterations of and within these narratives; how they are employed or, occasionally, refuse recognition. As a consequence of this shift of interest, ‘the history of video art’ is rather acknowledged in terms of a case study of art historical writing where concepts like art, canon, gender and the discipline of art history are centre-staged.4 To historicize is to have already begun to theorize, since without a concept of history it seems impossible to think of the it of one’s interrogation in the first place. Consequently, I do not believe that there already is a story out there (to be found and linguistically recast), but that history is a narrative mode of relating to the pasts in order to understand both what went on back then and how that may (or may not) affect one’s own situation in the present.5 Therefore, my particular interest here involves which sets of concepts, ideologies and desires have produced these narratives – and on which (kinds) of archives they are based. I scrutinize why and what constitutes video art’s history as it is created primarily in monographs in the form of historical survey books on the subject. These publications were all published in the 2000s, the first one in 2003 and the latest one in 2008. However, before one can claim the/a history of a particular phenomenon, one has to define the latter and frame its characteristics. In this case, this concerns the legitimizing process of nominating video works by artists as ‘art works’. In order to say something substantial about its history I therefore begin by looking at the process of establishing the status of video as art as it took place in writings by scholars, critics and artists during the 1960s and into the 1990s especially. I tentatively call this phase the legitimizing period of video art, and my investigation here concerns how this is expressed in a number of essays published in anthologies on video art. There is a chronology at play here too: the anthologies which aimed at defining and framing a video art discourse turned up by the mid-1970s, the surveys claiming to present video art’s history to its readers appeared in the 2000s, and exhibitions and their accompanying catalogues have appeared since the very beginning of the art form in the mid-1960s. My initial interest in video art’s history as narrated stories did not, however, involve questioning a suspected lack of aptitude of art history as a practice that might not make (enough) sense as the story-making practice of this phenomenon. Rather, I set out to investigate the (hopefully profound) effects of feminist thinkings. Video art came to be as an art form in the mid-1960s – historically juxtaposed with the second wave of the women’s movements.

introduction

3

Since feminisms within academia and art criticism in the West are of the same age as video art, I (almost) took for granted that I would find historical narratives, and hence fully fledged interpretations, with feminist interventions (if not yet by gender theories).6 This project began with my thinking about the surveys on this particular art form, which emphasizes critical engagement as an immanent aspect of both the medium and as art-differently, and whether these surveys would reveal a critical stance regarding gender awareness, sexbiased systems of valuations, self-critiques, frankness of how selections were made, aesthetic and ideological foundations, and so on. As it turned out, my feminist perspective here has rather to do with the set of questions asked, as my own cogent points of view are oriented towards and stem from a position which assumes that gender-biased structures are always lurking about, even when not overtly practised or claimed. I obviously found other issues pertinent to investigate and think through. Reading through the body of publications addressing and thus creating first video as art and then video art history, it was rather instantly clear to me that art history – and its adjacent concepts – were regarded with a widespread and often profound hesitation. None of the introductions of the essays in the anthologies or the monographs examined in the following actually speak about or specify in depth why art history was (and to a certain extent still is) assumed to be incapable of dealing with such a relatively new art form, especially since this is an art form of moving images (which the two paradigmatic art forms – painting and sculpture – obviously were not). Instead it turned out that the historicizing process of video art became a conceptual site for me to think about those old concepts art and canon, but also art history and gender. My aim is thus to scrutinize the underlying arguments and presumptions in order to try to figure out what terms were activated and with which outcomes this recalcitrance operates. My answers and arguments are not given with absolute certainty, but as suggestions, tentative solutions, or further questions about how one could continuously practise art history despite the legacy rendering it, if not obsolete, then at times obviously problematic. Moreover, aspects of interest include how the (presumed) break with modernism is dealt with and how the putative gap between the former and postmodernism circulates as a historical fact rather than as a shift regarding theoretical interests; the formation of an art form with its own identity and claimed characteristics; and which concepts and ideas appear as problematic and which were found apt and hence employed more successfully – or at least without hesitation. That is, what is at stake when incorporating video art in the discourse of art history and vice versa? What are the prerogatives? And what are the losses and compromises that, perhaps necessarily, had to be made in order to construct a history of video art? I explore the historicizing process and how this is expressed in and by the construction of historical narratives on video art, as it emerges and changes primarily in texts. The present object

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of study is hence a number of anthologies and surveys on video art, written by both scholars and artists, within academia and, occasionally, as catalogues accompanying large-scale exhibitions. The chronologically arranged surveys and thematic publications present an archive of video art history. But this is not the entire archive, only that which has already been collected, categorized, analysed: that is, the already filtered. Thus I look not for what is omitted, unjustly or not, but at what is already there (or here) in organized form, representing knowledge to anyone interested in video art. My work is thus not a video art history book re-claiming artists and art works that have not made their way into these narratives, nor is it about those who have fallen behind during the historicizing process. Neither am I turning to film history. The relation between notions of film – especially experimental film – and video art are discussed throughout the legitimizing and historicizing processes that I do focus on, as is video art’s often claimed alliances or antagonisms with especially television. These issues are investigated and analysed in a number of publications.7 I only address these relations – which appear to be aesthetic and/or ideologically charged – in relation to the body of texts explicitly in focus here, but not in depth. As I am especially concerned with the notion of art and art history as a discourse in doubt,8 I only briefly acknowledge instances where different disciplines, practices and notions seem to either support each other or clash. Furthermore, I only address texts that speak about video art in general terms; that is, neither nation-bound publications nor those involving essays addressing specific visual themes of video art or monographs on individual artists appear here.9 There are a large number of books, essays and exhibition catalogues that focus on video art from specific nations, but they consequently do not claim to survey the/a general history of the art form.10

The past versus history ‘It really is brilliant news that historians can just never get things right’, writes Keith Jenkins, arguing that the historical past (that is, the before now) can never be either objectively narrated or closed to further reinterpretations.11 Of particular importance in the following is to address in-depth the often shifting (or even sliding) view of the past as synonymous with history/history. That is, the idea that historians by some mysterious aptitude can access the past and bring it into the present (even if only) in the form of a narrative. This is not how I think about the past and history, preferring the versus between them. Framing past events by a ‘the’ implies that one has already begun one’s narrative practice, selecting moments in the prospect of creating one narrative as a single and, preferably, coherent story. That art history as a narrative practice is always late in relation to

introduction

5

what it aims to investigate (and thus say something about) is a condition which it cannot overcome. Occupied with the past, irrespective of how long ago that particular past of interest happened, art historians are obliged to recognize the fact that histories of the past are necessarily created in the form of stories. But when ‘one past’ is so recent in relation to the present that it almost appears as if the two are conflated, the actual discrepancy may give the impression of an almost simultaneity. Instead, they are separated by a radical chasm, since the delay per se implies that the past and (its) history are of completely different kinds. Historical narratives are in opposition to comments on the present state of a phenomenon. In particularly early stories on video art and its history, these two time-separated activities have stirred up a noticeable reluctance towards art history as appearing too late and thus unable to deal with video art. Perhaps it was the short time which had passed between the creation and display of video art works and those works being theorized and historicized that enforced the crisis between art history and contemporary (or rather, the contemporaneity of) art? This is a question that I will return to several times in the following, since it is this argued crisis that is both my point of departure and my conclusion: the latter since I began this project in the now of my own thinking. A rather widespread hesitation regarding the incapability of the discipline is declared in numerous essays in anthologies on video art. However, in beginning my work with this project, I was struck by the recalcitrance also expressed in surveys, whose raison d’être is precisely that of making reliable stories of past events: that is, making history of the past. A truthful translation could never be made of the past as it happened and as the interrogation of the same is positioned in the present. All that is possible – I think – is history as a medium based on various evidence and documents, but also, importantly, on the inescapable feature of the fictive aspect of stories created and told.12 It takes a certain amount of texts to make up a practice that is not merely a single speech act, but repeated and debated to such an extent that one can consider it a discursive practice. If video art was founded in the mid-1960s, then a historiographical study cannot be done until there is something like an institutionalized narrative of this phenomena: a body of works (books, exhibitions, collections) claiming the historical phenomena, so to speak. The same goes for both feminist art history and histories of feminist art, which have only recently become objects of study within academia. Video art is positioned precisely as a phenomenon of the past, only recently possible to re-historicize and, consequently, to re-theorize. Undertaking a critical examination of (institutionalized) video art history needs further distance to the past in order to situate the historical narratives as detached from one’s own position. But what, then, is institutionalized video art history? The present book tries to respond to that question, but for now it suffices

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to define it as a cumulative, consensus-based and widespread recognition and acknowledgement by the (Dantonian) art world of which artists and art works are essential to the art form, and by what criteria these issues are arguably so.

Texts of/on the past: theory, reconstruction, meaning production (and then what?) I employ chronology initially in order to present, and hence revisit, parts of the archive(s) from which video art history has been created. I speak about ‘early texts’ on video art, and by this I mean writings produced in tandem with the emergence of video art. I have not forgotten the delay operating here, too, in relation to the creation and seminal display of video art works, but it is partly by and through these early texts that video works become art. It is thus this art-legitimizing process that initially concerns me: how that privileging notion of art is handled without completely submitting to criteria on which the notions had previously been defined, valued and interpreted. As my own interrogation began with surveys arguably re-/presenting video art’s history and I found particular concepts and ideas rather problematically employed, I turned to early texts in the hope of finding not origins but a previous conceptual context which theorized various implications of creative video production. Through a selection of anthologies and particular essays therein, I draw out claims, arguments and criteria concerning the status of art and art history, as well as some of the so-called early moments of the art form. I then turn my focus to the survey books and their claim of presenting to their readers the history of video art. What interests me is how they perform it, and by which agents, art works and events they proclaim video art history. With what criteria are the moments, the inevitable grand instances, argued for? How does video art history come about within the surveys? How is video art institutionalized? Into history? Analysing video art’s history, the focus is on what has been written (and to a much lesser degree shown) and thus spoken regarding the art form and what I perceive of as its self-image; the history of video art is thus acknowledged as a specific discursive practice (within the much larger – meta – discourse of postwar, postmodern and contemporary art). As such, it operates from a set of rules and regulations performed in a certain time and historical position and situation, which condition what can be represented and by whom.13 Which codes and instances determine the order of the discourse? Aspects of particular interest here are the ideological, rhetorical and theoretical implications of these narratives. Furthermore, this implies that I turn to this body of texts, in the form of the surveys and anthologies respectively, not only as sources of information (the archive) and the object of study; I am also trying to enforce a dialogue in-between them.

introduction

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The idea of historical narratives in general terms is one of the crucial problems for an investigation such as this one. What is a general history? Especially when aiming at a critical, deconstructive exploration of such ideas and practices, it seems paradoxical to think of history, historical progress and narratives in terms of the general and the original as simultaneously operative. But in practices of art history writing, this dichotomy is engaged in such a way that the original and innovative events (seemingly) cause the very possibility of narrating history as a lineage of progressions which becomes the general history of the events. However, this does not imply that such general histories do not exist, or, rather, are presented as such: the amount of similar art history survey books is evidence of that. They are founded on particular presumptions enclosed in specific discourses, emphasizing particular but reoccurring important instances in the shape of privileging particular artists, art works, contents, themes and – regarding video art – technological aspects.14 Since I examine a particular field, or sidetrack even, within a (the) general historical narrative of postwar art and after, that assumed generality needs to be exposed and addressed too – while risking reinforcing a US-centred narrative as precisely an already assumed generality. The survey book is a particular genre, resting – seemingly – on assumptions of what is already there – that is, specific moments and agents which are (somehow) already acknowledged as absolutely necessary events and agents in anything aspiring to be called the history of. Survey books, generally, are interesting since their roles and goals as discursive practices are not those of critically debating a particular set of institutionalized practices, but instead operating as instigators of, in this case, institutionalized video art. Crudely speaking, art history, and its intimate running mate canon, have been widely and thoroughly debated, problematized and altered during the three decades of postmodern and post-structuralist critique and after, when new critical theories emerged within academia. Amongst these are feminisms and postcolonial studies, but these new theories also include different perspectives on images such as those evinced within visual culture studies. What was once thought of, or at least accepted as, a (rather) neutral, reliable, perhaps fair and objective history of art was dismantled of its ideologies, aesthetic preferences, rhetoric and so on. Deconstructed, it turned out (for those of us subscribing to post-structuralist ideas and theories) to be neither true nor finite, but instead as suggestions of how to understand the past and hence how to tell it as history. Feminist interventions – to name only one reaction – claimed the partial, hence defective, ‘nature’ of art history as a chronological story of indispensable moments and phenomena argued as historically progressive.15 That surveys are still around is therefore interesting, yet not surprising; somehow they have not been entirely repudiated despite the particularly post-structuralist suspicions of general historicizing narratives per se. The historical survey as a narrative format has been a disputed genre within postmodern theories

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and re-thinkings of art historical discourse(s), and has been pointed out as an antithesis to much post-structuralist-informed theories of art and history.16 As a genre, they present a pedagogical tool for those who specifically desire an overview of particular fields of artistic practice. What concerns me here, however, is what this pedagogical tool speaks about and how it performs that of which it speaks. According to the online Oxford Reference, a survey is ‘a general view, examination, or description of someone or something: the author provides a survey of the relevant literature’.17 Important to note for the following is that a survey has a narrative structure which organizes particular events in a successive manner (that is, chronologically or thematically progressive), and claims that these events – even if chosen amongst a cluster of other possible examples – are indispensable for meeting the demands of required historical, hence narrative, coherence and consistency. The surveys addressed here are all produced from a myopic perspective on a more limited phenomenon: video art.18 The inevitable problem with surveys is their surveyness. In the following, they are understood, and hence defined, as a particular kind of speech act uttered within the discourse of institutionalized, written art history. Therefore, surveys are performative in that they – by repetition – constantly reclaim and do surveyness.19 Due to the implications of the genre, historicizing surveys are based on and depart from a severe process of selection. History, however – and especially the how of histories – is a seminal issue of trouble, but is here constantly re-problematized (here I refer to history both as narrated and as the/a past). If the legitimizing and historicizing processes can initially be said to reveal a chaotic moment of defining and promoting video as art, this thereafter rather signals a healthy scepticism. In this context history as a particularly defined past inevitably implies some kind of development regarding, for example, theoretical and/ or technological aspects, although the idea of art obeying some universal laws of constant progress is nowadays a much disputed understanding of history, both as past and as story. History, if understood as the past, is innumerable thus ungraspable. Art history is not. I will return to notions of history in the following, but already stress here that video art history as a specific field of artistic practice and as a particular branch of art history was shaped and, almost immediately, re-written at a moment when the grand master narratives began to fail; that is, when stories of universal claims were met with increasing reluctance. As noted above, video art became an art form at the conjunction when high modernism and its adherent ideologies and aesthetic ideas became slippery and insufficient for a younger generation of artists, critics and scholars in the West. If art history – especially as it existed in surveys and textbooks – was, at this particular point in time, questioned by new sets of different terms and theoretical perspectives, and artists were beginning to employ new media and (some of them) focusing on issues

introduction

9

that were relatively untold within this particular discourse, would it not be possible, then, to think and do art history differently? And, moreover, to think that the discipline is also actually capable of pluralities regarding its kind? Whereas the surveys on video art’s history in focus here are monographs, the first publications to be addressed are three anthologies, one monograph and one exhibition which all take a broad stance on the art form. In the present context, the format of the anthology, with several different voices, and hence perspectives, on a particular subject, reveals a situation of a process of understanding, defining, canonizing and historicizing video art. The surveys, on the other hand, generally testify to a situation where video art’s history appears as something, more or less, already found due to the conflation of the past and history. As the six surveys on video art’s history that my inquiry is concerned with are thoroughly discussed from various perspectives and concepts throughout the book, I will only introduce them briefly here and do so by highlighting how they are presented to a presumed reader. My point with introducing them by not only referring to but even citing the publishers’ words about them is that I want to make clear what they claim to offer their presumed readers and what the grounds were for me in choosing them as objects of study. The first one is Video Art (2003) by Michael Rush, who has written extensively on art and media.20 In 2007 it was published in French, which, of course, indicates an ambition to reach a larger group of readers and, perhaps, to promote it as a classic. On Thames & Hudson’s website the book is presented as ‘the most complete and up-to-date survey available of an art form born just over forty years ago and now seen everywhere’,21 but also as ‘the first comprehensive survey of this medium in twenty years’:22 Video Art offers a history of the medium seen from the perspectives of its early practitioners – such as Bruce Nauman and Vito Acconci, through the vast array of conceptual, political, personal and lyrical installations of the 1980s and 1990s by such artists as Gary Hill, Bill Viola, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Mary Lucier and Michal Rovner, to the present digital revolution. Michael Rush examines some of the most pioneering works and influences to have emerged internationally, as well as the recent use of video not only in multiscreen installations mixing sound and visuals, but also immersive environments such as Virtual Reality, aesthetic surveillance, and alternative sculpture that combines solid forms with moving image.23

Both Video Art: A Guided Tour, by the British video artist Catherine Elwes, and Videokonsten: en introduktion, by Swedish art historian Max Liljefors, were published in 2005.24 It might seem odd that I have included a survey written from the periphery both regarding the geographical centres of video art and

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in a language (Swedish) far from spoken globally, but as I make clear in the following, it is interesting for several reasons. The most important ones (for me) are that it was actually written at the very point when these historical narratives entered the scene and that it reveals a focus on American video art while never explicitly admitting that. Written in Swedish and published by Studentlitteratur, it aims primarily at Swedish (or Scandinavian) students in art history: hence a rather limited group of readers. Regarding this particular book, the publisher no longer introduces the book on its website.25 Of particular interest here is how an (Americanized) history of video art is transferred, or translated, and thus how it relates to the other historicizing stories in the present context; I will return to this issue as it also concerns my own work, since what I am actually investigating is an Americanized video art history. Elwes’ book, argued to be written from the UK, is presented as follows: Video art dominates the international art world to such an extent that its heady days on the radical fringes are sometimes overlooked often unknown. Video Art, a Guided Tour is an essential and highly entertaining guide to video art and its history. Elwes, herself a practicing artist and pioneer of early video, traces the story from the weighty Portapak equipment of the ’60s and ’70s to today’s digital technology, from early experiments in ‘real time’ to the ‘new narrative’ movement of the ’80s. She also examines video’s love-hate relationship with television. Artists discussed include, amongst others, Nam June Paik, Nan Hoover, The Duvet Brothers, Dara Birnbaum, Bill Viola, Pipilotti Rist, David Hall, Stuart Marshall, Stan Douglas, Smith & Stewart, Steve McQueen and Sam Taylor-Wood. Elwes brings to life the excitement and political fervour of video art’s early days and follows its journey to its current status as the default medium for contemporary art.26

In 2006 the rather brief Video Art by Sylvia Martin appeared.27 Art historian Martin was at the time Deputy Director of the Kunstmuseen in Krefeld, Germany. This publication differs from the others primarily because of its very short account of video art’s history, only 20 pages long, which is followed by entries on 35 artists. However, on these pages a history is narrated which is very similar to the much more extensive surveys with regard to themes, names, aesthetic ideas and so on. Also, as Taschen is a publisher specializing in books on art, architecture and design, I wanted to include their version, so to speak. On the publisher’s website it says nothing of being about history explicitly, but one can assume its historical content: The immediacy and accessibility of video makes it an ideal medium for artists who want to work with sound and moving image; no sooner than video cameras were available to the public in the 1970s were artists already beginning to experiment with the possibilities of video. Though it took decades for it to be widely embraced by mainstream art, video is now firmly accepted as an important medium, thanks to the work of artists such as Matthew Barney, Bruce Nauman, Bill Viola, and Gillian Wearing.28

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Also in 2006 Chris Meigh-Andrews, a British artist and Professor of Electronic & Digital Art at the University of Central Lancashire, published A History of Video Art: The Development of Form and Function, which is the only one which specifically states ‘history’ in its title.29 Noticeable both here and with Elwes’ ‘guided tour’ is the ‘inside’ perspective. Being practising artists themselves, the knowledge they therefore have of the medium is obvious in how they write about particular art works and the technology as it was developed. The publisher presents A History of Video Art thus: A History of Video Art is a critical introduction and guide to artists’ video. It covers the period from the early 1960s – when video art first appeared as a distinctive medium – into the 1990s – when digital technology merged video’s distinctive practice with that of independent film-making and photography. This artistic history is also a technological and a cultural history. A History of Video Art also sets its analysis of artistic practice firmly within the context of both the development of electronic imaging technology and the changing political and social climate. Richly illustrated, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in art history and contemporary art practice.30

And finally, I address Yvonne Spielmann’s Video: The Reflexive Medium of 2008, which was first published in German in 2005.31 Spielmann, who is Research Professor in New Media at the School of Media, Language and Music at the University of the West of Scotland, has a rather different approach than the aforementioned authors. Alongside Meigh-Andrews’ book, Video: The Reflexive Medium is the most technology-focused and is not presented as an art historical publication. Yet it also deals with art, and art history, even if from another perspective than, for example, my own, and with the same set of artists who are included here, too. The context and focus on the medium is made evident on MIT’s website: Video is an electronic medium, dependent on the transfer of electronic signals. Video signals are in constant movement, circulating between camera and monitor. This process of simultaneous production and reproduction makes video the most reflexive of media, distinct from both photography and film (in which the image or a sequence of images is central). Because it is processual and not bound to recording and the appearance of a ‘frame,’ video shares properties with the computer. In this book, Yvonne Spielmann argues that video is not merely an intermediate stage between analogue and digital but a medium in its own right. Video has metamorphosed from technology to medium, with a set of aesthetic languages that are specific to it, and current critical debates on new media still need to recognize this. Spielmann considers video as ‘transformation imagery,’ acknowledging the centrality in video of the transitions between images – and the fact that these transitions are explicitly reflected in new processes. After situating video in a

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genealogical model that demonstrates both its continuities and discontinuities with other media, Spielmann considers three strands of video praxis: documentary, experimental art, and experimental image-making (which is concerned primarily with signal processing). She then discusses selected works by such artists as Vito Acconci, Ulrike Rosenbach, Joan Jonas, Nam June Paik, Peter Campus, Dara Birnbaum, Nan Hoover, Lynn Hershman, Gary Hill, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Bill Seaman, and others. These works serve to demonstrate the spectrum of possibilities in video as a medium and point to connections with other forms of media. Finally, Spielmann discusses the potential of interactivity, complexity, and hybridization in the future of video as a medium.32

But as with the other publications, my interest and discussions focus explicitly on video as art and how it has been historicized. In 1970 Gene Youngblood’s highly theoretical Expanded Cinema was published. It is a monograph, often quoted and thus still playing a decisive part in much thinking about the art form. However, as it does not survey a history – more or less an impossibility at that time – it operates somewhat differently from the other monographs. I consult it more than interrogate it, and hence it is employed from a perspective akin to the anthologies. In reading through these surveys and what I call the early texts on video art, published in collections of texts, it became increasingly evident to me how different they are – that is, not only as different genres but regarding the content and level of critical thinking; for example, whether concepts are problemized or not. It also became clear that I needed to address the archive of texts in order to figure out the historicizing process, which was different than theorizing about how video works could be acknowledged by the status of ‘art’. Amongst the anthologies that I address, there is one that stands out as being as close to a ‘standard’ publication as it comes within this particular discourse: Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, edited by the two artists and writers Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer in 1990.33 It is still on the market, much referred to, and the latest reprint is from 2005: ‘This book is an insightful evaluation of video art since its early beginnings, examining its theoretical, aesthetic, and social implications.’34 Here the contributions by artists’ writings are significant. Organized into five sections, with each addressing a particular theme or aspect of video art practice, it covers most of the issues forwarded already in the anthologies published earlier. Yet it is often claimed as seminal and ground-breaking. However, I focus particularly on the first section, entitled ‘Histories’. Several anthologies preceded Illuminating Video, of which one is Video Art: An Anthology, edited by Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot, and published in 1976.35 In the short (only one-page) ‘Introduction’, the editors – artists themselves – emphasize the changed context of art as a consequence of video art works of the then past ten years. Avoiding a particular aesthetic, they instead advocate varieties which are manifested by 73 artists represented by a spread each. The character of the book is thus reminiscent of exhibition

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catalogues. In the last part of the book 22 essays frame the art form theoretically and thematically, written by persons well established within the field of video art, but only a few of these are discussed in the following. The agenda, so to speak, is signed by the inner circle of those promoting and setting up the video art discourse. Two years later, art historian Gregory Battcock edited New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology (1978).36 This anthology is addressed at some length, partly due to the fact that it is rarely referred to anymore, and it thus operates (negatively) as a forgotten document of past ideas concerning video art. Here, too, the writers are art historians, artists and critics, and their different professional fields and voices thus represent a broad take on the art form. The issues discussed are, however, often much the same as those found in the later surveys. In 1986 John Hanhardt’s anthology Video Culture: A Critical Investigation was published.37 It is still often referred to and it offers a highly theoretical perspective on video. Even though culture appears in the title, it primarily addresses an art context. But what distinguishes it in the present context is the first section entitled ‘Theory and Practice’, in which authors and texts not usually found in this context are represented: Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, Louis Althusser, Hans Magnus Enzenberger and Jean Baudrillard. Their theories and particular ideas occasionally appear in other texts, but to include them as highly theoretically informative for this particular branch of art seems radical. The other two sections, entitled ‘Video and Television’ and ‘Film and Video: Differences and Futures’, testify to the two most analysed and excavated relations. The final anthology to be consulted and investigated is Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, edited by Michael Renov and Erika Suderburg in 1996.38 Here too, the essays that are discussed are those primarily dealing with the notion of art, art history and its traditional concepts.

Video Art Historicized: traditions and negotiations The structure of Video Art Historicized is organized in relation to the concepts and practices that I have found to be the most problematic and most intriguing to think through. These troublesome areas and aspects are also often pronounced precisely as such by the authors themselves. In the first chapter, ‘Hesitantly art: great expectations of a medium’, I discuss the notion of art and connect the emergence of video art to a situation where the notion was already proving to be increasingly problematic. The legitimizing process of video practices as art implied specific claims, but also involved outspoken resistance towards ideas and criteria found too traditional and hence out-dated to make sense of video art. The initial conundrum to solve was how to deal with the concept of art; whether to reject or submit to it, or

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by which strategies it could be re-negotiated. To a certain extent my queries here are about what the historical break called postmodernism actually involves, and I suggest thinking in terms of paramodernism as a way to reconsider particular issues. In ‘Art history or not: stories of reluctance and crisis’, I move on to the expressed hesitations regarding the discipline of art history and why it was seen as not appropriate for either understanding, theorizing or historicizing video art. As part of the legitimizing process, video art was as much in need of a prehistory as it was of being claimed as art (even if differently). Origins of the technology as much as the video art works were sought in various other fields of image production, but most notably in film and television. In this Western context, the art form itself is being established on the institutionalized art scene; its own starting point is underscored and begins to constitute particular aspects and artists as particularly privileged. In this chapter my discussions also revolve around notions of the past and history. In the third chapter, entitled ‘Canon: an unresolved issue’, I obviously turn to the perhaps most contested notion, one not exclusive to this particular branch of art history/theory writings. Canon is claimed to be obsolete, and I focus on the arguments put forth for creating historical narratives without empowering the stories with canonizations, but also scrutinize how – or if – this is actually successful. From this particular mode of legitimizing privileged events, often organized chronologically, I move on to aspects of gender in the fourth chapter, ‘Compulsive categorizations: gender and heritage’. As already noted above, video art is of the same age as the establishment of feminist theories and practices within academia and art criticism. It has certainly also affected video art history, but in a manner rather different from what I initially thought I would find. The old trope of patriarchal lines of heritage is discussed, but also the criteria used to position women artists within these historical narratives. At this point, my focus increasingly turns to the monographs of the 2000s, and the early texts operate more as a backbone and theoretical correlate. In the final chapter, ‘And also: making stories, thinking through thematic space’, I address specific trajectories of subjects, which manifest themselves as narratively constitutive of video art’s history, and which I discuss through my own concept: thematic space. Technology and plurality are re-considered, ending with a suggestion for future engagement in relation to Irit Rogoff’s notion of criticality. Throughout the book, but re-thought in my concluding remarks, are a few concepts that are decisive for my thinking around these particular issues and which I think the historical narratives and theorizing undertakings are circumscribed by, even when not proclaimed in the texts. These concepts are technology, critical engagement, subversion and contemporaneity. In writing this, I have evidently completed my manuscript and it will not be

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reopened for further suggestions or surprising detours: at least not right now. In the final pages I return to my original query: creating a hypothesis about previously constructed stories of video works becoming art, their infiltration into art history and vice versa, and how – by constructions of evaluative new criteria – an identity of the art form emerged.

Notes 1

Marita Sturken, ‘Paradox in the Evolution of an Art Form: Great Expectations and the Making of a History’, in Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, eds, Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, Aperture and Bay Area Video Coalition, New York, 1990, p. 102.

2

For a still image of the performance, see: http://www.afterall.org/2013/06/20/robert_morris-01. jpg. Erwin Panofsky, ‘Iconography and Iconology’, in Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance, Harper and Row, New York, (1939) 1962. This is the edition referred to in Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1994, p. 160. For a recognition of contradictory yet simultaneous meanings – that is, an acknowledgement of iconography as possibly polyvalent regarding meaning production, as well as the possibility of an iconographic analysis resulting in stating a lack of meaning – see Lena Liepe’s elucidative essay ‘Bilden, den historiska tolkningen och verkligheten: Om ikonografins teori och praktik’, Bild och berättelse. Föredrag framlagda vid det 17:e nordiska symposiet för ikonografisk forskning, Kakskerta, Finland, 19–24 september 2000. Helena Edgren, Marianne Roos (red.), Picta nr. 4, Åbo 2003, pp. 147–156.

3 See Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem, p. 160. For another interpretation of the piece, listen to Christophe Cherix’s talk given at the symposium Art Speech, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 21 May 2011. Here from: http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/273/3068 (accessed 24 March 2014). 4

In Foucauldian terms this would imply the investigation of the histories of these concepts in terms of ‘various fields of constitution and validity, that of its [their] successive rules of use, that of the many theoretical contexts in which it developed and matured’. Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge (L’archéologie du savoir, Gallimard, Paris, 1969), translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith, Routledge, London and New York, 2002, p. 5. However, I do not undertake anything even remotely reminiscent of an archaeological investigation of these concepts, but limit my discussions as to how they are activated – or refused – in the present body of texts scrutinized.

5

Within recent deconstructive history (and art history) the difference between ‘history’ and ‘the past’ has been thoroughly discussed by several scholars. See Keith Jenkins, ed., The Postmodern History Reader, Routledge, London, 1997; Keith Jenkins, Refiguring History: New Thoughts on an Old Discipline, Routledge, London and New York, 2003; Willie Thompson, Postmodernism and History, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2004; Hélène Bowen Raddeker, Sceptical History: Feminist and Postmodern Approaches in Practice, Routledge, New York, 2007; Richard Shiff, Doubt, Routledge, London and New York, 2008; Alan Munslow, Narrative and History, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2007. See also Joan W. Scott, ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, The American Historical Review, vol. 91, no. 5, 1986, pp. 1053–1075. For narrative theory, see also Jean-Francoise Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, (1979) 1984; Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1973; Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, translated by Jane E. Lewin, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, (1983) 1986. For the art historical discourse, see Robert S. Nelson, ‘The Map of Art History’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 79, no. 1, March 1997, pp. 28–40; Carolyn Steedman, ‘After the Archive’, Comparative Critical Studies, vol. 8, nos 2–3, Edinburgh University Press, 2011, pp. 321–340.

6

See Scott; and Mary Sheriff, ‘Seeing Beyond the Norm: Interpreting Gender in the Visual Arts’, in Judith Butler and Elizabeth Weed, eds, The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott’s Critical Feminism, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2011, pp. 161–186.

7

Some of these are: Michael Rush, New Media in Late 20th-Century Art, Thames & Hudson, London, 1999; A.L. Rees, A History of Experimental Film and Video: From the Canonical Avant-Garde to Contemporary British Practice, British Film Institute, London, 1999; Ursula Frohne, ed., Video Cult/ ures: Multimediale Installationen der 90er Jahre, Museum für Neue Kunst, Cologne, 1999; Joachim

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Jäger, Gabriele Knapstein and Anette Hüsch, eds, Beyond Cinema: The Art of Projection: Films, Videos and Installations from 1963 to 2005, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2006; Uta Grosenick, ed., New Media Art, Taschen, Cologne, 2006; Tanya Leighton, ed., Art and the Moving Image: A Critical Reader, Tate Publishing, London, 2008; Stuart Comer, ed., Film and Video Art, Tate Publishing, London, 2009; Edward A. Shanken, ed., Art and Electronic Media, Phaidon, London, 2009; Stan Douglas and Christopher Eamon, eds, Art of Projection, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2009. 8

See Shiff.

9

On ‘general histories’ versus ‘total history’, see Foucault, 2002, p. 10. See also Raddeker, pp. 19–52.

10

See, for example, Christine Van Assche, ed., Vidéo et après: la collection vidéo du Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, 1992; Julia Knight, ed., Diverse Practices: A Critical Reader on British Video Art, University of Luton Press, Luton, 1996; Lucy Kimbell, ed., New Media Art: Practice and Context in the UK 1994–2004, Arts Council England, London, 2004; Wu Hung and Christopher Phillips, Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, Steidl, Göttingen, 2004; Rudolf Frieling and Wulf Herzogenrath, eds, 40yearsvideoart.de. 1, Digital Heritage: Video Art in Germany from 1963 to the Present, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2006; Eva Klerck Gange et al., eds, Paradoks: Posisjoner innen norsk videokunst 1980–2010, Museet for samtidskunst, Oslo, 2013. On moving image art in Sweden, see Astrid Söderbergh-Widding, ed., Konst som rörlig bild – från Diagonalsymfonin till Whiteout, Bokförlaget Langenskiöld/Sveriges allmänna Konstförenings årsbok 2006, Lidingö, 2006.

11

Jenkins, 2003, p. 5.

12

On the concept of ‘fiction’ and narrative construction of history in this context, I follow both Keith Jenkins and historians such as Hélène Bowen Raddeker. Fiction is thus not to be understood as a result of free imagination, but that creating a historical story – linking ideas to events, sites and so on – always consists, to some degree, of fiction. See also Genette, 1986.

13

See Foucault, 2002.

14

See, for example, James Elkins, Master Narratives and Their Discontents, Routledge, New York, 2005.

15

The by now infamous early editions of History of Art by Janson is just one example of the extreme – and traditional – way of claiming something as the history. H.W. Janson with Dora Jane Janson, A History of Art: A Survey of the Visual Arts from the Dawn of History to the Present Day, Thames & Hudson, London, 1977.

16

See, for example, Robert S. Nelson, ‘The Map of Art History’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 79, no. 1 (March 1997), pp. 28–40. I return to this issue in Chapter 4 in relation to feminist-informed reinterpretations of art history. See further Lyotard.

17

http://www.oxfordreference.com (accessed 20 February 2012).

18

Trying to nail down different aspects of the discipline in crisis, Donald Preziosi argued that art history suffered from a panoptic perspective. It is thus counter to this idea that I prefer to think of surveys as myopic. See Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1989.

19

To a certain, but limited, extent this draws on Genette’s theory of mode vs. content: see Genette, 1986, pp. 41–43.

20

Michael Rush, Video Art, Thames & Hudson, London, 2003.

21

http://www.thamesandhudson.com/9780500284872.html (accessed 25 May 2012).

22

http://www.thamesandhudson.com/9780500203781.html (accessed 25 May 2012). This is written presenting Michael Rush as the author of New Media Art, originally published as New Media in Late 20th-Century Art, Thames & Hudson, London and New York, 1999. My emphasis.

23

http://www.thamesandhudson.com/9780500284872.html (accessed 25 May 2012). My emphasis.

24

Catherine Elwes, Video Art: A Guided Tour, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London, 2005; Max Liljefors, Videokonsten: en introduktion, Studentlitteratur, Lund, 2005.

25

E-mail sent to author, 25 May 2012.

26

http://www.ibtauris.com/Books/The%20arts/Art%20forms/Non-graphic%20art%20forms/ Electronic%20holographic%20%20video%20art/Video%20Art%20A%20Guided%20Tour. aspx?menuitem={A75DA03B-A8B5-4462-B6D1-BE303D4638F0} (accessed 25 May 2012). My emphasis.

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27

Sylvia Martin, Video Art, Taschen, Cologne, 2006.

28

http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/art/all/03668/facts.video_art.htm (accessed 25 May 2012).

29

Chris Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art: The Development of Form and Function, Berg, Oxford, 2006. He is also director of the Electronic and Digital Art Unit (EDAU), a centre for postgraduate research. Information from: http://www.meigh-andrews.com (accessed 25 May 2012).

30

http://www.bergpublishers.com/?TabId=2189 (accessed 25 May 2012). My emphasis.

31

Yvonne Spielmann, Video: The Reflexive Medium, translated by Anja Welle and Stan Jones, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2008. It was originally published as Video: Das reflexive Medium, Suhrkamp Press, Frankfurt, 2005.

32

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12384 (accessed 25 May 2012).

33

Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, eds, Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, Aperture and Bay Area Video Coalition, New York, 1990.

34

This is all that is said about it on the publisher’s website: http://www.aperture.org/books/bookcategories/essay-books/illuminating-video-an-essential-guide-to-video-art.html (accessed 25 May 2012).

35

Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot, eds, Video Art: An Anthology, The Raindance Foundation, New York and London, 1976.

36

Gregory Battcock, ed., New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1978.

37

John Hanhardt, ed., Video Culture: A Critical Investigation, Peregrine Smith Books, Layton, in association with Visual Studies Workshop Press, New York, (1986) 1990.

38

Michael Renov and Erika Suderburg, eds, Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996.

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1 HESITANTLY ART: Great expectations of a medium

An emerging art form For scholars, critics and curators to structure a body of material, irrespective of whether it is to produce a text or an exhibition, one needs concepts, categories and various other structuring devices, such as chronology and a well-defined notion of art, in furtherance of making the material at hand legible as a conceptual site. Even if artists making video art in, for example, the 1990s not only employed video but digital techniques, and (technically) it all began with film and broadcast television, the term is still used for the art form (though the umbrella notions projected art or new media art are increasingly used today). The moment when video art was established as an art form in its own right could tentatively be argued to coincide with the possibility of a grand-scaled exhibition1 – that is, when enough interesting and thus acknowledged video art works had been produced, hence providing a cumulative body of art works (as contrary to singularities) which were designated as that particular phenomenon henceforth called video art. At this tentative moment, then, certain features appeared as discursive conditions for what was inscribed in the history of video art and, consequently, what was not. An issue that may be irrelevant to artists, but which is important for interpreters creating coherent narratives, is to decide what and who is legible as a representative of a particular practice. Choosing the representative moments and agents defines – and hence discursively frames – the practice(s) of video as art, yet evidently only up until the present moment. There are not seriously different ideas of when and where – and from whom – video art began; on the contrary, the consensus is striking. By beginning with three dictionaries’ entries on the concept/art form, the most concise definitions that circulate within the discourse of video art are presented. The apparent function of dictionaries is to briefly deliver what is

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generally considered to be the most essential, but filtered, information and knowledge of well-separated phenomena. With these quotations I thus want to initially highlight a general agreement of when, where and from whom it all started – that is, the significant events that circulate as origins. As will become clear in the following chapters, the historical narratives all testify to the difficulties of handling the concept of origin, but at the same time they all seem to need it. Part of this problem involves the two chief trajectories: the first focusing on a fine art context, whereas the other centres on technology. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms defines video art thus: Video made by visual artists, it originated in 1965 when the Korean Fluxus artist Nam June Paik made his first tapes on the newly available Sony portable video camera and showed them a few hours later at the Café au Go Go in Greenwich Village, New York. Video is a medium, not a style, and embraces an extremely wide range of activity and level of achievement.2

The online Oxford Companion to Western Art begins its entry on video art: a form of art which emerged in the 1960s, and which was based around the manipulation of videotaped images and their projection or replay on television screens. Although contemporary with early experiments in computer art, and despite superficial formal similarities, the earliest manifestations of Video art were not characterized by a specific interest in technological exploration, but were informed rather by an intention to subvert the conventional uses of television and film as communicative media. The most famous examples of such art are the films of Andy Warhol, such as Sleep (1963) and Empire (1966), both of which last for more than six hours, are silent, and show only one static image. The origins of Video art are generally attributed to the work of Nam June Paik (1932–), a member of the Fluxus group.3

And according to Wikipedia, where anyone inclined can alter the text: Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. (It should not however be confused with television production or experimental film). Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast, viewed in galleries or other venues, or distributed as video tapes or DVD discs; sculptural installations, which may incorporate one or more television sets or video monitors, displaying ‘live’ or recorded images and sound; and performances in which video representations are included.4

Obviously, the general conception (as long as we agree to understand dictionaries as representing that) is that video art appeared at the moment when professional visual artists began using video recording techniques to make art works. According to the first quote, two originary moments appear as decisive for the art form: the invention of the Sony Portapak and a particular

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video work shot and screened by Nam June Paik in 1965. The assumptions to be drawn from these entries are that the art form consists of various visual formats and different technologies, it is in some cases related to performance, Paik was the first video artist, video art is not a style but a medium, and initially it aimed to subvert various conventions. Interestingly, conventions within the field of (fine) art production are not mentioned here. Comparing this with the early anthologies on the subject and the surveys in focus, all of these aspects are presented as historical facts. For example, in Videokonsten: en introduktion, Max Liljefors writes: ‘The year video art was born is usually marked as 1963.’5 What happened then was Paik’s first solo show at Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, entitled Exposition of Electronic Music – Electronic TV, and amongst the works on display was Zen TV, an often reproduced work about which a great deal has been written.6 This was not, speaking strictly from a medium perspective, video art, but consisted of a number of works made up of television sets.7 However, already in 1958 Wolf Vostell had made works with modified TV sets, exhibited in 1963 at his show TV Trouble at the Smolin Gallery in New York, in which the often reproduced TV Dé-coll/age No. 1 of 1958 was on display.8 This piece has since been nominated as one of the very first video art works.9 During this time Vostell also made use of TV sets in performances, and hence was one of those artists connecting these two up-and-coming artistic modes of expression, making his work manifestly contemporaneous. A sub-category of early video art is TV art, which can be tentatively defined as a branch focusing on the TV set as a ready-made object both submitted to aesthetic investigations and employed as a vehicle for moving images.10 Several essays and a number of shows testify to the focus on both the concept and cultural impact of TV.11 Both Paik and Vostell modified and distorted television programmes by magnetically disturbing the images. Using the TV sets but not recording technique is, however, part of the beginning of video art as it is told in all of the surveys addressed here; it expresses the interest in and employment of broadcasting and moving images. In Paik’s own practice they were frequently used, and were also amongst the first video installations which emerged as a particular kind, or branch, of video art production. The interest in TV was not only due to the new image technology per se and new habits of acquiring various forms of culture and information, but that it was a new object that increasingly inhabited the households of the Western world during the 1950s and onwards.12 Even though Vostell is recurrently mentioned as completely contemporaneous with Paik, he is rarely acknowledged as being the original video artist.13 Paik is the one generally given the status of the inventor of video art. Singling out Paik in this way involves video art being given a very precise date and time of its inception, an event that operates well in chronologically structured narratives as well as in relation to art history writings, which

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circulate specific names/signatures as a narrative core. What is crucial for my following discussions is to acknowledge already here inventions as that which are historically inscribed as causing ruptures, discontinuities and deviations from that which then become previous regarding concepts (the ‘epistemological acts and thresholds’ of which Foucault writes).14 Furthermore, in Paik’s practice both aesthetic ideas and aims and technological innovations merge to an extent that makes his art ready for (almost) inventing the two major trajectories: socio-cultural critique and technology as both the medium and the conceptual site of the art form. Through his involvements in Fluxus, ideas of chance – as championed by John Cage – and ‘the performative approach’ – introduced to painting by Jackson Pollock – were engaged in tandem with the new technique of moving images.15 The merging of a rather broad set of interests and developments in Paik’s work and his (increased) focus on moving image technologies have made him more than suitable for this radical starting point of video art – and this reappears in narratives of video art practices located outside of the Euro-American context.16 Paik, who is said to have bought a number of Portapaks the very same day that they came on the market in the US, is furthermore said to have made one of the two first proper video art works.17 On 4 April 1965 Paik video-recorded Pope Paul VI visiting New York, and later the same day it was screened before an audience – an event that every single one of the monographs (and several of the essays addressing the formative and nascent phase of the art form) examined here pay attention to.18 However, a few weeks earlier Andy Warhol is credited with having shown video recordings, an event which is rarely noted.19 Regarding the beginning, there is, for example, the fact that in the early 1960s several artists recorded their performances, which is an image-making practice that may precede an artist’s later working directly with video in order to produce an art work consisting of moving images. In some of these historical narratives, the actuality that artists employed moving image technique (often alongside photography) is regarded as part of video art’s (pre-)history, while disregarding that the aim was to record for her/his private archive an otherwise lost work and not to produce a video art work per se.20 I do not consider that kind of pre-history of making video documentations – but, then, nor do I examine the oeuvre of particular artists – the intention of producing an art work is thus crucial to my understanding of the notion of art, as one defining criteria, that is. Several of the publications which I examine begin their chronological surveys not only with the invention of film but of more or less related technological inventions such as sound recording (irrespective of whether this temporally structured story is part of the introduction, as in some of the anthologies, or is the main trajectory of the entire book). According to Michael Rush’s Video Art, it was when the portable Portapak entered the scene that visual artists and others working outside the corporate realms of television and cinema could begin to develop a new

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form of ‘moving image art’.21 That is, when the opportunity to possess one’s own, easily accessible, video camera arrived, artists could leave the studios of broadcast companies (where – in the US – they had until then been able to rent the equipment). This physical detachment obviously implied a much more varied situation, opening up for potentially more varied and creative video works. It was thus not least the particular situation of availability of the necessary technical equipment that principally instigated video art.22 By the end of the 1960s and in the early 1970s, the proliferating employment of video technology by artists began to make imprints beyond singular events in the periphery of the art world. During these two first decades, several collaborative video artists and activist groups were established in both the US and Europe. Both Liljefors and Meigh-Andrews juxtapose the emerging collectives with the political situations in the US and Europe during this time and the ambitions of video artists and/or activists to use the video medium in order to urge political changes in society.23 Furthermore, art schools began to teach video in the 1970s – an important condition for the professionalization and thus establishment of the art form about which, however, few authors speak.24 This, I think, is somewhat remarkable since professionalism is not only related to the notion of art, but part of the legitimizing and establishing processes, and therefore also to the definition of video as an art form. Art institutions and commercial galleries followed the increasing interest in the art form/medium. The first video collection, according to Sylvia Martin, was that of the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, established in 1972.25 In 1974 MoMA’s video department was founded, which is a sign of the importance given to video art in an American context – as was the rather early inclusion of video works in the Whitney Museum’s biennale.26 In New York, The Kitchen Live Audio Test Laboratory was founded ‘as an artists’ collective’ by Steina Vasulka, Woody Vasulka and Andres Mannik in 1971. The Kitchen, still in existence, was organized as a studio for the presentation, production and distribution of especially video art and performance art, and played a prominent part as an agent within the history of video art as one of the venues most often referred to.27 In 1973 a video department was opened at the International Cultureel Centrum in Antwerp, described by Martin as becoming ‘Europe’s most important institution for video production and distribution’. During the 1980s festivals of video art began to appear, and are innumerable today.28 In the time span between the earliest anthologies, exhibitions and production facilities, video art grew rather quickly into being considered, hence interpreted and promoted, as one of the major art forms during the 1980s and 1990s. The by then widespread employment of the video medium and display of video art appear as historical facts and are presented as unmistakable signs of the importance of the art form and its rising status. More space and interest for video art at museums and other art venues appeared and paved the way for the large expansion of video art in the 1990s.29 As one of the major art forms

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in contemporary art, an apparent need, or demand even, arose to survey the history and current state of video art, which is evident if one looks into what has been published during the last decade, when the extensive monographic surveys on the subject began to appear. However, in order to theorize and historicize a particular phenomenon such as video art, there has to be a legible body of events that manifest more than singular instances by specific yet few artists, which is why I turn to a few events that contextualized video art within the realm of fine art, and which have arguably affected the later historical narratives. But before addressing the early legitimizing contexts of video art, there is one narrative feature regarding the where of video art’s becoming that needs to be mentioned: most of the publications addressed here as my primary sources and objects of study are centred on the US as the geographical area where video art took place, and hence the site of the events claimed as the most important in its history.30 Even though I do not explicitly deal with this aspect of how video art has been theorized and historicized as nation-bound phenomena, it is important to recognize this underlying and often hidden presumption.31 Still, there are several good reasons for departing from an American perspective – especially regarding accessibility to the acquired technology – but it is also true that the stories are sometimes Americanized, for example, by such simple facts as that both Paik and Vostell are on occasion acknowledged as Americans, and not Korean and German respectively – a minor detail, perhaps, but which is still misleading as it operates to strengthen the image of video art as an American invention.32 What is more important here is that the art form is treated as decidedly evolving on American ground due to the release of the Portapak camera in 1965. With the much cited Illuminating Video of 1990, the two editors Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer aimed at a national scope, focusing on video art and video art criticism in the US. Their initial departure is related to the role that the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) had played as one of the media art centres facilitating the realization of artist projects.33 Both Rush and Meigh-Andrews have sections on the evolving situation of video art as it proceeded in different nations, but leave out the national theme, as its early histories are settled.34 Two exceptions here are the two anthologies, Resolutions by Renov and Suderburg, and Video Art by Schneider and Korot. Renov and Suderburg made an effort precisely not to stay within either a Western or a US-centred context. Instead, they write, the ‘essays seek to address video as a global medium: many of the chapters are written within or about contexts far removed from the standard EuroAmerican art video histories’.35 Later they write that they ‘imagined a more expansive global reach’ and therefore ‘enlisted the participation of some of the writers and producers who offered material and conceptual support to independent video initiatives around the world’.36 However, despite this ambition, the Euro-American focus is manifest. They exemplify their global

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take by mentioning two essays particularly: Tetsuo Kogawa’s and Bérénice Reynaud’s essays respectively. Whereas Kogawa’s essay, ‘Video: The Access Medium’, is grounded in European philosophy and focuses on Paik’s work, Reynaud’s text on Chinese video was written from the position of a ‘Western woman … albeit displaced within American culture and the English language’, who, according to herself, is seduced ‘by contemporary Chinese media’.37 Furthermore, only two nations are named in captions – Canada and China respectively – whereas artists of different nationalities are represented in the various essays.38 A similar approach is made with Schneider and Korot’s Video Art, where several essays explicitly address nation-bound topics and/or artists.39

Early video art in context The question of choosing a particular and unique moment as its origin has been crucial for declaring the inaugurate moment of video as art. Significantly, this origin also serves the purpose of the starting point for the narratives on the history of video art. Deciding the site, time and object of this origin is, of course, unavoidably connected to how one defines video art, but also to what claims one lays on history.40 By the 1970s, video art was established as an art form, even if it still played a rather peripheral, or minor, part on the contemporary Western art scene. Book-length publications addressing video art specifically were still rather rare, and it was more often inscribed in a field of experimental, alternative or creative film-making – yet exhibitions focusing on video art were increasingly produced. The historical archive of video art therefore also consists of the remains of exhibitions in the form of images, catalogues and reviews, and their circulation in art critical writings.41 Even though the display situations of video art are not what I primarily aim at investigating here, they have played a crucial part in the establishing, legitimizing and historicizing process of the art form and need to be addressed, even if briefly. The purpose of the following section is to serve as an informative backdrop to my following discussions, which depart from more specific issues and concepts. The point in also addressing a few exhibitions juxtaposed with the first anthologies is to locate both instances of the archive which have arguably functioned as formative for pertinent issues of video art and those which have been more or less forgotten or simply neglected for unspoken reasons. Regarding seminal exhibitions which are frequently recalled as inaugurative moments of video as art, two shows stand out: the 1963 Wuppertal show with Paik, and TV as a Creative Medium of 1969 at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York. Thinking about video art in what I here note as early contexts, the 1977 edition of Documenta is of particular interest since it was one of the large-scale

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presentations of video art in an international exhibition, hence establishing the art form alongside both other so-called new media and the two traditional media, painting and sculpture. There had been several investments from institutions to produce and display video art shows prior to Documenta 6, and more followed during the 1970s, but I use this particular show as an example of how video art was both historicized and theorized during these years.42 Furthermore, the artists and art works displayed on this occasion are now firmly established as the core in the present surveys and anthologies, as well as in general textbooks of Western art history, not only in relation to video art but to postmodern art in a broad sense. Alongside the 1963 Wuppertal show with Paik (Exposition of Electronic Music – Electronic TV) and Vostell’s at the Smolin Gallery, TV as a Creative Medium of 1969 – at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York – is the show most often referred to as one of the earliest manifestations of video art.43 Most of the works displayed were, as the title also emphasizes, TV art rather than video art (video technology was only used in a few works) and few of the artists represented appear in the later historical surveys of video art.44 Those who are still uncontested as being part of video art’s history (that is, its canon) are Paik, who here appeared with Charlotte Moorman (the only woman participating, performing TV Bra for Living Sculpture), and Frank Gillette.45 The short introduction to the show, written by Wise, is prophetic in its rhetoric: ‘The machine is obsolescent’, the written word is threatened, ‘individuals are deeply affected’, education ‘revolutionized’, and schools will perhaps be ‘eliminated’ (since TV is educational).46 Most of the works are described in terms of the technique applied and, occasionally, as creatively altering the use of the medium/technology. In some but not all cases, traditional information is given about what physical items the works consist of. Others, like Paul Ryan’s contribution, are not described at all (this entry consists of two quotations, except for very brief information on the education and present occupation of the artist). Thus, the texts do not present much of theoretical, aesthetic or historical content to be further drawn from, which could be an argument for the subsequent lack of addressing any reasons given for the show’s historical status as actually inaugurating video as a new art. Both Max Liljefors and Yvonne Spielmann argue that it is the first video art show in a more strict sense of relating the medium to the notion of art,47 whereas Sylvia Martin considers it to be one of the first thematic presentations of video art.48 In an essay, Marita Sturken describes it as part of the ‘mystic history … charted through various events’ and writes that in retrospect it acts as ‘an indicator of the diversity of concerns in early video art’.49 But evidently, what becomes part of the acknowledged events claimed as crucial to a narrative history is often not argued for in these publications. TV as a Creative Medium serves the narrative function as a/the seminal event where video art seems to be a fact, as it is not yet in the uncertain territories of applying for art status which it enters when

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theorized in the texts that would follow. The fact that it was a group show could be an argument for the establishing process, but it is rarely analysed or represented in detail. Instead it operates as the mere instance that, seemingly, needs to be mentioned as a particular event of historical significance in a proper chronology. Consequently, it circulates as an unmitigated ‘historical fact’, with no apparent need to be further argued for (or against). The first publication to be concerned with video art at length was Expanded Cinema by the media theorist Gene Youngblood, published in 1970.50 He did not focus exclusively on video art, but rather investigated in depth the current state of technologically based media in a broader sense of experimental and creative visual culture.51 His rhetoric points to future developments and radical changes for humans on earth, enforcing altered ways of communication and therefore how we will perceive the world; the importance of technology’s part in furthering democracy is evident here. Potentials for critical practices, political changes and consciousness-raising practices are all mentioned as to what will emerge through the work of a younger generation. In, for example, the fifth part entitled ‘Television as a Creative Medium’, video art and artists are discussed. However, the discussion is interspersed with much technological detail and with practices which share the medium with other kinds of usage.52 Youngblood coins the term videosphere: ‘valuable as a conceptual tool to indicate the vast scope and influence of television on a global scale in many simultaneous fields of sense-extension’.53 That artists working with the medium were still rather unusual is pointed out and the two initially mentioned as examples are Paik and Jean-Luc Godard.54 Citing Scott Bartlett, he also underscores the newness of the medium, since the new technology compels artists (and others) to rethink what they actually have to say.55 Thus, content is here directly linked not only to how one can express ideas and statements (audio-)visually, but to what one can speak of as not possible to express in other media. Perhaps this view is in some sense related to the possibly different aims of video artists that Gregory Battcock also later articulates. When addressing specific works, Youngblood is, however, very concerned with the technological devices employed and how they function, and he cites the artists themselves only when content and creative working processes are explained. What is interesting in his argumentation is the noted efforts that artists have to make to adjust the medium with all its technological variations ‘for the purpose of aesthetic experimentation’, since the technology was not developed for creative art practices – which it should have been, according to Youngblood.56 Furthermore, ‘videotape artists’ have different aims and intentions than others working within the same medium. The works by artists are argued to have affected attitudes within TV management – again, the critical potential stemming from the realm of art (even though the borders are rather open here) is pointed out.57 When merged in the form of cooperations, the different systems of broadcast television and art respectively

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are argued to bring forth both philosophical issues and the aspects (or logics) of distribution that affect both practices. And I want to add: video art discourse here contextualizes (not to say incorporates) video art foremost in an intimate relation to television and broadcasting, leaving the implications of an/the art world aside – which is where the other texts preferably situate video artists’ practices. (For example, in Video Art, Rush argues against a too elaborate connection of these two branches.) Symptomatic of this approach is that it is Schum’s TV Gallery that stands as the primary example of where and how video art circulates when in a more strictly defined art world, which was seemingly not yet ready to incorporate video art.58 In relation to video as art, Youngblood further notes the importance of conceptual approaches, the diminished monetary value and other sites for distribution – issues that will later turn up as significant for the occasionally argued inherent critical engagement of video art.59 But he also discusses artists’ film works from the perspective of eroticism: for example, Warhol’s images of male sexuality and Carolee Schneemann’s 16mm film Fuses, which is interpreted as aiming at subverting ideas of pornography by emphasizing emotional content.60 In ‘Part Six: Intermedia’, he situates artists as ‘ecologists’: an artist is ‘one who deals with environmental relationships’ by leaving object-making – as paradigmatic for art – and thus opens up the realm of artistic practices for a much wider field of interrogations, inventions and actions than normally (as in traditionally) associated, or claimed, as part of a fine art context.61 One of the artists in focus here is ‘intermedia artist’ Wolf Vostell and his de-collages, recognized for ‘rendering the environment visible as “art” by manipulating elements inherent in that environment’.62 And Youngblood continues: Basically, Vostell seeks in all his work to involve the audience objectively in the environments that constitutes its life. He seeks to break passivity into which most retreat like sleepwalkers, forcing an awareness of one’s relation to the video and urban environment. He sometimes describes his work as a form of social criticism employing elements of Dada and Theatre of the Absurd.63

Even though Expanded Cinema is not foremost about video art but rather about moving images created by a multitude of technological devices and for various sites and aims – which, nevertheless, will all seriously affect our life on earth – the optimism shared with Battcock is as evident as it can be. Expanded Cinema also testifies to the particular interest, knowledge and ambitions of its author: significantly exploring media art, or videospheres, as contesting the dullish entertainment culture globally, and freeing the potential for radical societal changes that are made possible when the medium is employed with a critical edge. Video art was also the subject of the three ambitious anthologies, of which two are still frequently referred to, and are hence part of the written archive as it is noted in the bibliographies of the surveys: Video Art: An Anthology, edited

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by the two artists Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot in 1976, and Video Culture: A Critical Investigation, edited by John Hanhardt in 1986.64 The fate of Gregory Battcock’s New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology of 1978 is different since it is not mentioned in any of the surveys.65 Yet, it is an interesting document of the initial phase of trying to make sense of video as art within a rather traditional art historical enterprise, even if one can assume that it rapidly became outdated precisely due to the claims and suggestions made.66 Schneider and Korot’s and Hanhardt’s respective anthologies have thus come to function as early documents, setting, as it seems, the critically informed agenda of video art as an art form which is still often perceived and presented as part of the paradigmatic turn away from formalist aesthetics. Video Art: An Anthology is of a rather different kind than the other anthologies discussed here, which is why I only present it briefly at this point and then return to particular issues when relevant to the following discussions.67 Its structure resembles that of an exhibition catalogue, since the 73 artists represented all have their own spread to present their work.68 Thereafter follows first a selection entitled ‘Broadcast and Closed-Circuit Exhibition’ including six essays, and then ‘Commentary’ which consists of 16 essays. The introduction written by the editors is only one page, but what can be read is that they announce quite surprisingly that ‘Video technology was developed in the late 1930s.’69 They point out the relation to broadcast television and its commercial aspects. Their focus is on American artists, with a few exceptions. What they say about video art is that by then it was a ‘substantial body of video work created by individual artists in the past ten years’ and that this group of works ‘represents an extension of the traditional context of art, and also media – specifically, broadcast TV’.70 The artists represented outnumber both Battcock’s and Hanhardt’s books respectively, but the same names occur, which reveals that consensus was established from early on. Battcock’s anthology, New Artists Video, includes 17 essays, of which only Rosalind Krauss’ ‘Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism’ (originally published in the very first issue of October in 1976) still appears recurrently as a reference.71 It should perhaps go without saying that Battcock’s ‘Introduction’ and most of the essays stand out as clearly marked by their historical context, being written in the early to mid-1970s. In comparison with Schneider and Korot’s and Hanhardt’s books – both regarding the overall themes as well as the individual essays – New Artists Video appears as particularly art historically old-fashioned, as it lacks vigour and critical engagement in many aspects. The sources of inspiration and involvement presented in the collection of essays are astonishingly broad. The book includes texts by scholars, art critics, artists and curators, and thus testifies to an ambition of covering not only a broad and differently defined art form, but a multitude of voices and perspectives interpreting the status and situation of video art. In its entirety,

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the book reveals an unstable and rather chaotic context of theoretical and critical attempts to interpret and understand the still rather new phenomenon of video (as) art. I read New Artists Video as a document of the uncertainties that permeated art historical thinking of the time, particularly in relation to the emerging discourse of new art forms such as video art and conceptual art, since several authors make claims and historical connections which now seem rather far-fetched. It is important to note that most of the essays are concerned with the New York art scene, even if this is never pointed out. I find it intriguing that New Artists Video is so rarely addressed as an historical document (a faith that is not shared with Battcock’s anthology on minimal art from 1968) – not even as an example of a fumbling situation of trying to find and create a relevant interpretative context (or as an event where art history and art criticism partly failed).72 For example, Battcock writes: ‘we should not dismiss a broad variety of subject areas that, in one way or another, seem to offer ideas and clues that will aid our understanding of video and give us some idea of its potential … Vicky Alliata and Mona Da Vinci claim that God is involved.’73 Battcock begins with a set of questions – echoed in later books on video art. He writes: 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? What are the aims of video artists? How does one learn to make video artworks? What kind of equipment is needed? When did video first appear and where is it going?74

These questions testify to an ambition to define video art as fine art and, furthermore, how to situate it in a field of art practices that were (still) subordinate to the two paradigmatic art forms – painting and sculpture – which are evidently acknowledged as the ultimate framing practices of what can be art at all.75 Art as a philosophical category acknowledged as a paradigmatic break is consequently not informing his ideas of video as art. Yet it is also interesting that Battcock addressed the learning processes; by noting that making video art demands (art school) education and funding in order to be recognized as one professional branch amongst art production. He is concerned with ‘artists trained in such visual media as painting, sculpture, printmaking and performance’ – that is, professional artists already working (or educated) within the field of fine art.76 Another apparent peculiarity is that he called attention to the aims; posing that question to painters would sound odd. Except for aiming at making artworks as a distinct mode of utterance, the goals of individual artists working in such broad artistic practices that are inscribed in each art form – and, of course, not necessarily being ultimately tied to the medium – can hardly be gathered under a conclusion of aims. But asking this is rather to ask for video art’s place in relation to other artistic media, and, by extension, to

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indirectly call for a definition of what video art (even if tentatively) is. Battcock concludes the introduction by noting that ‘the medium seems to possess the qualities and even the tradition of any other established art idiom. Its directness, its relative simplicity, and its powerful effect on the viewer assure a bright, popular, and effective role for video as a contemporary art form.’77 Defining video art is, however, ‘almost impossible’, according to Battcock: It is not sufficient to say that, as a new art form, video has attracted the imaginations of many artists closely identified with the fine arts. Nor is it enough to point out that many professionals have come to the field of video art from such disciplines as cinema, literature, education, and even commercial television.78

One suggestion on the development and process of video works becoming art is given by Judith van Baron, whose line of argument follows the idea of history as evolutionary when she writes that video ‘was first a documentary tool, then an experimental technique, and finally a fully realized art form’.79 This implies that progress is enforced by both technology per se and the process and undertakings by artists to learn how to work with it. Battcock turns to the crucial differences between video art and commercial television in order to set at least one frame for how to define particular video practices as art. This particular differentiation is still a defining issue that has run as a connecting thought through video art history ever since.80 The artists represented with illustrations are more or less the same as in all the later surveys, as are the overall subjects dealt with in the essays. However, if one presupposes this particular body of essays to be an example of normative practices of art history, with its recalled art historical moments and the criteria for valuations, it is soon made clear to a present-day reader why the writings by artists, critics and scholars informed by post-structuralist critical thinking took a rather reluctant position against the involvement of art history. That is, the references and associations made in New Artists Video are grasping for nearly anything that has any visual resemblances or theoretical/ideological/cultural affinities with video art.81 Moreover, the technological trajectory is rather surprisingly not that prominent in the anthology, although it is in the other publications of this period in time, as well as in the later still to come.82 Battcock leans on ideas of ‘the best artists’ and ‘good artwork’, which are claimed to be easily recognizable, whereas the criteria of why that is ‘are not easily identified’. He recommends that video art as a new art form should be allowed to introduce its own ‘qualities and principles that are timeless and universal’.83 And he continues: ‘At the same time it must remain true to the special qualities that differentiate video from other forms. Otherwise, one might wonder, why video at all?’84 Here the project of defining and establishing video as art is obvious, and is performed by connecting it to other art forms and to the conventional criteria employed. But it is also performed

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by simultaneously differentiating it from the two former by singling out the peculiarities of this specific medium, which, in turn, reveals that a formalist idea of keeping true to the material was seemingly embraced by Battcock. Other writers in the anthology turn to comparisons between video art and various events and phenomena within art history in order to distinguish the characteristics of video art, by formulating different suggestions of how to understand the latter as art.85 Here, incorporating video into the history of fine art has an overt purpose that embraces both pedagogical and aesthetic aspects: ‘What all this seems to imply is that those who bring with them a background in the fine arts will feel very much at home.’86 However, there are certain features that Battcock is particularly interested in, and amongst these is what the purpose of video as art may be. Most importantly here is that video art will reshape aesthetic awareness critically. The aim of video art is thus not as peculiar as it may first seem, since it is precisely the critical engagement of video art that is claimed further on as a differentiating, and hence defining, aspect of how (and why) video is, or even can be, art. The two forms of video art that trained artists mainly practise are either making video tapes or ‘installation video’, which was also what was shown at the Documenta 6 in 1977 (to which I return below). As argued by both Battcock in his introduction and in the essay by Ingrid Wiegand, the success of a video work was argued to depend on its legibility as art: installations are argued as being ‘essentially sculpture’ and therefore the most privileged kind of video art in exhibitions (despite the argument above of critical aims).87 This seminal anthology is of particular interest, due not only to the apparent oblivion, or neglect, by later authors to trace video art’s history – its narrated past – not only to art works of previous dates, but also to the written discourse still affecting the historical narratives on video art. In all, the collection of essays testifies to an optimistic, self-confident, significant change not only to the strict realm of art, but to communications worldwide and face-to-face, involving psychology, aesthetics, politics and, not least, great expectations for the future. Furthermore, the anthology reveals the early formation of different trajectories which are still struggling with each other in the more recent surveys: the relation to television (and broadcasting), the critique of the art market and art institutions, the relation between viewer and art work, and the issue of art – what is gained and lost respectively if and when one applies this notion to video works. Here, however, these aspects vacillate between the various branches of video art (and at times seemingly unconsciously). They change the prerogative that shapes the narratives, and as a convulsive openness per se which refuses to settle any kind of hierarchy – which, however, happens all the time – it is the attitude of refusal that remains in the writings to come. The fate of oblivion that Battcock’s anthology has met is shared by Documenta 6, taking place in Kassel in 1977. As a grand-scale exhibition

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taking place (almost) every fifth year since 1955, Documenta had taken (and still does) a rather different approach to art if compared to other grand and reoccurring art shows like the Venice Biennale. In a comparison between the two, it is clear that the former has always been more focused on political and conceptual issues.88 With the 1977 edition, artistic director Manfred Schneckenburger’s attempt was ‘to break down certain categorical hierarchies within the art world’, according to a thesis by Kathryn Mae Floyd.89 The sub-title of the 1977 edition was ‘Art in the Media World – Media in Art’ and it ‘looked at cultural production through the lens of the topic “media-society”’.90 To a large extent the focus of Documenta 6 was on specific art forms – photography, film and video – and the entire Museum Fridericianum was devoted to this.91 The video section, curated by Wulf Herzogenrath, was displayed on the upper floor, but in two different manners.92 The so-called ‘video installations/sculptures’ were given the largest space due to the size of the works, and 11 artists showed works under this heading.93 ‘Experimental film/expanded cinema’ was located in one of the opposite wings. Video tapes were shown in a ‘videobar’, and in the Videothek works by 52 artists/groups were possible to view – many of whom are by now firmly established within the history of video art as the most represented names.94 Out of these 52 artists, seven are also amongst those listed above as the most frequently named in the Battcock anthology: Acconci, Paik, Wegman, Jonas, Nauman, Gillette and Campus. Due to the size of the show and the number of artists participating, it is thus possible to argue that this event was a visual breakthrough for the art form, marking an institutional acceptance by a fine art context which has been particularly involved in critical art. Therefore it appears as a key moment in the establishing, and legitimizing, process of video works as fine art – and is even more interesting, I think, as Documenta connotes critical engagement and advanced art. Since it is not even sketched in the historical narratives to follow, I find it urgent to recall, even if briefly. In his short entry, Herzogenrath contextualized the history of video in relation to television, drawing on the similar technological developments and communication systems, though the two were argued to be aiming at different contents, aesthetics (of reality/realities) and sites of display.95 Video as art, referred to here as ‘eines neuen künstlerischen Mediums’,96 begins here too with Paik and with reference to the 1963 show in Wuppertal, where he and Vostell employed TV sets. The arrival of the Portapak is also noted here as the most important event necessary for making the technique available to a broader field of artists.97 Video, according to Herzogenrath, was not a style but simply a technological facility employed by artists, just like any other media. Thematically, he emphasized it as a means to counter the ‘realities’ produced for broadcasting and experienced by the audience in their own living rooms (or at the cinema, side by side with a large number

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of strangers obstructing more intimate, individual experiences) by creative artistic productions which problematize the former by presenting alternative realities. The process of defining video art as developed in opposition to television is also briefly discussed by David A. Ross in his short contribution to the catalogue.98 Ross, however, is mainly engaged with arguing for museums and other art institutions to become more involved with the new art form, urging them to consider not only the display situations but also the communication systems (which are not synonymous with technique) that make video art different from other art forms. Notable here is the importance of the support of art institutions, which, from the outset, were obviously designed to host art. This direct address to museums and others points out the importance of what can be gained by being incorporated into – or, seen from the other side, infiltrating – the display, the financial, aesthetic and ideological site of fine art. As noted above, this edition of Documenta 6, with two exceptions, is not mentioned in the body of surveys. One of those who does refer to it is Sylvia Martin in Video Art, but she simply states that the exhibition ‘reflected the state of Media art in the video segment curated by Wulf Herzogenrath’.99 Chris Meigh-Andrews acknowledges Herzogenrath as an important curator and not only for this show. Yet he does not write anything on the show itself.100 As it was one of the prevenient large-scale presentations of video art, taking place at such a prominent site as the Documenta, it is worth stressing that not even those who focus on the TV trajectory, like Herzogenrath obviously did before, found it interesting enough to refer to. I am not actually aiming to criticize the narrative focus chosen in the historical surveys, but wish simply to stress the archive as not only a conceptual site for a solid foundation but as past events that contributed to the prevailing and manifest issue of the when, where and how of video legitimizing itself as fine art. Entering the realm of so-called fine art strips the phenomenon of its sub-positions; the arena of institutions is rarely effective as a site for radical, subversive ambitions of questioning the discourse of art. Hence the site, scale and status of representation matters when investigating the relation between video as a creative phenomenon on the fringe and video art as a dominating art phenomenon within institutional practices of display. Almost a decade after the aforementioned anthologies and Documenta’s investment in image-reproductive media, John Hanhardt’s anthology Video Culture: A Critical Investigation was published. The sub-title proclaims another perspective: a critical engagement of this particular field of visual practice. The book is divided into three thematically different sections. The first, entitled ‘Theory and Practice’, ‘contains key essays which have informed the critical debates involving the creative potential and political implications of the mass media of radio, film, and television’, according to Hanhardt.101 The five essays here are interesting choices in relation to

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the context, and deviate from both Battcock’s and Schneider and Korot’s publications, since the former actually deals critically with the notion of art, suggests a future alternative television and also addresses ideological issues.102 All in all, they testify to an ambition of Hanhardt’s to frame video within an advanced theoretical discourse, later only occurring to the same extent in Illuminating Video and, amongst the surveys, Meigh-Andrews’ and Spielmann’s respective books.103 Another difference important to point out is that Hanhardt speaks of ‘video culture’, hence initially not separating video practices as rigidly as (at least occasionally) is done in the two former collections; here it works as a strategy to legitimate film and cinema as its historical origins. With reference to Hanhardt’s introduction, his creation of an historical past also differs from Battcock’s. Where the latter tried to establish video art within an explicit (but wide open) fine/traditional art historical discourse, the former turned specifically to avant-garde films produced by European and Soviet artists in the 1920s and 1930s.104 The film trajectory is recalled in the surveys, as is the antagonistic relationship between video art and television – the former being defined as opposite to commercial, popular culture TV.105 Going through his bibliography reveals that the written sources that are drawn from as references were almost exclusively articles and essays printed in art magazines, a few exhibition catalogues and various publications on film, cinema (often termed underground, experimental, avant-garde and so on) and television respectively.106 The point is that the chosen historical pasts immediately affect and inform the understanding of the operative sites of video as a creative medium, and whether to direct it towards the realm, and hence discourse, of fine art or to a broader, and – one assumes – less strictly demarcated, field of visual culture. Stressing a past situated outside of a fine art discourse implies that features, semi-strange to strict definitions, affect the notion of art as video, as art brings with it another genealogy. Hanhardt was explicitly addressing an American visual culture and appointed the arrival of the Portapak on the American market as the moment when ‘video began to grow as an art form’.107 This technical availability alongside the rapid technological developments are claimed to be part of ‘video’s dramatic rise in such a short time’.108 The artists that he lists as pioneers are the same who appear in all of the surveys, as well as in the previous anthologies: Paik, Vostell, Nauman, Acconci, Serra, Holt, Campus, Juan Downey, Gillette and Schneider.109 Coming from different practices (‘music, performance, dance, and sculpture’) but working in the art world, the artists become – as narrative instances – evidence of the heterogeneous field of artistic practices implied in the notion and self-image of video art. Nevertheless, Hanhardt also prompts us to at least rhetorically ask the question whether video art really is art. His answer is that ‘the real question is not whether video is an art form but how video changes the definitions of

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art’.110 At the end of his introduction he aims to situate video art within a fine art discourse, as he claims that it shares aesthetic concerns with traditional art forms such as painting and sculpture, while simultaneously acknowledging the broad and flexible character of video art.111 This is done by addressing a selection of formally different artworks, claimed to ‘represent historically the forms that were part of video art from its beginning’. At this point the group of representative artists (of which some are the same as the pioneers) is enlarged by a few more names: Bill Viola, Beryl Korot, Shigeko Kubota, Dara Birnbaum and Mary Lucier. From a gender perspective this rather modest number of names (15) implies an equality balance that is actually to be impaired in the later surveys.112 Of these artists mentioned particularly by Hanhardt, only two did not participate in Documenta 6 (to which he did not refer) – Birnbaum and Lucier – whereas three of them (Campus, Viola and Korot) were presented by the same works that he addressed as especially important in order to understand ‘the first twenty years of video art’s history’.113 I want to stress here, then, that names (as signatures) are as important in the context of video art as they are elsewhere in normative art historical practices. The relation between the concept of art and the artists making it is by definition not possible to overlook. The idea of who the latter is, as decisive for the former, actually operates here, too, as an assurance of the works being art. All of these examples of early manifestations of video art reveal simultaneously a hesitation and, paradoxically, a manifest need to involve the concept of art and also, unavoidably, art history. It is obvious that they express an ambition for including video art in the fine art sphere – which art history at the time was argued to embrace solely – in order to address these works as unquestionably art. That the reasons for involving art history were still rather unclear, as to how and why a fine art category needed to be addressed, is particularly evident in the introductory essays by Battcock and Hanhardt respectively, whereas the selection of artists and art works which were included, the definition of the art form and the idea of its origin put forth in the Documenta essays reveal a rather strict and consensus-based understanding of video as art, as well as the set of ideas employed when creating and promoting the art form. Video art was apparently – tentatively – defined in relation to traditional visual arts, but also, because of its shared technology, to television and various film practices. These issues of relations, coherence and deviations remain in the monographs surveying video art’s history. Furthermore, in comparison with the later historical surveys, the early phase of video art was canonized here both regarding the artists and art works, as well as the primary trajectories and themes by which its past will be historically narrated. But what is perhaps the most conspicuous outcome of reading through these anthologies and Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema is that the level and

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width of theoretical inquiries performed are not of the same level in the following historicizing monographs on the art form. The critical engagement as well as the avidity and ambition to create an advanced theoretical video art discourse have lost some of their previous creative energy and are present as approaching the found – as in an already there – rather than being marked by further in-depth reconsiderations of what happens ideologically and theoretically when a shift (or rupture as regarding the notion of art) turns into (or presents itself) as a document, a historical fact. It is this kind of situation which Foucault suggests, when ‘history itself appears to be abandoning the irruption of events in favour of stable structures’.114

Changing paradigms of art In general art historical narratives of so-called postmodern art, beginning with art of the 1960s and beyond, it is often claimed that a paradigmatic shift regarding the notion of art occurred.115 Causes usually claimed are the new art forms, other ways and aims of making art, and the import of foremost post-structuralist, Marxist and feminist (re-)thinkings about art. This shift has been advocated successfully by Arthur Danto, as well as others, in highly art theoretical and philosophical texts. But over time it has also circulated as an undisputed fact in less theoretically informed writings, amongst which historical surveys are situated as a particular genre. This paradigmatic shift is far from always scrutinized any further. Instead it usually operates as an underlying presumption of how to understand art of the postwar period as breaking with ideas – and practices – fostered and performed particularly by high modernist art and its partisans – that is, when this shift is narrated in general/normative art history.116 My aim here is partially to dispute this shift understood as being of a paradigmatic level, yet a fairly radical theoretical change. In order to make a deviation from the traditional way of thinking that stems from locating art in relation to the binary of modernism–postmodernism, I suggest paramodernism as a tentative concept for rethinking.117 This is further related to the particular problems that occurred when the emerging practices of video art became connected to the notion of (fine) art in this, as normally claimed, tumultuous theoretical context. The situation during these decades tends to be described as a turmoil regarding how to critically understand and invest in the many new shapes that art (suddenly) seemed to take.118 Visual artists had turned to a variety of media not exclusive to art production or traditionally legible as art material (like oil and acrylic paint, marble, bronze – termed as ‘pure local facts’ by Danto)119 and sites only temporarily operating as venues for art (broadcasting, deserts, billboards and so on), but still claimed that what they did was actually art. My argument here is that this was not an entirely new situation

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regarding Western art practices, but rather (or also) a new awareness of the broad scope of creative fields in which artists were involved – and actually had been during the entire twentieth century (that is, within the same period but not within the frames of modernism and high modernism). My idea with paramodernism is to emphasize that, during the last century, in the West, there have obviously been several different approaches to and practices of art that (for various reasons) have been neglected in art historical practices; art that, seemingly, appeared to be difficult to negotiate into narratives of institutionalized modernism. The prefix para implies something that goes on – or takes place – beside, or against, or beyond the normative. Here it is not least a question of heritage and trajectories. With paramodernism, I refer to art and creative practices in a broader sense, which are contemporaneous with, but importantly also opposed to and deviating from, normative modernism; kinds of practices and attitudes which keep returning but with different strength and impact. This is thus not only about already institutionalized versions of avant-garde practices, but rather the idea of reappearances and reformulations of attitudes and practices. I want the concept to occasionally bridge the putative rupture between art categorized as either modernist or postmodernist, and to empower relational situations instead; to disrupt the omnipresence of this dichotomy. With this new notion I wish to reinforce a critical perspective that does not take for granted this assumed historical opposition, but rather argues for the importance of constant renegotiations of (neglected) attitudes regarding art and art practices historically. Primarily it is of relevance regarding practices that either were not, or at a still recent state were, included in normative modernism or disorderly activities that are still difficult (in a positive sense) to nominate as art. The emergence of the video medium as both an art material and an art form belongs to these confusing times, as does performance art, installation art, photography and conceptual art. Initially, writing about, exhibiting and thus promoting these art forms also testified to the period as experimental, of which the inevitable stumbling block was art, despite how peculiar that may sound today. Defining art became, again, a rather urgent matter. The discourse of art had taken new directions, and art history and criticism had to invent new ways of thinking about and understanding these new phenomena if they were to be dealt with in ways that made sense outside of academia (to a certain extent similar to the changed utterances enforced by the medium, as noted by Youngblood).120 Art as a conceptual, aesthetically and ideologically charged meeting place – a rendezvous – to be protected yet under negotiation (as mutated) is what manifests itself as an insistent crux in relation to theories and historical narratives on video art in what follows as well. According to Arthur Danto – whose ideas I focus on as a case in point, rather than arguing for a notion of art completely imbued with his theories – art of the 1960s and 1970s detached itself from art known hitherto, but the

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awareness of the ‘paroxysm of styles’ did not become clear (as in accepted) until the 1980s.121 The by now well-known and accepted paradigmatic shift, of which he is often situated as the initiator and key advocate, was that visual properties no longer stood as the primary criteria for defining what was art and what was not.122 Resulting from this conclusion was the notion that a particular narrative had come to an end during the 1970s, while art had not; the loss was that of not ‘belonging to a great narrative’ anymore and of (somehow) being situated in what can be described as initially a void after modernism.123 The consciousness of modernism (or rather, modernist artists and critics) was, according to Danto, at another level than pre-modernism. The effect of this heightened awareness was that modernist art distanced itself from ‘the previous history of art’, therefore performing a (more) progressive stance towards art (also notable in other cultural practices).124 Contemporary art (up until 1997, when his After the End of Art was published) had left the restraints of history altogether, using previous art as an archive of ‘living artistic options’.125 Simply put, the situation implied that there was no longer a desire or point seen in continuing (as in developing) modernism’s trajectories or ideas, according to Danto. This perception of the present as detached from the past as such regarding cause and effect – and the various norms and criteria attached to modernism, which is referred to in the singular nota bene – is also evident in the earliest writings formulating video art. But here, and this is important, the sense of difference was initially accounted for regarding how to understand, and claim, video art as art in the first place and, as a consequence, this problem was addressed by historicizing video/ film practices within the realm of art history – even though this appeared inadequate in many aspects – but with strong historical links to modernist film-making. The situation of art of the 1960s, 1970s and after is presented by Danto as chronologically after modernism but as simultaneously not continuing modernism and thereby breaking with historical progressions and linear evolution. Therefore, ‘after’ as a structuring device for thinking around art had come to an end.126 This is art’s philosophical turn, according to Danto. Nonetheless, ‘after’ is still around, and historical legacy and, in effect, historical narratives were not found obsolete at all (by everyone). The pluralism of modernist art activities such as both (experimental) filmmaking and subversive attempts of the avant-gardes to undo conventions and institutions are legacies invoked throughout the historicizing process aimed at situating video art within a discourse of fine art. However, pluralism regarding visual expressions is not synonymous with deconstructive practices claiming the unreliability of the putatively normalizing concepts and systems of legacies by which much historicizing practices are created.127 This, then, is an instance where the idea of paramodernism could (have) strengthen(ed) a plurality of relational situations and practices instead of trying to normalize the break called postmodernism – not to reinforce ideas of progression, but

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to avoid reconstructing a pure, finally defined, modernism and to make clear that new theories of art need not close other, particular, relations of either influence, attitudes or materials. If there was a void after modernism, it did not appear everywhere all of the time. Entering into a discussion on the discourse of art at the time around the 1960s and 1970s – when video art emerged – I have to admit that I cannot fully agree with theories which situate postmodern art as such a fundamental break with modernisms (which I argue deserves a plural form), which is what Danto and many others do. Warhol’s Brillo Boxes did not, of course, arise from nowhere – that is, if one is (still) willing to embark on a discourse of genealogy and perhaps consider other, paramodernist, options of thinking – and Warhol was far from the only one credited at the time for ‘this breakthrough to philosophy’.128 As my own position implies a site marked by historical hindsight back to the time when Danto wrote on art after the end of art, I think it is important to acknowledge here that his theories were not least (yet far from exclusively) about him describing a particular moment in time – namely, his own view of history and changes through the concept of art. It is precisely the changed concept that is the driving force in his interpretations of that period as well, as it also locates his own thinking on art before (and after) modernism.129 What has happened since is that this ontological shift regarding art has become a norm, an activated and circulating presumption, an unspoken yet empowered trope of postmodern art (of the postwar period), and its effect is evident in the monographic surveys discussed in the following (as well as in many other and different narratives). Thus, the effect of a Dantonian view of art of this era is also epistemological; the way we know about art, what art we know about, and how we produce knowledge about and by art have changed too.130 The plurality of art after the end of art is one thing; a turning to the past – not merely activated through an archive of propositions of art but for genealogies in order to create comprehensive narratives about the past of particular phenomena – is obviously another. For Danto, the art he addresses (which is a limited set of artists and art works which are by now the most well-known ‘postmodern artists’) performed such a paroxysmal break with modernism that he prefers the term post-historical art before postmodernism, since the latter still clings to ‘a before’ inescapably implying ‘an after’.131 Warhol’s art, being Danto’s prime example, made it clear that art ‘can be anything artists and patrons want it to be’.132 Art from now on answered to the philosophical question of why it is art.133 According to him, this ‘why’ cannot be sufficiently answered by references to style, market value, particular aesthetics, historical legacy, material employed or ideology; that is, by none of the criteria by which art had hitherto been identified. From this point on, art was essentially a philosophical matter.134 But the implications and effects of art’s philosophical turn do not say much about either practices of art history or artistic practices in a scope wider

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than the rather limited one that he addresses. It explains why so many new phenomena entered the discourse on art, but Danto’s theories do not answer how various art works are (nominated and hence become) art. I return to the issue of history in the following chapter, but for now it suffices to stress that there are differences in practising philosophy and art history respectively. Whereas Danto’s definition of art of a post-historical era is nearly a universalist one, much art history is today preoccupied with answering how, when and where something was or is art: that is, to consider art in its varieties and complex contexts, which, at its best, defies any expression of universalism. These issues were crucial when (initially) theorizing video art and finding out how to (best) deal historically, ideologically, conceptually and aesthetically with other moving image practices and with those already constituting the discourse of art history. The historicizing process taking place more explicitly in the monographs tends to make detours around the most problematic issues of history, art and self-reflexive practices. These are the primary aspects to be further discussed in the following, but I wish to point out already here that I discern a different attitude, and hence approach, between the early texts and the subsequent surveys. The former could be phrased as making efforts to perform philosophical inquiries of normative concepts of so-called traditional art history, whereas the latter rather seek unifying features (of various kinds) in order to produce legible art historical narratives – which is not the same as falling for universalism. To give but one example here, in A History of Video Art, Meigh-Andrews notes that there were both modernist and postmodernist concerns at play in the theorizing of early British video art, depending on the perspective chosen. When the video medium was in focus, it was more affiliated with Greenbergian modernism, and when the (inherent) critical aim was emphasized – especially in the format of narrative-based works (like feminist) – postmodern theories were found to be more suitable.135 To some degree, then, the two concepts and their inter-related theoretical fields were not entirely separated by time, but co-existed even if only occasionally. This is, however, the only instance where any such thing as modernist video art is spoken of. Normally, video art alongside the other new art forms is what is narratively positioned as that which causes the break with modernism. None of the other survey authors consider modernist aesthetics as relevant to video art (which is discussed further in the next chapter). Yet when the issues of heritage, past events and practices, theories and criticality are addressed as different kinds of origins or precursors to video art, they call precisely that break into question (but without acknowledging it). The rampageous situation which Danto takes as his point of departure is, partly, a highly subjective understanding of that time, but I am arguing that it is also narrated as chaotic precisely due to the prevailing prerogative of formalist thinking of art in a broad sense in the historical and cultural context in which both his writings and especially the early anthologies on video art

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were situated. Foremost, it was the Greenbergian version of modernism that was found to be of no or very limited relevance to much art of the time. For example, a movement such as surrealism, which, in relation to a Greenbergian formalist understanding, appeared as a too deviant project to operate as a core narrative of modernist art, has more recently been increasingly embraced by art historians as well as artists.136 That is, the ‘in the pale of history’ argument turned out to represent one particular historical narrative of the time. That Danto departs exclusively from this US-oriented modernism more or less defined by painting, opticality, the politically stripped and post-war years, is evident. As with the surveys on video art, numerous art historical surveys of Western art of the twentieth century – which circulate in the same geographically located market and within academia, written by scholars professionally active in the US – depart mainly from modernism as it evolved over there. According to Hans Belting, this implies that there are (at least) two different grand (or should one phrase it as broad?) narratives of modernism: one that begins and takes place in Europe, the other during the postwar era in the US. Thus, the time spans are different, as are the ideologies and historical situations framing these narratives.137 Modernisms understood instead as an umbrella concept of a variety of practices and ideas of art taking place simultaneously further implies that historical narratives structured by chronology as well as themes and notions can still make sense. That is, there are many possible genealogies but one cannot claim agreement or consensus on either a universalist or a disciplinary ground – one has to present, instead, which one is being narrated and how, while simultaneously not stipulating a closure of the past as something rather unproblematically homogeneous.138 My point is that it is the particular contextual and, perhaps, conceptual sites within a complex historical situation marked by plurality and diversity that makes more historical sense to address here – which, I suggest, is possible by acknowledging the disturbing quality of paramodernism. Consequently, Danto was right that a master narrative trying to encapsulate all modernist art movements within the same frame would fail crucial aspects of diversity. From the perspective of the purified Greenbergian version, postmodern artists’ break with modernist ideology, historical legacy and aesthetics thus went deeper than was the situation in Europe. Whereas the philosophical turn foreclosing any continuation of modernism was Danto’s major argument, Belting – writing from within the discipline of art history – came to a somewhat different conclusion. The crux seems (simply) to have been that art history was seen to be out of time with much art production of the 1960s and 1970s (like Morris’ performance 21.3 visualized). Nevertheless, this sense of living and acting in a time of chaos has seeped into concepts of art and the writings on it – especially in reference to (American) art of this period. The argument I therefore stress here is that the turbulence and inversions associated with this period have become constitutive aspects of how art and

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the art world are narrated, and hence regulate what and how we know and continues to produce knowledge (whether in the form of ‘the history of’ or other kinds of scholarly interrogations). ‘The great rupture’ (causing Danto, as it seems, to reconsider the very status of art as well as history) was thus, as I see it, about a sequence of minor ruptures and changes that reoccurred throughout the twentieth century; that is, with reference to artistic practices. Art, apparently, did not end. But the question of how something was art – as in the case of video art – was affected in those decades by scepticism towards subsuming to a politically and theoretically stripped art, as well as to an aesthetic claiming the prerogative of the optical (which, again, primarily refers to a situation of high modernism in the US and not to the pre-war avant-gardes in Europe). Even if art historians since have made serious attempts to undo the formalist and aesthetically rigorous ideas championed by Greenberg, it is still his version of modernism (or negotiated deviations performed as interpretations of his ideas) from which narratives on much of postmodernist art depart, by arguing the occurrence of an evident rupture regarding the then prevalent concept(s) of art.139 What was recognized as out of time were the narrow frames of understanding of and theorizing modernist art and concepts, and therefore were even lesser apt for theoretically advanced thinkings of (the then) contemporary art. Also instrumental in the fall of art was not only a new awareness of artists employing (almost) whatever seemed suitable to make an art work, but also actually a reclaiming of the potential subversive plurality of modernist avant-gardes.140 This did not mean that anything goes – may pass as art – but that art, at this particular point in time, could be understood as many different things and phenomena speaking of various – and even conflicting – issues and by different media; and, as a result, upsetting essentialist ideas regarding the concept(s) of art. In due course, the concept of art became closely related to the embracing of plurality. But a pluralist field of art production was not an entirely new situation exclusive to postmodern art – the significant difference was that theories and narratives of art came to embrace it, too.141 In short: from an American/Dantonian perspective, art fell when Greenbergianism did – it simply went down with it. The idea of a chaotically different situation in the 1960s and 1970s – as it is interpreted by Danto and others, especially during the 1980s and 1990s – departs, to a fairly extreme degree, from the idea of a Greenbergian-defined modernism, which was slim regarding what counted as art in the first place and, consequently, which art was claimed to be progressive (while Danto himself speaks of levels of consciousness). Narratives of modern, postmodern and contemporary art produced in North America and Europe – which are the geographical areas that the surveys on video art considered here almost exclusively address – are principally preconditioned by the trajectory that centres Greenberg’s theories of which art of the first half of the twentieth century counted and why.142 This is

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often followed by the Dantonian exclamation of a post-historical era signifying that art was unhooked from the visual paradigm of earlier art, resulting in the broader acceptance of an institutionalized art concept, and thereafter concluding in a/the formation of a wide-ranging field of severe critiques of history writing, and concepts normally termed postmodernism. The formalist, utterly narrow, take on art produced in the era of high modernism, which has prevailed for a long time, was in opposition to the plurality of artistic practices and ideas of the same historical period, which have been successfully recalled by way of, foremost, post-structuralist theories and rethinkings.143 This is yet another instance where my idea of paramodernism could operate as a concept that renegotiates and bridges particular aspects of art and art production of the last century and hence questions the omniprescence of ‘the void after modernism’. However rarely voiced, the primary subject of art historical writings on modernism is – still – painting. The basis for Danto’s first arguments for other criteria for art was the Brillo Boxes, which could be argued to be as much sculpture as painting, as well as something conceptually beyond (that is, different from) these two concepts. But his discussion departed from and revolved around representation as it appeared in theories on painting (sculpture was never close to being written about as extensively as the former).144 Another feature of stories of modernism is, of course, that they are almost entirely based on the achievements of male artists (unless they explicitly deal with so-called women artists). Thus, despite the variations of what one argues as proper definitions of these notions (modernism, postmodernism, art, artist and painting) and when and where the different narratives begin, they depart from one specific art form performed, most often, by a male-gendered producer. (Note that I am here only referring to surveys, overviews of particular art forms and/or twentieth-century art from North America and Europe.) Just as one can choose amongst innumerable paintings, one can choose other art forms and artists as well as artworks (not to mention theory, method or ideology – or practices that appear unstable in relation to the concept of art), and these choices affect the narrative under production. Notions like authenticity, subjectivity, flatness, media specificity, self-referentiality, originality, style and so on are not always, and far from automatically, either relevant or mean the same things when employed in interpretations of such different art works as painting, performance, earth art or video art. If one neglects to consider these and other concepts as historically and theoretically tied to painting, and therefore avoids performing any kind of adjustment or translation when they travel – or are found to be unable to travel – to other kinds of artistic expressions, then it seems inevitable that these interpretations will falter.145 (Even such concepts as sculpture and painting, burdened with tradition and historical heritage, were in crisis since the contemporary works to which they were attached did not always look

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or take place like works of the past.) Concepts may have general meanings, but need to be negotiated and adjusted when employed in relation to specific art works, contexts and times; that is, when used for different discursive purposes. A central problem of finding more reasonable ways of talking of art in a new era (postwar and then beyond) – and which is palpable regarding video art – was that so many of the main tropes and criteria in the narrative of the historicized modernism simply did not make sense in relation to the new art forms. The main reason for this argument is that these concepts were developed as exclusively framing a particular genealogy of painting. Or, as in Mitchell’s phrasing, in coming to terms with ‘the most familiar and threadbare myths of modernism’: ‘It [painting] is, after all, the central, canonical medium of art history.’146 Keeping this in mind, the notion that a possible backdrop for the claimed plural and nuanced postmodern take on art is, at least partly, constituted by a narrow modernist (formalist) narrative of painting makes the hesitations towards affiliations with institutionalized art of the time more reasonable, not to say legitimate. Art in this regard was apparently a deadlock – as was art history. However, none of the writers of the video art surveys addressed in the following locate the problem with the concept of art or the practice of art history in this particular circumstance: that they actually (if I am right) rebel against stories and theories of painting is left completely unannotated, perhaps simply due to a lack of awareness. For practices of art history to be reliable, to make sense as a field of research both within academia and in other art institutions, it seems reasonable that the agents playing in this field, acting the discourse so to speak, have a firm understanding of the concept of art, that is, what one claims to actually historicize and theorize about. The history of art – not entirely synonymous with art history as practice – was a master narrative, at least until the paradigmatic shift that precluded this business, since it was based on ideas of evolution and progress: of advancing the phenomena entitled art. However, art history was in crisis too, but depending on the art (type of, of what time, culture and so on) the crisis looked different from different points of departure.147

Art or not: concepts, institutions and ontology With the emergence and establishment of new art forms, as well as particular art works destabilizing traditional ones by not being easily categorizable into any single category, the ontology of the notion of art had to be re-thought, since art no longer made sense in exclusive relation to the idioms of painting and sculpture respectively. In order to address video art within a presumably coherent and non-contradictory, if not yet exhaustive, theory of art, the notion itself and the categories inscribed therein became increasingly necessary to

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reformulate. Whereas Danto had advocated art’s philosophical turn by arguing that the visible criteria had become obsolete (that is, a passed stage in history), it is in this present context rather an issue of recovering engagement as a pivotal aspect of the then advanced, contemporary art. This difference in focus reveals the radically different practices; asking why something is art versus asking instead for aims (as, for example, Battcock and Youngblood did) and meanings in order to understand what it wants to communicate. To simply adopt (from the US perspective where these discussions were undertaken as they appeared in the publications in focus) the (assumed) prevailing, hegemonic formalist notion of art, or system of ideas, was never an adequate option as it seems. The premises were altered too much and hence art became – to a certain extent – a discourse approached with rather great hesitation but also as paradoxically needed. Aside from all the objects and events that the notion of art refers to, art was (and still is): 1) institutionalized (practices and objects); 2) historicized; 3) theorized; and 4) canonized. One aspect that is not overlooked on a superficial level, but rarely examined in depth in this context, is the concept of the artist. These two concepts, art and artist, cannot exist without each other – and yet the latter is more or less left unproblematized. It is as if this particular concept was not altered and renegotiated during this period, that it travelled unnoticed yet in the company of concepts in doubt. Regretfully, an interrogation of the artist is beyond the scope of my own examination. Still, I want to point out this issue as pertinent to keep in mind when reading the following. It concerns, for example, aspects of who is named as an artist, and what the role and goal of an artist might be assumed to be: to express individuality, the essence of a media, to produce aesthetic objects for a particular market, or, for example, to conduct critical investigations of society at large.148 The ‘conception of what art is needs one hell of a lot of rethinking’, writes Robert Stefanotty in his contribution to the anthology edited by Battcock.149 Acknowledging video art as one of the art forms that ‘has been relegated to unsalable status’, Stefanotty takes issue with the art market as occupied by thinking about – and dealing with – art as dependent on concepts of the original, single and valuable art work (and, in relation to the paragraph above, one could add: the signature of an identifiable individual artist). This is just one example of the rather widespread reluctance towards a value system that had run its course, so to speak. Video art by definition is an ongoing process which has evidently run as a core aspect in the historicizing process, but for clarity I have singled out the art issue. The concept of art was evidently a conundrum to be solved in order to talk about video as part of the art world. To name something as art inevitably implied also admitting its existence and the understanding of it as part of an institutionalized discourse. Again, the paradigmatic change of how to understand art – as, for example, a result of a Dantonian field of agreements –

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was not (yet) embraced by a majority of the empowered agents within the art world. For example, in her essay ‘The Surreality of Videotape’, keen to bring out both the importance of the working process and the viewing situation, Ingrid Wiegand expresses her doubt about the point of defining video art, writing that: The desire for definition is also a desire to keep up with the intellectualized aesthetic olympics set up by art critics for other artists’ media. It is, after all, the current art-world premise that if you can’t say a mouthful about it, it isn’t art … Nevertheless, video, like other media, cannot be defined meaningfully. Verbal definitions for visual experiences are merely aesthetic games.150

Another important aspect to remember is that art as foremost utterances of individuality and subjective expressions (alongside formalism) was also still a widespread assumption within (American) art institutions such as museums and art history, at least as far as this is presented, overtly or not, in the narratives focused on here. To refuel the concept of art with a critical stance thus led to questioning of the institutionalized art discourse. What happened in the 1960s and 1970s especially, the stories keep telling us, was that an increasing number of artists began to problematize the so-called white cube (or the ‘white flexible container’, as Charlotte Klonk poignantly terms it)151 as a site marked by particular ideologies, specific aesthetics, modes of communication and monetary systems.152 Moreover, they insisted on art as a cumulative, plural and ever-changing concept. Or was it that artists who did perform critique simply became more interesting to art critics, historians and galleries at this point of time? Either way, whether artists generally became more critical or not is different from being recognized from this perspective. Thus, as Duchamp’s ready-mades and Warhol’s Brillo Boxes famously enforced alterations of the notion of art, video art was claimed to have the necessary potential of doing (similar to Youngblood, who anticipated even more overwhelming effects). In other words, video as art could be art only insofar as the concept per se was altered (even if at times less than slightly); or if narratives of earlier art were reconsidered more seriously. According to Martha Rosler, ‘critical video art’ departed from other theories and systems of communication to a greater extent than did so-called traditional art like painting and sculpture, since the former had the potential ‘for interactive and multi-sided communication’.153 Here, one of the aims of entering the art system was to change the passive encounter with art by making the viewer–participant interchangeable with – or at least equally important to – the producer–artist. This makes sense, since passiveness is not a site for social and cultural critique, that is, engagement. In order to empower art, which Rosler argued was fundamental to much video art, art had to be acknowledged as a practice that (beside aesthetic qualities) aimed at performative critique (in the form of a ‘consciousness industry’).154

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The aestheticizing imperative (which omits both ‘documentary forms and topical political contents’) is also addressed by Martha Gever in relation to (American) curatorial and museum preferences, which she claims established ‘video’s modern-art pedigree’.155 It is clear that even if there were, and still are, video art works that do not aim for a performative critique but operate closer to, for example, a formalist aesthetic contemplation by a single viewer, it was not this latter branch of video art production that implicitly and by necessity aimed at renegotiating the concept of art (sheer visuality seems to have been adequate here). For artists and critics like Rosler and Gever, the primary problem with video as art or not was the imperative recognition of art as also practices performing cultural critique. By extension, this claim involved another trajectory than that of technical inventions and film, and thus another origin and set of forerunners: another narrative. Moreover, to think of video practices in relation to art was clearly not (always) foremost a philosophical issue. However, if one strives to change and broaden what a concept like art may or may not embrace, one needs to at least tentatively define what it has been hitherto. And if one comes to the conclusion that the video medium is also an artistic medium, then it follows to think through how it is art and what, so to speak, becomes of all other things that are also art: that is, what art does to art works rather than what we (who are the inhabitants of the institutionalized art world) do with art. Via Battcock, Hanhardt and others, I have already briefly touched upon the internal discussions and arguments for video art being claimed as art by way of difference (as, for example, moving image, the acclaimed criticality) as much as likeness (by way of its visuality, and formal references to sculpture and installations) to previous (institutionalized) art. What follows from this is to scrutinize the presumed ontology of the concept of art and those events and objects that are collected under this notion; and more precisely, which characteristics must be shared in order to inscribe particular objects made by a media hitherto not exclusively used for making art. What kinds of activities are specific – and possible – within a (re-formulated) ontology of art? A simple answer would be that they take place, happen and are situated within the institutionalized art world. Another is that these events and objects are produced as art and by artists but emerge in various venues and sites that help categorize them as precisely different ways of art. However, a claim such as Rosler’s, to change the notion of art in order to also include criticality as a kind of possible speech act and not merely as yet another classification within the system of art, demands a revision of the ontology of art. For the most part, this philosophical inquiry of the concept of art and its ontology is not discussed in the surveys – as noted above, the job of surveys is not that of debating critical and highly theoretical questions. Nevertheless, this question appears as a haunting issue and unconsciously both promotes and structures

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these narratives: the nomination as art, and how and why the works were art, are issues that reappear. To claim video works as art works, then, implies that these works have to be addressable as art works. Formalist art theory was obviously found to have too little in common with how and for what purpose many video artists worked.156 Hence video art could not be submitted to a formalist ontology/ definition of art. To think of art as a category of shared essences was not an option. If video art was art not (exclusively) by visual likeness, materials employed or an idea of art’s essence, then what remained was where it is art and the identity of the maker: the (trained) visual artists. This is the point where institutions such as museums, galleries, art critique and not least art history are called for. It is only in the aspect of where art happens and by whom it is produced that it is, or rather was, possible to create a coherent, comprehensive and non-contradictory site for video as art. The majority of the works that are included as representatives of video art in these surveys were displayed in established art sites. Texts as a particular site or recognition also operated as sites for the legitimizing, and lasting, processes of video art. But as I show in the following, not even the limitation of the where of art was an easy negotiation. The risk of ideological and aesthetic contamination seems to have been a dilemma, causing a critical situation of vacillation between benefiting from the acknowledgement and understanding of video works and ripping off the subversive potential. Mieke Bal has (in another context) suggested the word dirt as a possible future concept: ‘Unlike words such as “contamination”, which inspire fear of otherness, “dirt” is not frightening.’ And since dirt is possible to wash away, it does not stick like contamination, which has to be treated since it affects the body – or history – from the very inside: ‘And it is inevitable … but [dirt is] not deadly; as long as you take good care of yourself, you can continuously negotiate how dirty your environment can make you.’157 What seemed to be at stake here though was not a dirty situation but an actual risk of video art being contaminated by an aesthetic ideology and system of valuation opposite to that in which the works were created and what meaning (and content) they were aiming for. The risk was threefold: firstly, that the works would be symbolically weakened regarding their potential for social and cultural critique; secondly, that – in regard to the media being (actually) very different from those of painting and sculpture – the demand for other conceptual tools for interpretation would not be met; and thirdly, that the claimed capabilities would be lost altogether if taken hostage by the then ruling presumptions of what constitutes art and what does not. That is, contamination would in this context operate as a hostage-taker, but these risks could instead (also) be acknowledged in terms of para and hence encourage a more unstable – even paradoxical – approach to notions such as art.

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For Rosler it was the technological trajectory – focusing on TV, broadcasting and the uncritical industry of mass/popular culture – that enervated video art. She advocated a transgression of the (then) present institutionalized art system: a practice that emanates not foremost from technical innovations but from the politically active avant-garde of Dada and surrealism claiming revisions and changes. In opposition to an institutionalized art discourse, video art should not be claimed from an out-of-date understanding of art as a singular monolith whose tentacles embraced an artist such as Paik and thereby continued the myth-making. Evidently, the past as it was materialized in art works came to rescue further employments of the very notion of art, and I think not only as options (as Danto advocated) but as an archive and (para-)historical legacy to depart from. As there was not yet an academic field such as visual culture, which, presumably, would have been a more attractive ground due to its broad take on visuality, the struggle with art/-ness persisted in various ways. Michael Rush, arguing that ‘the language used for Video art is borrowed from film’, suggests that these two branches need be separated in order to understand video as art.158 It is in the hands of artists that video art is made and he thus rejects a too technological orientation as art since ‘those interested in the more technological aspects of the medium did not remain artists, per se, but … went in other directions’. However, Meigh-Andrews is of the opposite opinion here, situating technology at centre-stage.159 Video art had been around for four decades at the time when Rush’s book was published. Still, the primary defining aspect is who the maker is – and the artists he addresses are all well known, even in general art history (with a few exceptions, who – generally – rather belong to the discourses of cinema and experimental film, like Godard). What artists do – making their products art – is constantly inventing ‘new ways of telling things’: and this is what separates their work from cinema/film. Furthermore, their work deals with interactivity (by now ‘a medium in itself’).160 Acknowledging a variety of themes and approaches, the lasting aspect differentiating video as art is the profession of the maker. Criticizing Krauss for a ‘sweeping generalization about Video art’ and not taking issue with the art form’s preoccupation with television, Rush claims – as probable defining prerequisites – engagement in cultural critique and an ambition to ‘maximize the perceptual potentials of the medium’ as criteria.161 Despite the various technical devices available and employed by now (that is, digital technique, computer programs for editing and so on) that often make video art an umbrella term for moving image art, Rush – like the other authors addressed here – sticks to the media-specific notion of video art. What is argued to be more important than definitions by way of technique is, however – with reference to another essay by Krauss – the present, where ‘ideas – and not specific media – are central to artists’.162 But whether this may be true regarding the latter, media specificity is still

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the central core in video art history. In practice, however, it is the selected body of art works argued as representative for each of these narratives that makes up the ground for what video art may be. Anyway, Rush does not seriously engage in a discussion on notions and theories of and by art. The turbulent time of the 1960s and 1970s, when professionals within the art world answered to changes in society – political, cultural and technological – and are (postmodernly) argued to relinquish media specificity per se, slips (almost like an implicit argument) into the declination of the notion of art. In Video: The Reflexive Medium, Yvonne Spielmann differentiates between three categories of producers of video operating in different cultural fields, of which one ‘views itself decidedly as video art, which claims gallery space and later museums as the appropriate places for the presentation and reception of its works’.163 What primarily marks video art is the aesthetics, a viewpoint that she shares with Elwes and others. Both of them argue that there were artists aiming for a critical intervention of the fine art practices and those who did not have an agenda of subverting the art world system as such.164 Thus, depending on the aims and strategies of the individual artists, the notion of art is applied differently. However, Spielmann’s concept of aesthetics is directly and primarily linked to explicit technological issues: ‘video as signal process’.165 Her discussions and analysis of particular art works depart and return to the technical apparatuses used, which imply that the concept of aesthetics operates from a different set of parameters than do those interpreters who situate their discussions in relation to a more strict fine art discourse. Her investigations focus on an aesthetics specific to video and include capacity, speed and operationality as functions of the medium and hence aesthetic prerequisites.166 It is foremost the medium per se that is her focus, but like the other authors here, she advocates the necessity that video as medium is clearly differentiated from other moving image media (like film and computers), as well as traditional art forms: For the early phase of the medium, dividing it into genres like videotape and video installation, video performance and video sculpture has little meaning and scarcely contributes to determining the specifics of video. As the governing criterion for investigating video-specific characteristics, circumstances need to be established concerning what facet of the media exploration and intervention with the new technology emerges from.167

Nevertheless, Spielmann reveals a hesitation to talk about the video media in terms of art, since the latter entails a loss of media specificity – the centre of her own interests. However, in comparison with the other monographs – and a number of essays in the anthologies – it is only Rush who does not make technology a primary aspect of the historical narrative, which is why I found Spielmann’s argument here rather strange. Nevertheless, she prefers the terms video works (not with ‘art’ in-between), reflexive audiovisual medium,

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and audiovisual expressions alternately, even though the majority of her examples are exclusively situated in a fine art context. This shift, however, clearly reveals her omittance of the discussion of whether these works are art or not – a debate she declares highly irrelevant to her own aims as it often fails to seriously consider the technological factors.168 Further on she talks of the ‘protected realm of “art”’ as a mode of categorization that can no longer sufficiently validate the video works of which she speaks.169 However, she posits conceptual video work as not only a particular genre, but manifestly in an art context by recognizing the artists’ own ‘purpose of establishing video as a new sector in the canon of the arts, in the world of the art market and in the existing and recognized contexts of exhibition (essentially gallery and museum)’ when addressing artistic video and the ‘experimental phase’ explicitly.170 The focus on how the available techniques are employed does not exclude her from discussing what the works are about in terms of meaning, subjects and themes – primary aspects of art and art history. The way she situates these as also technological issues, or facts even, deviates from the other monographs under discussion here. Meigh-Andrews’ book, the title of which clearly states that it is about video art, is the most technologically focused, next to Spielmann’s. Even though the nomination of art is not argued as a real problem here, he too emphasizes the plurality of converging practices that grant the multifaceted practices which on the one hand are inscribed within the art form, but on the other hand keep video art away from a pure media-specific enterprise. The need for categories and precise concepts is naturally more important for critics and art historians, for whom they are the tools with which we work, than for artists generally (at least when in the process of making an art work), and the (initial) lack thereof is noted by Meigh-Andrews as a reason why artists were attracted to video in the first place.171 Here Paik is noted to have had the ‘ambition for video art as one dedicated to elevating the genre to be of equal status to painting and sculpture’, and so too is David Hall for aiming for a separation of video from the field of broadcast television as well as painting and sculpture which would establish ‘video art as an autonomous art form’, hence making it possible to develop a theoretical and aesthetical discourse of video as art and as a move away from objectoriented art.172 The situation of especially the first decade of video art was marked by collaborations transgressing the strictly defined branches of video art, activist video, experimental video/film and so on, and reveals that definitions of what one has made serve particular purposes.173 For the practice of artists – which I am concerned with here – definitions had and still have an importance for determining funding through scholarships, teaching salaries, exhibition fees and sales of one’s art works. For scholars and critics, the notion of art serves as a frame for interpretations, meaning production and – therefore – contextualizing and historicizing purposes.

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The aesthetic concerns and issues of a particular video work can thus lead to contextually different interpretations.174 It is symptomatic that he terms particular works ‘gallery pieces’.175 In the chapter entitled ‘The Gallery Opens Its Doors’, Meigh-Andrews discusses video works that are either installations or projections – two formats that are thus intimately associated with the institutional art site: the gallery and its audience.176 But here, too, it is evident that the (assumed) border of the realm of fine art has to be repeatedly questioned: that is, that artists working with and in traditional fine art sites also sought ‘new alternatives to the restrictions associated with the creation of the art object’.177 The video medium as shared with professionals and activities outside the strictly defined field of fine art is a presentation of actual events but also, in the context of surveying video art’s history, a strategy – and rhetoric – to constantly recall difference by definition as a criterion for video art. Depending on the main trajectory of these historical narratives (that is, if the fine art realm, technological developments or the relation to television or film are in focus), video art is defined as argued as an art form from slightly different aspects. It can be art because video work is made by an artist, because it is displayed in a gallery or museum, collected as art, hence circulating on the art market, or because video art shares certain features with both painting and sculpture and because it is a form of aesthetic expression – critical or not. The parameters for art are obviously the two major art forms per se – a common rhetoric but also a depiction of the practical situations for artists: to receive funding, what one makes has to be art, and preferably of a high standard. These reoccurring references particularly to painting (when the notion of art is discussed) sometimes have a flare of paragone debates in Renaissance art theory, where the constantly competing art forms both shared the common basis of being visual fine art (I am aware here of the anachronistic usage of concepts) but therefore had to claim their own superiority of visual representation by way of the differences between them.178 (The fact that video is an audiovisual medium is not, however, a central issue in the present context. This is noted by everyone, yet Spielmann is the one who makes most out of it.) The concept of art remains under constant negotiation. Like cubism and abstract painting, for example, which seriously altered the very idea of painting (as a visual mode no longer only employed and valued for truthful representations of the world), so did visual techniques (like performance, photography and video) unsettle the concept from the hitherto defining criteria by being incorporated in a fine art discourse. By the mid-1990s new technology again unsettled the concept not only of art, but also of video art. In his essay ‘Vision After Television: Technocultural Convergence, Hypermedia, and the New Media Arts Field’, Michael Nash notes the death of video art:

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The least that can be said is that we have witnessed the death of video art in the United States. By ‘video art’ I mean the formal category defined by disciplinespecific Great Society arts funding, theoretical resistance to electronic mass culture, and the self-serving historiography of curators seeking job security. There are almost no ‘video’ festivals in the United States anymore. The ‘blue-chip’ video artists – Gary Hill, Nam June Paik, Bill Viola – have been absorbed by the traditional arts establishment and now concentrate on creating collectible video installations … It was said a decade ago that video art may have been the only art form to have a history before it had a history, and now its history is history before we had a chance to mourn its passing.179

In the 1990s there was yet another debate and call for changes that insisted on rigorous examinations of the values and ideologies framing the Western concept of art: identity politics and theories aiming for a more critical, and politically charged, art.180 Aesthetic and ideological opinions, situations and positions assumed to be shared are sooner or later insisted on as precisely not shared, and it is at those moments in time when the ideologically biased art world practices disturb the art discourse from the inside and to such an extent that the grounds for validations have to be revised; as does art history. The notion of art may have lost much of its earlier precision, but it still does its job since it (at least) signals what the topic of the conversations and debates aim at.

Notes 1 Chris Meigh-Andrews is of the opinion that by the mid-1970s, video art was so distinguished from film that it had established the ground for ‘its own history’: Chris Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art: The Development of Form and Function, Berg, Oxford, 2006, p. 81. These are also the years when larger exhibitions on video art particularly began to be produced. For early shows and display venues, see also Johanna Gill’s report Video: State of the Art, The Rockefeller Foundation, New York, 1976. Michael Rush’s concluding section ‘Chronology’ also lists a selection of exhibitions between 1963 and 2003: Michael Rush, Video Art, Thames & Hudson, London, 2003, pp. 213–219. 2 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms: http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/opr/ t4/e1754?q=video+art&article_section=all&search=article&pos=2&_start=1#firsthit (accessed 22 November 2011). 3 Oxford Companion to Western Art: http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t118/ e2700?q=video+art&article_section=all&search=article&pos=3&_start=1#firsthit (accessed 22 November 2011). Note that the entry has not been edited for some years: Paik died in 2006. 4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_art (accessed 22 November 2011). 5 Max Liljefors, Videokonsten: en introduktion, Studentlitteratur, Lund, 2005, p. 21. My translation. 6 See Liljefors, p. 21; Sylvia Martin, Video Art, Taschen, Cologne, 2006, p. 8; Rush, 2003, pp. 53–54; Meigh-Andrews on this particular show, pp. 12–15. On the website http://www.art-in.de/von_der_ Heydt_Museum.php?id=1842, it reads: ‘Rolf Jährling (1913–1991), der die Galerie Parnass 1949 im damals noch kriegszerstörten Wuppertal gründete, zeigte zunächst abstrakte Kunst, insbesondere Werke der lyrisch-abstrakten und der informellen Malerei. Anfang der 60er Jahre wurde die Galerie mit den Aktivitäten von Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell und Bazon Brock zum wichtigsten Forum der Fluxus-Bewegung’ (accessed 24 November 2011). See also Günter Bär, ed., Crossroads Parnass: International Avant-Garde at Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal 1949–1965, Goethe-Institut, London, 1982. Furthermore, 1963 is also the year by which Centre Pompidou’s

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ambitious 2012 show Vidéo Vintage 1963–1983 begins its historical survey of video art. See Christine van Assche and Florence Parot, eds, Vidéo Vintage 1963–1983: une sélection de vidéos fondatrices des collections nouveaux médias du musée national d’art moderne Centre Pompidou, Centre Pompidou Editions, Paris, 2012. 7 In his essay ‘An Art of Temporality’, Christopher Eamon points to the difference to proper video art, since it was the TV sets as ‘material in its own right’ that Paik used, and not making and showing videotapes (p. 72): Christopher Eamon, ‘An Art of Temporality’, in Stuart Comer, ed., Film and Video Art, Tate Publishing, London, 2009, pp. 66–85. In Sylvia Martin’s version there were twelve TV sets (p. 8); according to Liljefors the number was 13 (p. 21). According to Martin, there were, however, sound recordings which were fed into one of the sets: ‘The sound recording’s electronic impulses influenced the likewise electronically produced image on the monitor’ (p. 8). 8 These early works by Vostell are considered to be important events in the history of video art by John G. Hanhardt, ‘Dé-collage/Collage: Notes towards a Reexamination of the Origins of Video Art’, in Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, eds, Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, Aperture and Bay Area Video Coalition, New York, 1990, pp. 71–79. See also Rush, 2003, pp. 213 and 53; Liljefors, p. 21; Margaret Morse, ‘Video Art Installation’, in Hall and Fifer, pp. 161–162; Chris Meigh-Andrews (referring to Hanhardt), pp. 9–10, 23; Martin, pp. 7–8. Also noted by Christopher Eamon, p. 72; and mentioned by Spielmann as ‘video sculpture’ later developed as multimedia installations: Yvonne Spielmann, Video: The Reflexive Medium, translated by Anja Welle and Stan Jones, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2008, p. 87 (originally published as Video. Das reflexive Medium, Suhrkamp Press, Frankfurt, 2005). 9 The method – dé-coll/age – that Vostell claimed to have invented here implied using TV sets as sculptural objects, while covered and partly glimpsed beneath was distorted reception of broadcasts. See Hanhardt, in Hall and Fifer. 10 The importance of the TV set as not only a vehicle for the screened moving images but as an important aesthetic factor of a work becomes clear – if not before – when technologies change and institutions have to deal with the preservation of particular works of art. To mention but one example: Douglas Gordon’s work Pretty Much Every Video and Film Work From About 1992 Until Now. To Be Seen On Monitors, Some With Headphones, Others Run Silently and All Simultaneously, 1992, which consists of 83 Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) TV sets standing on beer kegs. This means that not only the tapes shown on the screens have to be preserved but the technology by which it is transmitted and screened also has to be maintained in order for the work to remain intact – the most recent technology does not play it. 11 On early ‘television art’ as discussed in the surveys, see Meigh-Andrews on Gerry Schum’s gallery in Berlin, pp. 19–23; Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, Dutton, New York, 1970, p. 292; Liljefors refers to TV art and art employing the TV media in different contexts, for example, in relation to the early phase of video art but especially in the context of the collective artistic collaborations of Videofreex, TVTV, Raindance Corporation, Ant Farm and T.R. Uthco, pp. 69–78; Rush, 2003, pp. 14–27; Spielmann, especially pp. 77–82. Catherine Elwes, in Video Art: A Guided Tour, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London, 2005, discusses television, the TV medium and the inter-relationships between this and video art in various contexts throughout her book; see, for example, the introduction, pp. 1–20, and, for TV art in the 1980s, pp. 96–140. In the anthologies that I address particularly here, television and the TV medium is also extensively addressed and discussed, but not always in terms of ‘television art’. See Kim Levin, ‘Video Art in the TV Landscape: Notes on Southern California’, in Gregory Battcock, ed., New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1978, pp. 65–75; and David Ross, ‘A Provisional Overview of Artists’ Television’, in Battcock, 1978, pp. 138–165. In John G. Hanhardt, ed., Video Culture: A Critical Investigation, Peregrine Smith Books, Layton, in association with Visual Studies Workshop Press, New York, (1986) 1990, see especially the second part entitled ‘Video and Television’, pp. 147–218. In Hall and Fifer, see their introduction and especially the essays by Kathy Rae Huffman, ‘Video Art: What’s TV Got to Do with It?’, pp. 81–90, and Vito Acconci, ‘Television, Furniture, and Sculpture: The Room with the American View’, pp. 125–134. In Michael Renov and Erika Suderburg, eds, Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, see, for example, the essays by Gregg Bordowiz, ‘Operative Assumptions’, pp. 173–184, and Michael Nash, ‘Vision after Television: Technocultural Convergence, Hypermedia, and the New Media Arts Field’, pp. 382–399. In Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot, eds, Video Art: An Anthology, The Raindance Foundation, New York and London, 1976, see, for example: David Antin, ‘Video: The Distinctive Features of the Medium’, pp. 174–183; Peter Frank, ‘Video Art Installations: The Telenvironment’, pp. 204–209; Hermine Freed, ‘“Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going?”’, pp. 210–213; John Hanhardt, ‘Video/Television Space’, pp. 220–224; and Bruce Kurtz, ‘The Present Tense’, pp. 234–243. However, several further essays address television to a different extent and various perspectives; here I list only those dealing with it in more relevance to my own interests.

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12 Obviously, television was not produced nor broadcast by either the same kind of agents or the same visual, rhetorical or ideological parameters in the different European countries – where state-owned television was the normal situation – or in the US. In the latter, television was owned and broadcast by private companies. Another important feature that differs between ‘European’ and American television is that commercials were a regular feature in the latter but not in the former. Furthermore, television was used differently in Eastern European countries and Western European ones. In brief: television was not a universal phenomenon, despite the technology, but employed with different aims, senders and receivers, and ideologically charged in rather different political and cultural contexts. On television and art, see, further, Youngblood, especially Part 5 – ‘Television as a Creative Medium’, pp. 257–344. However, according to Rush, 2003, 90 per cent of Americans owned a TV in 1962. Liljefors makes the same reference to Rush and this figure (p. 23). See also, for example: Roy Armes, On Video, Routledge, London, 1988, p. 60; and Laura Cottingham, ‘New Wine into Old Bottles: Some Comments on the Early Years of Art Video’, in Rosalie West, ed., Outer & Inner Space: Pipilotti Rist, Shirin Neshat, Jane & Louise Wilson, and the History of Video Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 2002, pp. 9–11. 13 For arguments in support of a more important part played by Vostell, see, for example, Hanhardt, in Hall and Fifer; Liljefors, pp. 21–26. Christopher Eamon suggests that Paik was influenced by Vostell’s employment of TV sets (p. 72). In 1963 Vostell exhibited works composed of TV sets in the exhibition TV Trouble, Smolin Gallery, New York. See Liljefors, p. 21. Neither Paik’s Distorted TV nor Vostell’s 1958 piece included video (tapes) – still these works are generally acknowledged as the first video art works by the by then two video artists-to-be. 14 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (L’archéologie du savoir, Gallimard, Paris, 1969), translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith, Routledge, London and New York, 2002, p. 4 and passim. 15 Martin, p. 9. The reference to Pollock in this respect is only found here. 16 However, Paik was far from only a video artist, working in various media, a circumstance that Rush points out in relation to Fluxus: Rush, 2003, p. 69. On Paik’s broad artistic practices see, for example, John G. Hanhardt, The Worlds of Nam June Paik, Guggenheim Museum Publications, New York, 2000. The importance of Paik is also emphasized in the beginning of Hong Sung-Min’s article ‘Korean Video Art Now: From Collage to Montage’. Sung-Min writes: ‘When did video art emerge in Korea? Was it during the 1960s when Nam June Paik began working with video in New York? No. It was on 1 January 1984 when Paik’s work, Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, was broadcast live via satellite throughout Korea and Koreans finally became acquainted with video as a new art genre. This is not to say that artwork using video did not exist in Korea before 1984 … But just because a phenomenon exists doesn’t mean that its presence is confirmed.’ See Hong Sung-Min, ‘Korean Video Art Now: From Collage to Montage’, Art AsiaPacific, no. 27, 2000, pp. 76–81. An example of texts that position the relation of Western and Korean video art as a specific interpretative aspect is Robert C. Morgan, ‘Hyunki Park: Neo-Metaphysical Video and Conceptual Art’, Journal of Performance and Art, vol. 29, no. 3, 2007, pp. 30–33. See also, for example, Helen H. Park, ‘Expressions of the Emergent: Korean Video Art, History and Memory’, available at www.academia.edu. In an article on Japanese video art by Scott Nygren, an ‘American reading’ is emphasized as both misleading yet referring to a certain impact that American video artists brought to Japan. See Scott Nygren, ‘Paper Screen: Video Art in a Japanese Context’, Journal of Film and Video, vol. 39, no. 1, 1987, pp. 27–35. 17 Martin mentions that Paik ‘buys one of the first obtainable Portapaks in the USA’ (p. 7); see also Amy Taubin, ‘For Nam June Paik: Notes on an Oversight’, in Patti Podesta, ed., Resolution: A Critique of Video Art, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), Los Angeles, 1986, pp. 99–104. 18 This took place at the Café au Go Go in New York. See, for example, Liljefors, p. 21. 19 This event is mentioned by Rush in the ‘chronology’ section, under the year 1965: Rush, 2003, p. 213. Rush also states that Warhol’s importance was significant but that his work is ‘often omitted from video histories’, Rush, 2003, p. 52; Martin, p. 6. Meigh-Andrews contributes the importance of Warhol thanks to his experiments with film and in relation to the field of ‘expanded cinema’: see Meigh-Andrews, for example, pp. 72 and 77. 20 Bruce Nauman is one of the artists often named as employing video techniques in order to document his performances: see, for example, Rush, 2003, pp. 9, 30–33; Liljefors, p. 46; Spielmann, p. 88; Meigh-Andrews, p. 228; and Elwes, p. 11. Also, Ross writes that a work by Nauman was the first video art work sold: Ross, in Battcock, 1978, p. 148. According to Ross, Nauman was ‘the first artist to show video tapes in an exhibition in the U.S.’(p. 150), thus indicating the impact of a monetary aspect in relation to the establishment of events as origin, the first and so on. On early intermedia works and artists working with both video and performance, see Willoughby Sharp, ‘Videoperformance’, in Schneider and Korot, pp. 252–267.

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21 Rush, 2003, p. 7. 22 See Gill for the situation in the US during the late 1960s and early 1970s. 23 Particularly Liljefors and Meigh-Andrews narrate the start of video collectives. See Liljefors, pp. 69–78; Meigh-Andrews, pp. 61–68. 24 See Meigh-Andrews, pp. 44–46, 57. 25 Martin, p. 13. According to Meigh-Andrews, Vostell, together with Wolf Kahlen, initiated the collection (p. 25). The Museum of Modern Art in New York began its video collection (as part of the Film Department) in 1970: moma.org/collection/depts/film/index.html (accessed 7 September 2007). The collection of the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, began in 1958 when then-director Pontus Hultén brought with him the Club, initially addressing children and experimental film: www. modernamuseet (accessed 7 September 2007). 26 See Martha Gever, ‘Pressure Points: Video in the Public Sphere’, Art Journal, vol. 45, no. 3, 1985, pp. 238–243. 27 www.thekitchen.org (accessed 31 July 2012). See also, for example, Robert Stearns, ‘The Kitchen’, in Schneider and Korot, pp. 160–161; and Gill, p. 46. Other sites and institutions are of course also mentioned as important for the formative period of the art form, but the importance of the Kitchen takes on the appearance of a canonized site, through which ‘video art claims an institutional place between visual and Performance art, television and film’: see Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, eds, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, Thames & Hudson, London, 2004, p. 560. 28 Martin, p. 15. 29 See, for example, Documenta IX, Kassel, 1992. During the 100 days of Documenta, a TV transmitter based in Kassel continually and uninterruptedly broadcasted live from the scene of the show: cameras were placed at different spots near the Fridericianum, as well as globally, and the public could intervene by various technical devices (like computers, fax, telephones, and so on). Artists that are represented in the catalogue with illustrations of video art works include: Matthew Barney, Dara Birnbaum, Marie José Burki, Ernst Caramelle, James Coleman, Tony Conrad, Stan Douglas, Vera Frenkel, Gary Hill, Bruce Nauman, Tony Oursler, Bill Viola and KeunByung Yook (projection installation), 12–13 out of 183 artists, which is 6.5 per cent. See also Documenta 8, Kassel, 1987; and Christine van Assche, ed., Vidéo et après: la collection vidéo du Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, 1992. Numerous festivals and biennales also focus on art and technology – to mention but two: the Wro Media Art Biennale, which was established in 1989, and the Ars Electronica, which has taken place since 1979, in Linz. 30 Studying video art worldwide is not an option for a project such as mine. Yet profoundly aware of this situation, my investigation is of a different focus: the Euro-American versions of video art history. However, since the body of publications focusing on post-war and contemporary art produced and circulating in, for example, Asia and Africa is rapidly growing, historical narratives will be renegotiated. 31 While finishing my project, James Elkins published a text entitled ‘English is the Language of Art History’ as part of his Live Writing Project. Amongst other aspects, he discusses here the professional effects of not being fluent in written English, or only being fluent in English (hence not being able to account for scholarly writing in, for example, German, Chinese or Spanish). See: http://www.jameselkins.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=254:english-is-thelanguage-of-art-history&catid=4:experimental-writing&Itemid=11 (accessed 27 August 2013). 32 For example, Catherine Elwes claims them both to be Americans where she writes of them as being the two who ‘made the earliest appropriations of television footage in the 1960s’ (p. 107), even though Paik is a Korean artist in the beginning of her book (pp. 4–5), and Vostell is German (p. 24). 33 David Blot, ‘Preface’, p. 9, and David A. Ross, ‘Foreword’, p. 11, both in Hall and Fifer. 34 Rush, 2003, writes on ‘Video Art in Europe’, including art from Germany, the Netherlands, Austria (under the same caption), Great Britain and France, pp. 38–46; North America is represented by Canada, pp. 46–52 and then followed by nationless sections on Warhol, Paik and Kubota respectively, pp. 52–61. See also Meigh-Andrews, pp. 19–39. 35 Renov and Suderburg, ‘Introduction’, 1996, p. xvi. 36 Ibid., p. xviii.

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37 Tetsuo Kogawa, ‘Video: The Access Medium’, pp. 51–60; and Bérénice Reynaud, ‘New Visions/ New Chinas: Video – Art, Documentation, and the Chinese Modernity in Question’, pp. 229–257; both in Renov and Suderburg. 38 Sara Diamond, ‘Sex Lies with Videotape: Abbreviated Histories of Canadian Video Sex’, in Renov and Suderburg, pp. 189–206; and Reynaud. 39 Eric Cameron, ‘Structural Videotape in Canada’, pp. 188–195; Wulf Herzogenrath, ‘Video Art in West Germany’, pp. 226–233; and Bill Viola, ‘The European Scene and Other Observations’, pp. 268–278; all in Schneider and Korot. 40 In this sense then, this mode of attributing and establishing an origin implies that historical lineage, with the cause-and-effect idea narratively activated, belongs to traditional historiography in a Foucauldian sense. Foucault, 2002. 41 On art and archive, see Sven Spieker, The Big Archive: Art from Bureaucracy, MIT Press, London and Cambridge, Mass., 2008. 42 See, for example, ‘Chronology’, in Rush, 2003, pp. 213–219 for his list of exhibitions. Gill notes the importance of several individual curators producing video art exhibitions in the US: see, for example, pp. 36, 42–43, 45. See also Chris Dercon, ‘Untitled’, where the selection of Herzogenrath’s is argued to testify to a confused terminology affecting the poor state of video-criticism, in Podesta, p. 94. 43 TV as a Creative Medium at the Howard Wise Gallery, New York, was open from 17 May to 14 June 1969. The show is mentioned by Youngblood (whose chapter ‘Television as a Creative Medium’ deals with technological aspects related to a number of art works, rather than the show with the similar name): Youngblood, p. 306. See also Martin, p. 11; Rush, 2003, p. 214; Spielmann, p. 77; Liljefors, pp. 34–35; and Marita Sturken, ‘Paradox in the Evolution of an Art Form: Great Expectations and the Making of a History’, in Hall and Fifer, p. 105. Wise’s text is also reproduced in the Document section of Edward A. Shanken, ed., Art and Electronic Media, Phaidon, London, 2009, p. 269. 44 See the catalogue TV as a Creative Medium, Howard Wise Gallery, New York, 1969. 45 The participating artists (though that notion does not seem correct in some cases) were: Serge Boutourline, Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider, Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman (Paik also had a work of his own in the show), Earl Reiback, Paul Ryan, John Seery, Erik Siegel, Thomas Tadlock, Aldo Tambellini and Joe Weintraub. Several of them worked (judging from the catalogue entries) with technological developments and research, and had no training as artists, for example, Boutourline, Reiback (a nuclear engineer with ‘numerous patents in the field of sound, light and nuclear radiation’), Ryan (a research assistant to McLuhan), Siegel (‘mostly rebuilding and designing equipment’): TV as a Creative Medium, unnumbered. I do not suggest that training is a defining criteria for the profession of artist, but it is unclear whether they participated as artists or more as innovators regarding the technique and creative employment of TV technology. This is important, however, regarding the formation of video/TV art as art. 46 Wise, TV as a Creative Medium, unnumbered. My emphasis. 47 Liljefors, pp. 34–35; Spielmann, p. 77. See also Youngblood on Paik’s work: Youngblood, p. 306. Johanna Gill also mentions the show in her 1976 report. 48 Sturken, 1990, p. 105; Martin, p. 13. 49 Sturken, 1990, pp. 105 and 109. 50 Youngblood. See also: www.radicalsoftware.org/volume2nr4/pdf/VOLUME2NR4_0065.pdf. 51 In relation to ‘computer film’ and its limitations as experienced by artists, Youngblood compares this technology with other art techniques, writing: ‘As he [the artist] has done in other disciplines without a higher ordering principle, man so far has used the computer as a modified version of older, more traditional media. Thus we find it compared to the brush, chisel, or pencil and used to facilitate the efficiency of conventional methods of animating, sculpting, painting, and drawing. But the chisel, brush, and canvas are passive media whereas the computer is an active participant in the creative process.’ Youngblood, p. 191. Emphasis in original. 52 Compare with Spielmann, where technological details operate as the departure for interpretations and spur her theoretical discussions. Passim. 53 Youngblood, p. 260. Besides videospheres, Youngblood also employs the notion of technospheres, which signals a different conceptual approach than texts writing from, or towards, a notion of

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(fine) art. Youngblood also gives examples of other cultural forms employing particular television technology for specific visual effects, like the piece Limbo performed by the Alwin Nikolais Dance Company in 1968 (pp. 270–273). 54 Ibid., pp. 263–264. 55 Ibid., p. 264. Throughout this part of the book he quotes artists. 56 Ibid., pp. 265 and 277–279, where he writes about possible developments which would facilitate the working for artists. Further on he also accounts for several projects that served to commission works by visual artists, amongst whom Kaprow, Paik and Otto Piene are mentioned, as well as the establishment of artists’ residencies (pp. 281–282). See also, for example, pp. 191–193 on the importance of theoretical knowledge of art and artists’ ideas for technological developments and improved usage. 57 Ibid., pp. 281–282. Partly this is expressed by the different effects – and therefore meaning – between something screened on TV and as projected on a movie screen. 58 On Schum’s gallery, see, for example, Herzogenrath, 1976. 59 Youngblood, pp. 292–293, in the paragraph entitled ‘Conceptual Gallery for Conceptual Art’. He also mentions James Newman, a San Francisco-based art dealer, working with and commissioning works by a number of visual artists. 60 Youngblood, pp. 117–121. The paragraph on Warhol is entitled ‘The Pansexual Universe of Andy Warhol’ and here Youngblood speaks clearly on the artist being ‘partial to homosexuality’ (p. 117). Others addressed in this third part, ‘Synaesthetic Cinema: The End of Drama’ (pp. 75–134), are, for example, artist Michael Snow and experimental film-maker Stan Brakhage – both are frequently recurring throughout the body of texts that I examine here. 61 Youngblood, p. 346. 62 Ibid., p. 383. 63 Ibid., p. 386. My emphasis. 64 Schneider and Korot; Hanhardt, (1986), 1990. 65 Battcock, 1978. Hanhardt is the only one who lists Battcock in the bibliography. 66 Battcock’s book is, however, referred to in Comer; Tanya Leighton, ed., Art and the Moving Image: A Critical Reader, Tate Publishing, London, 2008; and Hall and Fifer. 67 However, Belting writes of this publication that it is a remarkable book which ‘offers the most comprehensive insights into its [video arts] early stages’: Hans Belting, Art History after Modernism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2003, p. 86. He also notes that Antin’s essay was a ‘brilliant and less polite critique of television’ and that ‘television was disqualified as a medium for artists not only by its technology but also by its consumer-oriented practice’; Antin, in Schneider and Korot. According to Meigh-Andrews it was the last publication by the Raindance Foundation (p. 63). 68 These vary greatly. They can be in the format of a CV (like Bill and Louise Etra’s contribution, ‘Video’, pp. 42–43), a subjective encounter of one’s thoughts in relation to work and life events (Hermine Freed, pp. 50–51), a short description of a work (‘Quidditas’, by Gran Gillette, pp. 56–57), a reproduction (Lynda Rodolitz, pp. 108–109) or a text focusing on the technology (‘Video Art’, by Ben Tatti, pp. 130–131), all in Schneider and Korot. 69 Schneider and Korot, ‘Introduction’, p. 3. 70 Ibid. 71 Battcock, 1978. Whereas his anthology on minimalist art is by now at odds with what has become defined and characterized as minimal art of the 1960s and 1970s, the aspects addressed and the choices of reproduction in the video art book are still present and active premises of video art’s history; Gregory Battcock, ed., Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1968. On minimal art and Battcock, see my Out of Minimalism: The Referential Cube, dissertation, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala University, Uppsala, 2003. 72 Battcock, 1968. 73 Battcock, 1978, p. xx. 74 Ibid., p. xiii.

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75 The essays dealing more explicitly with how to define video art are: Robert Stefanotty, ‘Kissing the Unique Object Good-Bye’, pp. 167–168; and Nam June Paik with Charlotte Moorman, ‘Videa, Vidiot, Videology’, pp. 121–137, both in Battcock, 1978. Paik is, however, mostly concerned with his own work; Krauss is not in search of art historical pasts, but seeks to define the very prerequisites of how video art operates cognitively differently from other arts. 76 Battcock, 1978, p. xiv. However, Gill’s report also acknowledges the importance of art schools teaching video technique and she furthermore points out particular individuals working as professors. Otherwise this aspect is rather stunningly neglected. 77 Battcock, 1978, p. xxii. My emphasis. 78 Ibid., p. xiii. 79 Judith van Baron, ‘A Means Toward an End’, pp. 169–180, at p. 169, in Battcock, 1978. She claims that despite the short time span of video art’s existence, its history ‘is not as complicated … as the plethora of practitioners may suggest’. She assumes that a smaller group of video practitioners/ artists working in a kind of ‘video enclave’ (thus implying that their work deviates to some degree from the ‘proper’ group/field) can serve as an example of the history of video art – but this argument is rather peculiar in the context. Furthermore, the work by the five male artists that she focuses on followed a particular development (or change) that she argues is in accordance with video art generally. The artists are Paul Kos, George Bolling, Terry Fox, Howard Fried and Joel Glassman. The connection between them is that they shared the one available Portapak in the city of Santa Clara, USA. 80 See Levin, in Battcock, 1978. According to Levin, ‘californiaesque’ video art was much more closely related to commercial TV than its eastern counterpart. His account of video art and its specific characteristics are entirely linked to TV. In fact, his essay is more about the latter than video art, focusing on the technological devices for making broadcast programmes. Ideas, often in a rather romantic perspective, of the effects of ‘the real’ and ‘live’ are promoted as distinguishing features separating video from both other art forms and commercial TV. Who the addressee of his text is supposed to be remains unclear and the text is repetitive with its detailed, and unconvincing, arguments about how, particularly, time and space operate in video media. As Levin’s text entirely lacks references, the ideas he puts forth about perception and, for example, the expectations of the audience (p. 89) seem to be a highly subjective interpretation of the situation. See also the bibliography in, for example, Hanhardt, (1986) 1990, where the titles of the articles clearly reveal the intimate, and problematic, relation between video art and television. 81 Douglas Davis recalls a ‘beautiful story’ about a man owning a small cable television station. The man turns the camera towards himself while on the air, but soon seems to forget about being recorded and broadcasted. He begins cleaning his desk, throwing things (papers and so on) which are already out of date, finding unopened letters – some of them actually containing cheques. And then, eight hours later, he ‘returns to his humdrum work and is never heard from again’. When reading this part of Davis’ essay, I thought that it was actually a rather well-phrased description/ image of early video art history and criticisms – especially as it comes around in the Battcock anthology. Douglas Davis, ‘The End of Video, White Vapor’, in Battcock, 1978, pp. 24–35. 82 Levin’s essay is the only one that really focuses on this aspect. 83 Battcock, 1978, p. xviii. At the same time he states that all art is ‘essentially extensions of architectural form’. 84 Ibid., p. xviii. 85 For example, Vicky Alliata refers to Christian theology and Latin Scriptures since she argues that art history is definable as the visual history of religion: Vicky Alliata, ‘Negative Videology’, in Battcock, 1978, pp. 3–6. Michael Benedikt departs from nineteenth-century poetry, arguing for spontaneity as a key aesthetic value in common, and immediate feedback as not a ‘style but the subject matter of the image in video’ (p. 10): Michael Benedikt, ‘Poetry and Video Tape: A Suggestion’, in Battcock, 1978, pp. 7–10. And Mona Da Vinci turns to Byzantine mosaic art by way of an idea of ‘collapsed space’, and also argues that painters and sculptors work differently with video, employing it as simply another media: Mona Da Vinci, ‘Video: The Art of Observable Dreams’, in Battcock, 1978, pp. 11–23. 86 Battcock, 1978, p. xx. One criteria for art is said to be portability, shared by all art forms (p. xxi). 87 ‘Installation video’ is exemplified by works consisting of TV sets. On video installations, see, for example: Battcock, 1978, p. xvi; Ingrid Wiegand, ‘Videospace: Varieties of the Video Installation’, in Battcock, 1978, pp. 181–191; and Morse.

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88 The reason for the first Documenta in 1955 was, not least, to re-charge European modernist art from the degradation performed by the Nazi regime and hence counter its ideology, which included the choice of Kassel as the site for the event. See: Hans Hayden, Modernismen som institution: Om etableringen av ett estetiskt och historiografiskt paradigm, Brutus Östling förlag, Stehag and Stockholm, 2006, pp. 145–150; Walter Grasskamp, ‘Degenerate Art and Documenta I: Modernism Ostracized and Disarmed’, in Daniel J. Sherman and Irit Rogoff, eds, Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles, Routledge, London, 1994, pp. 163–194. On the history of Documenta, see also Kathryn Mae Floyd, Between Change and Continuity: Documenta, 1955–2005, PhD thesis, University of Iowa, 2006. See also Curtis L. Carter, ‘Aesthetics, Video Art and Television’, Leonardo, vol. 12, no. 4, MIT Press, 1979, pp. 289–293. 89 Floyd, p. 31. 90 Ibid., p. 30. 91 Documenta 6, band 2, Fotografie, film, video, Kassel, 1977. 92 Photography was displayed on the ground floor of the building. Documenta 6, vol. 2, Kassel, 1977. 93 Documenta 6, band 2, 1977. These artists were: Bill Viola, Joan Jonas, Ulrike Rosenbach, Nam June Paik, Douglas Davis, Rebecka Horn, Shigeko Kubota, Vito Acconci, Antonio Muntadas, Beryl Korot and Friederike Pezold. Peter Campus and Richard Kriesche are listed as participating (p. 297) but do not appear on the gallery map (p. 4). 94 The artists represented were: Vito Acconci, Billy Adler, Ant Farm, Stephan Beck, Claus Böhmler, Heinz Breloh, Wojciech Bruszewski, Chris Burden, Colin Campell, Peter Campus, Douglas Davis, Juan Downey, Michael Druks, Ed Emshwiller, VALIE EXPORT, Fred Forest, Terry Fox, Charles Frazier, Hermine Freed, Michaek Geissler und Gruppe Video Audio Media, Jochen Gerz, Frank Gillette, David Hall, Ron Hays, Nan Hoover, Joan Jonas, Wolf Kahlen, Allan Kaprow, Harry Kipper, Wolf Knoebel, Richard Landry, Barbara and Michael Leisgen, Les Levine, Andy Mann, Cynthia Lee Maughan, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Jean Otth, Nam June Paik, John Reilly and Stefan Moore, Ulrike Rosenbach, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, Telewissen, Willie Boy Walker, William Wegman, Peter Weibel and Keigo Yamamoto. 95 Wulf Herzogenrath, ‘Fernsehen und Video Das Doppelgesicht eines neuen künstlerischen Mediums’, Documenta 6, Kassel, 1977, pp. 289–292. 96 Documenta 6, band 2, Fotografie, film, video, Kassel, 1977, p. 289. Quoted from the title of Wulf Herzogenrath’s essay. 97 Herzogenrath, 1977, p. 290. The show is Exposition of Music – Electronic Television. 98 David A. Ross, ‘ Fernsehen, Video und die Kunstmuseen, oder: Keine Nachrichten sind keineNachrichten’, Documenta 6, Kassel, 1977, p. 294. 99 Martin, p. 13. 100 Meigh-Andrews, p. 25. Herzogenrath also curated the ‘first major historical survey of video installation’, the touring exhibition Videoskulptur: Retrospectiv und Aktuel, 1963–89, in 1989. 101 Hanhardt, (1986), 1990, p. 9. The other two sections are entitled ‘Video and Television’ and ‘Film and Video: Differences and Futures’. 102 The anthology opens with Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, originally published in 1936. The other essays in this section are: Bertolt Brecht, ‘The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication’ (1957), pp. 53–55; Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation)’ (1971), pp. 56–95; Hans Magnus Enzensberger, ‘Constituents of a Theory of the Media’ (1974), pp. 96–123; and Jean Baudrillard, ‘Requiem for the Media’ (1981), pp. 124–143, all in Hanhardt, (1986), 1990. 103 Meigh-Andrews deals explicitly with theory and its implications for artistic practices in the chapter ‘Theory and Practice: The Influence and Impact of Theoretical Ideas on Technology-Based Practice in the 1970s’ (pp. 101–110). However, the theories he discusses do not focus on the notion of art, but on media communications, cybernetics and information theory, which are foremost connected to technological issues. 104 Hanhardt, (1986), 1990, pp. 11–16. 105 Ibid., p. 16. This course of defining video art is also undertaken by David Antin in his contribution, ‘Video: The Distinctive Features of the Medium’, in Hanhardt, (1986), 1990, pp. 147–166. The second section in the book is entitled ‘Video and Television’.

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106 Hanhardt, (1986), 1990, pp. 275–290. Hanhardt also refers to Schneider and Korot. 107 Ibid., p. 16. 108 Ibid., p. 16. 109 Ibid., p. 16. 110 Ibid., p. 17. My emphasis. 111 Ibid. The art works addressed here are the so-called TV sculptures by Paik created in 1963 for the show ‘Exposition of Music-Electronic Television’ at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, and Wipe Cycle, 1969, by Ira Schneider and Frank Gillette. 112 Out of 15 artists, five are women, which means a gender balance of 67 per cent versus 33 per cent. 113 Hanhardt, (1986), 1990, p. 23. 114 Foucault, 2002, p. 6. 115 See, for example, Marilyn Stokstad, ed., Art History, 3rd edition, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, 2008: the section entitled ‘The Final Assault on Convention, 1960–1975’ (pp. 1154–1166) opens by stating that pop art was seen – by some artists – as ‘questioning and overthrowing the conventions of art itself’. Even if no clear connection is established, the situation of artists attacking conventional art rules is mentioned in relation to the Vietnam War (or the American War, as it is called in Vietnam), environmentalism, the Parisian students’ revolt of 1968 and feminism. See also pp. 1163–1166 on feminism and traditionally male-dominated art forms. For an overview of how postmodern theory and art are addressed, theorized and defined, see, for example: Irving Sandler, Art of the Postmodern Era, Westview Press, Boulder, (1996) 1998 (especially chapter 11, ‘Postmodernist Art Theory’, pp. 332–374); Michael Asher, Art Since 1960, Thames & Hudson, London and New York, (1997) 2002 (especially ‘Chapter 4: Postmodernisms’, pp. 142–181); Foster, Krauss, Bois and Buchloh, pp. 580–583; Terry Smith, Contemporary Art: World Currents, Laurence King Publishing, London, 2011, for example, pp. 8–13, 19. For another perspective on what happened with ‘art’, see also Donald Kuspit, The End of Art, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2004. Here Kuspit argues for the notion of postart as replacing ‘art’, since the latter has been transformed into a post-aesthetic state marked by irrelevant usage, withdrawal of ‘personal autonomy and critical freedom’, and (in late-capitalist manner, I would add) nurturing the individual ego rather than a ‘social superego’ (p. 14). Kuspit makes no references to Danto, which is rather odd considering the ‘end’ as the core of both their lines of arguments. Kuspit’s discussions and arguments are not in real opposition to the ideas advocated by Danto, but how they think of, or value, the state of art as ended is. The implication for Kuspit is not that of a philosophically higher state, but on the contrary that art has degenerated seriously, hence entered the post-situation, which began rather long before (Duchamp is one of those who destroyed art, pp. 40–88), for example, Warhol who is the major agent of a changed notion of art, according to Danto. Postart includes art that ‘glamorizes everyday reality while pretending to analyse it’ (p. 91, and further exemplified by the art of Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer, pp. 99, 96–97); Kuspit does not think much of art which – as I would phrase it – performs socio-cultural critique. Nor does he think much of feminist-informed art (pp. 71–72). By juxtaposing Kuspit’s and Danto’s theories and claims of ‘the end(s) of art’, J. Sage Elwell has argued against the validity of both, as neither of them succeeds in ‘objective truth’ nor in sustaining the ‘essence’ and ‘depth’ which Elwell apparently purports as central to art. Even though I do not agree with him regarding the conclusions drawn, I find some of his arguments relating to Danto’s and Kuspit’s respective theories partly relevant to my own critique presented here. See J. Sage Elwell, ‘Reflections from the Bottom of a Brillo Box: A Theological Inquiry into the End(s) of Art’, Religion and the Arts, no. 16, Brill Academic Publishers, 2012, pp. 539–559. 116 For example, Meigh-Andrews writes that video art was ‘instrumental in facilitating the shift from modernism to postmodernism’ (p. 284). See Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke University Press, Durham, 1991, especially chapter 3, ‘Video: Surrealism Without the Unconscious’ (pp. 67–96). Rush situates the importance of video art within the field of postmodern art forms that together caused a situation of blurred concepts: Rush, 2003, for example, p. 9. See also Elwes, pp. 21 ff. In relation to postmodernism, Liljefors departs from the ‘relation between the real and representation’, following the line of thought where electronic media is argued as the prerequisite for the ‘postmodern condition’ (pp. 97ff). Meigh-Andrews comments on similar aspects in relation to British experimental video (pp. 43 and 235). Here Meigh-Andrews draws from the writings of Stuart Marshall. For Spielmann, this is not an issue. Compare with Foucault, 2002, passim. 117 I do not think that the notion of postwar art operates as synonymous with postmodernist art, since the latter is much more firmly attached to particular sets of theories, and (most importantly),

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through the prefix ‘post’, is positioned as the inevitably binary counterpart to modernism. In the following I use ‘postwar art’ when referring to a much broader context than that of postmodernist art. 118 See, for example, Elwes’ introductory passage to the chapter ‘The Modernist Inheritance’, where she writes of the ‘revolutionary ferment of the 1960s’ (p. 21). 119 Arthur Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997, p. 14. 120 See especially Belting, 2003; and Youngblood. 121 Danto, 1997, p. 13. See chapter 1, pp. 3–19. 122 Arthur Danto, ‘The Artworld’, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 61, no. 19, 1964, pp. 571–584; and Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1981. 123 Danto, 1997, p. 5. 124 Ibid., p. 8. Belting does not stress modernism’s break with history either as much or in the same way as Danto does, but rather evolves a theory of the historization of modernism. See especially chapters 12 and 17 in Belting, 2003. 125 Danto, 1997, p. 5. 126 Compare Hans Hayden, p. 267; and Belting, 2003, pp. 115–125. 127 Compare Keith Jenkins, Refiguring History: New Thoughts on an Old Discipline, Routledge, London and New York, 2003. 128 Danto, 1997, p. 113. In other publications on this period, genealogy is employed as a theoretical device to underscore precisely historical progress when linking Warhol’s works to those of Duchamp – a link that Danto, of course, also acknowledged. For example, Elwes refers to Duchamp as an artist ‘legitimate to claim for video … in the linguistic investigations of conceptual art’ (p. 23). Both Meigh-Andrews (in relation to Fluxus, pp. 9 and 94) and Rush, 2003, pp. 59, 79, 144, refer to Duchamp as a conceptual precursor. Another artist who is placed as an originator/ forerunner of the rather widespread practices of contesting the borders separating art from life and commonplace objects (by turning to the ‘real’) is Allan Kaprow. See Belting, 2003, p. 175, on how Kaprow made art differently by stressing the context and physical environment of art, instead of creating ‘art in the old sense’. 129 Compare Belting, who does not explicitly talk about subjectivity in relation to Danto’s philosophical answer to a changed notion of art, but nevertheless notes that it was ‘his own answer’, and having ‘an acute eye for what happened when “modernism was over”’: Belting, 2003, p. 115. 130 For another critique of Danto’s claims, see Hans Hayden, pp. 274–275. 131 Danto, 1997, p. 12. 132 Ibid., p. 36. 133 Ibid., p. 14. 134 However, Danto acknowledges that even after the end of art, art in the old sense is still made and art is still appreciated for aesthetic reasons. Ibid., for example, p. 33. 135 Meigh-Andrews, p. 43. This particular difference is related to the writings of Stuart Marshall and David Hall respectively. 136 See especially Clement Greenberg, ‘Towards a Newer Laocoon’ (1940), in John O’Brien, ed., The Collected Essays and Criticism, vol. 1: Perceptions and Judgements, 1939–1944, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1986, pp. 23–38; Michael Fried, ‘Art and Objecthood’, in Gregory Battcock, ed., Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, University of California Press, Berkeley, (1968) 1995, pp. 116–147. 137 Belting, 2003, pp. 44–46, 170–174. See also Andreas Huyssen, ‘Mapping the Postmodern’, New German Critique, no. 33, 1984, pp. 5–52. 138 See Hélène Bowen Raddeker on this aspect: ‘History, Postmodern Critique’, in Sceptical History: Feminist and Postmodern Approaches in Practice, Routledge, London and New York, 2007, pp. 19–52.

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139 See James Elkins, Master Narratives and Their Discontents, Routledge, New York, 2005, pp. 67–69, 83–97. See also, for example, the ‘Preface’ and ‘Introduction’ in Irving Sandler, (1996) 1998. 140 For example, Terry Smith’s theories of contemporary art and the three major trends that he still argues as constitutive aspects of present art practices depart to a certain extent from renegotiated strategies and aesthetic aims of the avant-gardes of modernism(s). See Terry Smith, What is Contemporary Art?, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2009; and Smith, 2011. I find, however, Smith’s theories and categories of contemporary art too much indebted to what I here call a (negotiated) Greenbergian modernist reading. Furthermore, his thinking revolves mainly around art by male artists (especially the first-mentioned book) which makes his results highly questionable, and the underlying universalist claims suggest that he operates in relation to the putative tradition of so-called Great Narratives. 141 See Hans Hayden, pp. 266–270; Elkins, 2005, p. 2, on art historical writing in an era ‘of increasing pluralism’. 142 See, for example, Corinne Robins, The Pluralist Era: American Art, 1968–1981, Harper & Row, New York, 1984. Marilyn Stokstad’s Art History – performing so-called general art history – is but one example where modern art (note that it is not the term modernism that is used here) is declared as exhausted by the mid-1970s on the basis described above: the avant-garde had lost its controversial status, ‘there were no more conventions to question’, and the most prominent values ascribed to modern art – ‘innovation, questioning of tradition, individual expression’ – had lost their subversive touch, now being part of society at large (p. 1171). The plurality argued as the fundamental character of postmodernism is an argument that is opposing the non-plurality of how modern art is historicized in previous chapters; both are presented as facts, and not as focusing on the particular versions of modernist art making these oppositions possible. An idea of a pluralist concept of art assumes its opposite. This issue is much too complex to develop further here, but I am very suspicious of narratives that situate (or, rather, produce a myth of) chaos as the site for a paradigmatic shift concerning art production and nomination. That is, chaos is one thing, acknowledgment of diversity is another. 143 See, for example, Rosalind Krauss and Yve-Alain Bois, Formless: A User’s Guide, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1999. Compare Terry Smith, 2011, who has been concerned with contemporary art in several publications and has a rather different take on postmodern art than the scholars connected to October. On plurality, narratives and consensus, see also Jean-Francoise Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, (1979) 1984. 144 Likewise, when James Elkins outlined what he found to be the most important trajectories of modernism in art history (in relation to their prevalence), it is painting and painters that constitute the core of important instances. Even his chapter on postmodern narratives focuses on painting. See Elkins, 2005. Compare the introduction in Margot Lovejoy, Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age, Routledge, London and New York, (1989/1992) 2004, p. 6. 145 The idea of travelling concepts is derived from Mieke Bal’s book on the subject: Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo and London, 2002. 146 W.J.T. Mitchell, ‘There Are No Visual Media’, Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 4, no. 2, August 2005, p. 258. 147 See, for example, Norman Bryson, ed., Calligram: Essays in New Art History from France, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988. New theories and methods emerged at this time, and these could be applied in the analysis of art of very different periods and sites. However, pre-modernist art is not the issue here. See also Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1989; Belting, 2003; and Danto, 1997. 148 In relation to identity theories and visual art, Amelia Jones examines the changed concept of the artist in relation to specific issues in art production of the last two decades. However, she outlines the concept as stemming from the Enlightenment’s ideas of the subject, and via Hegel and others she argues that the ‘artist’ became paradigmatic for the ‘free individual’ in the Western world. Her focus is on the US and UK art scenes explicitly: Amelia Jones, Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts, Routledge, London and New York, 2012, especially pp. 19–28. Feminist art historians have of course discussed and deconstructed this notion seriously for a long time. 149 Stefanotty, p. 167. 150 Ingrid Wiegand, ‘The Surreality of Videotape’, in Schneider and Korot, p. 280. 151 Charlotte Klonk, Spaces of Experience: Art Gallery Interiors from 1800 to 2000, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2009, p. 135.

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152 See Hedlin Hayden, 2003, especially the second chapter, ‘Upsetting the White Cube – a Corporeal Critique’, pp. 59–117. 153 Martha Rosler, ‘Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment’, in Hall and Fifer, p. 31. 154 Rosler refers to Alvin Gouldner’s discussion of the difference between ‘the cultural apparatus’ and ‘the consciousness industry’, where the former is politically impotent and the bearer of negative news, and the latter implies a ‘technological optimism’ (p. 50). 155 Gever, 1985, p. 239. 156 As in, for example, Rosler’s view. 157 Bal, p. 249. 158 Rush, 2003, p. 8. 159 Rush, 2003, p. 10; Meigh-Andrews, pp. 2–4. The identity of the maker of the video art work is recognized here, but this is not the same as undertaking an analysis of the changed role, aims and so on of ‘the artist’. 160 Rush, 2003, p. 10. 161 Ibid., pp. 10–11. It is Krauss’ essay ‘Video and Narcissism’ that Rush refers to. See further: Rosalind Krauss, ‘Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism’ (1976), in Hanhardt, (1986), 1990, pp. 179–191. 162 Rush, 2003, p. 11. The reference is to Krauss’ A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the PostMedium Condition, Thames & Hudson, New York, 1999. 163 Spielmann, p. 112. She talks about tendencies and different video cultures. The other two tendencies, or cultures, are works in alliance with television broadcast and ‘experimental video’ which overlap the two former. The first mentioned is the one most politically engaging (pp. 112–129). 164 Ibid., pp. 112–113; Elwes, pp. 3–4. 165 Spielmann, p. 137. 166 See Spielmann’s last chapter entitled ‘Video Aesthetics’, pp. 132–224. These operational functions return as issues throughout the book. 167 Ibid., p. 9. 168 Ibid., p. 16. 169 Ibid., p. 85. 170 Ibid., pp. 84 and 75. See also p. 113. 171 Meigh-Andrews, pp. 5–9. 172 Ibid., pp. 15 and 39–43 respectively. 173 Ibid., for example, pp. 202 and 220. Meigh-Andrews also writes on the difference between video artists and video activists as a later distinction (pp. 64 and 66), but also that several video-makers saw themselves as (more or less) part of both. 174 See, for example, Meigh-Andrews, p. 154. He talks about appearance though. 175 Ibid., p. 212. 176 Ibid., pp. 199–212. See further his chapter on video sculpture and installations (pp. 243–260). 177 Ibid., p. 202. 178 See, for example, Moshe Barasch, Theories of Art, 1: From Plato to Winckelmann, New York University Press, London and New York, 1985, pp. 164–174. The paragone discussions were not, however, exclusively devoted to comparisons between different forms and media of visual art, but rather to issues of representation. 179 Nash, p. 382. 180 On identity and art, see Jones, 2012.

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2 ART HISTORY OR NOT: Stories of reluctance and crisis

The status of art history From the present position, postmodernism appears initially as a broad call of crisis in reference to various fields and in relation to a number of ideas and concepts. The sites, areas and nature of these crises occasionally overlap with each other; they appear – at times – as clusters of local hotbeds parallel in time, sometimes in place, that eventually draw nearer to each other and demand management. At that point in time it seems as if the emergence of a paradigmatic shift is reasonable to argue for. That is, systems, protocols, concepts and ideologies – in other words constitutive aspects of art discourses – have to be reconsidered, redefined or even exchanged when those privileged in the (immediate) past were found to be insufficient.1 Video art, alongside the other emerging art forms and (still) less easily categorizable artistic practices, constitutes one such critical event, or hotbed: it claimed its status as art-differently. Turning points regarding artistic production, conceptual (and philosophical) disagreements and radical changes situated as historical breaks are what, broadly speaking, postmodernist art critical thinking amounts to: that is, how to make sense of everything that presented itself as new(s) and often as beyond history.2 The state of art history was another of these troublesome areas. It was found by some to be old-fashioned and in need of being scrutinized more thoroughly, not only with regard to older art, but also in relation to the contemporary art scene. Art history was seen as a too closed system, based on ideologies that were not found to be in concordance with the theoretical, aesthetic, ideological and political foundations of, for example, video art practices at the time, a practice that, (perhaps) eventually, should be archived, and hence only revisted in the future, as a document of past versions of historically narrating that thing called art.

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A large field of new theories had entered the discipline, but in various stages and not at all taking place in anything like a general sense; they were not yet even of the status of being part of proper art historical practices but were rather instances on the cusp of breaking with the former.3 Several publications and articles debated the present status, past and futures of art history during the mid to end of the 1980s and early 1990s when a crisis within the discipline was particularly observed. For example, Donald Preziosi’s Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science (1989) addressed an ongoing debate about the discipline of art history. The book addressed the discipline in its historical context(s) where Preziosi tried to explain the crisis by turning to the history of art history.4 Hans Belting also questioned the status and future of art history in Das Ende der Kunstgeschichte of 1983.5 But unlike Preziosi, Belting was more concerned with how to deal with the discipline in the present and thus in relation to new art forms, media and a renegotiated definition of art.6 That a crisis of and in art history was under way is, however, a situation that – with a few exceptions – neither the early publications on video art reveal any awareness of, nor do the latter surveys indicate as having passed through it. That is, art history-in-practice is not problematized, hence not seriously related to any (meta-)critique of concepts like, for example, narrative, progression, original and canon in the monograph surveys on video art – a critique of mine that I will return to. Moreover, ideas of a clear distinction between a (rather) purified version of modernism and the plurality – sometimes in terms of subversion – of socalled postmodernist art seems to me to be an obstacle still unsolved. Nevertheless, in Art History after Modernism, Belting devoted an entire chapter to the situation of video art, entitled ‘The Temporality of Video Art’.7 Writing on a crisis in art history, he considers art production and everyday culture of the post-war generation a welcome antidote for art history – a discipline in much need of rethinking its methods.8 His main argument as to why art history was still not capable of dealing with video art is not a question of whether it was art or not, but that the technological aspects were ‘obstacles – for the accepted methods of art history’.9 Most importantly this concerns different concepts of time (of which one is the actual decay factor of video tapes); video art’s performative time when being experienced in a display situation, that it is not suitable for still image reproductions (as illustrations in publications obviously are), and that it does not ‘offer itself for easy description’.10 Video art simply did not fit ‘the traditional narrative of art history as a chronicle recording events and works within the framework of history and evolution (of the arts in general)’ – an argument later shared by Chris Meigh-Andrews in A History of Video Art.11 Belting argued that video art work can only ‘be captured … in its own medium, the video’. The reason that video art, until then, had been theorized to a much larger extent than art historicized is due to the fact that

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it does not straightforwardly make sense in written descriptions in the same way as, for example, paintings do: according to Belting, their presences are of different kinds.12 Discussing, then, how to possibly deal with video art as art, he claims that its temporality as an art form implies that ‘its origin can only be traced back to the context of Fluxus and Body Art when video artists shared a common critique of the art market’.13 This is a rather radical manner of situating video art as art: by the shared concerns and not by how the medium operates audiovisually or the course of its technological developments. It is thus, as I understand it, a question of types of artists that constitutes the very basis for the art form, and hence a subject for art historical endeavours. Belting is then concerned with a few, particular art works (by Paik and Gary Hill) which he argues ‘[re-examine] the medium in order to subject it to critique’.14 Nonetheless, he does not develop the relation between art history’s shortcomings and the ways by which media art operates in a display situation. Nor does he give any substantial answers as to how art history can overcome its difficulties of dealing with it, but leaves it as an open question that concludes the chapter. Thus, how the antidote is supposed to work, and what its target actually was, remains unclear. However, the fact that he too regarded art history as not (yet) well adapted practice(s) in the quest to scrutinize the art form or its histories is revealing with reference to the situation of art history at the time, and with reference to historical narratives on video art. The ambivalence towards art history was often relevant and well argued for. There are different opinions and suggestions regarding the situation of repugnance to art history and the allied notions of art and canon. Furthermore, choosing a historical past consequently implies that the present is already inscribed by a certain type of interpretation, emphasizing not only predecessors but particular concepts and aesthetic considerations. As is further developed in the following, the discourse of (fine) art obviously attracted artists, scholars, critics and curators, but the crux remained of how to keep (so to speak) video art precisely on the border to – or from – that discourse; that is, to risk dirtying, but avoid (complete) contamination by a discourse found too troublesome and inadequate. What had happened was that video art became art by way of difference regarding the medium employed, but stayed within the realm of the visual. In this respect, video art operated in much the same way as Danto had claimed of Warhol’s Brillo Boxes;15 that is, defined (by consensus) as art but simultaneously broadening and upsetting the concept of art – as the work was not art in the same way (by the same parameters) as art was so far understood, hence defined. The epistemological authority that the art discourse – including art history and art institutions as two of its speech modes – entailed was something that video art benefited from. This attitude is rather widespread within this body of surveys: an outspoken need of

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the legitimizing power of art institutions and art history, albeit reluctantly. The fact that the essays in Hanhardt’s Video Culture were organized around different themes, of which none explicitly addressed art history or the notion of art, is symptomatic of the ambition of keeping the video art discourse at a safe distance from any proper (or strict) art historical business employing video art, instead of calling the works simply videos.16 This is similar to the many texts that favour the relation to television rather than fine art contexts, but attach the word ‘art’ to the works discussed.17 However, the various fields, subsets and aims of video practices continued to overlap and hence the contexts of display and experience affected the different constitutive aspects considered. Furthermore, a particular video work could – and of course still can – travel between different contexts where the status of art work may have been suitable (not to say beneficial) for interpretations in one particular situation but not in another. In order to be regarded as art, and thus enter the economic, ideological and aesthetic systems and realms of the art world, videos by artists needed a history of their own: an established discourse which simultaneously connected and disconnected it to other discourses, depending on what meaning, issues and conventions were sought to be narratively activated. Secondly, and often stressed, is that the threat of disappearing altogether alongside the actual video tapes stressed the impulse to immediately create a history.18 The argument (totally different in kind) against canon formations is the ephemeral nature of video tapes – the fact that they disintegrate (an argument that returns in later books) – and, consequently, the works that art institutions fail to preserve are lost forever: ‘it seems likely that written histories … will eventually be all that remains’, writes Meigh-Andrews.19 During the formative years of video art and the simultaneous process of historicizing it, this issue was partly turned against art institutions (accused of working from what was regarded as aesthetically important/good art), but also claimed as one motive behind the consciousness of the history of video art amongst its practitioners.20 Many artists and theorists of early video art therefore regarded art history with suspicion.21 (Later on, we did too.) As I noted in the introduction, art, art history and the display situations (and possibilities of inclusions) were conceived with reluctance or scepticism, or cautiously employed as necessary devices in the process of incorporating video works into the discourse of contemporary – postmodernist – art. However, this critical situation of how to come to terms with the then prevalent discourse of art history and its norms and regulations was not exclusively tied to the emerging new art forms. Crisis was acknowledged throughout the discourse and the various fields of agencies acting the discourse: museums, history, modernism, art, art history and narratives. Furthermore, another setback for the discipline of art history (if one can

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still speak about it in terms of the singular) – as well as any narrative on art historical events and moments – is that it cannot escape metonymizing operations. That is, the full picture is preposterous and therefore the myopic gaze remains.22 However critical towards much social art history, Preziosi was one of those who called for a reframing of the discipline towards a socially responsible art history, leaving mere methodological disagreements behind, while aiming for a discipline that does not exchange one panoptical gaze for another, but instead embraces plurality.23 The issue to discuss is whether the surveys deal at all, or to what extent, with a plurality of perspectives regarding foremost their practising of art history and in their creation of historical narratives. There is an important difference between anthologies and monographs, since the first comprises a number of different voices, hence arguments (partly comparable to the Bahktian notion of heteroglossia) and subjective aspects. The latter comes in the format of a single voice narrating a sequentially structured story.24 Also, they deal differently with the issues of when, how or even if art history is a suitable format for the included texts and/or the overall narrative structures. For the sake of clarity, I initially discuss the anthologies as one body of work and focus on the editors’ ideas on the subject, as well as on a particular but limited selection of essays, and then move on to the monographs before delivering some critical thoughts.

Art history or not? What the essays in Battcock’s New Artists Video clearly revealed was that the broad variety of references made invoked historical congenialities by which to also claim a specifically art historical legacy for video art. What today appears as a fumbling situation in Battcock’s collection of essays, with the grasping of, seemingly, almost anything that appeared to have any art historical affinities with video art practices, is precisely the manner of trying to inscribe video in a grand – also in the sense of plurality of expressions – general art history that later interpreters of video art rejected (even if the drive to promote video as art was still evident). The rejection that I argue is tangible cannot, however, be claimed as being directed towards New Artists Video by the sheer reason that it is not referred to, but to the endeavour of so vehemently trying to fit video art within traditional art history and its canonized concepts, styles and works of art. As a rule, in the introductory texts in the anthologies, it is art history (and particular versions of it) that is the target and not specific, named, agents of this practice. In Battcock, the visual relations drawn from were situated, however, not only in traditional art history, but from an extremely heterogeneous field of past events, including technological and media references (and even

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God).25 In order to come to terms with the presumed necessary genealogy legitimizing video as art (differently), the discursive interconnections made here later appear as important tropes and trajectories: the focus on the visual artist as the producer, technology as an agent, the ambivalent situation to television, and not least the problems of dealing with the discourse of art history as the one discipline empowered to nominate ‘art’. Neither Schneider and Korot nor Documenta 6 addressed art history at all. Both were entirely different kinds of publications than Battcock’s and Hanhardt’s anthologies. The first focused on the artists’ own statements but concluded the book with a number of rather short essays, of which some dealt with issues of interest here, whereas the essays in the latter were directed to the (anti-)relation to television and the lack of interest from art institutions to engage in video art. However, Hall and Fifer did consider art historical practices as (eventually) complicit in the legitimizing of the phenomena as art.26 Foremost, it was the formalist art criticism that they considered as an opposition to their understanding of video art practices of that time, writing that ‘video art defies a depoliticized hierarchy since it is socially engaged’.27 The project of depoliticizing modernist art – in the process of which there also emerged a normative and rather narrow take on Western art of the first decades of the twentieth century – operates undercover here and constitutes history as a problematic practice since it is, seemingly, detached from considerations of more unruly versions of (modernist) art. By the end of the 1970s it can be noted that a critical discourse of video art became increasingly necessary because of ‘the continuing production of undeniably important work’, writes David Ross.28 Illuminating Video was published at a point when video art history is said to emerge; video art had existed for approximately 25 years by then.29 The editors’ hesitations not only towards art history generally, but more specifically towards employing a linear strategy which would be tempting to link to the canon, is outspoken.30 Nevertheless, two of the essays in the first part of the book address narratives specifically under the heading ‘Histories’: Martha Rosler’s and Marita Sturken’s essays respectively.31 A particular problem in constructing a reliable history of video art was, according to Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, that video art’s origin is heterogeneous, implying that wherever one begins a (linear) narrative, the amount of exclusions makes it too narrow. Historical narratives, in this respect, are thus always failures since they cannot capture the past in its entirety (that is, the full picture); the panopticon gaze – and even more so a myopic one – consequently always results in failure. Hence, the plurality of the art form’s historical lineage was, from their point of view, traceable to such a broad variety of different visual and technological fields that mere art history as the framing discourse would omit too many important practices and works,

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and therefore was found too lacking. Hall and Fifer’s understanding of art historical practices (writing in 1990) is that these were not seen as competent enough to handle the broad field of styles and that the selective art historical process was too restrained by aesthetics as an ‘already isolated sphere’. However, this perspective on the limited possibilities of art history to examine video art serves rhetorical purposes by emphasizing the value of artists making the interpretations and writing the history, thereby keeping academic art history at bay. The self-consciousness around video art as performing societal and cultural critique seems to have operated as an evident position to create history from and, in extension, to refuel the field with a critical stance as imbedded in the very practices (not to mention the technology) of this (art) medium. In other words, the self-awareness of video art as subversive, cutting-edge art – one not totally submerged into fine art – works in a semi-loop as it returns but is constantly slightly changed in relation to institutionalized art history.32 Still, the selection of authors thus reveals, with the advantage of historical hindsight, that a canon in spe was undeniably produced by those (rightly) understanding and shaping the/a history of video art. This situation of valuing professions against each other is to some extent seemingly – whether an outspoken strategy or not – to write history from the perspective of what I think of as video art’s self-image while simultaneously producing the latter; that is, as critically, theoretically and conceptually highly competent. Video art’s origin, though not entirely detached from a broader field of creative, non-commercial video works, is here recognized as conceived ‘from a promiscuous mix of disciplines’.33 Hall and Fifer, writing the introduction to this thematically broad anthology, hence declined to address video art as stemming from an origin in the singular and instead argued for a plurality of pasts converging into a cluster of video practices that arguably is art. (However, far from all of the essays in the collection are concerned with video art in any strict sense of the notion.) The resistance towards a video art history – implying being captured by a too conventional discipline and discourse of art – is notable in Illuminating Video, and is later on – in the more recent monograph surveys – transformed into an attitude defining and, as a consequence, claimed as one lasting characteristic of video art per se. Hall and Fifer write: Cutting across such diverse fields, early video displays a broad range of concerns, often linked by nothing more than the tools themselves. Nonetheless, the challenge of video’s history has been taken on by the art world, though it might well have been claimed by social history or … the history of science and technology. Art historians, however, face two obstacles to constructing a credible history of video: video’s multiple origins and its explicitly anti-Establishment beginnings …

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When art historians consider video’s origin, they encounter the first obstacle: a wild plurality of styles for sorting and analysis. History is a process of selection. Art history, however, selects within the already isolated sphere of aesthetics.34

This critique towards art history seems reasonable, if one agrees to this particular understanding of the discipline. However, disciplines like ‘the history of science and technology’ would surely demand other but no less restrictive frames. That practices of art history have undergone crucial changes is evident when faced with this view of art history.35 What the discipline is criticized for, regarding its incapability to deal with video art, was valid for the other new art forms as well – especially when this aversion stemmed from an outspoken rejection of the formalism prevailing in much (American, or even New York-centred) art history and criticism at the time.36 What is particularly noted here is the incapability of art historians to deal with ‘social and political factors because they have been considered beyond their carefully delineated parameters’, and that video art ‘resists this closed system’.37 That many of video art’s early spokesmen and practitioners from its beginning characterized the artistic practices as unaccommodating to establishments and institutionalizations per se is presented as a fact, according to Hall and Fifer.38 Renov and Suderburg’s intention with Resolutions was to address not exclusively video art, but video culture in a much broader sense. In relation to a discourse of surveillance, they refer to the panopticon as theorized by both Foucault and, before him, Bentham, writing: ‘In practice, however, the panopticon organized its absolute visibility around a dominating, overseeing gaze that issued from a central point.’39 In another context, Preziosi had argued that traditional – and uncritical – art history operated as a panopticon; that is, the disciplinary crisis revealed art history as a too panoptic enterprise. Too much focus was directed on particular directions, the idea of directionality being one of the acute issues.40 Furthermore, he argued that the discipline was incapable of redirecting its gaze back on itself. But I suggest that in general it was also, and perhaps still is, a too myopic practice. Issues that social art history (and fields like visual culture studies) sought to change were especially the restricted range of phenomena studied and hence by what methods, and departing from which theories, art historical research (still claiming that name) could possibly further include.41 Art history in practice had become problematic, especially for those who wanted to combine a new set of theories and methods (like psychoanalysis, semiotics, deconstruction, social perspectives and so on) with historical archives of various contents, without falling into the trap of working with the concept of history as necessarily linked to ideas and theories of progression; and, as in the case of Resolutions, to widen the scope of video culture as a broad phenomenon situated in various places

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and circumstances: ‘Video in the 1990s is an equally hybridized domain deserving of treatment that preserves its discontinuities and multivocality. The knowledge presented on these pages is therefore situated and particular; specific questions address dispersed cultural objects from diverse critical positions.’42 However, their ideas of these practices are that they are ‘alternative media’ and may therefore also testify to a reluctance towards the limitations engendered by the notion of art and art history as the conceptual format framing it; since the ‘pre-existing cultural venues were hopelessly bureaucratized, politically conservative, or resistant to the new, alternative sites had to be fashioned at the border, margin, or subculture’.43 An important feature of the hesitations is what is especially present in texts by American scholars and artists: a rather distinct and problematic relation to formalist aesthetic theory on art. Re-evaluations of art as a concept and art history/critique do not automatically mean or lead to either an abolishment altogether or a serious reformulation of these notions. According to Marita Sturken and others, the history of video art was not formulated alongside new ideas and theories now clustered under the headings of post-structuralism and postmodernism, but from a modernist formalist viewpoint concentrating on the medium per se.44 Rosler, who in this respect agrees with Sturken, is critical of the historiography of video art precisely because of the American formalist modernist thinking prevailing in the 1960s and 1970s, making video ‘art-like’, or even ‘museumized’. However, the repeated focus on technological issues is not that far from the ‘medium-centred arguments’ advocated by Clement Greenberg and others.45 And this focus is primarily advocated from within the field of video art practices – from those who had the actual skills to work with the technique. Preferentially, the history ought to have recognized – according to Rosler – that the social and cultural critique of modernist art, as, for example, performed by members of the various dada and surrealist groups and aiming at the art institutions, were actually more relevant to much video art practices of the 1960s and 1970s than to formalist perspectives, framing, hence limiting, the notion of art.46 Rosler writes: ‘Instead of destroying the art world, the art world swelled to take them [the avant-garde] in, and their techniques of shock and transgression were absorbed as the production of refreshing new effects.’47 That art institutions began collecting new art in the form of, for example, video did not necessarily imply that video works were legitimized as art; yet it was given status (or reduced, depending on one’s view of art institutions’ doings and effects) as a valuable, collectible artefact. However, it also meant that this incorporation into the realm of art could pose the risk that an art institution claiming these kinds of objects made them more art than other things; as primarily art (that is, aesthetic) objects and only secondly as expressions of, for example, social critique.48 As the fate of

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dada and surrealism has been that of being ripped away from their political activist grounds, which is still visually manifested in museums of modern art where the white cube and anti-surrealist aesthetics disarm any attempt at provoking the bourgeois high-art context of displaying and contemplating art, this legacy seems to have been considered as a proof of art institutions’ power and capacity to transform, categorize and depoliticize art works.49 Instead of examining and visualizing the intellectual kinship between groups of artists historically separated from each other, the putative ‘pure aesthetic’ (whatever that is) tends to be the most valued aspect and hence operates directionally with regard to historical narratives and the theoretical and methodological aspects and norms by which they are constructed. To think in terms of paramodernism, or simply para-activities regarding art practices, would open up this kind of related (but not in terms of the identical or in any sense universalist) situations that could (possibly) alter and qualify understandings and acknowledgments of more plural versions (than) of art, not so easily adaptable to the modernism–postmodernism dichotomy. By now – as in the ‘now’ of my own writing – it is ideas of formalism – which sometimes seems to equal ‘modernism’ – that should not keep slipping by uncompromised. Instead, I try to unsettle the formalist prerogative (which of course many of you do too), and to read this apparently irreconcilable relation between video art’s history and art history as, partly, grounded in an attitude that, on the one hand, wants to turn to other past events than those present in narratives of normative modernism, and, on the other, seems incapable of actually claiming the potentials that a contaminated notion of art might enforce. Paradoxical, and unstable, positions and claims could further help relax these apparently immanent oppositions.An example of this latter attitude (that is, to think in terms relating to my idea of para) is Martha Rosler’s discussion which revolves around her theory of the historically complicated relation between technique and aesthetics, often appearing as each other’s antagonists in her account of video art history and its failures.50 Her arguments take their historical departure in the inventions of mass press and photography respectively. On the one hand, the two were involved with each other in the distribution of news and knowledge (mass-reproduced texts and images) outside of a strict aesthetic sphere, aiming instead towards another kind of society (where the previous elite was disempowered by the growth of new other classes, notably the bourgeoisie and the working class, and opening up a public sphere with democratic demands).51 On the other hand, the photographic technology, as well as social changes, evoked a stronger embrace of traditional values, including aesthetic ones. What Rosler targets here is a genesis of an aesthetic ideology which ends with – precisely – protective formalism. The ‘antitechnological culture’, beginning in the twentieth century, strived for more humanist values in society, including art. Simultaneously, then, as artists

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(like the impressionist painters) fought against a technologicalization of art, photography as a medium was increasingly employed for aesthetic means, and was thus approaching the realm of fine art. However, and this is the crux of the relation: ‘Photography itself quickly forced the other … visual practices to take account of it, but strove in its aesthetic practices to ape the traditional arts.’52 Rosler’s perspective on the role of technology does not follow the usual path, which is to retell the history of time-bound inventions and list the various technological means available. Instead she connects a political imperative to the employment of mass-reproducible techniques. ‘Aping’ fine art meant an abandonment of ‘a rational and representational form’, and photography as an artistic practice turned towards an ‘aestheticized pictorial realism’.53 What happened, according to Rosler, is that in the realm of fine arts (or the aesthetic object), the political (social meaning) could not stand up to the demands of the dominant aesthetics. She writes: ‘High culture appeared to have conquered the “negative” influences of both politics and mass culture by rigorously excluding – or digesting and transforming – both through a now familiar radical aestheticism’, which is formalism and what she notes as ‘elite art’.54 It is precisely this built-in opposition that Rosler’s arguments indicate as a risk with making video art too much like other (traditional, or normative modernist) art and, furthermore, why a history of video art would necessarily imply a re-reading of the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century that did seek social change by transgressing both a too individualistic address and a too restricted definition (in practice) of the notion of art.55 Turning to the art world in the 1960s, with its political and ideological turmoil, it was a doubtful way to proceed, since younger artists, Rosler writes, ‘looked to science, social science, and cultural theory – anywhere but to dealers, critics, or aesthetics – for leads’.56 The ontology of art – and thus art history, one can conclude – had thus to be reformulated to go beyond mere aesthetic values and include the historical, political, social and cultural context of art and the premise that art works, which are also statements beyond a formalist ideology aloof from worldly matters, are (actually) not in conflict with the category of art.57 This field of different practices, legacies and aesthetics is mapped on the following page, in a drawing by Laura Cottingham in a manner that plays with Alfred Barr’s schema of the relations of abstract art.58 Martha Rosler claims that the failing instance of a credible history of video art is made by art institutions and art historians (and other scholars) when trying to make the artistic practices of video art more like art in general. This implies looking at the aesthetic aspects and qualities as well as the technological means, rather than to the political critique of society and culture at large.59 She argues that video’s past has more to do with myths than history,60 and besides the listing-mode of history of technological invention, Rosler notes a consensus that ‘appears to be that there is a history of video

2.1 Laura Cottingham, ‘After Alfred Barr: Video Art’, 2001, ink on paper, 12 × 14 inches. © Laura Cottingham.

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to be written – and soon’.61 The pattern of following so-called traditional art history of the time was, according to her, ‘silly’, especially when employing such notions as style, personal markings (like an individual’s brush strokes as a kind of hand-writing that connotes presence) and originality in the sense of touch (and not meaning, addressee and so on).62 The effect of myth – as Barthesian depoliticized speech – in combination with reading artworks in this way was simply the wrong way to go, since it strived to make obsolete what Rosler argues are the fundamentals of much video art practice: namely, social and cultural engagement and critique.63 Marita Sturken unravels several of the myths at play in the historical narratives of video art in her contribution to Illuminating Video, the essay ‘Paradox in the Evolution of an Art Form: Great Expectations and the Making of a History’.64 She argues that video art’s separation from other artistic practices were, partly, due to the early segregation worked out by art institutions in their collections (video art as part of the film department, not painting/sculpture) and in early large-scale exhibitions of the art form, writing: In a mere twenty years, the technical and aesthetic changes in video evoke the equivalent of decades of development in such diverse media as photography and painting, thus provoking the perception that it must be quickly historicized. The need for history increased when information begins to erode and become irretrievable. As the electronic history of video fades, its written history gains importance. When the tapes are no longer decipherable, there will still be interpretive texts. Video’s preoccupation with history, its underlying fear for survival as a medium within the master narrative of art history, is manifested in the construction of history as a word. The other primary reason for video’s concern with its own history is not technological but institutional; however, it also carries with it a fear about survival. A history is often created as an act of preservation within specific social structures. That is, to formulate a history is to establish the legitimacy and autonomy of a particular field. The role museums and art institutions have played in institutionalizing video (as a medium that, one must add, artists originally perceived as antithetical to the art establishment) has significantly shaped the field This ‘museumization’ has succeeded in both nurturing and isolating work produced in video, a factor that can be seen as the direct result of non-profit funding structures in the United States.65

However, this division does not appear only in museum collections, but is in fact a manifest aspect of how video art is presented and interpreted in most of these books. The many connections made to both painting (by focusing on difference) and the limitations of formalism (to meet the critical, political or even activist branch of video art, which is the one that, for example, Rosler advocates) have established segregation from within. That is, video art is nowhere claimed as art in the same way as painting is, which is why I tend to

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think of this as that self-promoted, immanent resistance which at that point in time would have cancelled (any) interest in video art being institutionalized visually in the same (display) manner as painting and sculpture. Nevertheless, both Sturken and Rosler share the opinion that the ‘technologically determinist’ perspective on history-making has been given far too much attention at the cost of issues more pertinent to the artists making the art works.66 But according to Sturken, the stories that emphasize practices highly critical of mass media and consumption need to be nuanced, since several artists actually tried ‘to get on the airwaves’ and video collectives were far from always founded on anti-capitalist grounds.67 Sturken calls attention to an intrinsic paradox of video art’s relation to history. According to her, video is ‘a medium whose very technology is geared to the present and associated with the future’, implying that a/the past was somehow detached from a symbolic understanding of the technology per se. At the same time, the rapid disappearance of video and the selfconsciousness of being subversive, working from the periphery of both art and ‘the overwhelming presence of television’, led to an awareness of and need for a past in order to claim a position in the present (and future) to speak and act from.68 The focus on presence, as a consequence of the medium, seems to have operated as an impulse to also create history in the presence of it: an immediate-as-history, so to speak.69 Michael Rush’s Video Art is the earliest of the monographs surveying the history of video art and his intention was to present ‘an overview of this remarkable medium that, in its little more than thirty-five years of existence, has moved from brief showings on tiny screens in alternative art spaces to dominance in international exhibitions’.70 The survey is structured by ‘three major themes’. These are, in turn, organized chronologically, despite him stating that ‘no handy “themes” or “schools” of artists present themselves as organizing tools’.71 Recalling the differences to the genre of anthologies, the narrative here is single-voiced, speaking of a plurality of aesthetics as well as technological prerequisites, a large number of artists and art works – all incorporated into a well-framed story. In the narrative of Video Art, it seems like (concluding from how the author presents his book) themes have been singled out first and thereafter the artists and art works that best illustrate them. His procedures thus follow conventional art historical writings, categorizing particular features in a line of progression, or as changes and alterations, and employing the artists/art works as narrative instances of individual events within a linear, that is, chronologically structured, order of events. This is not to say that the overall structure necessarily is the one aspect that forcefully limits the chosen representatives, as the latter operate as reciprocal moves affecting the narratives too, and hence they confirm the relevance of each other as particularized instances within the narrative. My point here is that the structure of Video Art allies itself to an

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unproblematized version of art historical practice, of which he does not say much. Perhaps the art historical discourse was simply not a hindrance to him. The exception, however, is that Rush announces one point of deviation ‘from art historical categories’, the technological aspect, which Belting also declared as a too complicated aspect for art history to deal with properly.72 Rush makes a sweeping presentation of how video art entered into both the institutionalized art world and alternative sites, making it all appear like an easy walk. This is an opinion that, for example, Yvonne Spielmann counters, but also Liljefors, Meigh-Andrews and Elwes speak about the first decade in terms of video art as taking place on the fringe of contemporary art.73 Why the task of historicizing video art would be not only complicated but, perhaps, even venturous remains unclear, since Video Art seems very confident about how art history is practised here. The first chapter, ‘Shaping a History’, begins as follows: Attempting a history of Video art is a complicated venture. The origins of the form were too multifaceted to be identified with one or two individuals, no matter how influential they may have been. In general terms Video art emerged in a complex international cultural environment characterized by anti-war protests and sexual liberation movements, all of which were increasingly visible on home televisions. This scene, combined with a moment in art history that, exhausted by the muscular trappings of Abstract Expressionism, was embracing new forms influenced by dance, theatre, performance, film, and nascent multicultural awareness, made video the natural choice for art that was both a critique and a bold new experiment.74

The ‘one or two individuals’ that he here declines to mention by name, one can assume, are Paik and either Vostell or Warhol. As noted earlier, Rush rather makes the Portapak the original starting point for the art form. However, like Belting, Rush also focuses on video artists as particular kinds of artists sharing certain ideas, political views, a particular interest in media culture and so on with other artists of the same generation. I take this as an argument as to why either the art issue or art history as problematic do not really concern him. However, in the passage on Warhol, Rush writes: Introducing Warhol into this history of Video art is a way of embracing it in the context of art history in general, for Warhol is clearly an icon of the art world. It is within this art-historical context that the central figure in Video art’s history (that is the history of Video art viewed as art as opposed to Video art as a practice used by people other than visual artists) presents himself: Nam June Paik.75

What art history as a narrative practice is apparently about, then, is to scrutinize the field of artists and their products as they (somehow) are already incontestably acknowledged as agents and events of the art historical discourse – or in the case of Warhol, as a neglected initiator of video art, even if recognized as a prominent artist in other (initially sub-)contexts of

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traditional art history. Hence a circular kind of implicit argument operates here as the legitimizing process of video art’s history and its privileged and indispensable events as unavoidable narrative instances in this specific story. Although Sylvia Martin’s essay ‘Moving Pictures’ is a short presentation of video art, it too simultaneously follows a thematic and chronological organization, and, regardless of the format (of 25 pages), she manages to mention most of the reoccurring events by then transformed into historical highlights of video art. However, there is no discussion of the discipline and narrative format of art history nor the notion of art, although here and there it is noted that the audience of today is used to moving image art to such an extent, I conclude, that arguments concerning whether these video works are art or not or belong to the realm of art history are understood by her as being obsolete by then. The respective surveys by Max Liljefors – Videokonsten: en introduktion – and Catherine Elwes – Video Art: A Guided Tour – share several mutual aspects. Both draw extensively on technological developments as factors affecting art production, and their narratives are also similar (even if not to the same extent as Meigh-Andrews and Spielmann). Elwes’ Video Art: A Guided Tour follows a chronological order. But as she writes both ‘from’ the UK, which she claims has a somewhat different story than the one coming from the US, and as admittedly having been herself part of the video art world, she retells the scenes and occasionally the choice of artists and art works differently from both Rush’s and Liljefors’ surveys, as well as the early anthologies addressed above.76 Elwes does not, however, scrutinize the concept of art history in general terms or in relation to her own practice, but notices the inescapable requisites for video artists to be acknowledged by the ‘hegemony of the art marshals’. And she continues: ‘Then as now, artists needed to be sanctioned by historians and critics to maintain visibility and ensure sponsorship, state, private, and corporate.’77 To conclude that neither art history nor art institutions like museums and galleries are branches – and discursive elements – of the art world that she heralds in any real sense thus seems reasonable. Art history intervenes more out of necessity than something to escape altogether, which she claims, however, was an ‘honest attempt’ by many artists back in the 1960s.78 Even though Elwes can be assumed to be hesitant about the role played by art history, except for the benefits of financial support and visibility that may follow from such recognitions and alliances, there are no outspoken problems in practising it. The introduction deals mostly with technological issues and the usages of these, as does the chapter ‘The Modernist Inheritance’. In both, however, she begins by briefly setting an art historical stage where prominent (that is, arguably canonized) artists are placed centre-stage: Paik and Duchamp play these roles here.79 The dematerialization of art as a particular kind of art practice is also contemporary with the earliest video art. But several of these authors still

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emphasize that the immateriality of the moving image, and the fact that the material base for video art and beyond does not make much sense from an aesthetic point of view, operate as decisive features, making video art very different from how paintings and sculptures (with their palpable quality) operate visually.80 This is also the opening aspect of Liljefors’ introductory publication on the subject.81 That video art does not share the same kind of presence as the aforementioned art forms is here taken as a likely reason for why video art has not been either theorized or historicized to the same extent as the traditional art forms.82 I would say that it is rather due to the fact that video art has existed during an incomparable shorter time span; the accumulation of events has to be of a certain dignity before history makes any real sense – especially when history is produced narratively in concordance with concepts of chronology and canon, hence linearity and, more often than not, ideas of progression. Immateriality is by now, I think, far from an immediate problem for a knowledgeable audience – and even less so from a scholarly point of view. More important here is that Liljefors’ book appeared in the same year as Elwes’, and only two years after Rush’s, whereas Martin’s, Meigh-Andrews’ and Spielmann’s were all published a few years later. They are all evidence of both a need and a desire to capture video art within an historical frame, however differently these frames are set. At this point in time, then, the making of history in narrative form was, obviously, enacted by several scholars and art writers simultaneously. Four decades of artistic practices within the art form constitute an archive of a large quantity of works, as well as discernible variations of subject interests and aesthetics, and therefore provide the necessary context to carry out art history.83 An ambition that Liljefors shares with Rush and Elwes is to produce an expedient survey of the very history of video art; that is, an awareness of both the past events per se and the fact that video art by now does have a well-recognized history of its own, and one worth telling in historical form, whereas MeighAndrews’ ambition is that of ‘tracing a history of video art’.84 In the passage entitled ‘Historical writing’ (Historieskrivning), Liljefors’ aim is the same as is mine here: to look at how video art has been historicized in the past. Our main difference is his focus on the history of video collectives and, of course, the lengths of our different projects regarding this particular issue.85 Nevertheless, Liljefors notes the fundamental aspects of all historical narratives: that of choosing privileged and indispensable moments and the fact that these are not (and cannot be) selected ambiguously, since a history can only talk about things already known, hence found. Unless, that is, one takes a serious trip to the many archives where video works are located when out of sight, and actually does find hitherto neglected information or previous writings on works now gone.86 What has been told before, and the names already mentioned, tends to return, and what has been suitable for museums to collect is the visual evidence of which art works have been (carefully) attended to.87

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More or less the same set of events and artists is addressed by Yvonne Spielmann, despite the fact that she obviously did not subscribe to the views of those who claim the importance of discussing video (art) works as art. Regarding that notion as too limiting for her own subject, she is likewise of the opinion that art history cannot sufficiently deal with the media specifics necessary when investigating video, irrespective of a preceding nomination of art or not. Her main objection is argued to be a widespread lack of knowledge of how the various technological apparatuses and devices actually function. Still, she makes no reference to surveys on video art, which, of course, makes one doubt on what premises she actually makes these conclusions. But, whereas Hall and Fifer in Illuminating Video, for example, dismissed art history on the basis of neglecting political and social issues, Spielmann rather brings out yet another field of knowledge.88 The focus of analysing video (art) by way of the medium per se is, however, reminiscent of both Belting’s and Meigh-Andrews’ views on the subject. Meigh-Andrews’ A History of Video Art, rich as it is with regard to various aspects of video art and its history, is also a good example of the underlying hesitation towards both the concept of art and the discourse of art history. Yet he also takes issue with video art being defined and interpreted in relation to broadcast television, where he refers to David Hall as important in his striving for an acknowledgement of video art as an ‘autonomous art form’.89 The recalcitrance to the former is partly revealed by the repeated testimony to artists also working as activists (or not themselves being content with being labelled video artists), and the cross-fertilizations of different cultural practices such as film and music. Another reason is the hesitations expressed by video artists, implying that the medium was free from both traditions and hierarchies as operational, hence (normally) regulatory, within art history.90 But like Rosler’s essay and Hall and Fifer’s introduction, to mention only two texts, the resistance is also imbedded in the failures of art history to deal with political and social issues as well as other cultural expressions.91 However, MeighAndrews furthermore notes the importance of theory: ‘Film practice has developed a considerable body of theoretical and critical discourse, which for the most part video lacks, has always envied and has more than occasionally drawn from’, referring to the period from the mid-1960s to the 1990s.92 In his concluding chapter he writes that ‘“Artists’ Video” [not using the term video art] as a separate and distinct practice within the fine art canon seems to have been absorbed into a larger and less clearly defined moving image practice’ which includes various different technologies and aims, and, moreover, an audience used to the moving image as a natural part of exhibitions.93 This testifies to a state when video art was in fact already recognized as an important feature of contemporary art, and no longer needed to claim its status as art.

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Origins: art and/or technology As is made clear above, the historical narrative of video art emerged soon after its advent as a new art form was acknowledged as such by professionals within the art world. What must be stressed, I think, is the almost synchronicity between video art as it happened and developed and it being theorized and historicized (regarding origins); not unlike the Foucauldian historical a priori which implies that the regulation of the archive becomes simultaneous with that which it helps define and historicize.94 Simultaneously, and paradoxically, the late 1960s and 1970s was a period when the concept of art accepted hitherto fell (according to some of the scholars setting the tone, at least), as did the belief and trust in grand narratives, objectivity, origins, truth and patriarchal privileges. That is, at the same moment as video art was in the process of being established as an (high) art form, many of the criteria and systems of valuation had begun to crack – not least within art critical practices and, with a certain delay, the discipline of art history.95 The first more serious attempts to situate video art works within the realm of fine art were rather diverse in the many different suggestions regarding its origin in relation both to art and to technological inventions and practices of moving images, prominent features, aesthetics, and theoretical presumptions and perspectives. Also, amongst the first generation of video artists, several were dedicated to producing textual documentation alongside their art works; to actively participate in issues regarding definitions and valuations. According to Laura Cottingham, these artists ‘were not only arguing their case against more traditional art media, attitudes, and aesthetics; they were also engaged in internal debates to establish criteria by which the new video medium should be judged’.96 The body of publications scrutinized here reveals a corresponding set of ideas of when, where and by whom video art began. As most of these surveys and a number of essays in the respective anthologies testify to, a chronological narrative demands a particular moment of departure, of origin even. The general conclusion drawn from reading these books is that video art appeared when visual artists began using video-recording techniques to make art works. However, despite the different narrative perspectives, the authors of especially the monographic surveys share a desire to outline a pre-history, which, in turn, evolves into significant aspects that operate as structuring devices of their narratives as precisely surveys. Thus, depending on the different thematic perspectives chosen, the moment of the narrative’s origin is often located further back in the past and operates as a historical necessity as such. What I am implying here is both that there is a sense of consensus regarding a fairly narrow selection of possible departures, and that, in relation to which one is chosen, the stories then unfold. But, of course, the point of departure is also always already claimed and argued for by the set of representatives by

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which the particular survey ends. There is, for example, the fact that in the early 1960s several artists recorded their performances, which is an imagemaking practice that may precede an artist’s later working directly with video in order to produce an art work consisting of moving images. In some of these stories the actuality that artists employed moving image techniques (often alongside photography and performance) is regarded as part of video art’s pre-history, while thus disregarding that the aim was to record for the archive an otherwise lost work, not to produce an art work per se.97 Several of the publications examined here begin their chronological surveys not only with the invention of film, but also with the more or less related technological inventions such as sound recording (irrespective of whether this temporally structured story is part of the introduction, as in some of the anthologies, or is the main trajectory of the entire book); this recalls McLuhan’s idea that ‘the content of a medium is always an earlier medium’.98 Or they may seek predecessors amongst artists sharing political, ideological or critical beliefs and ambitions, like Martha Rosler did. Meigh-Andrews discusses rather thoroughly political situations of the 1960s (for example, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the students’ revolution in 1968), not as historical origins but as contemporary events and circumstances that were seriously affecting many works by video artists/activists.99 The relation to the medium of film and particularly modernist avantgarde artists’ film works is a pre-history that is often claimed, particularly in the many exhibitions, with their accompanying catalogues focusing on artistic moving image practices, by categorizations of museums’ collections (where film and video often belong to the same department), as well as a rather extensive body of scholarly publications on the relations and affinities between film, cinema and moving image art.100 However, whereas film practices may be inscribed as important, or even inevitable, as an early source for understanding the video medium within a realm of visual aesthetics and art, some – for example, Rush and Spielmann – maintain that with the emergence of video technology and professional visual artists’ increasingly working with the medium, different branches evolved and some turned towards practices argued as distinctly not art. The relation to experimental film is one such origin, but which from the 1960s and onwards evolves parallel to video art (and later to new media art), and it further operates as a kind of sidetrack which makes, for example, Rush’s rather long presentation of Godard reasonable within that particular historical narrative.101 Television was another important phenomenon as a technological forerunner to the video medium in the sense of artists using broadcast companies’ equipment, and later as both a vehicle for screening video works and as a sculptural element of installations. The invention of photography is yet another technological invention which is occasionally reconciled with a historical past of video art.102 The heterogeneous and

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often scattered relations that are acknowledged as distinct features of both previous moving image practices outside a strict fine art realm and video art practices in a broad and long-term sense are at the same time recognized as difficult to handle when organizing a historical narrative, and yet necessary to maintain in order not to relinquish the very plurality by which it is defined. Historical events firmly inscribed within general art history are, however, very rare, and only a few single names of artists that experimented with film (such as Man Ray and Léger, for example)103 appear as exceptional examples rather than of actual importance when it comes to defining, hence legitimizing, the art form. This view is shared by all the authors referred to here, although to different extents. I think of these rather broad pre-histories as meeting two demands. Firstly, there is the tradition of legitimizing a new phenomenon by connecting it, without totally submerging it, to events, that is, art-making, preceding the object at hand (as when critics and scholars linked the art practice of Robert Rauschenberg to that of Duchamp, hence claiming a trajectory, and a legacy, for employing everyday objects as art/art material). This is an inclusive strategy which works both ways. It re-evaluates a past for yet more aspects that with historical hindsight turned out to be even more innovative and important than was (perhaps) assumed at the time of it happening (as with Duchamp’s ready-mades). By returning and re-evaluating past events, one is actually also inventing them as significant pasts through which the present becomes both legible and – in a sense – even possible. It also charges a previous event with the value of historical significance as a legible origin. An origin can only be claimed as such when and where the event of which it consists is linked to subsequent events acknowledged in the present. Secondly, it makes the new phenomena (like Rauschenberg’s Bed) not only understandable as a speech act within a particular system of visual language (that is, art), but as something also recognized for developing earlier, similar practices of art-making. Legitimization happens through the acknowledgement of the particular two parameters agreed upon: the status of the maker and the display situation (the video work was made by a visual artist and screened for an audience). Nam June Paik’s video recording of the Pope visiting New York on 4 April 1965 is the event for which there is a remarkably strong consensus as being the very first video art work.104 To be legible, and recognized as something of value (aesthetic and/or monetary), new and innovative art works have to be interpreted – and thus inscribed, that is, read – into something already acknowledged as art. What is rarely argued here is the relation to the Fluxus network’s art practices, which could also serve as a criterion for an art context. Despite a rather widespread reluctance amongst the writers on the subject towards traditional art history and its adherent, putative concepts, histories of video art do not often begin there and then with the Paik piece.105 Instead video art (like the traditional

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story of Western painting as it circulates in textbooks)106 is claimed to have its origin further back in history. Image-making is, however, not the same as making art. To make art is to know that it is precisely that which one is producing; this is also the reason why the concept of the artist is important in this particular context, since it operates in these surveys to distinguish between video art and other forms of creative video practices and video cultures. Thus, for an art historical context the identification of the producer is as important here as whether a video work is nominated art (or not) and the context of display.107 It is when these three aspects coalesce contextually that art history as an ideologically charged mode of historical narration apparently makes sense and is practised. But alongside the much-stressed different nature of the video medium, these aspects operate as important demarcations of art history as a narrative discourse perceived as addressing a too limited set of possible practices. My point here is that, for example, documentations of performances not aiming at either a display situation or a critically informed interpretation can belong to artists’ video practices not as proper art works but rather as part of a history of the usage of the medium. The idea of precisely proper art works is one that is constantly contested yet is far from being an outspoken argument for treating and practising art history with suspicion. It rather operates as an underlying, but sometimes rhetorically employed, assumption for altering aesthetic valuations related to both traditional art history and the art market. Ideas of origin, the first, and similar concepts frequently inform these surveys. Hence, despite the claim made in those days by Arthur Danto, and others, that art had turned into a philosophical phenomenon defaulting the long-lasting visual prerogative of art, and therefore breaking with art as a practice defined by historical linkage and developments, Paik as a video artist had to come from some identifiable place (for some unspoken reason). The historical pasts re-called are more often than not found outside of the fine art realm, but as art, video art is linked both to the paradigmatic change of the concept, to the cross-fertilizations of artistic practice of the time and to the status of the producer and the sites where the art works were displayed. One exception to this practice of more or less extensive pre-histories is Yvonne Spielmann’s Video: The Reflexive Medium: she makes clear that the origin of video art is the possibility to transfer electronic signals (to which I return in the last chapter).108 In these narratives, technological inventions in the form of new apparatuses furthermore serve a function as historical evidence that, seemingly, does not always need to be interpreted but rather appears as objective facts to which one can link (chronologically) particular artists, art works and modes of visual aesthetics. However, as technology is far from only employed – narratively – as a material device, it also comes to convey meaning in the same ways that other signs and events do. For instance, the appearance of the Portapak is more often than not narratively

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framed as an historical myth (as derived from Barthes); not in the sense of it not being (legible as) true, but by the manner in which the event of Paik using it for the first time conveys meaning within narratives of video art history: as the birth of video art, hence causing both video art and later on its history, the uncut – and therefore (almost) real – displaying of the recording he made.109 According to Barthes, myth is, by definition, not separable from its intentions and the distance which is already established as a site located somewhere else.110 The myth, in this case the historical importance of a Portapak in the hands of a unique artist at a particular historical moment and place, circulates as ‘a statement of fact’, hence standing (safely) apart from subjective interpretations attributing particular significance to historical pasts. On Barthes’ notion of myth, John Fiske writes: ‘Barthes uses it [myth] as a believer, in its original sense. A myth is a story by which a culture explains or understands some aspect of reality or nature … A myth … is a culture’s way of thinking about something, a way of conceptualizing or understanding it.’111 With reference to my discussion above on history perceived as something found rather than produced in narrative form, the Barthian concept of myth emphasizes the process of naturalization of history and thus as meaning production as opposed to practices with a critical historiographic edge to them. That is, in the sense that Rosler argued for myth-makings, further involving a gender-biased origin of the art form and a lack of prioritizing socio-cultural critique in the endeavours to theorize video art while producing historical narratives. In Sceptical History, the historian Hélène Bowen Raddeker discusses ‘the circularity of causation in representations of the past (or history, origins, tradition) that seeks to show how the past has determined the present, apparently in unilinear fashion’.112 Choosing, for example, a particular historical event of the past as the entry point from which to begin an investigation, and thus the interpretation, of ‘that’ past is to have already set the frame and trajectory from which the narrative will unfold. Simply put, not everything can be likely to be caused by that singular event claimed as significant. What Raddeker designates as presentism is an unavoidable presumption for historical interpretations and cannot be circumvented, according to her, but it can be scrutinized (self-referentially analysed) in tandem with the narrative process. Going back hence implies that the present in which one is situated is the actual point of departure (culturally, politically, ideologically, socially – and aesthetically) as much as one may claim to reconstruct or recover a past. Reconstruction is – at best – only one suggestion of the what a past once was, or meant (as in researching). Raddeker, however, argues that the entire idea of recovering is a traditional notion of little relevance at the present time, since ‘it represents an insistence … of the original/true meaning’, and that it is further impossible to recover such phenomena as intentions, ideas and beliefs.113 If one agrees with the

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idea that meaning resides in language, and is not out there in some kind of reality, then it seems reasonable to argue that how one understands, for example, video art affects what is possible to proclaim as both its pasts and its post-events (like, for example, new media). Thus, one can only be critical about what is already recognized (inasmuch as that which is not, one cannot have an opinion about). If the past is homogenized by linking an origin to a particular event and agent, then the trajectory of the ‘postists’ has only one route to follow (or deviate from) and the plurality of the latter – or the present – becomes even more conspicuous and also, perhaps, more easy to argue for.114 What I claimed in the previous chapter in relation to Danto follows this line of argument: that it was a particular, singular and subjective (hence also an empiricist position of) understanding of modernist art that (partly) made it possible for him to so convincingly argue for a paradigmatic shift concerning the notion of art. My argument about painting follows the same line; it functioned as a correlate for nearly all other new art media of the 1960s and 1970s, not least regarding the optical privilege of art.115 What has happened in the genre of art historical surveys on postmodern art and beyond is that (for example) both Greenberg’s and Danto’s perspectives on modernist art are often employed as if they were evidence, or facts, for how the past was, rather than distinguished as also subjectively situated interpretations.116 Employing their theories as (aspirations to) truth gives the narratives referring to them a ‘realistic effect’.117 However, if one argues that a radical shift occurred regarding how artists make use of older art (as propositions of art), it might as well be that a latent attitude of the past has been recognized due to new documents. That is, when focus was also redirected to such impure modernist art as surrealist art, the past no longer seemed as rigid as before, and by opening up to past pluralities, the present could acknowledge and legitimize its aesthetic and ideas for further investigations and practices; in certain aspects, then, surrealism could be one example of paramodernism astir. Raddeker speaks of the unusual situation of ‘unearthing new documents’ as what may propel alternative interpretations of the past.118 As argued above, I think that the widespread, homogenous story about Western modernist art – as it took form in the 1950s and after – omitting particular art movements, as well as women and non-white artists, is crucial to the very possibility of postmodernist art and stories: that is, how one makes meanings of past events both departs from and affects the present.119 In this context plurality often has more to do with theoretical perspectives than with departing from different events of the past, keeping the normative modernist–postmodernist binary activated. Apparently it did not suffice to indicate video art as a fact based on agreements in the art world (irrespective of it being in terms of a Dantonian philosophical turn, or by other criteria, for example, visual objects made by professional artists). The reasons for addressing artists’ video works

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as art, despite the regulative power of that concept, vary and are often in contradiction. On the one hand, the designation of these aesthetic objects as art implies, by way of tradition and institutionalized theories and concepts, particular ways of understanding and interpreting. On the other hand, it discloses an almost schizophrenic ambivalence to that very framing, as it limits the alternatives of precisely what video art’s history can possibly include. Limitations (from a myopic perspective) are, however, necessary in order to make sense of a particular argument: a specific course of events, that is, a (linear) history. The initially claimed art status – but as art differently – was more often than not based on other criteria than those prevailing within Greenbergian formalism, and could perhaps make one believe (or hope) that serious attempts were made to come to terms with an art historical practice found to be out of time with the new art forms.120 According to David Ross, the early period of video art ‘generated a rather limited critical discourse’.121 However, even if video art by the end of the 1990s was a well-established art form with innumerable artists employing the medium primarily or only occasionally, the limited discourse still affects the structure and narratives of the historical surveys. Notions of history, art, chronology and canon were all troublesome to handle but still unavoidable, as it turned out. The ambivalence is more often expressed in words than in efforts to write history differently, as if these concepts were to be stoically endured rather than viewed as theoretical sites for renegotiations. The reluctance against and suspicion towards the discourse, or discipline, of art history did not render the latter obsolete. In many respects business, so to speak, went on as usual. Nevertheless, what may be taken as more than mere signs of ambitions to narrate history in different manners are the frequent emphases on video art’s – general! – bonds to political activism, its ideological critique of society as well as of institutionalized art and art history, and the constant affirmation of video art’s truly multiple historical legacies and genealogies. The claimed gap with traditional art forms – now spoken of in terms of different media – can be argued as an insistence not only of a renegotiated concept of art, but of any attempt to fall into the production of narratives that by too strict constants (whether concepts, names or works) slip on the risky border of those old-fashioned ideas of the universal, totalitarian modes of engaging with pasts and present(s) – as well as particular binary thoughts. There is a striking consensus in these matters which, on the other hand, could be a reason for the scepticism regarding the success of the differences argued for. It is evident that the new art forms (video, performance, photography and conceptual art) demanded other and new ways of being historicized than traditional art and in relation to changed interests, hence the turn towards, for example, sociology, semiotics, feminism and post-colonial studies. Influences thus worked both ways, although not always as fully fledged art historical projects. Video art’s history as it is practised in these narratives is firmly

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located in a discourse where the identity of the artist, the nomination of art, the institutional sites for display, the art theoretical context of critique, the recurring references to the paradigmatic art forms of painting and sculpture, and, not least, the unproblematized idea of modernism as utterly formalist rather testify to art history as not seriously renegotiated.

Notes 1 For example, the confusion regarding concepts and crisis linked to ‘postmodernism’ was addressed already in the anthology E. Ann Kaplan, ed., Postmodernism and its Discontents: Theory and Practice, Verso, London and New York, 1988. See, for example, her Introduction, pp. 1–9, and Warren Montag, ‘What Is at Stake in the Debate on Postmodernism?’, pp. 88–103. 2 See, for example, Hal Foster, ed., Postmodern Culture, Pluto Press, London, (1983) 1985; Andreas Huyssen, ‘Mapping the Postmodern’, New German Critique, no. 33, 1984, pp. 5–52; Ihab Hassan, The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture, Ohio State University Press, Columbus, 1987; Nigel Wheale, ed., The Postmodern Arts: An Introductory Reader, Routledge, London and New York, 1995; Sven-Olov Wallenstein, ed., Svar på frågan: Vad var det postmoderna?, Axl Books, Stockholm, 2009; Pamela M. Lee, New Games: Postmodernism After Contemporary Art, Routledge, New York, 2013. On technologically based art and postmodernism, see Margot Lovejoy, Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age, Routledge, London and New York, (1989/1992) 2004; Lee, 2013. See also references below. 3 So-called New Art History emerged, advocated by, for example, Norman Bryson in the book he edited in 1988: Calligram: Essays in New Art History from France. In order to rethink and revitalize practices of art history, he introduced essays departing from post-structuralist theories. Psychoanalysis and semiotics were but two theoretical fields that were addressed in the publication. The essays were declared to represent new approaches within the humanities generally. His own introduction was in part a harsh critique of ‘Gombrichian’ art history, here signifying a theoretically rather limited practice with a conservative set of methodological tools: Bryson, ‘Introduction’, pp. xiii–xxix. In his review of the book, David Carrier pointed out that what Bryson – with his ‘French-style art history’ – was actually supporting was ‘amateur art history’. This, according to Carrier, is foremost marked by the lack of footnotes and hence, more importantly, a lack of consulting and rethinking of previous research on the particular issue at hand (which Carrier notes that all of the included authors are practising, amongst them Kristeva, Barthes and Foucault). See David Carrier, ‘Calligram: Essays in New Art History from France by Norman Bryson’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 47, no. 3, Summer 1989, pp. 286–287. In another, shorter and less critical, review of Bryson’s publication, the need for a revitalized discipline is acknowledged: Julie F. Codell, ‘Calligram: Essays in New Art History from France by Norman Bryson’, The French Review, vol. 63, no. 2, December 1989, pp. 386–387. Belting, also sceptical of Gombrich’s method of connecting psychology to perception, writes: ‘The danger in Gombrich’s method is the temptation to reduce anything in art to the game of perception’: Hans Belting, Art History after Modernism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2003, pp. 144–145. On Gombrich, Hegel, theory and art history, see also James Elkins, ‘Art History without Theory’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 14, no. 2, 1988, pp. 354–378. Introducing new theories and interpretative approaches to the field of art history was, however, also seen as perhaps risking professional art historical practices which account for ‘the ways in which visual images are [art/ historically] contextualized’ in favour of an excitingly proliferating ‘French-styled theorizing’. The focus on the rather subjective spectator’s part in the process of interpreting images present in the ‘Calligram’ essays is by now a rather widespread recognition of the necessity of self-reflexive practices – that is, to elucidate how oneself is situated and situates the object of study. Even though the word crisis was not used by Bryson, the collection of texts testifies to an apparent need to reconsider the theories and methods hitherto (normatively) employed within art theoretical writings and is mentioned here as but one example of an escalating desire to regenerate the discipline. Norman Bryson, ed., Calligram: Essays in New Art History from France, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988. See Carrier, p. 287. See also Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson’s seminal – now a classic – essay, ‘Semiotics and Art History’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 73, no. 2, 1991, pp. 174–208. 4 Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1989. It was a landmark investigation of what has become a particularly vivid branch of the discipline: critical interdisciplinary historiographical studies. Here he pointed out

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that contradictions, unlinearity, theoretical and methodological differences and so on were not constitutive aspects of a new situation breaking up a hitherto homogenous and solid discipline, but in fact conditions that had operated simultaneously even when in conflict throughout the history of art history within academia. His interrogation of the discipline was an answer to a debate going on during the 1980s, especially in the US, and which he found to be ‘redundant, frequently shallow, and polemically aimed at often fictive targets’ (p. xiii). The first chapter is entirely devoted to this debate, where the primary threat is symbolically moulded as a character named Deconstruction. The debate that he particularly refers to took place in a special issue of Art Journal in 1982 – ‘The Crisis in the Discipline’ – and to which he himself also contributed an article. As the crisis is presented by Preziosi in his book, it was different and oppositional understandings of historical directionality that triggered the debate; Art Journal, special issue: Donald Preziosi, ‘Constru(ct)ing the Origin of Art’, Art Journal, vol. 42, no. 4, New York, 1982, pp. 320–325. Worth mentioning is that the special issue’s title is not followed by a question mark and thus states crisis as a fact. The two most important things to seriously scrutinize were, according to Henri Zerner who edited this issue, ‘to rethink the object of art history’ and the very notion of history (p. 279). Both these aspects are addressed by Preziosi. The contributing essays deal with different approaches to the idea of crisis, but worth pointing out is that only one of them addresses the concept of ‘art’ more directly; Rosalind Krauss, ‘Photography’s Discursive Spaces: Landscape/ View’, Art Journal, vol. 42, no. 4, New York, 1982, pp. 311–319. An effect of the inclusions of art produced from places around the globe, that is, not just Western art, is that universal claims regarding practices of art history – but not art – became an impossible position since methods and theories have to be chosen in accordance with what is studied: Oleg Grabar, ‘On the Universality of the History of Art’, Art Journal, vol. 42, no. 4, New York, 1982, pp. 281–283. 5 Hans Belting, Das Ende der Kunstgeschichte?, Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich, 1983. 6 Belting, 2003. 7 Ibid., pp. 85–95. 8 Ibid., p. 84. 9 Ibid., p. 85. 10 Ibid., p. 85. He makes a distinction between the ‘time of video art, which is different from time in video art’, p. 87. 11 Belting, 2003, pp. 89–91; Chris Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art: The Development of Form and Function, Berg, Oxford, 2006, p. 6. 12 Furthermore, what situates history in a new and difficult position is the digital technologies which make ‘anything and everything’ available in the same present (with the expansion of the internet since then – his text being originally published in German in 1995 – the situation is thus ‘worse’, or better, today). If I understand him correctly, he also argues that a time lag between the making of a work of art and the moment of its display has been, if not a necessity, a fact (as an effect of, for example, the time of making a painting) within art historical practices. On Paik’s TV-Buddha he writes: ‘The history dividing the old sculpture and the new medium … collapses in this simultaneity, which is an attack on the very narrative of art history. The video reprojects the Buddha’s image with the immediacy of a mirror, as it is capable of both recording and transmitting at the same time, and thus also negates the time lag existing between the creation and the perception of the usual work of art.’ Belting, 2003, p. 89. 13 Ibid., p. 87. 14 Ibid., p. 95. The backdrop to his analysis of Hill’s works is painting; see, for example, p. 94. 15 Arthur Danto, ‘The Artworld’, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 61, no. 19, 1964, pp. 571–584. 16 In John G. Hanhardt’s book, Video Culture: A Critical Investigation, Peregrine Smith Books, Layton, in association with Visual Studies Workshop Press, New York, (1986) 1990, the essays are organized under three different sections: ‘Theory and Practice’, ‘Video and Television’, and ‘Film and Video: Differences and Futures’. 17 For example, in Gill’s report of 1976 it is clear that the notion of art was not yet unequivocally employed, or that artists themselves initially regarded their video works as ‘art’. See, for example, the quote by Woody Vasulka, in Johanna Gill, Video: State of the Art, The Rockefeller Foundation, New York, 1976, p. 46. 18 See Martha Rosler, ‘Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment’, in Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, eds, Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, Aperture and Bay Area Video Coalition, New York, 1990. See also Marita Sturken, ‘The Politics of Video Memory: Electronic Erasure and

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Inscriptions’, in Michael Renov and Erika Suderburg, eds, Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, pp. 1–12. 19 Meigh-Andrews, p. 5. Dara Birnbaum has emphasized that it is no longer solely the issue of the short duration of video tapes that threatens the preservation of video art/media art, but also the changing technological apparatuses which demand that art institutions also store TV sets and so on. Birnbaum spoke about this on 9 March 2012 at the occasion of the Before and After Cinema – International Symposium, co-arranged by the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, the Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm and the Academy of Dramatic Arts, Stockholm (9–10 March 2012). 20 Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, ‘Introduction: Complexities of an Art Form’, in Hall and Fifer, p. 15. However, Gill notes several institutions and individual curators engaged in collecting, establishing particular departments and producing exhibitions in the US in the late 1960s and early 1970. 21 See, for example, Rosler; and Marita Sturken, ‘Paradox in the Evolution of an Art Form: Great Expectations and the Making of a History’, in Hall and Fifer, pp. 101–121. See also: MeighAndrews; Yvonne Spielmann, Video: The Reflexive Medium, translated by Anja Welle and Stan Jones, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2008 (originally published as Video. Das reflexive Medium, Suhrkamp Press, Frankfurt, 2005); Max Liljefors, Videokonsten: en introduktion, Studentlitteratur, Lund, 2005; Catherine Elwes, Video Art: A Guided Tour, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London, 2005; Belting, 2003. 22 Preziosi, 1989: see chapter 6, especially p. 164. Preziosi places ‘bourgeois art history’ in opposition to the social history of art, and then problematizes the latter, arguing that particularly Marxist art history too often neglects theoretical inflections (?), and particularly a theory of meaning (p. 165). See also Bal and Bryson. 23 Preziosi, 1989, pp. 167–168. Belting too saw the social history of art more as an escape route than actually solving the situation of a lost ‘common denominator’: Belting, 2003, p. 161. 24 Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’, in Michael Holquist, ed., The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1981. 25 This is thus only partially the kind of broad take that I would connect to the idea of paramodernism, since many of the references called for in Battcock are rarely connected to the kind of meaningful relational situations that the notion implies. 26 Hall and Fifer, pp. 14–15. 27 Ibid., p. 15. See also Rosler. 28 David A. Ross, ‘Foreword’, in Hall and Fifer, p. 10. 29 Ibid., p. 10. 30 Hall and Fifer, p. 13. 31 The other three essays in this section of Illuminating Video focus particularly on American video documentaries (Deirdre Boyle, ‘A Brief History of American Documentary Video’, pp. 51–69); the relation to television (Kathy Rae Huffman, ‘Video Art: What’s TV Got to Do with It?’, pp. 81–90); and Vostell’s practice of dé-collage as an origin of video art (John G. Hanhardt, ‘Dé-collage/ Collage: Notes towards a Reexamination of the Origins of Video Art’, pp. 71–79). 32 Compare W.J.T. Mitchell, ‘There Are No Visual Media’, Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 4, no. 2, August 2005, pp. 257–266; and Keith Moxey, ‘Visual Studies and the Iconic Turn’, Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 7, no. 2, August 2008, pp. 131–146. 33 Hall and Fifer, p. 14. 34 Ibid. 35 Since 1990, when Illuminating Video was first published, art historical practices within academia have undergone major changes and are, I think, by now much better suited – or in concordance with – art-making in the postmodern era and after. But it appears to be intertextual practices, like visual culture studies, that are imagined here. 36 On modernism and formalist art theory, see Hans Hayden, Modernismen som institution: Om etableringen av ett estetiskt och historiografiskt paradigm, Brutus Östling förlag, Stehag and Stockholm, 2006; Arthur Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997; Belting, 2003; and Håkan Nilsson, Clement Greenberg och hans kritiker, dissertation, Stockholms universitet, Stockholm, 2000. See also Sturken, 1990, for example,

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pp. 108 and 115. For a detailed study of Greenberg, see the monograph by Caroline A. Jones, Eyesight Alone: Clement Greenberg’s Modernism and the Bureaucratization of the Senses, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2005. 37 Hall and Fifer, p. 14. See also Pamela M. Lee, Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s, MIT Press, London and Cambridge, Mass., 2004, pp. 261–263. 38 Hall and Fifer, p. 14. Some of the section of essays collected under ‘Histories’ therefore focus on the very obstacles for writing, hence constructing, a history. (I return to this issue in depth in Chapter 3, on canon.) 39 Renov and Suderburg, pp. xiii–xiv. 40 Preziosi, 1989, p. 14. He is concerned here with the relation between directionality and the term scheme; for if one proclaims that the primary goal of art history as a practice is to place events like an art work as ‘correctly’ as possible into an already presumed art historical scheme, then one also implies that ‘history has (or even is) a scheme, the notion that history has a code … namely that of chronology’. 41 In more recent years, visual culture studies has been criticized for sustaining traditional value systems such as the gender-biased one. See especially the critique by German art historian Sigrid Schade, for example, her essay ‘What Do “Bildwissenschaften” Want? In the Vicious Circle of Iconic and Pictorial Turns’, in Kornelia Imesch, ed., Inscriptions/Transgressions. Kunstgeschichte und Gender Studies, Lang, Bern, 2008, pp. 31–51. Schade’s aim here is to demonstrate how the new discipline of visual culture studies (Bildwissenschaften) has become yet another strategy to exclude both the results of women scholars and the critical perspectives, theories and results that gender studies has successfully brought into the discipline of art history (see pp. 35–37). However, her discussion focuses particularly on the work by the German scholars Gottfried Boehm and Hans Belting. Schade claims that the interdisciplinary and critical perspectives addressing social, cultural and historical contexts on images have for years been interrogated within gender studies but that these are – astonishingly – passed over by these two, and other, scholars. One of the strategies by which this exclusion is performed is, according to Schade, the idea of the iconic/ pictorial turn separating anew language from images and thereby foreclosing the particular premises on which gender, and feminist, research is based. She writes: ‘I have tried to analyse what the protagonists of Bildwissenschaft understand and talk about when they speak of linguistic methods or discourses and how the misunderstanding of the linguistic turn is constitutive of their thinking.’ Arguing instead that images and language operate in tandem, she continues: ‘so that they [image and text] can signify, produce meaning and engender specific social practices within a historically, culturally and socially defined environment. Since these are some of the premises of the work which has been done in gender studies and related fields of cultural and visual studies, it is only within such a perspective that it would be possible to link research in “Bildwissenschaft” to gender studies. The task would be to show that it might be worthwhile, on the condition that the protagonists of “Bildwissenschaft” and their sponsors become aware that – at this very moment – they are once again producing institutional exclusions of women in conjunction with the exclusion of gender studies approaches and the insights and knowledge this subject field has produced over the last twenty-five years, and realise that they are claiming monopoly on their questions and subjects which is not legitimate.’ What is actually happening, according to Schade, is that knowledge already produced within gender studies/gender theory-informed fields of research is not recognized at all and what it comes down to ‘is also a question of scholarly ethics’: Schade, pp. 49–50. On how to define visual culture, see especially Nicholas Mirzoeff, ed., The Visual Culture Reader, Routledge, London, (1998) 2013; and James D. Herbert’s contribution, ‘Visual Culture/ Visual Studies’, in the second edition of Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff, eds, Critical Terms for Art History, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, (1996) 2003, pp. 452–464. 42 Renov and Suderburg, p. xii. 43 Ibid., p. xvii. My emphasis. 44 Sturken, 1990. 45 See, for example, Caroline A. Jones, p. 38; Håkan Nilsson, especially pp. 102–105; and Hans Hayden, for example, pp. 42–43. 46 Rosler, p. 38. 47 Ibid., p. 39. Rosler mentions expressionism, dada and surrealism. Rosler is here departing from Peter Bürger’s ideas of the avant-garde (and its failures). 48 See, for example, Sturken, 1990, pp. 112–113; Liljefors (who refers to Sturken), pp. 80–81. As an example of how an institution such as MoMA accommodates rather than engages profoundly

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‘with complex ideological issues while the institution – on a deep, structural level – remains utterly impervious’ (p. 307), see Staniszewski on the show Disclocations, 1991–1992: Mary Anne Staniszewski, The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1998, pp. 304–307. For a particular case of collecting, see Lisa Dorin, ‘“Here to Stay”: Collecting Film, Video, and New Media at the Art Institute of Chicago’, in Film. Video. New Media at the Art Institute of Chicago: With the Donna and Howard Stone Gift, Museum Studies, vol. 35, no. 1, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2009, pp. 6–9. Even though the kick-off of the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, was actually an ‘avant-garde film festival’ in May 1958 (and not a more ordinary show of fine art) and Pontus Hultén was a strong advocate of film as an art form, the museum did not purchase video art until 1973. The first three works purchased were by Walter de Maria, Paik and Robert Whitman respectively. See Magnus af Petersens and Martin Sundberg, ‘Art on Stage: Happenings and Moving Images at Moderna Museet’, The History Book: On Moderna Museet 1958–2008, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2008, p. 107. 49 On dadaism, surrealism and the political, see Sven Spieker, The Big Archive: Art from Bureaucracy, MIT Press, London and Cambridge, Mass., 2008. 50 Rosler. 51 Ibid., p. 34, reminiscent of Walter Benjamin’s essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1936). 52 Rosler, p. 35. My emphasis. 53 As in the case of Alfred Stieglitz, which is Rosler’s example here. 54 Rosler, pp. 39–40, 41. 55 That is to say, movements like dada and surrealism. 56 Rosler, p. 42. 57 Rosler draws on Alvin Gouldner’s idea on consciousness industry here. 58 Barr’s schema, or map, was first printed on the cover of the exhibition catalogue Cubism and Abstract Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1936. For a discussion that problematizes Barr’s map and hence the value system underlining this particular exhibition by foregrounding the professional networks at play here, see Marcia Brennan, ‘The Multiple Masculinities of Canonical Modernism: James Johnson Sweeney and Alfred H. Barr in the 1930s’, in Anna Brzyski, ed., Partisan Canons, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2007, pp. 179–201. 59 Rosler, pp. 42–43. Her arguments depart from the situation in the US at the time, when formalism and personal expression were emphasized. 60 The myth departs from Paik; see further in chapters 3 and 4. 61 Rosler, p. 42. My emphasis. 62 Rosler quotes Jane Livingston, though her note says Martha Gever. Other footnotes are also incorrect. 63 Roland Barthes, ‘Myth Today’, in Mythologies (1957), Hill and Wang, New York, 2012, pp. 215–274. 64 Sturken, 1990, pp. 101–121. 65 Ibid., pp. 103–104. Emphasis in original. 66 Ibid., p. 105. Rosler argued against the myth of Paik, and particularly the effects of embracing his work, employing its characteristic as a denominator of video art generally. 67 Sturken, 1990, p. 109. There was a lot of ‘new money’ in the beginning, preferentially or juridically forced into founding collectives (pp. 111–112). For example, she mentions R&D and RAND Corporation which both ‘began as a profit-making corporation[s]’. 68 Ibid., p. 102. Compare Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (L’archéologie du savoir, Gallimard, Paris, 1969), translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith, Routledge, London and New York, 2002. 69 See Sturken, 1990, p. 102. 70 Michael Rush, Video Art, Thames & Hudson, London, 2003, p. 7. 71 Ibid., pp. 8–9.

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72 Ibid., p. 8. Compare Belting, 2003, pp. 85–95. 73 Rush, 2003, p. 13. See Spielmann, p. 73 in relation to ‘experimental video praxis’, and pp. 87 and 89. 74 Rush, 2003, p. 13. 75 Ibid., p. 52. My emphasis. 76 Elwes, pp. 1–2. 77 Ibid., p. 9. 78 That is, not only art history but the ‘art establishment’ at large. Ibid., p. 9. 79 See also Taubin, who argues for a relation between the projects of Paik and Duchamp respectively; the latter aiming for a blurred boundary between art and life, the former at dissolving the boundary ‘between art and TV’: Amy Taubin, ‘For Nam June Paik: Notes on an Oversight’, in Patti Podesta, ed., Resolution: A Critique of Video Art, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), Los Angeles, 1986, p. 100. Moreover, David Joselit connects theories of the ready-made to Paik’s work: David Joselit, ‘No Exit: Video and the Readymade’, October, no. 119, 2007, pp. 27–45. 80 See especially Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, (1973) 1997. See also Belting, 2003, especially ‘The Temporality of Video Art’, pp. 85–95; and Lovejoy, pp. 93–100, 120–123. 81 Liljefors, however, also points to the audio implications, which art historians, presumably, are not that well trained in dealing with (p. 6). 82 Ibid., p. 5. 83 See Spieker, especially the chapter ‘1970–2000: Archive, Database, Photography’, pp. 131–171. 84 Liljefors, p. 7; Elwes, pp. 1–2; Rush, 2003, p. 7; Meigh-Andrews, p. 2. 85 Liljefors, pp. 78–83. This implies that he studied some of the same sources and objects of study as I do here. The attention given to video collectives is not that usual, but appears to some extent in Meigh-Andrews, especially pp. 61–68; Spielmann, pp. 81–82; whereas Rush, 2003, only lists some names (pp. 16–17). See also Sturken, 1990, pp. 103–115 on collectives. 86 Many artists have their own archives, containing works not collected by art institutions, which make revisits more complicated, even if far from impossible. 87 For example, separating video art into separate collections at museums was a strategy which argued for the importance of that particular department and raised money for further purchases. Liljefors argues that the many large-scale shows featuring video art were historically part of this strategy (p. 80). Furthermore, what is technologically as well as aesthetically ‘suitable’ for the museum environment implies that particular kinds of video art – like video installations – and already canonized and ‘single-ized’ artists are favoured before the various practices and video works by video collectives. 88 Spielmann, for example, pp. 10, 15, 16 and 25 (on lack of technological knowledge), p. 36 (where she addresses the pictorial turn and its questionable relevance for video) and p. 301, note 7. 89 Meigh-Andrews, for example, pp. 39 and 58. This aspect is addressed throughout the entire book, however. 90 Ibid., for example, p. 282. 91 Ibid., for example, pp. 282 and 284. 92 Ibid., p. 87. 93 Ibid., p. 283. My emphasis. See also, for example, Liz Kotz, ‘Video Projection: The Space Between Screens’, in Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung, eds, Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2005, pp. 101–115. 94 Foucault, 2002, p. 143. 95 For the acknowledged crisis that the discipline faced in and around the 1980s, see, for example, Preziosi, 1989; Belting, 2003; and Danto, 1997. For feminist critique of the discipline, see, for example: Linda Nochlin and Ann Sutherland Harris, Women Artists: 1550–1950, Knopf, New York, 1976; Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology, Pantheon, New York, 1981; Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany,

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Harper & Row, New York, 1982; Griselda Pollock and Rozsika Parker (eds), Framing Feminism: Art and the Women’s Movement 1970–85, Pandora, London, 1987; Linda Nochlin, Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays, Harper & Row, New York, 1988; Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism, and the Histories of Art, Routledge, London and New York, 1988; Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art and Society, 5th edition, Thames & Hudson, London, (1990) 2012. 96 Laura Cottingham, ‘New Wine into Old Bottles: Some Comments on the Early Years of Art Video’, in Rosalie West, ed., Outer & Inner Space: Pipilotti Rist, Shirin Neshat, Jane & Louise Wilson, and the History of Video Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 2002, p. 4. The anthologies edited by artists are one example, and of course the many contributions by artists within them: Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot’s Video Art: An Anthology, The Raindance Foundation, New York and London, 1976, and the many essays in Gregory Battcock, ed., New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1978, are but two examples. Korot was also one of the initiators of Radical Software. 97 Bruce Nauman is often mentioned as one of the artists who was amongst the first to employ video media for documentations of performances. One of his works is further claimed to be the first video work sold: Meigh-Andrews, p. 228. On Nauman as an example of artists using video as a ‘by-product’, see also Rush, 2003, pp. 9 and 69. 98 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Ark, London, (1964) 1994; here from Mitchell, p. 262. 99 Meigh-Andrews, especially pp. 59–60. 100 For the relation between film and video art, see, for example: West; Joachim Jäger, Gabriele Knapstein and Anette Hüsch, eds, Beyond Cinema: The Art of Projection: Films, Videos and Installations from 1963 to 2005, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2006; Tanya Leighton, ed., Art and the Moving Image: A Critical Reader, Tate Publishing, London, 2008; Stan Douglas and Christopher Eamon, eds, Art of Projection, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, 2009; Stuart Comer, ed., Film and Video Art, Tate Publishing, London, 2009. For genealogies drawn between experimental film and video art in relation to new media art, see, for example: Uta Grosenick, ed., New Media Art, Taschen, Cologne, 2006; and Edward A. Shanken, ed., Art and Electronic Media, Phaidon, London, 2009. For a discussion of the differences between film and video, see, for example, Douglas Davis, ‘Filmgoing/ Videogoing: Making Distinctions’, in Hanhardt, (1986) 1990, pp. 270–273. 101 Rush, 2003, pp. 41–46. On the relevance of Godard’s aesthetics, postmodernism and the boundaries of art, see also Taubin, pp. 101–102. See also Spielmann, p. 81. Meigh-Andrews writes rather extensively on, for example, Michael Snow and Stan Brakhage, while making clear that they are not ‘video artists’ (pp. 11–16). Hanhardt makes the connection to ‘avant-garde cinema’. 102 See Liljefors, p. 13 (who also notes Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone, p. 14). 103 Meigh-Andrews, p. 80; Hanhardt (1986) 1990, p. 12. 104 In histories on Fluxus, this and other video works by Paik are rarely mentioned. According to art historian Magdalena Holdar, the discourse around Fluxus rather restricts intermingling with other art practices – especially those which are ‘closing in’ on the fine art field. Holdar is presently working on a project entitled The Northern Angle: Tracing Swedish Fluxus in a Transnational Artists’ Network, and I am grateful to her for informing me in these matters. 105 See: the section entitled ‘Part I: Prehistory 2’, in Rosler, pp. 33–42; Hanhardt, (1986) 1990, pp. 9–23, and also the first part in Video Culture, where the essays draw on various technological and theoretical issues (pp. 27–124) – the draft of ‘The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication’ (1957) by Bertolt Brecht stands out, pp. 53–55. See also Liljefors, ‘Videomediets förhistoria’ [The Pre-history of the Video Medium] in Liljefors, pp. 12–16; Elwes, pp. 21–24; Spielmann, pp. 1–3 and 19. 106 The cave paintings with which all Western-oriented art history textbooks begin is one such instance of making art originate from the earliest found examples of humans making images at all – that is, humans as a creative and imaginative species. 107 However, in addition to Paik and Vostell, Warhol is another early example of an artist making moving image works, though he was never exclusively a video artist like Paik. See, for example, Rush on Warhol: Rush, 2003, pp. 52–59. However, Paik was far from ‘only’ a video artist, working in various mediums, a circumstance that Rush points out in relation to Fluxus (p. 69). On Paik’s broad artistic practices, see, for example, John G. Hanhardt, The Worlds of Nam June Paik, Guggenheim Museum Publications, New York, 2000. 108 This is made clear in the first line of page 1, but Spielmann returns to it throughout her book.

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109 Barthes, ‘Myth Today’. See also, for example, John Fiske and John Hartley, Reading Television, Methuen, London, 1978, especially p. 43, on the ‘third order of signification’. 110 Barthes, ‘Myth Today’. 111 John Fiske, Introduction to Communications Studies, Routledge, London and New York, (1982) 1990, p. 88. 112 Hélène Bowen Raddeker, Sceptical History: Feminist and Postmodern Approaches in Practice, Routledge, London and New York, 2007, p. 53. 113 Ibid., p. 10. 114 Ibid., p. 37. 115 Compare Mitchell. 116 I do not mean that only Greenberg’s and Danto’s theories about art have prevailed; what I am aiming at here is rather to highlight how subjective and empirically grounded theories – even when elaborate – are transformed into speech acts that resemble historical evidence. The two thus serve as examples here, even though I use them both as backdrops for my discussion and as backdrops and targets for my critique. 117 Raddeker, p. 40. 118 Ibid., p. 40. Her argument is that it is more often about ‘changes in rhetorical (mental and linguistic) conventions’ – drawing on Han Kellner here. Political conviction, like feminism, is an example of ‘significant changes in interpretations’. But it has also been imperative to revisit archives, resulting in findings of the past – even though she is right about the circumstance that achievements by women rarely made their way into the archive in the first place. However, my point is that reclaiming the importance of, for example, surrealism is not about finding yet another document, but making the movement an event of the past and thereby ascribing meaning to it. Surrealism, like futurism, was not omitted in the sense of being entirely censured, but in the sense of not moving forward – not being part of the progression of ‘art’. 119 See, for example, the two introductions in Marsha Meskimmon, Women Making Art: History, Subjectivity, Aesthetics, Routledge, London and New York, 2003, pp. 1–9, 13–16. On ‘questioning of the document’ and its relation to history and memory, see Foucault, 2002, pp. 6–7. 120 Martha Rosler is one of those arguing for the failure of Greenbergian formalist ideas and concepts. See also Taubin, who does not mention Greenberg specifically but writes that to situate the work by Paik and Godard respectively ‘within a “video specific” critical framework would regulate them to some last outpost of high modernist essentialism. That kind of closed-circuit, ahistoric analysis is unfortunately standard practice, resulting in superficial or dismissive readings of demanding or edgy work …’ (p. 101). 121 Ross, ‘Foreword’, in Hall and Fifer, p. 10.

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3 CANON: An unresolved issue

In the spring of 2012 the Centre Pompidou in Paris engineered a show entitled Vidéo Vintage 1963–1983.1 The show, obviously, was a retrospective presenting the first two decades of video art production. All of the works on view belong to the museum’s own collection. On the website it reads: This new exhibition … throws light on the history of this medium from the 1960s to today. During the 1960s and 1970s, artists experimented with video through performance, filming themselves or in television studios, studying in depth the diverse possibilities of the analogue layer, then carrying out conceptual trials. ‘Vidéo Vintage’ traces the journey, not only of the art of video, but also through a synthesis of the first decades of contemporary art from 1963 to 1983. A chance to discover or rediscover the research of the masters of this contemporary art.2

Organized thematically, the first part was ‘dedicated to performance and selffilming’; the second section focused on video art’s relation to television and its developments; and the third concentrated on ‘more conceptual and critical research’. The show was staged by a scenography consisting of couches, coffee tables and small units (‘lounges’) where particular groups of work were assembled.3 Of the 72 works by 52 artists that were on view (chosen from the museum’s collection that contains approximately 1,400 works) several of the benchmark works were listed and thus the most well-known artists working with video in this period. For example, there were several works by Paik, and amongst the represented artists one could also find Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, Dara Birnbaum, Joan Jonas, Woody and Steina Vasulkas, Marina Abramović, Gina Pane, the Ant Farm, VALIE EXPORT, Gary Hill and Jean-Luc Godard. Even though it was stated that the show was international in its scope (with the artists ‘representing three continents’: Europe, South America and North America), American artists were in the majority in relation to specific nations. However, the number

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of French artists is pronounced (for example, Godard, Nil Yalter, Paul and Carole Roussopoulos), that is, in relation to the present context of surveying video art’s history. It is also interesting that the third section focused on artists who explicitly came from a fine arts background, hence emphasizing the traditionally argued split of interests and aesthetics amongst different kinds of video practitioners and, moreover, making this particular part of the show relate to notions such as ‘attitudes, forms, concepts’. Amongst the artists and works found there, several names do not appear in the textbooks, or remain minor agents (like Joseph Beuys, Laurence Weiner and Anna Bella Geiger). Not surprisingly, the exhibition was principally composed of the names and work titles which are always present in historical surveys on video art, and which thus testify to the possibility of an actually existing video art canon. A fascinating phenomenon within the body of video art history narratives addressed here is that several authors claim that writing video art’s history is difficult; not least since there is no established canon. Therefore, it is interesting to simultaneously note that the possible impact of a canonizing system would facilitate the construction of turning video art’s history into video art history. The recurrence of this view that canon is absent calls for a discussion of the concept, and what the texts then might be argued to perform regarding the selections of works and artists of which they speak. However, if there could be a canon, it would definitely be established. Chronology as the organizing device for historical narratives seems rather unproblematic, whereas which significant events one should situate along the timeline often appear as a contestation – at least as far as the rhetoric goes. However, if there really is no canon – that is, no discernible consensus about the choices made – then what does it mean for an art historical narrative to lack, or even be released from, the compulsive impulse of canon and canonical systematizations? How do these stories progress (which chronology seems to demand), how are they structured and by what criteria are works and artists selected in the presumed absence of canon? What, if anything at all, is possible to construct out of a cumulative body of video art events without arguing for the (finally) chosen ones to be of particular historical significance? How does one (even if only rhetorically) refuse the practice of naming names while still involving narration and interpreting historically situated changes (not to say progress) within a specific field of cultural production? In short: what, then, are these historical narratives about if definitely not, for instance, about specific works which have turned out to have that historical significance which only historical hindsight can distinguish and validate? How, then, can a presumed canonless phenomenon like video art history be legible in historical terms? This question is of relevance since how to understand and define what a historical narrative of art is changes if the methods and theories do. If canon is not replaced by other organizing tools, what are the arguments for the particular agents of the narrative? Before

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turning to the various reasons for relinquishing a narrative based on canon and canonizations, and the different opinions on how to narrate a chronologically ordered set of events and agents otherwise, I want to first turn to the concept per se, and discuss in what terms it could be understood in more general terms and by which bias canon is either rejected or embraced in these productions of video art history narratives. There has been much research produced concerning the concept and methods of canon and canonization within the humanities. Conversely, this has been carried out both to a lesser extent and later within the discipline of art history.4 Most of it is much beyond the scope of my discussion – despite the focus of the present chapter. However, the concept has been briefly discussed above in relation to the notion of art and to art history, but it has evidently been a particularly troublesome concept within the practices of writing a history of video art, hence it is of relevance to think it through in more depth and examine its place and role within these particular narratives. In the anthology Making Art History: A Changing Discipline and its Institutions (2007), the concept is examined under the caption ‘Border patrols: art history as identity’.5 Somewhat surprisingly, the importance of canon is sustained rather than found to be old-fashioned and a too restrictive tool for evaluating and organizing objects studied within the discipline. However, the concept needs to be more reflexively employed and the idea of one single monolithic (that is, universal) canon has, since the 1970s, been contested and found – generally – to be dysfunctional. The editor Elizabeth C. Mansfield notes that ‘the canon shapes not only the identities of the cultures chosen for inclusion (and thus, those excluded as well), it also positions the art historian culturally, socially, and economically’.6 The border that, arguably, needs surveillance circumscribes both the discipline and the profession of the art historian. Not only the identity of a discipline and/or the professionals working within that field, but also so is ‘jurisdiction’ threatened; by extension, an absence of canon could threaten the very notion, hence discourse, of art – at least as long as art operates as a frame without allowing for too many transfers to its (potential) outsides.7 Art history as an academic discipline as well as a discourse operating outside academia still has a particular jurisdiction over the specific category of visual culture designated art. Would it not then be possible to arm the discipline with the particular rights inscribed by that jurisdiction to make an incursion into the domain of the broader and more disparate field of practices entitled video culture? When and where video works are in fact claimed to be art, art history would thus have the authority to operate as one of the primary discursive situations in which to (best?) deal with these visual expressions and argue convincingly how to understand and know it in terms of theory, art, history and narration. So far, the answer discernible amongst the writers investigated in my present text has been vacillating between a yes and a no. In the context of writing the history of video art, one of the reasons

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against art history has been precisely that of the seemingly inevitable impulse to canonize (or not, implying a possible neglect of the art form altogether) its objects of study. Despite canon being a long-term acquaintance, a tentative definition and a brief retake of its most obvious effects is necessary before turning to the arguments why there may not be a canon within video art history. In general terms, it is a hierarchical system of organizing objects and events – here nominated as art – that are, by broad consensus, appreciated as signed singularities, often of aesthetic high quality, performing visual representation (in the double sense of the word),8 but with a new edge, so to speak, informing and affecting future art. Obviously, attached to the concept are a number of aspects, charged as much by particular ideologies and subjective tastes (at times rhetorically presented as universal). Canonization cannot take place by accident, or haphazardly: canon is not a notion referring to accumulative mistakes and it is not like an ‘empty bag’ to fill with whatever new art comes along. And it rests, like all dichotomies, on what is not included – what it is not – and it is therefore relative ‘by nature’. Art works which have the status of belonging to the canon are positioned as such due to the historical significance that they have been proven to have, and the promises of progress and change that they have fulfilled and which have been revealed over time. Discussing canonizing processes, Anna Brzyski states that ‘canonical status is established relationally’.9 This implies that a canonized work of art holds this status because it has been proven to have had serious impact on subsequent artists and their work in relation to artworks which have not. But also, according to Brzyski, the two co-existing ‘discursive domains … that of art history and that of art practice’ are not, in fact, separated (as in working parallel, but autonomously in relation to each other) but rather cooperate in the canonizing processes.10 Tracing processes of canonizations are therefore productively instructive of how knowledge and valuations of art events have developed over time and as located in different sites – the latter in both a geographical and an institutional sense. The contents of canons have differed over time and location, and have been renegotiated, altered and argued as falsely and/or extremely biased. Canon operates as a seemingly descriptive mode for describing and organizing a particular phenomenon and tradition in historical terms. By definition the concept always refers to a body of works that are repeatedly claimed to be of particular significance for a certain tradition or field of cultural expression (be it fine art generally, or subcategorized as, for example, pop art, baroque, dadaism, abstract painting or video art). The most important argument for canonical status is that it remains over a longer period of time and therefore also belongs to that which is most repeated. Staging a work of art as canonical therefore implies that a certain identity is established and continuously emphasized. This status has to be given by those agents who act/perform the discourse.

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As I have argued in the two previous chapters, there were, according to several video art practitioners and interpreters, benefits to be had from embracing (even if hesitantly) the notion of art and the support and recognition that follow from institutional acknowledgement. Yet there seem to have been concerns about the risk of contamination here, too. However, canon can work as a ‘kind of cultural quarantine’ from both sides, so to speak.11 On the part of art history, the borders are kept safe from being infiltrated by a too large and too varied cluster of visual cultural objects (which could make it implode into, for example, visual studies). In the context of video art agents, however, to forgo canon as operative within the specific field of visual culture, video art would be safeguarded from being quarantined and shut off from the rest of society (which was precisely how art history was understood to work). All this notwithstanding, ideas of the concept have changed since video art entered the fine art scene; scholarly works performing critical investigations by addressing notions of gender, class and race, and by involving relations and structural situations by acknowledging the constitutive impact of different historical, cultural and social contexts, have proliferated greatly and rapidly during the last three decades. The point is this: what canon was back then is not necessarily what it does – or constructs – today, since the discourse has changed in several ways. Therefore, to reject canonization as a mode of selection and evaluation back in the 1970s, when video was in the process of being established as an artistic medium, is evidently not the same thing as to state the absence of a canon in the 2000s. As noted before, I make a distinction between video art’s history and video art history. Whereas the first one here implies references to the past, archived or not, the latter is the structured narrative of particular past events categorized as video art. Historical narratives can hardly claim reliability while simultaneously promoting a practice based on contingencies. The function of canon and the effects of canonizations are narratives based on selections which are always evaluated and hierarchically organized. Canon is not anything like an empty structure or system; it always already denotes ‘the best’ and the most important of a particular phenomenon; that is, if one regards systems as already ideologically charged with meaning and particular interpretative perspectives on things. The problem with canon is that it is stable by definition and therefore needs to be operative over a longer period of time, while the actual duration of time in this context is relevant to video art and not to art. It is a narrative device in the same sense as plot is, for example, but it is also the name of a particular system for evaluation. It is these two different significations that make it clash against its own other side, making it the antithesis of post-structuralist historical practices. Yet it is the reiteration of names and events that enables the discourse of video art history.

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There is no canon in video art history Regarding, for example, Illuminating Video (which, by the many references to it, has become a standard work on video art), it was claimed by the editors Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer that their intent when including essays written by representatives of different professions was to avoid ‘any attempt at constructing a linear history’, hence the publication does not follow a chronological structure or purpose.12 As an anthology where several of the authors are artists themselves, a more subjective choice of what counts as important artists and art works is suggested in the introduction.13 Furthermore, it was, as noted above, the plurality of practices and the heterogeneous legacies that not only prevented them from attending to any (overt) creation of a canon but seemingly made the concept obsolete and improper as a grounds for aesthetic evaluations and creative diversities of the much broader field of video culture. This is the ordinary argument for why there can be no canon within historical narratives of video art: in this context it is thus plurality per se that makes canon incomprehensible. But the recognition of a plurality does not imply that canon is automatically made obsolete as a structural device – or that its bias (somehow) becomes more legible. Instead, it means that canon is recognized as a matrix inevitably situated in and stemming from specific historical and hence cultural contexts, but a matrix that is widely re-circulated as well as under constant re-enactment.14 Arguing that a video arts canon is impossible or even obsolete has (as I understand it) nothing to do with an opinion on the impossibility of actually choosing a set of indispensable moments which have already then turned out to be of historical significance, but more importantly with the many different fields (or branches) of video art practices. Indispensable, like significance, would here connote canon, whereas a privileged work would, suggestively, be of importance but not a fundamental moment of video art (generally) as of the mid-1980s. That is, avoidance of canon, hence resisting canonizing impulses, would hereby operate as a protective attentiveness to maintain differences as a fact and as a primary characteristic for defining video art. Furthermore, it would rescue video art from what both Martha Rosler and Marita Sturken speak about as a museumization of art.15 To put it differently, museumization is here comparable to being either taken hostage by a culture, a particular discourse in this case, or of being held in quarantine and thus stripped of any subversive potential or claim. The risk would thus be, if I understand Rosler correctly, that video art in extension would begin to circulate within the domain of art history and, once there, would lose its ‘elements of implicit critique’.16 Also, an effect of museumization is that works become ‘possible for reproduction’ – which, according to Michael Camille, is one of the very conditions for canon formation.17 From this perspective, then, museumization would be the first action (or step) towards a possible canonization, or at

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least of being too close to the objects symbolizing this particular mode of systematization and thereby risking falling into a category of phenomena ‘richly documented but poorly understood’.18 What is argued to be at stake here is that the very aim of (conceptual) video art would be misinterpreted and mistaken for ‘essentials of a medium’, as Rosler puts it. The editors of Resolutions (investigating ‘independent’ video practices, as distinct from specifically artistic ones) do not speak of either canon or art history, and very little of art, although they confirm the view that video practice ‘continues to confound its academic chroniclers, those who would award video its niche as artistic medium …’19 They furthermore resist the bifurcation of video as an artistic medium resulting in art works and other practices of video-makings displayed and distributed outside the strict realms of fine art. Yet what they do acknowledge is that ‘new technologies are never as new as they appear to be; they are experienced in relation to older and more familiar media, which they challenge and destabilize’.20 Their aim was to present a collection of essays which reconsidered in depth the terms of how video production had so far been ‘historically cast’, keeping plurality at the centre of how to understand practices here. This is emphasized as a collection of marginalized video practices, which have not received much institutional support and therefore, one can assume, are situated rather far from the discipline of art history, hence canon too. The editors, planning the publication while Illuminating Video was published, were strengthened in their idea of not restricting Resolutions to a fine art context.21 This is reflected in the various topics and perspectives that inform the included essays – and only one artist/video work producer is named in the captions: Lynn Hershman.22 In 1986 a publication with a similar title was published: Resolution: A Critique of Video Art, edited by Patti Podesta in relation to an exhibition on contemporary video art at the LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions).23 It includes a number of short essays but also a section entitled ‘Artists Catalog’ which very briefly presents the artists participating in the show. Furthermore, several of the essays address the work by artists I have already mentioned as belonging to the rather limited group of canon (that is, as being not only representative of different genres, periods and so on, but of the art form). However, there are also artists who do not occur as frequently. To a certain degree this testifies to the geographical location – some of the represented artists worked in Los Angeles and some of these were also professionally connected to LACE at the time.24 For example, Paik is highlighted (though not represented in the show) in an essay addressing the postmodernity of video art, where two of the other names significantly supporting the arguments conveyed are Hill and Godard, whereas Duchamp operates as the origin since he ‘planted the seeds of postmodernism some forty years earlier’.25 The artists who also contribute texts within different genres are Douglas Hall, Lyn Blumental, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, Dara Birnbaum and John Sanborn.26 As for the other

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essays, the artists mentioned are more often than not those contributing to the show. Another interesting aspect in relation to the formation of particular trajectories is revealed by William Olander’s essay which focuses on women artists from a perspective informed by feminist theory. Here he emphasizes the works by Blumental, Birnbaum, Rosler, Judith Barry, Nancy Buchanan, Lisa Steele and Margia Kramer.27 Except for Kramer, and to a certain extent also Buchanan, these names are frequently mentioned and constitute the particularized category of artists labelled women and/or feminists – which I discuss further in the following chapter. Regarding these rather early publications on video art and the broader field of video culture, it is perhaps somewhat pointless to look too hard for evidence of an emerging canon. Instead, one has to look at how each author presents their own selections; what they argue are such important works and agents that excluding them there and then would have implied an incorrect record – more or less – of the particular past events narratively addressed. For example, in the introduction to Video Culture: A Critical Investigation, John Hanhardt focuses primarily on American artists (or artists living and working in the US) when he surveys video art since the 1960s. He emphasizes a shift of focus discernible amongst a group of film-makers in the 1950s, who found the material properties of the film medium increasingly interesting. Amongst these he names Warhol.28 When discussing video art ‘proper’, which begins with Vostell and Paik, he writes: ‘The artists who pioneered the development of video as an art form – Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, Richard Serra, Nancy Holt, Peter Campus, Juan Downey, Frank Gillette, Ira Schneider, among others …’29 He then focuses on particular art works in order to narrate different kinds of video art. These works are made by Paik, Nauman, Acconci, Campus, Downey, Gillette and Schneider, Viola, Korot, Shigeko Kubota, Birnbaum and Mary Lucier. By now, these names should ring a bell. There is, however, no discussion about canon or representative art works, except that Hanhardt’s introduction evidently focuses on pioneers. Nor is there any discussion of canon in Schneider and Korot’s Video Art, but judging from the names of the artists included, most – but not all – belong to those frequently reoccurring in the following surveys. Completely beyond my scope here, yet useful to remember, is to ask the question of whether any artist is canonical if not credited for precisely pioneering achievements and thus of historical significance. At some point in time and viewed against a body of texts (linguistic as well as through the visual format of exhibitions), certain features appear more prominent than others in the sense that they are repeated. Particular names, clearly, are transformed from original singularities representing foremost themselves into a linear structure – a narrative, that is – where these same names operate as focal points due to their historic significance and hence point beyond their own moment and

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statements. This is actually when the formation of canon has not only set in but is arguably a present fact. Canon is, at most times, a concept practised in close relation to history when conducted as something immanently linear and progressive. However, would an undoing of the linearity and progression also undo canon? What the discursive field of video art is constituted of and refers to must still be framed, even if only momentarily, like in an anthology or by each essay therein. And this framing, as it happens, addresses much the same artists, art works and events that the other publications do. In Illuminating Video there are specific parts of the book highlighted with bold type in the table of contents. These are ‘artists’ pages’. Artists such as, for example, Acconci and Rosler contributing with essays is thus marked differently than, for example, Joan Jonas’ participation, which belongs to the former genre. The artists who are given space for ‘artists’ pages’ are, except from Jonas: Gary Hill, Dan Graham, Dara Birnbaum, Chip Lord, Howard Fried, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, Muntadas, Peter d’Agostino, Tony Labat, Steina Vasulka and Tony Oursler – all firmly established video artists/artists working with video. Out of 39 contributors to the anthology, 25 are artists, that is, presented as such, and amongst the most frequently named artists are also Judith Barry, Lynn Hershmann, Mary Lucier, Martha Rosler, Woody Vasulka and Bill Viola.30 My point should be rather obvious: the same privileged names appear here too – or perhaps I should rephrase it as already here. There is a core of agents – and a rather limited one in relation to the innumerable professional artists that make video art works and also write on the subject – which makes the argumentation against the presence of canonized artists and works to be at odds with how I understand canon. Hall and Fifer conclude their introduction as follows: What Illuminating Video does not purport to be, however, is a definitive history of the field. Indeed, a subtheme of this book is that no single history can (or should) be written and that to understand video one must consider several origins as well as its diverging agendas, both social and aesthetic. Multiplicity is one of video’s strengths and the source of much of its power. It is also video’s location on the margins of official aesthetic acceptability that allows it to maintain a residence within the conscience of the art world.31

This is the reason why the section of essays entitled ‘Histories’ aims at reconsidering the problems and myth involved when historical narratives on video art are produced. But what, then, was the intention of the editors? It was not to ‘quarantine video from discourses that involve all the arts’, but to inform about video art in the context of contemporary art in a more general sense, and to simultaneously counter the limited repertoire of interests that conventional art history had revealed so far.32 If one argues that coherent historical narratives produced within and as art history inevitably rely on

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canon/indispensable works of art, their counter strategy is to hold on to video art’s ‘anti-Establishment in its disregard for commodity values, [and the fact that] video defies a depoliticized hierarchy, since it is socially engaged’.33 Rather than trying to re-negotiate and investigate the ideological base for both art history and canon, the editors seemingly suggest that by sheer resistance alone, video art can both be contextualized within a contemporary field of art and still claim its position at the margins of the same. Instead, the thing ‘to do’ could have been to address the politics behind canon formations – like the one they actually suggest by their own selection of contributors. After all, politics and criticism is at the core of their ambitions with the anthology.34 That is, canon is not an evaluative system that only comes with art; it can take place/happens as it is, at various sites and different (underlying) yardsticks. The particular site of canon formation that is criticized here is that of fine art and art institutions – with which I mean both art history and institutions such as museums, commercial galleries and also, importantly, artist-run spaces. Nevertheless, there is a major difference between mapping a broad field of video art practitioners and the process of constructing a historical narrative. One of the results, discernible now, with art making political statements is that art history – or parts of it – had to change radically in order to also claim jurisdiction over these modes of artistic statements and interventions. Since art history (even in the 1990s) was based on canon, and its (slightly) various ideological and aesthetical aspects, a critique of Western society and culture, particularly the role and power of mass-media, inevitably – it seems – made video art and art history a problematic liaison. This was partly due to art history being performed precisely not only within but as institutions, and it was the actual institutionalized discourse of art that many artists’ critical examination of contemporary society and culture was targeting. However, until the 1990s (that is, when video art had been around for roughly 25 years) it was more relevant to refuse, or pass by, possible claims of canon and canonizations as present, since the art form was still perceived as young and new. That especially the editors of the anthologies argue against canon formations and make efforts not to engage with canonical logic may seem reasonable simply due to the situation of video art as a still emerging art form, and as such in a formative state. However, designations like newness and youth do not cancel out tentative definitions and interpretations. For example, within contemporary art understood as a field of agents, events and art works, hierarchies are rapidly formed and these do have repercussions on what enters art history – which does not only deal with very distant pasts. The problem here, as I see it, is that of not acknowledging the tentativeness of the entire business. Important here is, of course, that the anthologies were produced with different aims than the monographs explicitly narrating a (linear) history. But by the mid-1990s video art was already (also) of the past, constituting a

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historical legacy; and called for precisely as such by the field of new media art which includes more recent and advanced technologies. At that point in time it became increasingly difficult to come up with plausible reasons as to why stories on video art particularly could, or would, stand outside chronologically ordered events of specific historical or contextual importance, which is what canon marks.35 Canon, or ‘the menu of “important art”’ as Hall and Fifer express it, was thus not considered an adequate method of ascertaining which indispensable moments could justify defining essential criteria for the art form. However, my conclusion here is that it was the ideological grounds and aesthetic-oriented aspects of traditional, putative canon construction that was the problem, not primarily a lack of agreement on particular works and artists as (much) more important than others.36 Paradoxically, the much-criticized formalist criticism of reducing art works to formal expressions and media specificity is also presented here as a conclusion that states that eventually it is only the material aspects that can adequately tell one art form from another and, logically, which professionals within the discourse are important (or not). The one aspect that obviously does connect all these various practices of (early) video art is the medium. The medium itself plays a momentous part in the historicizing process and emerges as an agent in its own right – which is why I will return to the issue of technology in more depth. The recalcitrance towards the empowering discourse of art and art history is much more evident in the publications from the 1970s and into the 1990s. By the 2000s it appears as if these antagonistic critiques fade, but vaguely, since it obviously remains an issue to briefly note but not to pay more serious attention to. According to Rosler, Western art was a ‘structure of dominance’.37 Canon is certainly a method for dominance of knowledge; it structures by broad agreements on what to know about, and how to know – and, in effect, who and what are not necessary to know and therefore are possible to neglect. A system of dominance was not, as I read Rosler, what video artists at the time were willing to submit to. (Thinking about it, it seems incongruous to imagine anyone would willingly subject themselves to such an authoritative system.) Instead, the goals of video artists were to ultimately upset and redefine these systems ‘by merging art with social life and making audience and producer interchangeable’, according to Rosler.38 What may appear here as an addressing of video artists with a surprising generality is in fact a result of her being concerned with critical video art. However, Rosler is far from alone in positioning the critical branch of video art practices as the core and focal point of her examination (as already stated, this involves almost all books in my study, except for Rush’s and Spielmann’s), but as her essay also examines the myth of video art/history, it is ‘the utopian moments’ that are emphasized and which – occasionally – are presented (or read by me) as uncritical in their often self-claimed status of the (potentially most) subversive art form. Regardless, the idea

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of an autonomous, or neutral, practising of canonizations had then been further investigated and criticized. Despite the fact, though, that the power of canon – as ‘the ultimate arbiter of cultural value’, as Brzyski phrases it – has diminished significantly, it is still around.39 In A History of Video Art: The Development of Form and Function, Chris MeighAndrews states that ‘artists and curators anxious to identify the new cultural form [that is, video art] have tried to define a canon with little success. The art form itself seems paradoxically to defy the activity of classification whilst simultaneously requiring it.’40 According to him ‘the very notion of a history of video art is itself problematic’ due to the short time span of its existence.41 Furthermore, Meigh-Andrews defines canonical works as those which are ‘preserved, archived, or restored’.42 And since it is ‘obvious that videotapes not considered “significant” are unlikely’ to be cared for in that sense, the history of video art cannot (unlike painting) be written in terms of a canonbased narrative, according to him. However, the destiny of most artworks is that of being written out of history – that is, if it ever enters that realm at all. We cannot construct a narrative of those things we do not know (but going back to the archive would certainly alter parts of the history, as it did in the 1970s and onwards when feminist scholars, amongst others, began working through the archive of art). Meigh-Andrews does not declare that there absolutely is no canon (except for the unsuccessful efforts made by others), but is suggestive about how well established a canon possibly is. His own aim is to trace a history of video art and he does so by departing primarily from technological issues.43 The many different aspects regarding influences – aesthetic, political, national and technological – and the various fields of artistic practices and sub-genres are what seem to be his reasons for arguing against a possible canon. In short, the argument here too is that the plurality of this particular field of practices is too extensive to be comprehended. My counter argument remains: neither plurality of practices nor a dispersed aesthetic legacy disqualify narratives from canonizing processes automatically. This situation is phrased somewhat differently in Video Art by Michael Rush, who notes that no ‘artists present themselves as organizing tools’. The reason for this is foremost that some but not all artists that have worked with the video medium regard themselves as video artists.44 Hence, the underlying idea that there are (more or less) ‘proper’ video artists, as well as artists who only occasionally turn to video, operates as a circumstance that arguably seems to keep canon at bay, although only in a superficial sense. The artists representing the first two decades in his survey convey what I think stands out as the actual presence of canon. Medium exclusivity regarding the art form chosen by artists would in extension logically imply that the status of canon is impossible for the work by, for example, a painter who takes up sculpture or a canonized performance artist who substitutes this art form/

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medium for, let us say, photography. Drawing out the argument like this reveals how untenable it is. Since video art in its early phase happened (that is, was made, exhibited and discussed) ‘in obscure, “alternative” spaces’ and ‘played a vital role on the margins of the avant-garde’, the ambition of Video Art: A Guided Tour by Catherine Elwes was to reintroduce ‘the work of pioneering video-makers’.45 As our guide to these historical events, the author is explicit about her tour being ‘a personal one’, but she also confirms that the works around which her narrative revolves are those ‘that best illuminate the distinctive chronology’ that she aims to represent.46 Her narrative thus implicitly demands the presence of particular artists and works. Pioneers, as noted above, are those who are usually inscribed by canon; it is actually one of the criteria for canonization regarding modernist art and after. And, secondly, it sounds almost like subjectivity regarding the fact that one’s choices of artists and art works addressed could function as a shield towards canon – which I do not think is true here (one has only to look through the names listed in her index). Subjectivity as the position taken by the author is rather discernible here in the interpretations of particular works and how the connections between them are drawn and argued for.47 Moreover, in theory rather than in practice, in relation to the more performance-based video works, the role of the viewer challenged the position of the author/artist, a situation that could be argued as cancelling the events from participating in a formation of canonical works and artists. Elwes does not address the concept of canon explicitly, but since the names and works are emphasized in terms of the pioneering and the inventive, there is no real argument for an actual derivation of canon here. That one chooses amongst a large body of art works and their creators to tell the history of video art does not imply that subjectivity obviates canon. The focus of the narratives certainly has repercussions on how the narratives are structured, not least in relation to which art works and artists are included. Both Spielmann’s and Meigh-Andrews’ surveys focus on technology to an extent not seen in the others. Elwes’ book is, however, also technology-oriented, which determines the structure as well as the topics rather extensively; she focuses differently on the subjects and contents of the art works than the two first-mentioned. Spielmann prefers to avoid a discussion on, hence departure from, the concept of video art and instead emphasizes ‘video aesthetics’: the characteristics of the medium and the changed, improved and new technological inventions are what she situates at the centre of her critical examination. Canon is not mentioned at all here and Video: The Reflexive Medium is presented as being concerned with issues that go beyond the scope of (mere) art history. The broad fields of video aesthetics and video culture are both part of a larger discourse of media cultures and visual studies – but one which also has prolongations as to what could be tentatively termed ‘high cultural extensions’ into the art world and

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institutionalized art history. Canon, obviously, does not vanish by claiming that one writes within another discipline or from another perspective; the site of canon is not exclusively art history but is, on the contrary, strengthened as it travels into other scholarly fields of knowledge production. In the third part of the book, ‘Video Aesthetics’, Spielmann writes mainly about visual artists and video art works, and these belong to the most often discussed within video art history.48 That is, the signatures remain much the same here, too. Another argument that is often acknowledged – however totally different in kind – against canon was the ephemeral nature of video tapes (with video art there is the oxidizing factor to consider: the literal vanishing of the works), which argues that establishing a canon based on already forever lost art works makes it impossible to renegotiate which works and artists are to be inscribed in a/the early history. Thus, there seems to have been suspicions of naming the first moments – even though this is done by everyone without any palpable hesitations – since there is no way to recall, hence reinterpret, them from a canon-critical perspective, were one to wish to do so. But canon is not a phenomenon that inherently demands or opens for critique. It is not practised with an ambition of being thwarted but rather to sustain the validity of a particular narrative by making claims of particular past events. Therefore, a conclusion of the situation is that the physical qualities of video tapes (of disappearing naturally) were actually one of canon’s (unlawful) errands – since canon is a fixative in itself. Canon and the video tapes thus, so to speak, operated towards the same goal (were they to be qualified as agents themselves). Therefore, the one place for early works, and perhaps even no longer existing ones, is as canonized (or at least indispensable) events protected, so to speak, within the historical narratives. The situation of dealing with ephemeral art works is widely observed as both an impulse for the urgent creation of a video art history and, simultaneously, preventing the possibility of there ever being a video art canon. In the monographs, the arguments against participating in a canon formation process and the claim that this process really does not exist – or that it does, but with hesitation – are presented in the introductions, and thereafter more or less left uncommented upon. But does this imply that canon – understood as a cluster of unavoidable historically significant events of which a consensus is clearly ‘in action’ – is absent? Apparently not. Every historicizing narrative is a simplification, and conclusions drawn from singular events always risk a too myopic perspective of the past (or present). But to claim that there are particular subjects, ways of working and so on, that are clearly discernible implies that the proofs on which one grounds one’s interpretations and conclusions are controllable. Canon, as well as a deliberate deviation from it, can operate as one such instance of controllability, of which formative events are underscored or in some sense denied. Opposing the choices of others could thus be an act of keeping the plurality not only of the ways, sites and

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themes of video (art) culture, but also of the agents (that is, names) of the discourse. One of the difficulties here is often taken to be: the canon of what? Of video art or a broader field of video practices with some kind of cultural critique or visual aesthetics as a common denominator? There is, seemingly, an underlying idea that canon cannot be in conjunction with a too plural field of practices – but is this plurality (as different from other art forms, that is) actually present in the narratives; that is, disregarding the plurality that comes with every medium and art form? Depending on the narrative focus, the selection of representative artists and art works differs only marginally; technology is one trajectory that, compared with coming from a fine art context, (slightly) alters the names, titles and choice of illustrations. Furthermore, there is a difference between the publications coming from an American perspective and those being written in the UK/Europe: the locality of the events emphasized is therefore an aspect of importance here but, again, it is valid for all historical narratives and thus a general condition for writing. Still, national canon formations apparently do not eliminate an internationally claimed one.

Canon and canonicity as art historical traps Fine art is a set of cumulative and plural practices partly restrained (and fuelled) by a tradition of aesthetic, ideological and monetary judgements circulating around an always present but slippery acting canon. It seems to be at the instances when the concept of video art ricochet against that hideous concept of canon that a defensive act sets in, keeping video art not entirely succumbed to fine art by keeping it open to adjacent practices. At times, it appears more like a reluctance to patronize one branch, hence falling into an art historicallike manner of creating hierarchies amongst genres; opposing canon (as different from discussing canons that oppose each other) thus operates here as an instinct of self-preservation. One of the serious problems has been that canon comes with outdated ideologies and aesthetic criteria too intimately related to traditional art history and its prevalent ideologies and value system founded on aesthetics (and the economic terms of the art market), rather than content and a performative will for (socio-cultural) changes. The second most important reason to resist canon was initially the art issue. Accepting canon as of art history would consequently lead to submitting to the discourse and field of practices of fine art – inevitably cutting off important and other genealogies, as, for instance, other moving image media or political activism (as visualized by Cottingham’s map). That is, it would seemingly fail the prerogative of a truly heterogeneous field of video art practice and legacies. Inviting canon to the discourse on video art could thus be argued as resigning, as an effect, to a

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simplification of the plurality of a particular past, leaving it dispersed (which would not be the same as to assert the past as unfixed). An important aspect to bear in mind is that the first formations of video art history were created in the postmodern turmoil when hitherto hegemonic concepts, ideas, ideologies and aesthetic evaluations began to fall apart; when history, and the methods by which it was traditionally conducted, was under severe scrutiny, as was the belief in so-called grand, or master, narratives with universal prerogatives. Yet canon is still a leading systematic structure in much academic art history and the practices of art museums (not to mention the market).49 It is an evaluative method by which books and exhibitions are structured: to arrange and evaluate art by names (that is, signature), schools, the indispensable objects and events, and the so-called alternatives aspiring for increased status by way of proximity to the already canonized; that is, constructing hierarchies, legacies and genealogies. Simultaneously, however, it also operates as precisely not an absolute necessity for history to run its (‘truly progressive’) course; canon does not prevent narratives from including a broad variety of other artists and their work, or other subjects and interpretative perspectives. It does not even prevent future narratives from questioning the grounds for what has thus far been historically esteemed. It means that particular ones have been shown to hold historical significance and it is this group that constitutes the canon – not to be mistaken with representing the entire field of a particular phenomenon. There are many factors that are involved in processes of canonization: recognition by art critics, collectors, institutions, the market, the educational systems, gendered and intersectional perceptions on art and artists, availability of technological equipment and so on. In the present context one could also add nationalism. Ideologically, the art market, and hence art works as (foremost) commodities, were aspects of art which several artists of the 1960s and 1970s contested. In fact, this particular point of resistance and, consequently, the ambition to refuse to feed the art market and its allied institutions are two features through which much of the by now canonized art of that time is defined and hence valued and appreciated for having emphasized and problematized. The prime example here is conceptual art in all its different manifestations – be it as performance, earth art, non-sites, Fluxus-ideas of the gift (to give a more detailed example)50 and so on. My point is that not only is canon at play within narratives on video art’s history, it also reversibly justifies video art as art statements but of a different kind – one that will not submit to the market–canon relationship. One paradox in this particular context is that this standpoint is an invention too, hence it becomes one of the tropes around which the art form justifies itself and is logically employed as one of the narrative criteria for the selection of artists and their works. Also, especially regarding the anthologies addressed here, the status of individual artists and art works respectively are to a rather large extent argued for from within the field of video art production and display,

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and therefore are based on specific knowledge of the medium.51 What this implies is that canon has emerged from within too, and not entirely from interpretations made in an after taking place outside, such as, for example, the discourse of art history. Regarding canon, the conclusion – drawn by many – was that it had become something of an evil force, a method that in the past obviously had led to exclusions on grounds that became increasingly troublesome to defend – not only due to it being a sign of old-fashioned art history claiming valued objects of high aesthetic standard, but, more importantly, as these objects signify a world of countering ideologies. This, however, was at a point in history when Western general art history provided a canon which was still regarded as one (with some deviations).52 Since the 1970s numerous art historians and critics have deconstructed general art history from different ideological and theoretical perspectives. Historical narratives claiming to be based on research and in-depth knowledge of the subject at hand necessarily need to place themselves in dialogue with other narratives and therefore their – evidently – particular sets of agreements. Often this concerns what and who to tell. Writing, then, a historical survey also involves the possible futures following the starting point, since the most recently produced art works need to reveal affinities with the addressed events of the past. Moreover, every art work can be addressed from various perspectives, but in the particular genre of historical surveys their position therein is to (also) make the story as solid as possible; that is, trustworthy in the sense of being attributed as evidence of a particular linear history by way of consensus and as existing in narrative form. Trust, here, is, however, also to acknowledge those practices that operate and act at the margin of the primary trajectory chosen; that is, deviations substantiate the canonized works as the latter gain their status relationally.53 This means that the main narrative core is composed of particular events and signatures. But in the paradoxical situation regarding video art, canon both operates as that which video art per se cannot adjust to while simultaneously recognizing sub-categories within its own field; thereby canon is seemingly destabilized. It should be obvious by now that my argument here is that there clearly is a canon within video art history, and the evidence for this is the ubiquitous names and titles which have been circulating in texts on video art since at least the early 1970s. If it was too soon to confirm the possible presence of a video art canon in 1990, it would be even more difficult to claim that the anthology New Artists Video edited by Gregory Battcock is a pivotal instance of canon. Nevertheless, when tracing a process of canon formation and the early phases of its establishment by turning to both the artists who contributed with essays themselves and particularly those who are inscribed within the stories of each essay by reference (linguistic and/or visually by way of image reproduction), it becomes evident that there is a set of artists and works which have remained

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significant for the art form ever since Battcock’s publication. Thus, in relation to the process of canonizing – or, at this point, a process of performing priorities – particular artists as indispensable within a historical narrative, it is worth taking a look at those mentioned in the essays respectively. Acconci is positioned as the leading artist within a field of video art that examines its relational conditions (that is, opposing formal readings of art), followed by Paik, Benglis, Campus, Jonas and Nauman.54 If deliberately not arguably of a trans-historical value, its significance still has to have been proven to hold good over a period of time and is based on consensus between the agents of the discourse; that is, in relation to the phenomenon of video art. By now it is thus clear that several of the artists emphasized in the early contexts of video art are acknowledged as precisely historically significant in narratives on video art history. Whereas video art may constitute a sub-genre of fine art generally and therefore constitutes a discourse that both overlaps and is integrated by the latter, canonized video art/artists is/are occasionally part of both, with Paik being the most obvious example. This implies, then, that historical video art has entered the master narrative of Western art as it is produced in textbooks resting entirely on canon.55 Writing a survey on art, and claiming precisely that, is to my mind to submit to canon as practice (method) since to survey a history – as in mapping – implies that a set of known (established through consensus) sites/events/ works/agents are already defined as focal points; that there is a discourse in relation to what one writes and draws conclusions from. For example, Meigh-Andrews acknowledges this by the ‘tracing of a history’, and by stating that he will ‘discuss a representative selection of influential and seminal works produced by artists’.56 These artists, addressed as such, are situated in relation to specific topics, usage of various technological devices, and so on, which certainly does not mean that some of them are also canonized. The representative and the canonized are neither in opposition nor synonymous with each other. According to Liljefors’ Videokonsten, there was (in 2005) still no discernible agreement on how to write the historiography of video art, and an effect of this is how to classify video art into manageable categories and sub-divisions.57 Liljefors describes two problems here. Firstly, he presents the argument that video art as an artistic practice has never been limited to particular issues or themes. But, if other artistic media are allowed stylistic, periodical, thematically geographical categorizations, why then should video art be handled differently? Are there thus particular reasons why these criteria – or interpretative aspects – are (by no means) applicable to video art? If yes, then why? From the beginning, so to speak, the crux has been precisely this: the medium and the works made with it were not apprehended as conveniently framed and interpreted by these aspects. But we are not at the beginning of video art anymore, and since the beginning several privileged aspects have crystallized, including a string of names, themes and issues, as well as contexts

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of networking. Partly due to the new art forms and media employed by artists, the notion of art has changed rather radically, wherefore it may no longer seem reasonable to argue with resistance against a hierarchy within video art practices. Secondly, often ascribed to artists of the postmodern era and beyond is the argument that artists working with video are often also working in other media and would thus not correspond to such professional groupings as painters and sculptors. But painters obviously also worked with video, and several of the so-called early video artists came from fine art contexts. This too is rather an aspect of artistic practices generally and historically over time to repeatedly remain attentive to, since many artists rarely restrict themselves to a single medium, even if many artists also do precisely that. It is a myth that artists would normally work in a single medium and therefore I do not think that this is a sustainable argument against the possibilities of canonizations of video art. These circumstances are problematic instances implied in all art history writing – or should be. Heterogeneity is, naturally, what defines art from a recent past as well as contemporary art. It is a characteristic of historylessness to make video art and video artists into something essentially different from other artistic media, when and where one addresses it as art exclusively. This is, however, nothing that is in any sense only characteristic of Liljefors’ book, but something that runs through art criticism and scholarly writing concerned with contemporary art in general, that is, in an effort to radicalize and differentiate the present from the past. It is, partly, about employing a specific rhetoric in order to launch a new phenomenon. One of the tasks of art criticism is to point out and discuss in what sense an art work/artist/show is interesting and if it is different enough to say something unheard of before (in a different dialect would suffice).58 This ambition to nail down inventions (and innovations) is a strategy which also often occurs in scholarly writings on art, but not only of recent pasts. Being historicized is to have lost its position in the present. The quick course of being sent to the past may imply, of course, that the critical and subversive implications, hence the performative potential, and sense of newness are aspects that are enfeebled. Canon, then, is what makes an art work signify, for example, criticality and radicality, but therefore also, paradoxically, having lost these. Therefore, when I say that ‘sure, there is a canon within video art history’, I also take the moment of its presentness away. The effect of canonization is that a passed radicality is claimed; the radical act is no longer performative but an aesthetic value judgement and hence a meaning is ascribed to its broader contents and effects – that is, its potential for further innovations, hence historical significance.59 Going through these surveys and anthologies along with the most referredto exhibitions of video art, it is evident that certain artists and particular video works do reoccur to the extent that not acknowledging this corollary of art works as a canon formation seems strangely at odds with the practice of naming names and narrating a linear, and often progressive, history within this

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discourse. As I made clear in the previous chapters, the artists and art works represented in the seminal anthologies and exhibitions are still the names and objects around which the histories about the early years, as well as the most recent works that have made it into the narratives of video art, circulate. A survey on video art not naming Paik, for example, would unavoidably imply making a statement against his role and achievements within the field of artistic video production. The same would be true were one to list the most prominent contemporary artists working with moving images and neglect to mention Pipilotti Rist, for instance. Or, to put it drastically, it would be to vacillate on the border of revisionist history writing. The publications of the 1970s and 1980s have operated as instigating the canonizing process, whether unwillingly or not. As these particular publications were not structured according to a presumed historical linearity, the concept of lineage may be seen as absent; linearity, and history as an evolutionary process, is intimately linked to canon. But undoing linearity as the narrative structure does not by any simple means create an erasure of canonization(s) – as was argued by Hall and Fifer when presenting their intent by including essays written by representatives of different professions in order to avoid ‘any attempt at constructing a linear history’, hence the publication does not follow a chronological structure or purpose.60 Yet both the privileged and indispensable moments are much the same as elsewhere, and these count for the publication in its entirety. Canon is always an effect of previous recognitions and evaluators. What is a canon if not a set of artists and art works that a majority within the professional field constantly not only returns to but emphasizes the absolute significance of? If everyone mentions Paik, Acconci, Rosler, Nauman, Rosenbach, Jonas and others, are they then not canonized video artists? Of course they are. Canon operates, amongst other things, as a proof of the history. Canonically organized narratives, with their standard set of agents and events, imply (at least) three preceding aspects: first, that there is a linear, cumulative process of events, agents and objects so widely spread and consisting of such a large amount of instances that a selection is needed in order to handle the phenomenon at all – in this case video art. Secondly, that amongst the various and uncountable moments there are, due to agreements, particularly salient ones and the fields of professionals are in agreement on these indispensable moments, but not necessarily the reasons (or all of the collected criteria) for their respective recognition of the historical significance of each of them. That is, there may be subjective inklings of the order within the levels of the hierarchy – minding, though, that tradition can be rather quickly established. And, thirdly, that the prominence per se implies that a critical, evaluative process has actually already taken place (which is not, however, the same as to cancel opinions about or oppositions against it). Canon (when it works well in relation to its purpose, that is) is supposed to resist possible accusations of randomness, anarchy and – occasionally – ignorance based on personal

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beliefs, interests and values.61 It is, by definition, an excluding force as much as its function is to include innovations with an impact on the practices of succeeding artists and art theory. This is so even if, surely and rightly, it is constantly under attack precisely due to the empowered ignorance that it executes. Within the vast body of work that has debated and deconstructed the concept of canon and its (slightly) varying foundations, the existence of ‘competing canons’ and even an idea of subordinated but up-and-coming canons have been conveyed.62 This is the evidence of the historical fact that canon cannot make universal claims, but that it operates prominently within specific historical time spans and social, cultural and political contexts. Canon represents, in turn, the values of those contexts and time. Nevertheless, to fight canon – and its administrators and advocates (academia, art museums, the art market and so on) – did not (automatically) lead to that suggested openness, but at times to a somewhat rash creation of canon; as if the unwillingness to submit to the existence of a canon (formation) at all rather meant that the actual and already active process of selecting who and what to agree upon as being of particular significance were often done without the otherwise much-acclaimed criticality and self-awareness of video artists and their allied and supportive critics. The broad scope of video art practices that Hall and Fifer – and evidently others, later – argue as the core, hence the foundation, of the very art form emphasizes different but overlapping domains, where the two opposite poles are, arguably, fine art and TV/documentaries. However, this presumed ‘broad scope’ is a frequently recurring phrase, but also one that is depreciated when related to the context of video art history; the body of names and works repeatedly circulating within the discourse justifies the canon despite the fact that these narratives also address other events. As the respective narratives progress, it also becomes evident that the closer to the present they come, the more varied are the selected works and artists.63 In short, it is about those agents who are acknowledged as having made contributions in the past that alter or redirect a phenomenon visible in the present. The effects of a particular artist’s practice or specific works go beyond the mere present context of it happening at a particular point in time and are discernible as a heritage.64 Working from the margins, as video artists are said to have done, could be argued as a strategic defence (in narrative terms, that is) against canonizing processes, since the canonized is by definition (in) the centre of things and events. However, we all know that what is made in the margins is what in time may very well enter the centre (one has only to think of the early cubist phase of Picasso, the abstract paintings of Malevich, the work by Louise Bourgeoisie – modernisms were marginal events that became the art of the period), insofar as that which enters from the margins comes to make sense within Westernized art history.65 Could there, then, be any thinkable benefits from accepting canon formation as a constitutive force within the practice of narrating video art’s history?

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In general art history as it is produced in textbooks (and, usually, in museums), necessary inclusions have arguably been made and the criteria for canons of the past rethought and renegotiated during the last decades.66 And furthermore, self-awareness of the choices one makes and why are by now a presupposed aspect of the profession of art historians, critics and curators.67 Narratives are traditionally constructed around particular focal points which, in the context of art history, more often than not mean names. By the widespread practice of repeating names, canon is established precisely by the repetition set in motion. It is thus performative; naming is in this sense doing what it says (in an Austinian sense). That is, one cannot repeatedly utter these names while simultaneously claiming that they are irrelevant or appear by sheer happenstance; that they do not act forcibly, authoritatively and constitutively within a narrative such as, for example, video art history. In her introduction to Partisan Canons (2007), Anna Brzyski writes apropos consensus: It is more than curious, therefore, that despite the extensive nature of the critiques of canonicity and their wide acceptance, mainstream art history continues to embrace canonical logic in its day to day operations, research, presentation of scholarship, pedagogy, and curatorial practice. This paradox exists in part because scholars no longer consider the canon to be the obstacle it once was perceived to be. After all, the argument goes, the canon no longer appears to impose serious limits on our practice.68

It does limit us. But, since the primary question in this particular context evidently has been ‘the canon of what?’, the strategy to foreground particular moments has had significant repercussions on the simultaneous creation of an identity not only of video culture in a broad sense but also of video art. In the present context one could, perhaps, talk about the construction of an own deliberate (sub-)canon in terms of canon-by-resistance-from-within. Since canon implies that there is a consensus of the standards and conventions of what counts the most, there apparently evolved certain criteria for what is the most appreciated and important in the sense of influence, and hence that which creates a particular culture and therefore shapes the identity of that culture.69 This is an idea of an identity, a self-image even, but I think it is of relevance to at least tentatively connect this idea to the notion of canon as well. Some of the issues that are recurrently addressed as more or less essential to video art are a challenge to the existing definition of fine art as static objects of particular aesthetic value, the highlighting of the importance of political activism as a mode for contemporary art, and that avant-gardish tropes like innovation, criticality and the subversive remained at the centre of video art discourse, too.70 Brzyski writes: ‘In most cases, production of specific canons occurs within a complex matrix of social, political, cultural, institutional, and

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discursive transactions that prevent unambiguous identification of a single factor as the sole or even the most important determinant. Similarly, while some canons emerge as a result of diffuse collective endeavours, others have clearly identifiable authorship.’71 Constructing a specific discourse of video art, which the early anthologies, exhibitions and texts actually did but revealed by hindsight, needs particular instances in order to frame the phenomenon in the first place. There cannot be a discourse without content and vice versa. Likewise, norms, values and prerogatives are unavoidable aspects of any discourse. The highlighted names operate as a kind of frame for what the discourse on video art can be about – even if in a tentative sense (as are all privileged aspects as well as phenomena). There are benefits to constructing a core of historically, hence contextually, determinant events (by which I mean here artists, art works, texts and exhibitions). Broad agreements on particular, but not all, features of a discourse are necessary; without the slightest consensus there can be no such thing as video art in the first place. This is not, nota bene, to say that canon claims old-fashioned universal prerogatives. Instead, the most obvious benefit of submitting to or inviting canon, on one’s own terms, that is, is that the canonized art works – once having earned that status – have been seriously interpreted, analysed and criticised by many. A canonized work means that it has been taken seriously by a number of other agents within the discourse, and hence that it has (so to speak) been proven to have lasting effects. It is focused, even if for different reasons. Historical narratives are rarely – at least I know of none – about events claimed to have no effects and no importance for the future following it in time: lasting effects are therefore central to the idea of narrating historical changes, not the non-changes. However, a major focus on a particular event implies consensus, but not necessarily that this is a good thing to agree upon. (That is, morality and morals enter any discourse in one way or the other, but that is not the issue here.) Canon operates as an instigator and gate-keeper of tradition, framing ideologically particular cultural expressions, such as video art. Names of artists, their participation in shows, and art critics’ written responses to their work and exhibitions are what may last the longest in the archives, since a number of art works will literally vanish due to fragile technology and neglected preservation. In the future, then, a return would still be possible – but without the possibility to judge, examine and interpret the art works of the past. A revised future canon would then (perhaps) be merely suggestive of how it once was. My argument against this understanding of what remains of an historical event is of course that a work of art does not only exist in physical terms – it (that is, as a work that goes beyond the material limits) exists just as much in the narratives, as interpretations and written documents.72 This counts for all art works – and not only them but all moments of the past which we speak of, interpret

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and construct historical narratives about. The archive happens within discourses. Nor does the short time span of video art’s existence hold as an argument against canon and canonizations. Instead I find it happening within instances of contemporary events taking place. That canon is always possible to alter and adjust is, partly, something else. Sturken points to the need for ‘interpretive texts’ as the one source that will be left (after the literal vanishing of video tapes).73 The effect of this situation would run the risk that the canon as of today remains. Surveys, in and by their production of generality, are one of the most pertinent sites for canon. But that it happens there does not mean that it bodes well for the phenomenon at large; only that it claims its prerogative in the realm of historical narratives of that situated phenomenon.74 This returns us to the question that permeates this discourse: the canon of what? Obviously, out of the surveys addressed here all but one (Spielmann’s Video: The Reflexive Medium) deal explicitly with video works as art (even if there are also plenty of examples of moving image works that are not entirely or at all defined as fine art), and not with postmodern and/or contemporary art in general, general art history or visual culture. Regarding this particular art context and the canon established therein suggests particular standards and protocols within itself. It does not speak of video culture in more general terms. The impact of the medium is, however, often centre-staged, and I return to this issue in the final section of this chapter. If deviation, or subversion even, is claimed as a long-lasting feature of video art, then the discourse also has to include these moments. That is, without a core of the already spoken there cannot emerge any (new) resistance. In this context, the resistance has to come from within and not solely as a reaction to outer practices and discourses (for example, resisting the criteria by which other art is judged, interpreted and so on). Taking a look at the canonized artists and art works of modernism (those which always appear in textbooks, at museums of modern art and so forth), it is clearly evident that most, if not all, have gained this status precisely for having deviated in some way or another from the norms and traditions, especially the aesthetic ones, of their own time. For the moment I am disregarding the gender aspect of it all (which I return to in the next chapter), as well as ethnicity and class. Arguing along these lines, then, implies that the risk of museumization referred to above also brings with it the possible (long-term) recognition of having achieved radical difference – even if now located in the past. Deviation and difference are primary criteria for canonization in relation to art nominated as modernist, postmodernist and belonging to ‘the contemporary’.75 Traditional art (that is, as already traditional at the date of its making), on the other hand, is what hitherto has not permitted canonical status in the modernist/postmodernist era. The reason why video art became something of the postmodern art form par excellence has also been

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conducive to a particularly prominent position of video art within art theory that debates notions of postmodernism and the break with modernism. In the final essay of Partisan Canons, Terry Smith argues that contemporary art works that are complex and which do not easily point to a particular resolution, but instead deny the possibility of closure of how it should (best) be understood, contextualized and interpreted also – as an effect thereof – resist the status of the canonized.76 The result of this argument would thus be that works which do open up for exhaustive interpretations are the ones that are canonizible. I disagree. The canonical status per se may stand the longest, but canonized artworks are subjected to repeated examinations performed over time and in different media (like art criticism, academic research, exhibitions and so on). ‘Offering closure’ would rather imply that a work has lost not only its present-ness, but more importantly the allure of drawing ever more attention. According to Smith’s line of argument, too complex art works would thus share some immanent quality such as resisting canon. He writes: Does not the very idea of the canonical presume, at the very least, concentrations of value that have potent effect, intensities that last, standards that set, paradigms that take hold, all of which should lead to practices that echo the exemplary inspiration? Contemporaneity, it would seem, is fundamentally antithetical to the very possibility of this kind of universalizing canon formation. Are the days of canons, finally, over?77

Related to the context of video art/culture when it was still not institutionalized (or museumized), the contemporary moment back then indicates the problems of thinking of video art in terms of canon. Video art, as holding on to a fluctuating idea of being art but art-differently, could logically not arrange ‘itself’ within a discourse that aims precisely to standards, of tracing lasting effects. As of postmodernity per se, which it fitted like a glove, video art cannot avoid the status of canon by now. Even if words, hence concepts, like masterpiece and genius are discordant in relation to both postmodern and contemporary practices of art history and criticism, we still often produce interpretations and narratives with these concepts as unspoken effects – since innovation and invention both connote the former traditional/out-fashioned notions. In this case, the technology employed is also widely recognized as a sign of these concepts. The technological inventions and developments of mediums organized under the term video art and later new media art are important factors to consider when dealing with this field of art-making. In this sense video art essentially differs from mediums like painting due to constantly new apparatuses and image-editing programs which have rapidly and in a relatively short time span altered and multiplied the ways by which one can create moving images. This could have had repercussions on the canon since new modes

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of image-making demand new sets of origins.78 However, this is not really the case here. The first two decades of video art remain very much the same regarding the artists and art works referred to. If there are any benefits to be had from the status of canon, it is that the canonized will be taken care of, preserved as part of the archive. As ideas of the universal have collapsed, canon cannot be thought of in those terms anymore but rather as that which is repeatedly mentioned and named. The works by, for example, Birnbaum or Paik are not declared as the best (ever) – what they are is unexceptionally mentioned. And as we all know, canon takes place in situations firmly framed by specific preferences, and these are discernible with historical hindsight, revealing those from the formative years of the/a video art discourse. Of central importance here is to further recognize that the canonized video artists all belong to the same period of time. Therefore, they do not conform to a particular aesthetic, a way of working with the medium, issues explored and so forth. The Western video art canon of the 1960 to 1980s – and beyond – hence reveals disparities in all kinds of ways. Lineage by heritage (as in, for example, a Greenbergian modernist canon) is not what constitutes or frames this particular canon. In that sense plurality is, in effect, retained. But what the canonized artists and their works do is reveal a set of various standards and show different ways of making video art. This goes for all art forms. Another – and what I think is a crucial – aspect that most of the canonized artists actually do have in common is that they have made works that are proven to be readily adopted for display in alliance with institutions’ display aesthetics and possibilities. The canon of video art history does not arrange itself into a universal art historical hegemony – it is too partisan for that. However, from the initial phase of video art it is partisan from within, so to speak, and canon hence operates both as a strategy against traditional, hegemonic art history with its outdated values and as a stratagem (in a positive sense) of constructing history as constituted by moments agreed upon by those agents actually active in the field. Hereby the ideologies and value systems of the field can also be detected. Smith recognizes the continued need of systems for categorizations but also for contradictions. He argues that contemporary art’s (as of 2007) ‘most generative points’ are ‘the studios, the labs, the sites, the net’, which ‘official contemporary art’ cannot encompass.79 Therefore contemporary art as canonized speaks only of rather limited events and agents and, moreover, affects in limited ways. However, one of the points in relation to video art history is that canon formation took place from within and that the historicizing process has continually acknowledged what in this context must be recognized as off the institutionalized sites for art – the many collectives are evidence of this. By theorizing and hence promoting video art as a ‘counter-institutional art’, the canon (as it has become) departs from the margins in several aspects (medium,

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sites, content, the inherent criticality). Hence the point here is that the canon of video art history has been formed despite the many and various sites not run by commercial interests or traditional institutions like museums. One method of finding evidence for the actual existence of a canon within video art history is to turn to the index of names in each of the books under scrutiny. It is then made sufficiently clear that particular artists’ names occur in every book (but not in all essays). To further articulate the presence of a canon, one can turn to the illustrations. This reveals not only the prominence of particular artists, but also connects to the distinction between invention and innovation. Paik, for example, not only represents the first video artist but is also canonized on the basis of exploring the technological inventions available and, in collaboration with Shuya Abe, of inventing new devices. He is thus recognized for both making high-quality art works and pursuing the creative potentials of the medium. Following the discussion of Jensen in this matter, the long-lasting effects of Paik’s oeuvre stems from it being defined in terms of both innovation and invention.80 Few other artists come even close regarding the acknowledged future relevance revealed by historical narratives. Important here is that what is constructed as important in the sense of innovation and invention is not necessarily identical to what was going on in the present-ness of particular situations; that is, in what sense and to what degree artists are inspired. One example here is the acknowledgement of Birnbaum’s use of scratch video which, for instance, both Spielmann and Meigh-Andrews discuss (I return to this in the following chapter in relation to my discussions on gender). Meigh-Andrews does this, however, in relation to many others as central to the trajectories he is establishing in the second part, which deals with ‘representative video art works’.81 One could thus argue here whether this is of canonizing criteria or of mere serious importance, or about the levels within canon. But unlike the conclusions that Jensen draws from his material, there is in the present context rather a tendency to think that so-called major artists can be represented visually by a broader variety – especially Paik, but this is also valid for artists like Hill and Viola. A different situation occurs with Dara Birnbaum. In all of the six monographs interrogated, her work Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–79) is reproduced, and it is further discussed in two of the anthologies.82 In visual terms, her position within the video art canon is argued in relation to one single work and hence is very much unlike the situation of Hill and Viola, who are of the same generation. A similar position is given to Rosler. Likewise, she is admittedly one of the early video artists but is particularly recognized for one work: Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), but with Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained (1977) as the second most often reproduced.83 In relation to both these works, there are two aspects on which there is consensus: the conceptual level of the works and, foremost, their relevance as two distinctly feminist works of video art. This further implies that canonical video artists’

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works are valued in ‘significantly different ways, which can be used to raise new questions about often very familiar objects’, which Jensen writes in relation to his investigation of Western nineteenth-century canon.84 In a narrative sense these particular works furthermore mark that feminisms and gender awareness are aspects acknowledged as parts of both video art canon and the position of the author. Canon is a system preceded by the canonizing arguments which eventually become unspoken. When the presence of a particular artist or work no longer – seemingly – needs to be justified but appears as naturally there, then canon is present, too. To choose other works by Rosler or Birnbaum, for example, would imply a deviation from the established narratives and therefore demand an explanation of the reasons why other works are of particular interest. In prolongation, narratives based on traditional historical linearity and assumed genealogies manifested by the reoccurence of the same set of art works (canon) would lose their peculiar status of being already there, and consequently would only be able to reproduce as a found history, not as a result of critical rethinkings. To narrate the progress, for example, of a particular phenomenon implies that one needs to stay with that which presents itself as already given so as not to encumber the narrative with too many explanations and arguments, keeping possible deviations at bay. This is one aspect of traditional surveys. Visualizations of video art also take place on the covers of publications. This is, of course, no evidence of general prominence, but to further articulate my point here I want to recall this site of, and for, visual canonization. For example, Sylvia Martin’s book has Anthro/Socio (1992) by Nauman on the cover, and on opening the book, one stares at an illustration of Paik’s Video Flag X (1985), and then Hill’s Tall Ship (1992). To the left of the table of contents is a still montage of Viola’s Dantes Triptych (1992). The opposite, if thinking in gender-biased terms, is seen in Rush’s book. On the front cover are Lucy Gunning’s Climbing Around My Room (1993) and Pipilotti Rist’s I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much (1986), while on the back, stills from Christopher Draeger’s Ode to a Sad Song (2001) and Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s The House (2002) are reproduced.85 The irresoluteness around the concept of art (or fine art) amongst the writers addressed here has been an argument against any complete acceptance of canon/canonicity, and one which returns every now and then. Accepting art as a founding strategy and ontology for video art practices seems to have been a threat of losing a broad and varied genealogy. However, the mistake – as I see it – is to somehow accept (or take for granted) that a canonization of a particular artist’s work makes the entire oeuvre of that artist automatically art. This is more of a problem for scholars, having to frame rather rigorously one’s field of vision, so to speak, in order to say something at all, yet need not restrain artists, critics and curators out there. However, in the early

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publications there is an apparent suspicion of the fine art field and the risk of being contaminated by art historical values. The insistence of anti-art is a paradox; it simultaneously defies art and yet enters the scenes and sites where art happens. But as long as it was done with reluctance, participation and flirting with fine art seems to have been acceptable – at least with historical hindsight.

Notes 1

The exhibition was curated by Christine van Assche, curator of the New Media department at Centre Pompidou. See the catalogue: Christine van Assche, and Florence Parot, eds, Vidéo Vintage 1963–1983: une sélection de vidéos fondatrices des collections nouveaux médias du musée national d’art moderne Centre Pompidou, Centre Pompidou Editions, Paris, 2012.

2

www.centrepompidou.fr/Pompidou/Manifs.nsf/0/FE07E5DC35D11D8DC125795F0036FC90?Open Document&sessionM=2.2.1&L=1 (accessed 7 September 2012).

3

See the free folder for the show. The three sections were entitled: ‘Performance and Self-Filming’; ‘Television: Research, Experiments, Criticism’; and ‘Attitudes, Forms, Concepts’. This division, however, was not that clear since the show also consisted of several units within the separate themes.

4

In 1996 The Art Bulletin published the different approaches to the concept by five scholars under the headline ‘Rethinking the Canon’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 78, no. 2, 1996, pp. 198–217. The contributors were Michael Camille, ‘Prophets, Canons, and Promising Monsters’, pp. 198–201; Zeynep Çelik, ‘Colonialism, Orientalism, and the Canon’, pp. 202–205; John Onians, ‘World Art Studies and the Need for a New Natural History of Art’, pp. 206–209; Adrian Rifkin, ‘Theory as a Place’, pp. 209–212; and Christopher B. Steiner, ‘Can the Canon Burst?’, pp. 213–217. I find it interesting that several publications on the notions and methods related to art history addressing students do not discuss canon specifically, even if references to the concept appear here and there: for example, Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff, eds, Critical Terms for Art History, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, (1996) 2003; Anne D’Alleva, Methods and Theories of Art History, Laurence King Publishing, London, 2005; Michael Hatt and Charlotte Klonk, Art History: A Critical Introduction to its Methods, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2006. In more recent years scholars investigating the concept have published, which may mark a new interest; see, for example, Anna Brzyski, ed., Partisan Canons, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2007; and Paul Crowther, Defining Art, Creating the Canon: Artistic Value in an Era of Doubt, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007. Furthermore, canon is addressed by James Elkins in Master Narratives and Their Discontents, Routledge, New York, 2005; and in, for example, Isabelle Graw, ‘Beyond Institutional Critique’, in John C. Welchman, ed., Institutional Critique and After, JRP Ringier, Zurich, 2006, pp. 137–151.

5

Elizabeth C. Mansfield, ed., Making Art History: A Changing Discipline and Its Institutions, Routledge, London and New York, 2007.

6

Ibid., p. 11. My emphasis. It is argued here that canon was essential to the professionalization of art history in the early twentieth century – that is, the fields of study were hereby more clearly framed. But also that the knowing of the canon helped identify a ‘we’ who are art historians. Marlite Halbertsma’s essay discusses two canons, running more or less parallel in time: ‘The Call of the Canon: Why Art History Cannot Do Without’, in Mansfield, pp. 16–30.

7

It is argued here, tentatively though, that visual studies, not only claiming the right to employ various methods and theories not traditionally used within art history, also contested the hierarchy amongst visual expressions and objects. It is this last manoeuvre that would eventually make the concept of art obsolete: Mansfield, p. 12. On opposing, challenging and/or rivalling canons, see also Brzyski. In his article ‘Can the Canon Burst?’, Christopher Steiner posed the question whether future inclusions are really the way to go, so to speak. Rather, he opted for further investigations and continued reassessments of the ideological, historical, social and so on foundations of the concept per se.

8

See, for example, Camille who argued that ‘canon is not made up of actual objects but only of representations of those objects … Whether their bias be nationalist, formalist, or iconographic,

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canons are created not so much out of a series of worthy objects as out of the possibilities of their reproduction’ (p. 198). 9

Anna Brzyski, ‘Making Art in the Age of Art History, or How to Become a Canonical Artist’, in Brzyski, ed., Partisan Canons, 2007, p. 245.

10

Ibid., p. 248. In another context, Boris Groys has discussed the implications of the internet in relation to museums and their criteria of choice and regulations, stating simply that: ‘According to these theories, artworks are chosen because they are chosen.’ See Boris Groys, ‘Art Workers: Between Utopia and the Archive’, e-flux journal, no. 45, 2013, p. 1.

11

Finbarr Barry Flood, ‘From Prophet to Postmodernism? New World Orders and the End of Islamic Art’, in Mansfield, pp. 31–53.

12

Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, eds, Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, Aperture and Bay Area Video Coalition, New York, 1990, p. 13.

13

Ibid. But why artists would make more subjectively based choices than, for example, art historians is not discussed further by Hall and Fifer, hence I simply do not understand this presumption.

14

See Anna Brzyski, ‘Introduction’, in Partisan Canons, p. 14. See also her discussion on the foundation, role, content and organization of images in the ARTstor database, pp. 14–17; and http://www.artstor.org/index.shtml and the introduction to the database at youtube: http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=Ngu4kBIJEg8&feature=youtu.be [accessed 17 August 2007]. In relation to canon, and ideas and practices of how to open it up, I think she makes an interesting point here. However, hierarchy between different canons remains, the Western fine art one being still too privileged and handed over to students both of art history and at art school; see Brzyski’s introduction in Partisan Canons.

15

Martha Rosler, ‘Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment’, in Hall and Fifer, especially pp. 42–44; Marita Sturken, ‘Paradox in the Evolution of an Art Form: Great Expectations and the Making of a History’, in Hall and Fifer.

16

Rosler, p. 33.

17

See Camille.

18

Which John Onians argues is the fate of the too familiar objects of the European art canon.

19

Michael Renov and Erika Suderburg, eds, Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, pp. xv and xviii.

20

Ibid., p. xii.

21

Ibid., pp. xvi–xviii.

22

David E. James, ‘Lynn Hershman: The Subject of Autobiography’, in Renov and Suderburg, pp. 124–133.

23

Patti Podesta, ed., Resolution: A Critique of Video Art, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), Los Angeles, 1986.

24

See ‘Acknowledgement’ by LACE director Joy Silverman (pp. 1–12), and Podesta’s ‘Introduction’ (especially p. 5), in Podesta. The artists participating were: Max Almy, Peter d’Agostino, Dara Birnbaum, Lyn Blumental, Ed Bowes, Shirley Clarke, Sam Shepard and Joseph Chakin, Juan Downey, Ed Emshwiller, Ken Feingold, Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn, Matthew Geller, Shalom Gorewitz, Doug Hall, Gary Hill, Tony Labat, Joan Logue, Meredith Monk and Ping Chong, Antonio Muntadas and Marshall Reese, Tony Oursler, (John Sanborn with) Robert Ashley, Michael Smith, John Sturgeon, Steina (Vasulka), Woody Vasulka, Bill Viola, Robert Wilson, Bruce Yonemoto and Norman Yonemoto (pp. 18–33).

25

Amy Taubin, ‘For Nam June Paik: Notes on an Oversight’, in Podesta, pp. 99–104, at p. 99.

26

Douglas Hall, ‘Thoughts on Landscape in Nature and Industry’, pp. 36–42; Lyn Blumental, ‘Doublecross’, pp. 43–46; Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, ‘Made in Hollywood: A Treatment for a Video Feature and Discussion of Aesthetic Strategies’, pp. 47–50; Dara Birnbaum, ‘Talking Back to Media’, pp. 51–56; John Sanborn, ‘The Warning Track: Just Before You Run into the Wall’, pp. 57–66; all in Podesta.

27

William Olander, ‘Women and the Media: A Decade of New Video’, in Podesta, pp. 76–83.

canon: an unresolved issue 131

28

The other three mentioned here are Stan Brakhage, Bruce Connor and Robert Bree. John G. Hanhardt, ed., Video Culture: A Critical Investigation, Peregrine Smith Books, Layton, in association with Visual Studies Workshop Press, New York, (1986) 1990, p. 15.

29

Ibid., p. 16.

30

See ‘Contributors’, in Hall and Fifer, pp. 521–525. For example, nine of these artists appear in Gregory Battcock, ed., New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1978, seven in Hanhardt, (1986) 1990, and 13 in Renov and Suderburg.

31

Hall and Fifer, p. 27.

32

Ibid., p. 13.

33

Ibid., p. 15.

34

In Deirdre Boyle’s ‘A Brief History of American Documentary Video’, in Hall and Fifer, pp. 51–69, the focus is on the relation, similarities and differences between video as art and as an activist act. Therefore social movements of the 1960s and 1970s are more important as ‘backdrop’ than is the issue of art or not. However, narratives of social movements also tend to emphasize particular agents and events. The individual artists and video groups that she refers to are all, by now, well known within video art history.

35

See Edward A. Shanken’s ‘Survey’, in Shanken, ed., Art and Electronic Media, Phaidon, London, 2009, pp. 12–52.

36

On ideology, see Mansfield, pp. 6, 38–39, 41–42, 122 and 203–205.

37

Rosler, p. 31.

38

Ibid., p. 31.

39

Brzyski, p. 2.

40

Chris Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art: The Development of Form and Function, Berg, Oxford, 2006, p. 4. However, Meigh-Andrews writes from another situation than is the case for most surveys on video art: a British (as opposed to a Northern American) context, which results, among other things, in a slightly different set of origins, hence also artists and art works addressed.

41

Ibid., p. 4.

42

Ibid., p. 5. This issue is also addressed by Hall and Fifer, p. 15, on ‘the archive’.

43

Meigh-Andrews, pp. 2–4.

44

Michael Rush, Video Art, Thames & Hudson, London, 2003, pp. 8–9.

45

Catherine Elwes, Video Art: A Guided Tour, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London, 2005, p. 1.

46

Ibid., pp. 1 and 2.

47

On the role of the author, see, for example, Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, ‘Semiotics and Art History’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 73, no. 2, 1991, pp. 174–208. On subjectivity and history, see, for example, Hélène Bowen Raddeker, Sceptical History: Feminist and Postmodern Approaches in Practice, Routledge, London and New York, 2007. See also Keith Moxey, ‘Motivating History’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 77, no. 3, 1995, pp. 392–401.

48

Yvonne Spielmann, Video: The Reflexive Medium, translated by Anja Welle and Stan Jones, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2008, pp. 131–224 (originally published as Video. Das reflexive Medium, Suhrkamp Press, Frankfurt, 2005).

49

Like the other art forms that emerged and gained/were trapped by institutionalization in the 1960s and 1970s, the art market was yet another problematic practice and discourse. Art understood and handled as commodities addressing and circulating this particular branch of the art world – not unlike broadcasting companies and the film industry (in the US especially) – was in concordance with much of the critique and reluctance towards canon as a system aimed at framing particular practices and their objects. In short, the traditional base for canon was constituted by physical objects, hence giving privilege to particular kinds of art works – which many artists were (and, of course, still are) simply not interested in producing but which processes of canonization had privileged. See, for example, Ian Burn, ‘The Art Market: Affluence and Degradation’ (1975), here from an extract from the text in Art in Theory: 1900–1990, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Blackwell, Oxford, UK and Cambridge, USA, (1992) 1995, pp. 908–911.

132 video art historicized

50

I am grateful to my colleague Magdalena Holdar – presently working on a project entitled The Northern Angle: Tracing Swedish Fluxus in a Transnational Artists’ Network – for informing me on this particular matter.

51

For an in-depth discussion of the importance of specific art historical knowledge in relation to canon, see Crowther.

52

See, for example, Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1989; Hans Belting, Art History after Modernism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2003; Arthur Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997; Mansfield; Brzyski; Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desires and the Writing of Art’s Histories, Routledge, London and New York, 1999. For a defence of art’s canonic value see Crowther, especially pp. 42–64.

53

See Brzyski, ‘Making Art in the Age of Art History’.

54

Acconci is the most frequently mentioned artist in the entire anthology: his name appears in six of the 17 essays. In Da Vinci, Krauss, Levin, Lorber, Marshall and Ross, it is of some importance to show the correspondence between some of the authors on which artists are important – keeping in mind their different interests: a correspondence which appears as an agreement. The other essays present other artists, rather few of whom appear in the monographs. Compare with Robert Jensen who presents a quantitative approach to canonized artists in textbooks: Robert Jensen, ‘Measuring Canons: Reflections on Innovation and the Nineteenth-Century Canon of European Art’, in Brzyski, ed., Partisan Canons, 2007, pp. 27–54.

55

See, for example, H.W. Janson’s History of Art: The Western Tradition, ed. Sarah Touborget et al., 7th edition, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, 2007, p. 1064; Marilyn Stokstad, ed., Art History, 3rd edition, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, 2008, pp. 848, 1187–1188. In Art Across Time, video art is represented by Paik, Viola and Shirin Neshat: Laurie Schneider Adams, ed., Art Across Time, 3rd edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2007, pp. 988–990.

56

Meigh-Andrews, p. 3. My emphasis.

57

Max Liljefors, Videokonsten: en introduktion, Studentlitteratur, Lund, 2005, p. 40.

58

See, for example, James Elkins, Art Critique: A Guide, New Academia Publishing, Washington, 2012.

59

See, for example, Jensen.

60

Hall and Fifer, p. 13.

61

Compare Jensen.

62

Not least, critical investigations of power structures related to canon have been carried out within feminist and post-colonial art theory. In addition to the references listed above, see, for example, Pollock, 1999; Charlotte Bydler, The Global Art World Inc.: On the Globalization of Contemporary Art, dissertation, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala University, 2004, especially pp. 170–197.

63

Comparing which artists are represented with illustrations of works made after 1995, there are only seven artists that all appear in at least three of the six surveys in focus: Pierre Hughye, Shirin Neshat, Tony Oursler, Pipilotti Rist, Stephanie Smith and Edward Stewart (working together), and Steina Vasulka. In total, there are more than 80 artists’ works made after 1995 that appear in these particular publications.

64

On the relation between canon and invention and innovation, see Jensen, especially pp. 30–32.

65

See, for example, Hans Hayden, Modernismen som institution: Om etableringen av ett estetiskt och historiografiskt paradigm, Brutus Östling förlag, Stehag and Stockholm, 2006, especially pp. 58–66; and Bydler.

66

Regarding museums, there have been several temporary projects aiming to actually display more works by ‘women artists’ during the last few years. For example, the exhibition Women Artists: elles@centrepompidou, produced by curator Camille Morineau, comprised only works produced by women from the collection, but it did not affect the reorganization of the display situation more than marginally: see Camille Morineau and Annalisa Rimmaudo, eds, elles@centrepompidou: Women Artists in the Collection of the Musée national d’art moderne centre creation industrielle, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2009. Another example of working with gender balance at a traditional art institution is the project The Second Museum of Our Wishes at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Here, the thendirector Lars Nittve made a plea for funding for the acquisition of art works by women in order to improve the collection. See John Peter Nilsson, ed., The Second Museum of Our Wishes, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2010. For a critique of this project, see Malin Hedlin Hayden and Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, ‘A Serious Suggestion: Give Up the Goat: Art Collections and Feminist Critique

canon: an unresolved issue 133

in Sweden’, in Angela Dimitrakaki and Lara Perry, eds, Politics in a Glass Case: Feminism, Exhibition Cultures and Curatorial Transgressions, Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 2013, pp. 66–83. I further addressed elles@centrepompidou in a paper in which I discussed the practice of thinking of collections as sometimes ‘a permanent phenomenon’ and at other times as storage from which to select items for a ‘short-term exhibition’, trying to problematize this difference by discussing what an already @ seemingly implied. See Malin Hedlin Hayden, ‘Feminist Shows Versus an Equality Marked Collection’, paper at the NORDIK conference, Stockholm University, 2012, forthcoming as ‘Women artists@home: Or why are there still no equality-marked collections?’, in Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, ed., Curating Differently: Feminisms, Exhibitions and Curatorial Spaces, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, forthcoming Spring 2015. 67

The nowadays rather infamous History of Art by Janson is just one example from the past of the extreme way of claiming something as the history of art. For further critique, in addition to that highlighted in the previous chapter, see, for example, Terry Smith’s critique of Gombrich: Smith, ‘Coda: Canons and Contemporaneity’, in Brzyski, ed., Partisan Canons, 2007, pp. 315–316. For a discussion of textbooks and (revised) canon, see also Barbara Jaffe, ‘“Gardner” Variety Formalism: Helen Gardner and Art Through the Ages’, in Brzyski, ed., Partisan Canons, 2007, pp. 203–223.

68

Brzyski, p. 2.

69

Compare Mansfield.

70

Compare with Isabelle Graw’s thoughts on institutional critique and its ‘successfully canonized’ status (p. 143).

71

Brzyski, p. 8.

72

Compare Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (L’archéologie du savoir, Gallimard, Paris, 1969), translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith, Routledge, London and New York, 2002.

73

Sturken, 1990.

74

Jaffe states that art history survey texts are also the ‘places where debates over the formation of art historical canons are most visible’. This does not, however, take place overtly, but rather through comparisons (p. 204).

75

On the concepts of contemporary and contemporaneity, see Terry Smith ‘Contemporary Art and Contemporaneity’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 32, no. 4, Summer 2006, pp. 681–707; and Terry Smith, Contemporary Art: World Currents, Laurence King Publishing, London, 2011.

76

Smith, 2007, pp. 322–323. His example here is Shirin Neshat’s work Passage (2001).

77

Ibid., p. 313.

78

Compare Jensen, pp. 27–54.

79

Smith, 2007, p. 311.

80

Jensen, especially pp. 44–49.

81

Meigh-Andrews, ‘Part II: A Discussion of Some Representative and Influential Video Art Works Set in Relation to Their Technical and Critical Context’, pp. 147–212. Birnbaum’s work and technique are discussed on pp. 170–174.

82

In Martin this work is mentioned and reproduced in the introductory historical survey, and it is mentioned in Renov and Suderburg (1996), whereas David Ross discusses it in more depth in his essay ‘Truth or Consequences: American Television and Video Art’, in Hanhardt, (1986) 1990, pp. 167–178. There he also notes the importance of Paik to Birnbaum’s work. Spielmann, who writes the most about Birnbaum, has reproduced five works.

83

Not all the publications interrogated here mention her name (Hanhardt, Schneider and Korot, and Spielmann). Semiotics is illustrated in Rush, Meigh-Andrews, Liljefors, Martin and her own essay in Hall and Fifer. Vital Statistics is reproduced in Rush and Liljefors. Both works are also discussed by Elwes, and the latter one is mentioned in Renov and Suderburg. However, neither her name nor Birnbaum’s appear in the French books on the subject consulted here.

84

Jensen, p. 49.

85

On the other covers the following works are reproduced: Spielmann: Nan Hoover’s Halfsleep (1984) and Dieter Kiessling’s Untitled (1988); Liljefors: detail of Mona Hatoum’s Corps étranger (1994); Meigh-Andrews: no information about the image is given; Elwes: Mick Hartney’s State of Division (1979).

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4 COMPULSIVE CATEGORIZATIONS: Gender and heritage

In the preface to their book The Power of Feminist Art, Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard write: ‘feminist art’s revolutionary lessons had been so successfully assimilated into contemporary artistic practice that its own history, as well as the histories of many feminist arts organizations and publications that had helped to generate and support this work, seemed in imminent danger of being forgotten and lost.’1 In the present context of texts which historicize and hence theorize practices, feminisms seem far from both the danger of being forgotten or too assimilated. In video art history the case is rather the contrary – but that, too, raises problematic issues. Video art, as perhaps the postmodern art form per se (simply due to the medium itself), ought to have been theorized from a gender-informed perspective, I am inclined to think, but even more so after starting this project. This is not only because of the sheer reason that criticality is claimed, but due to the fact that the two are of the same age even within academia and art criticism. For example, canon, and the still prevalent practice of canonization, is but one idea that became problematic within the broad field of postmodern art theory, and, as shown above, one of the more outspoken reasons for some to only reluctantly practise art history. Furthermore, the idea of originality, the/ an origin, the original, the artist as a (white, Western, middle-class male) genius are other notions that are deconstructed and re-evaluated in much postmodern art theoretical writings and in artistic practices. This has also been criticized in the texts addressed here, even if the last-mentioned aspect is often neglected altogether. Thus, re-evaluations of either the notion of art or of art history did not automatically mean or lead to an abolishment of these notions altogether. Actually, rather the opposite is true. The generality of most stories is, however, a gendered matter.2 To this both Rosler and Sturken subscribe, the latter by talking about the collectives as ‘hierarchical and male-dominated’, the former by connecting the history of video art to ‘the myth of Paik’.3

136 video art historicized

With compulsive categorizations, I argue that with the monographic surveys there is a shift which implies more emphasis on the sex of the artists. The extent of this practice is not comparable to the essays in the anthologies. In general, female and male artists were treated more equally in the early phase of the establishment of the video media works as art, as these were being theorized and historicized by and from various other perspectives. That is, there is no clear gender-biased division between either the technological competences or in relation to the subjects of art works. As argued in the previous chapters, the reluctance against and suspicion towards art history did not render all of its traditionally favoured tropes and structural methods obsolete. To a large extent, business, so to speak, went on as usual. In none of the books I discuss do the structures, narratives, plots or themes speak about a gender-framed genealogy of video artists. Gender is never an issue or a conceptual tool employed for deconstructing purposes. Women video artists were in the minority back then, too, but they were not addressed as primarily women artists, hence not marked as others to the same extent – which, however, is a problem as well. Nevertheless, the fact that – in general – a much higher percentage of the represented artists in these written stories are men, who then implicitly come to act from precisely a gendered position, is an issue rarely found in the various texts addressed here. This does not in any sense mean that gender as a normative and narratological structuring device was or is absent: most of the historicizing narratives are highly gendered in one way or another. Particular artists and art works are to a rather considerable extent addressed from specific gender-informed thinking: namely, women artists and their work as explicitly feminist practices. That is, gender is addressed as a theme that this particular category of artists almost exclusively is understood to work both from and with. When writing a survey on a particular art form, two options regarding the structure and content seem to come in handy by way of tradition: to choose to focus either on the medium/technology, or on the artists as individuals practising the medium in question, but still as representatives of the same. The first may be employed to also deconstruct notions such as history, art and canon, whereas the second option for a trajectory seems to be a mode already given, where the choices of representative artists remain unclear as to whether they cause the history or are chosen as effects of a (found) history.4 That is, claiming an origin from the premise that it is already a given, and not by actual choice employed as an indispensable (historical) moment, may operate narratively to obscure the very creation of a historical course of events. Structuring disparate and/or related events into a linear narrative is always a matter of creation to some degree, since not every event of the past can be taken into account. Here, too, the particular archive (re)visited is of importance. ‘The future to come’, of which Derrida speaks, depends on its reiteration of the past. He writes: ‘the archiving archive also determines the

compulsive categorizations: gender and heritage 137

structure of the archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship to the future. The archivization produces as much as it records the event.’5 That is, what is already there returns. In the following I depict and discuss the actual gendering devices and outcomes also represented in these surveys and to some extent some of the relevant essays in the anthologies. The central questions are: who is claimed and how? And what significant privileges operate as effects of the kind of claims made?

Recycling an old trope: the founding father and his heirs Despite all the talk of video art as a field of practices that escapes concepts like canon, it has an unmistakable origin which is presented as the first presence of the phenomenon manifested as it is in the first video artist who was Nam June Paik – who is constantly reappointed to this position.6 He is, for example, acknowledged as ‘the “dean” of art video’ by Battcock, since his art works represent ‘some of the most original and entertaining ideas presented through and about video art’.7 Hanhardt notes that Paik ‘has played a key role in video art’s history’ and, like Liljefors, traces the start of video art to Paik’s and Vostell’s early works with TV sets (even if they then both also list a number of other ‘pioneers’). The importance of Paik’s work is further emphasized and given much space in Hanhardt’s introduction, hence setting the frame for video art at large (and not only for his own book).8 This is also the situation in Rush’s book. Even though he claims that Warhol made the first video art work, it is Paik’s name that runs through the book and in relation to a broad range of aspects of video art, video sculptures, video installations and so on. Likewise, Paik is the recurring point of reference in the books of Battcock, Renov and Suderburg, Elwes, Liljefors, Spielmann and Meigh-Andrews respectively – to mention some examples. Furthermore, in relation to both media art and electronic art, Paik is also esteemed as ‘a pioneer of video, robotics and other electronic media’ by Shanken and a ‘genius’ by Youngblood.9 Taking on a position that called on the ‘privileged status of the artist … the lone voice of genius that was enshrined in post-war American art’, he could, in Elwes’ words, work as an ‘irreducible individual … [and a] free creative agent’.10 What I find interesting is that Paik is seldom introduced in a chapter of his own, like the slightly younger artists often are; or, as in the case of Liljefors, by focusing in this way on Nauman and Dan Graham instead. After Battcock, if we momentarily accept this book as one of the first to take a broad grip on video art (and of course art critique situating Paik at the top), he was already, from the initial phase, the name which still floats through any serious account on video art. By not literally marking his name with bold letters, he passes as

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the ultimate unmarked artist subject – or as the free agent par excellence.11 Since he travelled back and forth between the US and Europe, he is also (amongst) the first in Europe; together with Vostell and the art-gallery owner Gerry Schum, who ran the TV-Gallery in Berlin and the Videogalerie in Düsseldorf, Paik is ‘credited with introducing video production on a broad basis to an art community that was accustomed only to art film’.12 In the body of publications examined here (both monographs and anthologies), Paik is by far the artist most referred to.13 His artistic practice is hence repeatedly located in the traditional position of the exemplary founding father: the inventor, the genius, the origin of the art form even. This position is related to making the first video work, displaying it, but also to his constantly developing new technological devices. Situated as the initially authorized voice of the art form, Paik’s art sets the technological and aesthetical standard which following art practices are often measured from and/or related to. The most obvious consequence of interest here, in making the history of video art emanate from Paik, is that this story then coheres around particular aspects and events (which are Paik’s exhibiting TV sets in 1963 and using his Portapak for the first time when filming the Pope and screening the work the very same day) instead of, for example, stressing a particular understanding of image usage or its places within visual culture, or its potential for criticality.14 These issues are of course also widely written about, but my aim here is to bring out the positions and the positioning strategy per se. However, although Paik is sometimes regarded as lacking in criticality (according to Rosler, whereas Elwes is of the opinion that Paik did take a ‘strong moral and oppositional stand’ and Meigh-Andrews notes his critical investigations of how the media operates in a broader sense) – yet another central feature of video art’s self-image – he definitely succeeds with innovation: how to use the techniques and by collaborating with video engineer Shuya Abe.15 But here a few disagreements turn up as to why Paik is situated as the origin. According to Rush, Paik is the leading inventor of video art only when the trajectory is not that of technological advancement and innovations, because to Rush this is not the direction that the art form has taken since.16 Steina Vasulka and Woody Vasulka also often appear alongside Paik, but they usually play a minor part in presentations of the earliest years of video art, since their significance is argued as somewhat different. In Martha Rosler’s account of video art’s past as history or myth, Paik is the central figure whose position in video art history Rosler defies.17 She writes: for Paik, it would appear [in the narratives on the subject], was born to absolve video of sin. The myths of Paik suggest that he had laid all the groundwork, touched every base, in freeing video from the domination of corporate TV, and video can now go on to other things. Paik also frees video history from boring complexity but allows for a less ordered present.18

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Her tone is somewhat mocking (as I read it) both towards Paik himself but not least to the institutional support that he benefited from, which he did regarding the financial support that comes with it, critical acclaim and possibilities to exhibit. But she is also attentive to how history and/or myth are gendered by and through whom, by what and why particular artists are focused on. This is made utterly evident through her phrase ‘And – oh yes! – he is a man.’19 She underscores the traditional tropes; the male hero and the salutations – visualized in his works – to male peers and forerunners (‘quintessentially Cage’, described as the ‘archetypal modernist avant-gardist’).20 Moreover, Rosler notes the fetishizing of the female body: that is, Charlotte Moorman’s body, which is possible to read as but yet another object amongst the other parts, or units, of which the works consist, but also as the one agent who actually performs their collaborative works. Not aiming for a broadcasting practice, Paik literally hijacked TV as an object and cultural phenomena and situated ‘it’ in established fine art venues. As Ingrid Wiegand noted in Battcock’s anthology, video installations were at the time the video art mode that initially entered the galleries and museums (due to its similarities to sculpture).21 Rosler too argues that this form ‘could only live in museums’ – and, not least important here, is that scholarly writings on video art have to submit to a rather large extent to what is at all viewable (that is, on display). Perhaps, then, Paik fitted too well into the museumization process, which according to Rosler was one of the risks in establishing video as art and thereby submitting video art practices too much to the (strictly) institutionalized art world.22 Either way, Paik’s art came to set a particular kind of video art as the initial aesthetic standard from which museums selected and incorporated video art in shows and collections. Since his art was art also in a formalist, media-specific sense, it therefore seems like a not too far-fetched suggestion that his video art was provocative but within acceptable limits, making it more easily collectable than many others’ work.23 In relation to the mythology in video art history, Meigh-Andrews notes the existence of a British ‘parallel’: John Hopkins as the UK’s first video artist – even though Hopkins himself did not consider himself one.24 The father-to-son metaphor is rather strong in art history generally – even if feminist critiques have challenged this narrative structure and value system.25 It is also still widely employed in narratives of video art’s history, which has not taken serious issue with this particular aspect of conventional art historical practice. In this story, Paik himself descends from artists such as Léger, Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy, who are recognized as the first artists to use film technology.26 They were not film artists, but tried out and used the new technique only to be fully employed by Paik. After him, his male heirs enter the story. This kind of relationship is – obviously – not overtly presented in the terms of father and heirs, but it operates precisely in this manner. The two names that occur immediately after Paik’s are Vito Acconci

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and Bruce Nauman. In terms of heritage, they are positioned perhaps more like younger brothers than sons, since they are closer in age and beginning their careers as video artists when Paik/the art world is still in the process of making his/a name. Both Acconci and Nauman play major parts in video art’s history; as narrative points in chronologically organized stories, they operate as instances of progressions. But they also – with their different kinds of work and interests – widen the scope of the art form. In the case of Acconci, this happens not least by the critical stance towards art institutions and the problematizing perspective on the notion of art and the role of the audience that he brings forth in his video works.27 Nauman’s early contributions are often situated in their relation to performance and the play with sound and images.28 As both of them turned the camera towards themselves in several works, not least in their early works, and the standard frame of conceptual and performance art contexts in interpretations of their works, they both extended video art practice towards these two important contemporaneous art forms often claimed to operate in tandem with much video art.29 Hence, according to the narratives generally, the works by Acconci or Nauman do not share many common aspects and interests with Paik, and their works are therefore and justly addressed from other aspects. Yet the part they both play, that is, as names hence narrative moments, in video art history is that of entering the scene after Paik and making works that are ground-breaking in different ways.30 There is, however, often either a focus on Nauman or Acconci; Liljefors has chosen Nauman (Acconci is only mentioned twice in the entire book), whereas Rush gives them more or less equal attention, and Elwes chooses Acconci.31 It is thus as if both of them are not entirely necessary to emphasize equally – the patrilineal genealogy makes its case anyway. This particular mode of genealogy continues with the two artists that I am claiming are representing what could be described as ‘the first-born sons’, especially in American surveys: Gary Hill and Bill Viola, who are the real stars of this particular genealogy as both Americans and as exclusively male video artists. Viola is noted as ‘one of the international stars of the Video art scene’ by Martin who also positions him using various affirmative words, which is a kind of recognition she does not give to Hill or anyone else but Paik, ‘who made history’, and Nauman who ‘occupies an outstanding position’.32 Again, none of the authors use the words ‘father’ and ‘son’; it is a matter of how they are situated and positioned within the narratives that reveals that the trope operates on an ideological level, and as interfering with falsely pure aesthetic issues.33 Linear history is traditionally based on ideas or facts of progression and genealogy. It is therefore rather difficult to think of a chronologically organized narrative of a set of disparate historical events, without these two concepts lurking from behind. Within art history the narrative points that operate as instances of progression and hence genealogy are more often than not named

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individuals. Liljefors’ account of video art’s history is to an unusual extent concerned with video collectives and collaborations, which were particularly important until the end of the 1970s, and he claims rightly that they are neglected in history writings due to the art historical prominence of focusing on aesthetics and the relationship between artists–viewer–work.34 He writes: The immanent dynamic of art history-writing, which emphasizes the artist as genius and individual art works suitable for presentations in galleries and museums, has led to video art history to a large extent being designed as a strand of big names, for example, Dan Graham, Vito Acconci, Bill Viola and – especially – Nam June Paik.35

Still, Liljefors’ two chapters that deal with video art works primarily depart from precisely these canonical names, employing them as captions. In ‘Video art and the specific character of the media’, it is Nauman, Graham, Serra and Holt, Viola (twice actually), Iimura and Hill whose names constitute the structure of the chapter.36 The criterion for choosing these artists is presented in terms of when, that is, how early, they began to work with video (Nauman in 1968, Holt in 1969, Serra and Graham in the early 1970s). Viola, however, is proclaimed as one of the ‘greatest names in video art’.37 Each of them is presented by a few works, but the author’s focus is to perform interpretations of one work by each artist where a particular aspect is scrutinized in more detail. This is similar to the ‘chronology’ section in Rush’s Video Art and in relation to which the history of video art is presented as a male business with few exceptions.38 His introduction includes first Vito Acconci, Bill Viola, Gary Hill and Marina Abramović.39 Meigh-Andrews’ book is highly focused on technology and favours male artists to a large extent. But, as a consequence thereof, I think, Dara Birnbaum is unusually recognized for her employment of various technologies and as having made work that also influenced others, for example, her use of what came to be called scratch video.40 Birnbaum’s Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–79) is often interpreted from a feminist perspective, as dealing with popular cultural images of women.41 But even though Meigh-Andrews writes that it aimed at a critique of ‘stereotyped messages and cultural assumptions of the US television series Wonder Woman’, he does not pinpoint the work as feminist, recognizing instead its importance because of the technology that Birnbaum used.42 Technological skills or inventions are otherwise rarely ascribed to women artists in video art history.43 Gender as a method of categorization is also possible to track via the names and search words listed in the indexes. For example, of the publications that do not list only names (which are only a few), ‘feminism’, ‘female’ and ‘femininity’ are concepts that reoccur.44 Renov and Suderburg even have ‘women artists’ as a post in their index, but not ‘male artists’.45 Likewise, Hall and Fifer list simply ‘women’ (p. 566) but not ‘men’. To take literal notice of

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the sex of male artists – in the linguistic form of male artists – only occurs when in direct relation to women in running texts.46 Masculinity is nowhere to be found except in Elwes’ book, which actually has a chapter entitled ‘Masculinities: Class, Gay and Racial Equality’.47 However, here she does not enter into a discussion on thinkable issues such as male privileges, patriarchal structures, inequalities and so on but keeps to interpretations in relation to her exposition of ‘deviant masculinities’ and ‘minorities’. This is not what my critique aims at; my point is rather to highlight the neglect, or (unconscious) unwillingness, to think through how the rest of her book is structured – just as the authors of the other books here avoid discussing who their main trajectories revolve around and whose names are not included. There is, however, another important exception in Elwes’ account on masculinities: she situates the work of Meigh-Andrews, Jeremy Welsh and Viola within this frame as a particular interest of theirs – an interest in domestic relations that is nevertheless stressed as unusual amongst men.48 Aspects of how gender may operate in the practice of creating historical narratives of video art as a structuring method, interpretative perspective, privileged aesthetics, as well as references to socio-cultural politics within art history and the art world, and the issue of financial support or not, are not on the agenda of these authors in these particular publications on video art.

Calling ‘mothers’ According to Marsha Meskimmon: addressing women’s art means confronting a paradox: how to acknowledge its historical occlusion without reproducing the paradigms which render it as ‘other’. Scholarship and art criticism which defines women artists as an homogeneous cohort, irrespective of the dynamics of their histories, or which seeks in women’s art some unified ‘female essence’, preceding specific practices as their knowable ‘origin point’, erases differences between women and reinstates the binary logic through which female subjectivity is rendered invisible, illegible and impossible to articulate. The theoretical task is how to engage with women’s art and radical difference; how to think women’s art ‘otherwise.’49

But the otherwise can also lead to exclusions as well as to an estrangement creating precisely a sub-canon. Therefore, I prefer to either use the so-called or mark woman in order to emphasize that I do not take its meaning as an already given and instead wish thereby to open up the concept/word. The artists that I compartmentalize here as ‘founding mothers’ are those taken to represent the so-called first generation of women video artists and/ or addressed explicitly by their sex, making them a slightly different category

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of video artists. There is a shift in how these artists enter into the particular narratives, and this change occurs – gradually – with the publication of monographs on the art form. In the anthologies, gender is not such an obvious marker of the individual artists since their functions as narrative points are not divided or categorized as explicitly sex-biased practices. That is, women artists were not, as it appears from the body of texts addressed here, as strongly marked by their sex or the subjects or techniques they employed. But precisely these aspects come to the fore within the monographs as a particular method of categorization – and not only as interests and themes of particular artists. What remains the same, however – amongst other issues – is an inequality regarding the number of female and male artists that are represented. Before going into the situation – which I precisely wish to highlight as a situation as this opens up for thinking and acting differently in the future – I will briefly address an event which figures only in Rush’s book amongst the surveys and anthologies published later.50 My intention here is not that of making this event into a paradigmatic one, as if it could cause a radical change, but simply to use it as a particular case in point and as a reference regarding my own thinking here. In 1993 JoAnn Hanley curated the travelling show The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75, in which 21 artists from different nations were represented.51 What is notable is the time span, since it reveals that this particular generation – the first only of ‘women’ – originated when video art had already been around for almost a decade. It also makes clear that, by then, there were younger women video artists, a logical necessity for claiming the first for anything. The rhetoric of generations is a sign of genealogy and in this case a genealogy of a matrilineal order. The question that concerns me is why the focus on women artists as a particular group of video artists? And why at this particular point in time? Susan Sollins, then Executive Director of ICI, writes in her acknowledgement that this show refocuses attention ‘on the important early video works by women who shaped the use of the video medium’.52 What had happened? In the first anthologies on video art there was no apparent neglect of women artists, but here it is claimed that a refocus is taking place. That is, disregarding the numbers, women artists were not ghettoized in either rhetoric or outspoken ambitions, and hence were not situated as alternatives, a strategy that was rather prominent within general art history. (I am not so naive as to think there were no inequalities, but I am concerned here with how things are linguistically presented.) Part of the ambition was that the exhibition contain a number of works not shown before, which had to be sought in archives – some of the works wished for were lost, however, others in such a bad condition that they could not be played.53 This, of course, is partly a repercussion of a long-lasting (not to say traditional) neglect in taking good care of women’s artworks, whether they are stored privately or simply not collected by

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institutions with restoration resources. The effect of neglect is still that a lot of art works are excluded from ever reaching the status and position that history entails. Naturally, this applies to all kinds of art works and artists; far from even the majority of professional artists make it into art history, and this is one aspect of the power of the discourse – to exclude, hence empower its own status by nominating or not. According to Hanley, early shows often listed ‘a surprising number of women’ – the number is here to be understood in a positive sense. Moreover, she argues that within the field of video art, artists of both genders worked on more equal terms ‘in the creation and definition of a new way of making art’ than perhaps ever before.54 Nevertheless, or precisely as an effect, she also notes that the few women back then ‘hardly reflected the number’ of women video artists participating in shows at that time.55 I want to note here that this is contemporary with the women’s movements and the second wave of feminisms, in which several of these artists are acknowledged as either participants or being influenced by them (even if in different degrees and by various reasons and interests). Consequently, it seems hard to claim that they were unaware of so-called women’s issues in political contexts and the emerging feminist critique at the time.56 Considering the list of names in the show The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75, my first thought was that there were so many of them. But as the effect of seeing these names assembled on one single page weakened, I was struck by how few artists were represented when compared to the many names of male artists that reoccur in these historicizing stories. Most of these artists, however, belong to the set canon of video art, whereas a few names were entirely new to me in this particular context of video art’s history. The early feminist artists were present as usual: Rosler, VALIE EXPORT, Freed, Jonas and Rosenbach. Eleanor Antin belongs to this group – one of those compulsive categories – but she is rarely acknowledged in the texts studied here.57 Her work has not been entirely concerned with video, which is a possible reason, were it not the case of many other artists, for example, Lynda Benglis, Paik and Nauman. Still, she has done several works that would fit well into the primary trajectory regarding both narrative and conceptual video art, performance-related video, and women artists as feminists and as performing cultural critique.58 Clearly, however, Antin is thus an artist that has no obvious status as a video artist. The same counts for Yoko Ono, who is recognized by Rush for being amongst the artists that, during the 1960s, participated in various multi-media events and amongst those who ‘stretched the traditional parameters of their art to include technology, everyday objects and sounds, as well as Performance’.59 Ono made her first film, Eyeblink, in 1966 and thus did not work with the video medium, which hence seems to be a reasonable argument for not including her work in the contexts of video art. However, far from all of the works addressed in these books are proper video works – there are other examples of both 8mm and 16mm films – even if the

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majority of the works represented are. And yet, in many feminist-informed art historical projects, her presence is obvious; it is especially the work Cut Piece of 1964 that is addressed in this context.60 This detour to this particular exhibition seems to answer one of my initial questions when beginning this project: which artists were the first women video artists? And who followed (from whom)? The reason this is of interest is due to the strong emphasis on origins and firsts, the widespread arguments of video art as critical, and not least due to the recalcitrant attitude towards art history. In these narratives, women video artists – unlike, for example, Acconci or Nauman, Viola or Hill – do not enter video art’s history directly after Paik but in a much more loosely defined already-after. As noted above, ‘founding fathers’ has been an often used narrative trope in the production of histories of the past, and employed as a method for chronological organizations of historical events (even if rarely employed overtly). My point is that genealogies operate differently depending on the sex of the artist. There is a much stronger sense of descending from Paik – and other important art historical events of the past – when male artists are addressed, whereas women artists are more often spoken of in terms of being influenced by him or other important events. This mode of differentiating artists takes place in rather subtle ways, like in which order names are given and in the use of particular words as markers of sex, hence hierarchical position. One example in this context is the widespread usage of words like ‘pioneer’, ‘inventor’, even ‘genius’, and of being the first who is creating something of particular interest: words like these operate as signifying a particular genealogy – that of the masters.61 There are also many examples in this particular context, as, for example, when Rush writes about the ‘pioneers of artists-performers’ by listing seven men and one woman: Carolee Schneemann.62 These evaluative, and therefore ideologically charged, words do occur in relation to women’s work as well, but then they are much more frequent when only women are addressed. Thus, Ann-Sargent Wooster’s essay is a good example of the latter here, whereas the surveys are not, since they generally situate the male artists within this mode of evaluating.63 Another example of how words operate evaluatively is the aforementioned claim by Martin regarding Viola, whereas she begins the entry on Pipilotti Rist as being ‘the glamour girl among those young Video artists who have been working in a natural way with their femininity’.64 There is also another way to underscore minor status as a video artist, namely to point out the fact that the video medium is not the single medium in which a particular artist works. Countless artists worked in a number of different media, which, I think, makes this kind of remark superfluous to the importance of particular video art works, and, paradoxically, disclaims the heterogeneity otherwise regarded as the core of video art and its self-image. According to Martin, ‘it would be incorrect to describe’ Rosler ‘as a Video artist’, whereas Jonas is noted as a pioneer of performance art.65 However, the employment of

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different media counts for Nauman and Acconci too, while Hill and Viola are only – or indeed – video artists exclusively. When feminist scholars began to intervene and question the status of the historical narratives and the discourse of art, the strategy of not turning into an ally with the mode of constructing historical narratives by employing the mode of genealogy is noticeable.66 Still, positioning women artists as also heirs or followers of important male artists, or (but more rarely) creating a matrilineal line of historical progressions and changes, also occurs. The 1960s and 1970s became a period of excavating the archives: this is the historical turning point when ‘founding mothers’ had to be found and acknowledged, answering the question if there actually had been women artists and, if yes (as of course was the answer), to tell about their achievements (I am talking here about general art history). It is thus through the re-knowledge of women artists throughout the history of art that women artists of the past are also turned into forerunners of the category of women artists. In entitling this section ‘Calling mothers’, I wish to emphasize the genealogy that sneaks in precisely through the compartmentalization of women artists as not only a specifically gendered categorization, but in the present context as explicitly feminist artists. As a suggestion on how to deal with art by women artists without falling completely into the trap of dichotomizing, Meskimmon writes: Rather than seeing women’s art as a category of objects to be defined, it is more useful to explore the processes by which women’s art comes to make meaning. These include the processes by which we, as art historians and critics, make connections and contexts in the present – to paraphrase Rosi Braidotti on the transdisciplinary action of the feminist theorist: ‘creating connections where things were previously disconnected or seemed unrelated, where there seemed to be ‘nothing to see’.67

The importance of returning – when possible – to the written archive of video art becomes manifest in the 1990s and 2000s when women video artists emerged on a broad scale, although related to the entire breakthrough of video art. However, it is not until then that previous writings on the subject could emerge as an archive. This is the period when certain women video artists became much more firmly inscribed within an explicitly feminist agenda of historical narratives, at least with reference to the particular written archives that I am revisiting, with and through the present project.68 This change, however, is in no sense exclusive to video art; feminist perspectives and the broadened field of gender studies have intervened in historical narratives and analysis increasingly. Several writers on the subject note that video art appeared free from a prehistory of male dominance.69 Elwes argues that video art was also without conventions, which seems to be true only to a certain extent, since it drew heavily on both television culture and experimental film. A video art aesthetic, furthermore, appears to have been established rather

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quickly – a conclusion I draw from the present material.70 In circulation here is also an idea that video implied a more far-reaching control of both the production process and distribution, or that, as a new artistic medium, it implied a distance to traditional art historical ideologies and aesthetic values. Analysis of how this would differ from the control one has over one’s painting, for example, is not further elaborated, however, which makes the argument difficult to take a stance on.71 What these ideas reveal is a neglect, or amnesia, of acknowledging the impact of art. For art, in all its manifestations, was – at the arrival of video art – to a rather large extent a male business. If art practice per se was manifestly male-dominated and ideologically charged by patriarchal structures and privileges, then how and by what means could a new art form escape this particular, structural prerogative? My point here is that it did not: the historical narrative of video art was immediately invented as precisely dominated by male artists, even in the initial phase of establishing video as art and linking it to other events inscribed within art history. Today it may seem utterly naïve to imagine that sheer technique could stand free from – autonomous in a Greenbergian sense – the rest of art or society at large, especially since so much of the focus on the art form involves, and still does, claiming its critical stance. In the very early period of artists employing video as a technique for producing art, when it was still in the present, so to speak, it was understood as a yet uncanonized medium.72 Paradoxically, video art was not without a history, but was somehow still understood as outside of societal and cultural structures, ideologies and practices that would tie it to the downside of (art) history: history as limitations and regulations. The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75 is a case in point, since it manifestly makes women artists a group of their own – a common method within curatorial practices. As the artists represented in the show were all of the same sex, Hanley can refer to the entire lot as them, hence further strengthening the category. Both Hanley’s and Wooster’s essays are exemplary in the utterly strong connections that they make between the sex of the agent and the subjects dealt with in the art works. The dominance of interest in ‘the personal as political’, and the fact that many of the works in the show were themselves examples of a desire to scrutinize the various parts played by women within art history as well as in contemporary society, by turning the cameras towards themselves, are undisputable facts.73 But my concern here is to highlight how this connection between sex and subject grows stronger, and also comes to operate as an exclusionary strategy, willingly or not. In this particular show one artist stands out: Steina Vasulka. She is not addressed primarily as a feminist artist, but as a part-inventor of abstract video as a specific genre.74 This is, however, a rule in relation to how her work is interpreted and written about in general within video art history.

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Before entering into the discussion below on feminisms in more detail, I want to make a few more remarks on women artists and compulsive categorizations. Several of the surveys address feminism in separate chapters, since feminism also operates here as a particular branch of critical video art: Elwes, MeighAndrews and Spielmann all do this. Rush’s method of organizing artists goes a step further, since he has chapters on both ‘Women Artists’ and ‘The New Wave of Women Artists’, whereas Martin has a paragraph entitled ‘The image of woman’.75 Noting that video art emerged simultaneously with feminism, Rush emphasizes that ‘in the 1970s video gave women the opportunity to enter an art world that had often denied them access’ and, furthermore, that they could practise their art outside galleries and museums, which were declared as obsolete as validating institutions, thanks to the ‘increased availability of video cameras’.76 The latter argument should count towards the practices by male artists as well, but for some obscure reason is particularly connected to the working situations of women. In his headings, Rush thus addresses women as a specific category of artist. It is not the case that works by women artists are only scrutinized in these two sections. Nevertheless, he connects a particular group of artists to a specific field of ideological critique: feminism and the women’s movement. And furthermore, he connects this group to video art’s critical potential for opening up space ‘at the art table long dominated by men’. Here he acknowledges the ignorance of women artists generally within art history, but especially points out the culture of ‘“heroic” and macho Abstract Expressionism’ (hence simultaneously marking his American perspective on video art) as a backdrop to which the ‘feminist outcries’ were directed.77 Martha Rosler and Joan Jonas, described as ‘another highly significant woman artist’, operate as the representative artists here – despite the fact that neither of them was working exclusively with video art: a criteria which, however, was argued as important in a slightly different context. The patriarchal genealogy is also stressed in relation to Rosler, who is argued to have been inspired by Godard, Roberto Rossellini, Lyotard and others.78 Still, if the past is crowded with creative professionals of the male sex rather than of the normative two, then the archive continuously operates to prolong the practice of a sex-biased history. That is, the problem is – if one thinks there is one – not that of who is influenced by whom but how legacies are claimed and upheld. VALIE EXPORT, who began using video in 1968, is introduced as ‘not officially a member of the Viennese Actionist group, one young woman (whose feminist interests alone might have excluded her from the often misogynist Actionists) introduced new forms of media Performance with the video camera in the Vienna of the mid-1960s’.79 On the other hand, she is one of the artists who is given the most space in Rush’s survey, whereas Abramović belongs to the artists that occur in the most different situations. Foremost, women artists’ accomplishments within video art reside in their transgressions of different media – especially in the conjunction of

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performance and video.80 This also applies to numerous male artists, clearly noted by Rush.81 In the chapter ‘Women Artists’, the issues are more or less the same. Here it is stated that in the contemporary situation (of the mid2000s) video artists of both sexes are participating alike.82 Then why address women separately again, since there is no counterpart regarding a chapter addressing men only, and several of the artists who are represented here are also discussed elsewhere in his book? There are no arguments given for this particular ghettoization; women as a particular kind of artist are not analysed, nor are the subjects they work with or the particular narrative structures employed exclusively for them. My conclusion is simple: there seems to be no good reason for these categorizations in this specific context. Liljefors’ book is structured similarly to Rush’s. Women artists are mainly addressed as artists and producers of works who are taken into more serious account when they are categorized as dealing with gender issues. The chapter ‘Political engagement in video art’ names four video collectives, and is followed by captions naming Rosler, Hermine Freed, Jonas and Birnbaum: all four are addressed after a short one-page account on ‘Gender perspectives in video art’.83 The most conspicuous difference from the other books is that Liljefors addresses the much broader concept of gender instead of singling out feminism, but he does not make this concept coalesce with video art practices performed by men. These two books are obvious examples of this strategy that I here call ‘compulsive categorization’; a conspicuously elaborated heritage of conventional, general art history, to get straight to the point, but which still operates on a much broader scale than within video art history alone. Furthermore, Elwes and Meigh-Andrews both organize the work of artists from a sex-biased perspective, but are more specifically writing on feminism (in the singular) – which becomes a particular branch of critical video art.

Feminist video art: by historical happenstance or a genre of its own? When feminism is made a topic in this context, it is often recognized in relation to video as the medium which would release those who made use of it from the burdens of patriarchal structures of historical pasts as well as the present.84 But to move beyond traditions as imbued by patriarchal connotations was naturally not only an ambition of video artists, but was also linked to the women’s movement within both the art world(s) and society – as two areas of life and work that were after all not justifiably separated from each other. However, as I have noted above, this idea of a medium located outside of history as well as contemporary socio-cultural life is undercut by the art historical legacies for video art’s prehistory, by the relations established to film, cinema and television – all dominated by male agents – and through

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a rather ambiguously developed rationale for gender-biased readings of artists and their work. Thus, to employ video as an artistic means by which to bring forth and communicate issues of inequality and to establish alternative images of femininity and women’s situations is one thing, but it is an entirely different argument to claim art practices’ detachment from history, culture and society. Still, that feminisms emerged as political and theoretical fields to situate one’s own practice in should not be underestimated as both a vital source and a position to depart from for a large number of artists. Griselda Pollock writes: I pose the question: what makes us interested in artists who are women? It appears to be a simple question with an obvious answer. But it was only feminism – not the fact of being a woman – that permitted and generated such desire, and created, in its politics, theories and cultural forms, a representational support which could release into discourse aspects of feminine … desire for the mother and thus for knowledge about women.85

The feminist genealogical trajectory does not, however, conform to the ‘parent-to-child’ narrative format as intimately as does the father–son relation, an apparent aspect in much art history. Nevertheless, whereas an artist such as Rosler is employed as a founding mother – or ‘the first generation’ – even if never explicitly named as such, ‘real mothers’ occur metaphorically as narrative events in progressive histories. (Note here that I make myself guilty of construing arguments based on false ties of kinship where I should instead use a word like ‘forerunners’. Though perhaps too blunt a phrasing of a manner that emphasizes symbolical kinship instead of focusing on, for example, ideas explored visually, I want to underscore precisely what may happen to the historical narratives when the stories are told through this particular kind of rhetoric.) In any case, a small group of artists are repeatedly introduced and thus positioned so as to operate as the origin of feminist video art, taking on the role as mother-agents (regarding conduct and inheritance). Dara Birnbaum, Joan Jonas, VALIE EXPORT, Ulrike Rosenbach and, occasionally, Shigeko Kubota are, alongside Rosler, the artists most firmly inscribed in the historical narrative of early feminist video art. These names are canonized as early practitioners of feminist video art.86 Furthermore, what video did imply was a medium thought of and employed as a new language within contemporary art. On this issue, Hanley writes: Without the burdens of tradition linked with other media, women video artists were freer to concentrate on process, often using video to explore the body and the self through the genres of history, autobiography, and examinations of gendered identity. Women also used the new medium to create social and political analyses of the myths and facts of patriarchal culture, revealing socioeconomic realities and political ideologies that dominated everyday life.87

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JoAnn Hanley is very explicit as to how she situates women video artists’ works in a context increasingly informed by feminism, and she also connects the latter with the arrival of video art. What intrigues me perhaps the most about Hanley’s essay is that it so vehemently differentiates art works on the basis of the producers’ sex, and thus it not only brings forth the sex-biased structure prevalent in (too) much art history and art criticism, but that this also, simultaneously, determines two different ways of being a video artist.88 Several of the artists of whom she speaks are claimed to have made works focusing on female identity, and/or were influenced by feminist theory, or juxtaposed concerns regarding ‘the emotional’ with a serious interest in technology.89 Hanley admits that not all of the artists represented in The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75 made works that were ‘overtly feminist or political’, but what she does claim is that ‘most early 1970s video work by women is feminist simply by virtue of having been made by women at that time’.90 Personally, I have a hard time accepting this as a valid ground for what makes an act a feminist act and what constitutes a feminist subject.91 But feminisms (I insist on the plural form) as a frame for understanding and historically, hence narratively, situating solely video works by women is a very strong tendency as a method not least for categorizations, and one which operates on many levels of meaning production as well as monetary evaluations. As far as one can tell from the body of texts scrutinized here, the tendency to separate feminisms grows stronger with the surveys. This separation is interesting for a number of reasons: it tells something of how feminisms are defined, of which subjects can speak it, of how genres are established and, furthermore, how one particular branch of theory and political ambition is secluded from the overall idea of video art as particularly distinguished by its critical property (I return to this last aspect in the next chapter). In the following I focus on Elwes’ and Meigh-Andrews’ books respectively, since they both emphasize feminism as a corollary of women’s engagement with video. However, in all of these surveys feminist video art stands out as a genre of its own within the art form – it is one of the plots around which particular practices revolve and from which they depart. My aim here is not that of questioning either the importance of feminisms or their relevance in this particular context, but the contrary. What interests me here is how feminism(s) and feminist video art function as a particular narrative plot within the overall story of video art. Chris Meigh-Andrews writes: ‘By the mid-1970s, however, video art had begun to forge a distinctive practice, establishing the foundation for its own history.’92 The various reasons – listed by Meigh-Andrews – for artists to work with video include the following: political activism, performancebased, conceptual, abstract image experiments and feminist reasons.93 Thus feminism (which he focuses under the heading ‘The Female Gaze’)94 is not

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included in ‘political activism’, but stands out as such a specific reason to make video art that it – seemingly – is a branch of its own. Furthermore, it is separated from aesthetic practices like performance and conceptual art. The effect is that it suggests both a reason for making art and a particular way (process) of making it, which renders it distinguishable from the other categories. The difference is thus doubled here. The lack of both a video art history and a critical discourse are explanations that Meigh-Andrews ascribes to feminist artists’ interest in the video medium, which made it possible for these artists to claim a position within Western art: a position that art disciplines like painting and sculpture had effectively ruled out.95 However, he does acknowledge that these reasons attracted male artists as well.96 To practise feminisms is thus to be understood as both politically motivated by the unequal work conditions and by the possibilities of being recognized as important or making serious contributions, but also through establishing new themes and subjects dealt with, by and through one’s art works. By the end of his book he writes that, as feminist artists turned to issues of subjectivity and identity, the patriarchal order was exposed to deconstruction.97 Accordingly, it was not least the ‘potential to explore and deconstruct narrative conventions’ that attracted feminist video artists. But what kinds of feminisms these artists departed from are not further discussed, and feminism appears precisely in the singular, without any actual definition, or further explorations of possibly different significances.98 However, in this context the function and aim of feminism generally was thus to (radically) alter the images of women, rather than the thinkable much broader function of political and ideological critique (for example, also questioning the images of manhood). The works most frequently referred to and reproduced depart from the domestic scene presenting kitchens and childcare. Still, explorations of identity/processes – the core of much postmodern art theory and production – are not to be mistaken as automatically gender-informed art practices.99 A recurring situation that is emphasized as new and made possible by the video camera – as if for the first time – is the turning of the camera towards oneself.100 In relation to feminism(s), this artistic circumstance is repeatedly, and rightly, argued to have enabled (also) women artists to seriously turn the personal to the political; to audiovisually investigate subjects normally ascribed to the domestic, hence feminine spheres, traditionally visualized by men. This issue is discussed by both Meigh-Andrews and Elwes who, unlike Meigh-Andrews, puts forth her arguments by returning briefly to historical examples of inequalities based on sexual difference in society at large.101 Video technology was thus regarded as an option particularly apt to alter meaning production of representations of women, womanhood and femininity.102 But obviously artists such as Nauman and Acconci are also often acknowledged, particularly for turning the camera towards themselves; however, not from

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a distinct male perspective. However, I do not think that the direction of the camera itself implies anything like feminisms, as self-portraits are not always foremost about gender, even though everyone is always already gendered. The turning of the camera is interpreted from rather different sets of theories, ideologies and values, depending on the sex of the artist in focus.103 My point is, of course, that meaning production based on biographical information is one way of making arguments for a particular interpretation; departing from the artist as a person is rather different from making claims that an artist transgresses imagined borders between art forms. Depending on the sex of the artist, interpretations tend to focus on different kinds of information, ideas and theories; and in this particular example – of turning the camera towards oneself – it seems a bit too handy to read video works by women as more subjectively charged, hence autobiographically directed, than works by male artists. Likewise, representation as a central issue within feminist art theory is also a concern shared with most art theories, since art is representation aside from its consisting of particular materials. My critique is not aimed at feminist interventions, but instead at the fact that its thinkable counterpart – an overtly male intervention – is so rarely consciously gendered (or interpreted as domestically situated actions). The video art works by Catherine Elwes have been interpreted from a feminist perspective by both Meigh-Andrews and Julia Knight.104 According to the former, she is influenced by feminist politics which – alongside the evident interest in technology – is also reflected in both her linguistic form and her substantial take on feminist video art in her own book on video art’s history.105 Of the nine chapters, one is exclusively concerned with feminist art/artists, of which some of the aspects discussed have been acknowledged above (for example, that the personal is political). Here she pays attention to the role of television, to the importance of the instantaneous aspect of video production (also acknowledged by Meigh-Andrews and Spielmann), and more thoroughly to the private relationships taking place in domestic spaces which are entitled ‘Fathers, husbands, lovers, strangers’, ‘Daughters and sons’ and ‘Women in love’. Furthermore, the body is a primary topic here.106 There is also a special passage on ‘Feminism and language’ in a later chapter.107 The subjects chosen are somewhat extraordinary in this particular context of video art history, since specified private relations are so explicitly addressed – which they are not in any of the other publications. Furthermore, this reveals a particular direction of her feminist interests which departs, it would seem, from where the women’s movements initially took place: in the homes of the participating women and in the unequal situations and inconveniences taking place there, for example, sexual and violent abuse. What is thus more strongly emphasized here is the activist base for feminisms – linking feminist video art more thoroughly to consciousness-raising and the political actions directed at injustices in society, rather than as an exclusive

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theme within video art.108 That is, from this perspective both feminisms and video technology conduced oppositional strategies which, when combined, seem to have an unprecedented power to raise changes. Therefore, Elwes’ contribution regarding feminist video art is also the one which comes closest to a formulation of a definition of what makes an art work a feminist one (which none of the other authors in the surveys accomplish) and she also refers to a number of feminist theorists.109 However, she speaks of women as a very fixed homogenous group with the same needs, desires, ambitions, subjects and political will (in an essentialist manner) – which is an aspect that the second wave feminism(s) have been extensively criticized for during the last two decades.110 It is also evident here, as in the other surveys and essays in focus, that those who can speak feminisms are women only.111 As a consequence, feminist video art was rather rapidly enforced as a genre of its own, and was hence seemingly well positioned for claiming chapters of its own too, as well as an organizing principle to which these narratives all testify. In ‘Historiography/Feminisms/Strategies’, Deborah Cherry writes that: ‘Feminisms are sites of struggle and contradiction, defined and redefined by movements in and against culture, discourse and the institutions of power.’112 And she continues: Furthermore, what has been or can be defined as feminist has profoundly altered over time and across culture, so much so that there are now considerable difficulties in seeing women of another generation as feminist at all. [sic!] Coming to terms with feminism’s volatility means acknowledging definitions and understandings of feminism which may be unrecognisable to women of an earlier generation or another cultural constituency. Living in a multi-cultural society means coming to terms with feminism’s heterogeneity, acknowledging and respecting cultural diversity.113

In the 1960s, it appears as if there were no clear feminist positions to take.114 There were no established theoretical or ideological frameworks in the art world for meeting the demands – posed critically in terms of both theory and visualizations – of women artists speaking from ‘a politically charged subject’.115 Appearing then, and working from the position and categorization of being women artists, the artists mentioned above – and others – were subsequently reinscribed in particular feminist narratives in the 1970s, and in the present context were obviously even more manifest in the 2000s. By this time the question of female authorship had changed radically, from being understood (crudely speaking) as a signature by a gendered agent, to being an issue of how ‘the female/femininity’ is constructed in the first place, and whether womanhood/the feminine can be a site of speech acts at all.116 The prevailing idea that video art, by its sheer technology, was unbound from antiquated patriarchal art history, and therefore open in a (more or less)

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radically new way for women artists to explore, was – I argue – occasionally an illusion. The new medium implied to everyone using it a new means of image production and other ways of image distribution. But to believe that one is thereby in a position to avoid the layers of meanings and practical power structures, for example, permeating the discourse(s) of art I cannot – with historical hindsight – really see as a realistic option. However, the sense of working unattached to powerful structures and contexts may very well open up new ways of thinking and making art. My conclusion is therefore that the gendered signature, that is, the ‘woman’ video artist, became increasingly elaborated in intimate relation to certain topics of these same artists: that is, read as feminist topics or as explicitly concerning and addressing women. This means that the former inclusion of gendered signatures (that is, ‘women artists’) in the general historical narrative is, by the late 1990s and 2000s, also expected, or occasionally even demanded, to signify feminist practices. The authorship had to be further legitimized as explicitly feminist in order to hold onto its position in these narratives: that is, it would seem, in order to fulfil the demand of the critical position and/or space. The new criterion is thus directed to the practice and the art works as significant feminist speech acts, and not merely as a representation of a(n already) sexed signature. In 2000 the Landesmuseum in Vienna organized the show – Video as a Female Terrain.117 Despite video art as such being, seemingly, linked to feminist issues, I was struck by the force of its declaration; but perhaps even more so that male artists were also acknowledged as feminist practitioners. My initial hunch was that it was precisely a particularly strong gender-biased premise of so-called feminist (video) art that operated as the grounds for understanding and, consequently, writing critically on video art works. However, within this field of artistic medium and practices still appears as an exception regarding the habit of compartmentalizing artists by way of their sex. In the catalogue, curator Stella Rollig states that, despite the leading positions of several women artists in the field of video art, ‘there is no scholarly or empirical evidence for this’.118 She then asks, rhetorically: ‘Why are female artists perceived in particular and only (!) in this field [video art] in such a strongly disproportionate way?’ And no surprise, her conclusion is that this situation is due to the dominance of a patriarchal structure in the field of video, as well as elsewhere in society/culture/the art world. My present investigation of the relations between feminist art theory and video art produced by women artists was triggered by the declaration of this particular video exhibition, where video art was exclamatorily stated as a feminine practice. ‘Feminine’ is, however, not synonymous with either ‘feminist’ or ‘feminisms’. My initial presentiment, when formulating this research project, was that artists of the female sex were addressed differently from men artists; that the sex of the art producer somehow interfered with the interpretations of art works. However, what I instantly discovered was that art by women artists

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was, more or less, exclusively addressed as feminist art; as if feminist issues were the only political issues relevant in video art made by artists of the female sex. Feminism(s), then, was quickly assigned as the critical perspective by which women artists could make their way into the surveys, hence also the canon of video art. Which artists (names) that one chooses to include in a narrative of video art’s history may therefore vary to a certain point, but feminist video art cannot – as it seems – be left in the open.

Notes 1 Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, The Power of Feminist Art, Abrams, New York, 1994, p. 8. On the role of gender theory in general art history, compare, for example, James Elkins, Master Narratives and Their Discontents, Routledge, New York, 2005, pp. 155–156. 2 Amongst the innumerable publications on art, art history, feminism and ‘women artists’, see, for example, Linda Nochlin’s seminal essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’, first published in ARTnews, January 1971, pp. 22–39 and p. 67, here from Amelia Jones, ed., The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, Routledge, London and New York, 2003, pp. 229–233; Griselda Pollock and Rozsika Parker, eds, Framing Feminism: Art and the Women’s Movement 1970–85, Pandora, London, 1987; Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art, Routledge, London and New York, 1988; Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desires and the Writing of Art’s Histories, Routledge, London and New York, 1999; Peggy Phelan, ed., Art and Feminism, Phaidon Press, London, 2001; Marsha Meskimmon, Women Making Art: History, Subjectivity, Aesthetics, Routledge, London and New York, 2003; Jones, 2003; Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, eds, Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History after Postmodernism, University of California Press, London, 2005. 3 Martha Rosler, ‘Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment’, in Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, eds, Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, Aperture and Bay Area Video Coalition, New York, 1990, pp. 31–50, at p. 45; Marita Sturken, ‘Paradox in the Evolution of an Art Form: Great Expectations and the Making of a History’, in Hall and Fifer, 1990, pp. 101–121, at p. 109. 4 On cause and effect, see Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, Cornell University Press, New York, 1982, pp. 86–89; and Hélène Bowen Raddeker, Sceptical History: Feminist and Postmodern Approaches in Practice, Routledge, London and New York, 2007. 5 Jacques Derrida, ‘Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression’, Diacritics, vol. 25, no. 2, 1995, p. 17. Emphasis in original. 6 See Chapter 1 and any of the surveys on video art referred to. Battcock stated that Paik ‘has been closely identified with video art ever since there has been such a thing’: Battcock quoted in Nam June Paik with Charlotte Moorman, ‘Videa, Vidiot, Videology’, in Gregory Battcock, ed., New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1978, pp. 121–137, at p. 133. See also David Ross, ‘A Provisional Overview of Artists’ Television’, in Battcock, 1978, pp. 138–165, at p. 138. This narrative re-occurs in Meigh-Andrews’ presentation of video art’s origin in the chapter entitled ‘Fluxus, Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell’: Chris Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art: The Development of Form and Function, Berg, Oxford, 2006, pp. 10–12. Paik is the unquestioned first video artist here too. See also Catherine Elwes, Video Art: A Guided Tour, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London, 2005, p. 4.; Max Liljefors, Videokonsten: en introduktion, Studentlitteratur, Lund, 2005, pp. 21; Michael Rush, Video Art, Thames & Hudson, London, 2003, pp. 10 and 59; Yvonne Spielmann, Video: The Reflexive Medium, translated by Anja Welle and Stan Jones, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2008, pp. 73–74, 10 (originally published as Video. Das reflexive Medium, Suhrkamp Press, Frankfurt, 2005); Rosler; Sturken, 1990, p. 105. The number of monographs, exhibition catalogues, articles, recognition in general art historical overviews and so on which situates Paik in this founding position are too many to list here, but see, for example, Toni Stooss and Thomas Kellein, eds, Nam June Paik: Video Time – Video Space, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1993; SookKyung Lee and Susanne Rennert, eds, Nam June Paik, Tate Publishing, London, 2010.

Somewhat strange in the context of surveys on video art, which in most aspects are in concordance, is that Rush argues that writing a history of video art based on individual artists’ achievements is a venturous task. Yet Paik is always (amongst) the inaugurating video artist/s: Rush, 2003, p. 13.

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7 Paik with Charlotte Moorman, in Battcock, 1978, p. 137. On founding fathers and patriarchal genealogy, see, for example, Mira Schor, ‘Patrilineage’ (first published in Art Journal, vol. 50, no. 2, 1991), here from Jones, 2003, pp. 249–256. 8 John G. Hanhardt, ed., Video Culture: A Critical Investigation, Peregrine Smith Books, Layton, in association with Visual Studies Workshop Press, New York, (1986) 1990, pp. 10, 16 and 18–20; Liljefors, p. 21. 9 Edward A. Shanken, ed., Art and Electronic Media, Phaidon, London, 2009, p. 30; Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, Dutton, New York, 1970, p. 302. See also, for example, David A. Ross, ‘In the Beginning’, in Rosa Olivares, ed., 100 Video Artists, Exit Publications, Madrid, 2009, pp. 9–17. 10 Elwes, pp. 4–5. 11 See Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, Routledge, London and New York, 1993. 12 Rush, 2003, p. 38. 13 Counting as a method for claiming hierarchical positions – and presented as proof – is of course a rather blunt device. But canon occurs not only through the basis of arguments and valuations, but also by way of repetition. Hence I have done a lot of counting. 14 In 1963 Paik used TV sets in his first solo show, ‘Exposition of Electronic Music – Electronic TV’, Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal. The work was Distorted TV composed of 13 sets. See, for example, Liljefors, p. 21. According to Ross, Paik had arranged to ‘buy the first unit [of the Sony Portapak] to be delivered for sale in New York, in late 1965’: Ross, 1978, p. 142. 15 Rosler; Elwes, p. 4; Meigh-Andrews, pp. 18 and 115–117; Spielmann, pp. 98–100. 16 Rush, 2003, p. 9. 17 Rosler, pp. 44–48. It is an article by Martha Gever that she addresses here: ‘Pomp and Circumstances: The Coronation of Nam June Paik’, Afterimage, vol. 10, no. 3, October 1982, pp. 12–16. 18 Rosler, p. 44. 19 Ibid., p. 45. On the myth around Paik, see also Ross, 2009, pp. 9–10; and Meigh-Andrews, pp. 15–16. 20 Rosler, p. 45. Moorman is, however, acknowledged as a performance artist in her own right in other contexts. Or even as a video artist since performing Paik. See Battcock, 1978, pp. 25 and 133. 21 Ingrid Wiegand, ‘Videospace: Varieties of the Video Installation’, in Battcock, 1978, pp. 181–191. 22 Rosler. 23 However, this position of his is rather despite his Fluxus participations; much of his work did not primarily get its recognition for stemming from political activism, group collaborations or broadcasting practices. 24 Meigh-Andrews, pp. 34–35. In the introduction, Meigh-Andrews notes, however, that not all socalled video artists accepted this media-based categorization for their own artistic practice (p. 4). 25 For early critique, see, for example, Thalia Gouma-Peterson and Patricia Mathews, ‘The Feminist Critique of Art History’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 69, no. 3, 1987, pp. 326–357; Pollock, 1988; Lisa Tickner, ‘Feminism, Art History, and Sexual Difference’, Genders, no. 3, University of Texas Press, 1988, pp. 92–128. For a discussion on art history (as already found) and feminism, see also Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, ‘Centripetal Discourse and Heteroglot Feminisms’, in Malin Hedlin Hayden and Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, eds, Feminisms is Still Our Name: Seven Essays on Historiography and Curatorial Practices, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2010, pp. 85–103. 26 See Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, ‘From Gadget Video to Agit Video: Some Notes on Four Recent Video Works’, Art Journal, vol. 45, issue 3, p. 217. 27 On the importance of Acconci, see, for example, Sylvia Martin, Video Art, Taschen, Cologne, 2006, p. 13. 28 See Elwes, pp. 11 and 30; Martin, p. 16; whereas Liljefors situates Nauman’s works in relation to sculpture, pp. 46–48, and Rush addresses the work of both Acconci and Nauman in relation to performance, pp. 76–79, but does not really get into the work of either of them.

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29 See especially Rush, 2003, and Spielmann on the relation to performance. For the relation between video and performance art, see also RoseLee Goldberg, Performance: Live Art Since the 60s, Thames & Hudson, New York, (1998) 2004, especially chapter 6: ‘Video, rock’n’roll, the spoken word’, pp. 179–203. 30 See especially Liljefors, Rush, 2003, Spielmann and Elwes. 31 In Battcock, 1978, Acconci is mentioned more often than Nauman; in Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot, eds, Video Art: An Anthology, The Raindance Foundation, New York and London, 1976, Nauman is not one of the participating artists; in Hanhardt, (1986) 1990, they turn up rather equally; Meigh-Andrews writes extensively on both. 32 Martin, p. 92, on Paik(p 78), and on Nauman (p. 70). Oursler is, besides Viola and Hill, ‘arguably the best-known American Video artist’: Martin, p. 76. 33 Amongst those writers who have structured their respective books around names as captions, ‘Gary Hill’ is a chapter in Liljefors, Martin, Rush, 2003 and Meigh-Andrews; ‘Bill Viola’ in Liljefors, Martin, Rush, 2003 and Meigh-Andrews. Spielmann’s book is structured differently, with the last part addressing ‘Video aesthetics’ particularly and each theme with a couple of artists. The ones that are discussed separately in relation to a theme are Robert Cahen, Peter Callas, David Larcher, Nan Hoover, Gary Hill, Lynn Hershman and Bill Seaman. 34 Liljefors, p. 78. 35 Ibid., p. 79. My translation. 36 Ibid. My translation of the heading. There are more sections in this chapter, one addressing Krauss’ essay on video and narcissism and the other on video, perception and metaphor. 37 Ibid., p. 54. My translation. 38 In the early 1960s a few women artists are noticed as participants, for example, ‘1970’ begins with VALIE EXPORT, ‘1971’ begins with Gina Pane. Rush also lists ‘Women’s Video Festival’ organized by Susan Milano at The Kitchen in 1972 (pp. 214–215). 39 Rush, 2003, p. 8. 40 Meigh-Andrews, p. 174. 41 See Rush, 2003, p. 27; Liljefors, who writes on ‘gender perspectives’ rather than feminism by addressing the work by four women artists (pp. 92–93). Elwes does not, however, refer to Birnbaum’s work in the chapter on feminism, nor does Spielmann. On Birnbaum and issues of feminism (even sometimes phrased differently), see also Stuart Comer, ed., Film and Video Art, Tate Publishing, London, 2009, pp. 83 and 125; Phelan, 2001, p. 120; Lisa Gabrielle Mark, ed., WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and MIT Press, London and Cambridge, Mass., 2007, p. 219; Craig Owens, ‘The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism’ (1983), in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, The New Press, New York, 1998, pp. 65–92. Here, Owens also argues against Buchloh’s interpretations of Birnbaum’s work: see Benjamin Buchloh, ‘Allegorical Procedures: Appropriation and Montage in Contemporary Art’, Artforum, vol. 21, no. 1, 1982, pp. 43–56. 42 Meigh-Andrews, pp. 170–174. See also Elwes, pp. 90 and 147–148. Birnbaum herself has made it clear that, for her, the work was clearly a feminist critique. She spoke about this at a lecture given in relation to the exhibition Before and After Cinema, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, 9 March 2012. 43 Birnbaum’s work is here interpreted under the caption ‘Cutting it: Accessible video editing’ and not in the chapter addressing feminism and ‘otherness’. Elwes’ artistic work, on the other hand, is both acknowledged for the technology employed and her feminist subject: Meigh-Andrews, pp. 174–176. However, a collection of texts that exclusively addresses women artists and technology is Judy Malloy, ed., Women, Art and Technology, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2003. This publication was the result of the Leonardo project Women, Art, and Technology, begun in 1993, which focused on the writings of women artists only. 44 See, for example, Michael Renov and Erika Suderburg, eds, Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996; Hall and Fifer; MeighAndrews; and Elwes. 45 Renov and Suderburg, p. 419. 46 This is a custom practised widely, and I cannot remember any exhibitions, books and so on that make a headline of focusing on ‘male artists’ separately as a particular group or kind of artists unless seriously problematizing these concepts, even if several deal only with male artists.

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Simultaneously there are numerous examples of these narrative formats focusing on ‘women artists’ exclusively – as a caption and everything. In the mid-2000s there were numerous exhibitions focusing on feminist art as by women – or, more rarely, without the feminist epithet: for example, the aforementioned WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007); Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art (2007), Brooklyn Museum, New York, US; Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: 45 Years of Art and Feminism (2007), Museo de Bellas Artes Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain; Konstfeminism: strategier och effekter i Sverige från 1970-talet till idag (2007), Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, Sweden; Gender Battle (2007), Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; the already mentioned Women Artists: elles@centrepompidou (2009), Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, France; Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe (2010), Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, Austria; and Dream and Reality: Modern and Contemporary Women Artists from Turkey (2012), The Istanbul Modern Museum, Istanbul, Turkey. For socio-cultural structures of performative gender, see especially Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, London and New York, 1999; Phelan, 1993. 47 Elwes, pp. 59–77. 48 Ibid., pp. 71–73. 49 Marsha Meskimmon, ‘Historiography/Feminisms/Strategies’, n.Paradoxa, issue 12, March 2000, web.ukonline.co.uk/n.paradoxa/panel3.htm (accessed 17 January 2007). 50 Rush, 2003, p. 148. 51 JoAnn Hanley, The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75 (1993). The exhibition was organized by Independent Curators Incorporated, New York, and travelled to 11 different venues in the US and Canada between 1993 and 1995.The participating artists were: Eleanor Antin, Benglis, Barbara Bucker, Doris Chase, Shirley Clarke, VALIE EXPORT, Freed, Anna Bella Geiger, Julie Gistafson, Holt, Makao Idemitsu, Jonas, Korot, Kubota, Mary Lucier, Kyoko Michishita, Rosenbach, Rosler, Ilene Segalove, Lisa Steele and Steina (Vasulka – she is only mentioned here by her first name). 52 Susan Sollins, ‘Acknowledgments’, in The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75, Independent Curators Incorporated, New York, 1993, p. 6. ICI was founded in 1975 and organized the show Video Art USA the same year, part of the Sao Paolo Biennale (pp. 6–7). 53 JoAnn Hanley, ‘The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75’, in The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75, p. 9. 54 Hanley, p. 10. Julia Knight is of a contrary opinion: Julia Knight, ‘Video’, in Fiona Carson and Claire Pajaczkowska, eds, Feminist Visual Culture, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2000, pp. 249–263. 55 Hanley, pp. 9–10. Whom or what essay she bases this on is not made clear. What the actual numbers are, I have not examined – it is beyond the scope of this project. It is the attitude that concerns me here. 56 See, for example, Ann-Sargent Wooster, ‘The Way We Were’, in The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75, pp. 20–44, at 23. For the situation in Britain regarding the relation between the women’s movement and the emergence of feminist video art/practices, see Knight, 2000, pp. 249–263. In ‘Screens of Resistance: Feminism and Video Art’, Canadian Woman Studies/Les cahiers de la femme, vol. 11, no. 1, 1989, pp. 73–74 – her article on early Canadian video art produced by women artists – Dot Tuer writes: ‘in many senses, women’s independent video production has been formed by and is a witness to the on-going struggle to realise these ideals [of the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s]. In the imaginary utopia of video’s beginning … the politicization of the art world and the insistence of these demands forwarded by an activist feminism coincided. Women turned to the “new” medium of video as a medium without history’ (p. 74). Tuer, referring to Paulo Freire (a Brazilian literacy theorist), argues utopia as a site from which to denounce an ongoing dehumanization. Like the common trope in video art narratives that many video artists, in the 1960s and 1970s especially, turned against the mass communication per se of television – Tuer even describes the period as ‘the age of information manipulation’ (p. 73) – and of what was mass communicated, her argument is that the conjunction of feminism and video art production was specifically apt for grasping the utopian aspect – or promise – in an aim to change society, hence discriminatory systems, by and through ‘social, aesthetic and political interventions’ (p. 73). Tuer refers to a manifesto, ‘Towards a Female Liberation Movement’ (1968), written by Beverley Jones and Judith Brown (p. 73). 57 Antin is represented in Schneider and Korot, pp. 12–13, and is mentioned in Kim Levin, ‘Video Art in the TV Landscape: Notes on Southern California’, in Battcock, 1978, p. 72 (as an artist

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who amongst others ‘used video to tell stories’) and p. 75 (in relation to her ‘episodic novelistic autobiographical performances’). She is mentioned in two essays in Hanhardt, (1986) 1990: David Antin, ‘Video: The Distinctive Features of the Medium’, pp. 164–165 (neither of the words feminism or woman are used); and David Ross, ‘Truth or Consequences: American Television and Video Art’, p. 169, where she is mentioned as one of the ‘important artists whose aesthetic orientation has ranged widely’ (p. 168). Furthermore, she is listed as a ‘woman artist’ in Rush, 2003, p. 147; Elwes names her twice on pp. 9 and 44. She is not named in Meigh-Andrews, Liljefors, Renov and Suderburg, or Hall and Fifer. 58 For an interesting analysis of the relation between conceptual art and feminism, and what occasional oppositions between the two notions imply for how to read particular art works, see Jayne Wark, ‘Conceptual Art and Feminism: Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin, and Martha Wilson’, Woman’s Art Journal, vol. 22, no. 1, 2001, pp. 44–50. 59 Rush mentions her name in relation to various forms in which artists worked with projected images in the 1960s and early 1970s: Rush, 2003, pp. 61 and 69. 60 Of more recent events and publications, see, for example, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007) where Ono was represented by three films; she represents feminist art in Phelan, 2001, pp. 27, 196–197 and 215, for example; and in Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society, 5th edition, Thames & Hudson, London, (1990) 2012, pp. 362 and 410. 61 For a historical view of this situation, see Nochlin, 2003. Nochlin returns to this question in the essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Thirty Years After’, in Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher, eds, Women Artists at the Millennium, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2006, pp. 21–32. 62 Rush, 2003, p. 122. 63 Wooster. 64 Martin, p. 80. 65 Ibid., pp. 82 and 62 respectively. 66 Amongst early feminist art historical practices, see, for example, Linda Nochlin and Ann Sutherland, Women Artists 1550–1950, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1976. Here the sex-biased strategy as a condition for the exhibition and thus the catalogue – also, compulsively – conditions the narrative and the genealogies constructed therein. See also Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology, Pandora, London, 1981. 67 Meskimmon, 2000. 68 None of the essays in Battcock’s 1978 anthology address feminism or women artists separately, nor the early exhibitions, nor any essay in either Hanhardt, (1986) 1990 or Schneider and Korot. But in Hall and Fifer, Martha Gever, ‘The Feminism Factor: Video and its Relation to Feminism’, pp. 226–241, addresses feminism. In Renov and Suderburg, David E. James, ‘Lynn Hershman: The Subject of Autobiography’, pp. 124–133, connects feminist ideas to autobiography, and the instability of the subject, while Sara Diamond’s ‘Sex Lies with Videotape: Abbreviated Histories of Canadian Video Sex’, pp. 189–206, is concerned with censorship and artistic video practices dealing with sex of different contexts. 69 Meigh-Andrews, pp. 164 and 236; Rush, 2003, p. 147. 70 Elwes, pp. 40–41. 71 See, for example: Elwes, p. 41; Spielmann, passim; Meigh-Andrews, pp. 5–9; Liljefors, pp. 83–84. 72 Tuer, pp. 73–74. Meigh-Andrews is also of the opinion that video art did not yet have a history of its own in the mid-1970s. He also claims that it did not have ‘an identifiable critical discourse at this point’: Meigh-Andrews, pp. 8 and 164. My claim is rather the opposite, based on the references acknowledged here, that video art was part of a discourse: art; but also, still, even if vacillating, inscribed by the theoretical discourse of film, cinema and television. 73 See Knight, 2000, for a discussion of how the working conditions, the possibilities to exhibit and the lack of higher technological training affected the situation for women video artists in Britain. See also Meigh-Andrews, p. 5; Liljefors, p. 84; and Elwes, pp. 39–41 and 55. In New York, The Kitchen had made shows entirely focusing on women artists, the first one in 1972. Also in 1972, the first New York Women’s Video Festival opened at The Kitchen. It was founded by Steina Vasulka and organized by Susan Milano as an annual event until 1980, travelling to a number of cities in

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the US as well as to Europe. See Melinda Barlow, ‘Feminism 101: The New York Women’s Video Festival, 1972–1980’, Camera Obscura, Duke University Press, vol. 18, no. 3/54, pp. 3–40 (accessed online: http://muse.jhu.edu).

Many self-organized events in the form of exhibitions, workshops, festivals, conferences and so on were part of the women’s movement activities. Through the eight years of its existence, it seems that it addressed women video-makers, as opposed to only addressing ‘artists’, and the events thus showed documentaries as well as video art (even if a distinction between the two was perhaps a rare issue – this becomes more important when video art history is begun to be formulated). Far from all works shown at the festivals were dealing with explicitly feminist issues, but despite the intention of the maker ‘most early ’70s work by women was feminist simply by virtue of being made by women at that time … a time when just to put your hands on the camera was a feminist act’ (Ilene Segalove, cited in Barlow, p. 25.) In her article on the New York Women’s Video Festival, Melinda Barlow returns several times to testimonies on the feminist act of using video technology and the often hard resistance amongst women in overcoming insecurity about handling and taking power of these tools for image production.



In 1976 Ulrike Rosenbach founded the working group Schüle für Kreativen Feminismus (School for Creative Feminism) in Cologne. See Martin, p. 15. Meigh-Andrews also mentions this (p. 236).

74 Wooster, pp. 24–26. 75 Rush, 2003, pp. 147–165 and 196–205; Martin, p. 15. 76 Rush, 2003, p. 147. Compare Knight, 2000. 77 Rush, 2003, p. 85. 78 Ibid., p. 86. 79 Ibid., p. 90. 80 Ibid., pp. 101–112. 81 Ibid., p. 117. 82 Ibid., pp. 147–148. 83 My translation of chapter titles: ‘Videokonsten och mediets särart’ and ‘Politiskt engagemang i videokonsten’ respectively. 84 See, for example, Hanley, p. 10. See also Martha Gever, ‘Video Politics: Early Feminist Projects’, Afterimage, 1983, pp. 25–27. 85 Pollock, 1999, pp. 17–18. However, feminist practices cannot be positioned as an antagonist agent in the making (creation) of a critical form of agency. Neither, if one reaches the same conclusion as Pollock, can it be part of the core of that formation, since it is an oxymoron to the coreness [my word] per se. 86 For example, artists of the first generation of women video artists that worked from a feminist position (questioning ‘the position of women in a patriarchal oriented media society’) were, according to Sylvia Martin: VALIE EXPORT, Lynn Hershman, Nancy Holt, Ulrike Rosenbach, Martha Rosler, Rosemarie Trockel and Friederike Pezold; though Martin does not write that they were video artists, but that they used video (p. 15). 87 Hanley, p. 10. 88 All thematizations are necessarily tentative and evidently imply simplifications. The categorization of particular art works as feminist is a general tendency, often presented in specific chapters compartmentalizing certain artists. The video anthology Surveying the First Decade (Video Data bank, Chicago) classifies the art works in eight different categories: documentation of performance art, narration, feminist perspective, synthesizing, phenomenological focus, cultural activism, critique of ‘media society’, and independent TV production. These eight groups were one way of trying to ‘include’ the broad field of interests: here from Liljefors, p. 41. Typical is that only one group is based on a particular theoretical, political and ideological ground: that is, feminism. Due to the separation of feminism, artists working with critical investigations of, for example, mass media from a feminist perspective are thus much more likely to be recognized as feminist artists than in the much broader field of mass media critical artists. Art historical/ critical writing needs to focus on a selection of aspects in order to avoid complete incoherence and cacophony. This is what defines scholarly work, but not at all necessarily artistic practices – that is, to work towards concepts, categorizations, periods and so on. For example, Sturken, 1990, notes this too.

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89 Hanley, p. 14. 90 Ibid., p. 15. 91 I have discussed this in relation to the show Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, in 2007: Malin Hedlin Hayden, ‘Women Artists Versus Feminist Artists: Definitions by Ideology, Rhetoric or Mere Habit?’, in Hedlin Hayden and Sjöholm Skrubbe, 2010, pp. 57–83. 92 Meigh-Andrews, p. 81. 93 Ibid., p. 81. 94 Ibid., pp. 85–86. This is done through the example of curator and artist Catherine Elwes’ reasons for opposing video art practice against film-making. 95 Ibid., p. 8. He does, however, recognize the ‘short history of video art’ that was already a fact by the mid-1970s (p. 9). 96 Ibid., p. 9. 97 Ibid., p. 240. 98 Ibid., p. 180. 99 Obviously, both art and theory deal with identities of gender/gendered identities, but there is a difference (generally) between how art made by women/art representing women and art made by men/art representing men are dealt with. The former is usually discussed in terms of gender issues (for example, feminist theories – not to mention that artists who are of the female sex is a topic in itself), whereas the latter often tends to be perceived as dealing with identity generally, as such, or in universalizing terms. 100 See Meigh-Andrews, p. 52; Elwes passim; Rush, 2003, for example, p. 10; Liljefors, for example, pp. 83–84. See also Hanley; and James. For a different perspective on this redirection of the camera, see Rosalind Krauss’ essay, ‘Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism’ (1976), in Hanhardt, (1986) 1990, pp. 179–191. 101 Elwes, pp. 39–41. 102 Meigh-Andrews, chapter 13: ‘The Means of Production: Feminism and “Otherness” – Race, Gender, Technology and Access’, pp. 235–242, at 235. The artists represented as feminists are Elwes, Rosler, Rosenbach, Kubota, Katherine Maynell and Marion Urch. Feminist video art is furthermore argued here as also opening up other territories ‘for artists of colour and those who sought to explore issues relating to alternative sexuality, ethnicity, and race’ (p. 241). 103 As an example: in adjungierte dislokationen, 1973, VALIE EXPORT wears two 16mm cameras, one on her front and one on her back. Her body thus works as the stand for the camera. At the point where this work ‘becomes’ feminist, it is the female body from which the recordings are directed. There is nothing universal about this body (as opposed to Gary Hill’s body in CRUX of 1983–87, where he wears five cameras on his body as he walks slowly on a path). The film glides over the scenery as she moves about, walking, bending backwards (towards the sky), forwards (focusing the ground and – occasionally – her own body). Various cuts connect and separate the two opposing views of the two cameras. When displayed it is shown on three different screens. Beginning indoors (at the site of the domestic), she walks outdoors, out of the city and into an open landscape. It is a work that represents representation, which reproduces reproduction. See Joachim Jäger, Gabriele Knapstein and Anette Hüsch, eds, Beyond Cinema: The Art of Projection: Films, Videos and Installations from 1963 to 2005, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2006, p. 56. 104 Meigh-Andrews, pp. 174–176; Knight, 2000, pp. 253–254. 105 For example, Elwes speaks about: women taking ‘revenge’ (p. 47); ‘to rescue the body of woman’ (p. 47); ‘feminist takeover’ (p. 48). 106 Elwes, chapter 3: ‘Disrupting the Content: Feminism’, pp. 37–58. Her following chapter addresses masculinities, which means that there is a gender bias at play in the thematic structure of her chapters. 107 Ibid., pp. 77–78. 108 According to Catherine Elwes (compare Meigh-Andrews, p. 236), it was the immediacy and confrontational nature of video art that appealed to feminist women artists. This is, I think, an instance of the separation of feminist artists from women artists: the criticality is addressed as feminist. Women artists working from a critical perspective (on society, the state of the

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world, national politics and so on), but not concordant to specifically name as a feminist practice, are to a noticeble extent excluded here. However, Elwes’ feminist perspective seems to be rather unaffected by feminist critique of the last decade, for example, her idea of post-feminism: see Elwes, p. 43. For more recent elaborations and rethinkings concerning the notion of feminism/s, see Amelia Jones on her concept ‘parafeminism’: Amelia Jones, Self/Image: Technology, Representation and the Contemporary Subject, Routledge, London and New York, 2006, pp. 213–217; Amelia Jones, ‘The Return of Feminism(s) and the Visual Arts, 1970–2009’, in Hedlin Hayden and Sjöholm Skrubbe, 2010, pp. 11–56. For further discussions of identities in contexts, see also Amelia Jones, Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts, Routledge, London and New York, 2012. See also Lise Shapiro Sanders, ‘“Feminists Love a Utopia”: Collaboration, Conflict and the Futures of Feminism’, in Stacy Gillis, Gillian Howie and Rebecca Munford, eds, Third Wave Feminism, 2nd edition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, (2004) 2007, pp. 3–15; and Gillian Howie and Ashley Tauchert, ‘Feminist Dissonance: The Logic of Late Feminism’, in Gillis, Howie and Munford, 2007, pp. 46–58. On gender, history and articulation, see, for example, Judith Butler, ‘Speaking Up, Talking Back: Joan Scott’s Critical Feminism’, in Judith Butler and Elizabeth Weed, eds, The Question of Gender: Joan Scott’s Critical Feminism, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2011, pp. 11–28; or, of course, Butler, 1999. 109 Elwes refers to feminist scholars of various disciplines: for example, Laura Mulvey, Hélène Cixous, Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, and Peggy Phelan. 110 See, for example, the many essays addressing this issue in Jones, 2003. See also Georgia Warneke, After Identity: Rethinking Race, Sex, and Gender, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007; and Sara Ahmed, ‘A Phenomenology of Whiteness’, Feminist Theory, vol. 8, no. 2, 2007, pp. 149–168. 111 For example, Sylvia Martin presents 36 artists in her survey, Video Art (2006). Out of them, there are 22 men and 14 women artists. In the 20-page introduction to video art – spanning over 40 years of video art production – there are another ten women artists (and 15 men) who are represented with reproductions. None of the women mentioned in the introduction reappear in the artist presentations, whereas two men are also mentioned at length: Paik and Nauman. The women represented here are: Ann-Sofi Sidén, Dara Birnbaum, Julia Sher, Chantal Akerman, Diana Thater, Sam Taylor-Wood, Monika Oechsler, Janet Cardiff, and Jane and Louise Wilson.

Of the 14 women artists that are given a chapter of their own, only two are explicitly named as feminists: VALIE EXPORT and Martha Rosler, who is quoted as referring to herself as ‘a nascent feminist’. In addition, Neshat is said to work with segregation of the sexes and female identity, Rist with femininity, and Stephanie Smith (together with Edward Stewart) with ‘the relationship between the sexes’. To let the artists decide themselves whether they work with these aspects is a rare mode of narration. But none of the male artists presented specifically is acknowledged as having any particular interest (whatsoever) in gender-based issues, except for Stewart (who, apparently, is working with Smith with the subject of relationships between the two sexes). What comes as more of a surprise is that neither Abramović nor Athila nor Breitz are defined as feminist artists (which they are, most of the time, in feminist narratives of video/art) or as working with feminist issues. However, this non-feminist description of their work seems to have to do with the choice of art works that Martin addresses in the presentations about them. And as each artist is represented by a single work, the ideological and theoretical outcome can easily serve either a gender-based/informed reading or not. Addressing the oeuvre of these three artists respectively and not discussing their works as feminist interventions, effects, topics and so on would, I think, appear as problematic; that is, as neglecting important features of what the art works are about.

112 Deborah Cherry, ‘Historiography/Feminisms/Strategies’, n.Paradoxa, issue 12, March 2000, web. ukonline.co.uk/n.paradoxa/panel3.htm (accessed 17 January 2007). 113 Ibid. 114 See Griselda Pollock, ‘Three Thoughts on Femininity, Creativity and Elapsed Time’, Parkett, no. 59, 2000, pp. 107–113. 115 Ibid. 116 On articulations and constructions of gender, feminism, woman and the feminine, see especially: Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1987; Teresa de Lauretis, ‘Eccentric Subjects: Feminist Theory and the Historical Consciousness’, Feminist Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, 1990, pp. 115–150; Denise Riley, Am I That Name? Feminism and the Category of Women in History, University of Minnesota Press,

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Minneapolis, 1988; and Butler, 1999. Even though my own thinking does not depart from the writings of either, for example, Luce Irigaray or Julia Kristeva, their work should be properly referred to here as well. See Irigaray’s influential Speculum of the Other Woman, translated by Gillian C. Gill, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, (1974) 1985, and This Sex Which Is Not One, translated by Catherine Porter, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, (1977) 1985. On Kristeva’s theories as informing feminist art theory, see especially Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, translated by Leon S. Roudiez, Columbia University Press, New York, (1980) 1982. 117 Stella Rollig, ed., – Video as a Female Terrain, Landesmuseum, Wien, 2000. 118 Stella Rollig, ‘Videos: Who’s Got Time For Them?’, in Rollig, 2000, p. 6.

5 AND ALSO: Making stories, thinking through thematic space

So far I have discussed the monographs and collections of essays on video art history from traditional art historical concepts and methods, aiming at a critical scrutiny of the paradoxical situations in which these are either disputed or embraced, but also at a critical scrutiny of unwarranted objections insofar as they are – occasionally – highly and overtly operational. In this concluding chapter my interest is somewhat different. I want to think through a set of other concepts and themes around which these narratives revolve, both in the aspect of framing devices for the stories, hence as narrative cores (or plots even), and as criteria constituting the very operational definitions of what video art’s history is (really) about. There are certain phenomena that appear to such an extent and in such a mode that I discuss them as different thematic spaces. In rhetorical vocabulary, topos means ‘a “place” [locus] from which one draws a particular kind of argument’.1 In the present context my idea of thematic space evolves from the concept of topos, and aims at the different narratives from which video art’s history departs and around which it rhetorically revolves in order to unfold variations of history as stories. From a historiographical perspective it is of relevance to discuss how these thematic spaces function as discursive frames, since they relate to the understanding of historical progress and changes within video art as well as to historical narratives as a particular kind of knowledge production. Moreover, as with topos, the thematic space is not something that I want to suggest as synonymous with how concepts work and is therefore employed as a conceptual site, where a particular narrative unfolds (is told) rather than as a notion applied in order to define specific characterizing aspects of video art.2 That is, the space in which the concepts and events recalled are activated narratively; the raison d’être, in a sense, for the conglomeration of contents of different kinds. Technology is one such thematic

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space and is addressed accordingly, but it also operates as a medium and as a concept. With thematic space I wish to locate particular conceptual sites that operate like a nest, within which other concepts and subjects are nesting.3 Hereby, it both empowers the discourse but is also simultaneously framed by the latter, and, furthermore, appears as a single voiced narrative. Therefore a thematic space is, in this meaning, an antithesis to an anthology with its multivoiced character. Despite the fact that all these texts are about video art, does this mean that they necessarily engage with the same thematic space(s)? My argument is, of course, that they do not, and that, depending on the chosen thematic space, the narratives mean differently and lead to different knowledge, as well as to contexts of understanding what the history of video art might also be about. The past does not always mean in the same way, nor do past events (automatically) cause the same effects discernible in the present. I do not focus on the agents in the following, but on the main thematic trajectories which operate as distinguished features and which, moreover, I argue, work as inclusionary and exclusionary criteria for what historical surveys on the subject of video art’s history can embrace and claim as indispensable. Alongside schools and themes of different groups of art works, other aspects also present themselves as constructing devices and therefore affect aesthetics, ideology and theory, possibly resulting in inflections of the canon, as I have argued. It is thus about organizing devices which reach further than the mentioned concepts and which influence in depth the stories by which the past is constructed as history. Out of the themes (of books, essays, and chapters) around which these narratives also revolve, I have localized and singled out two thematic spaces that I will discuss further: technology and the often argued critical potential of video art. Unlike the first one, the second is not highlighted per se in either the surveys or the anthologies, but it repeatedly rises to the surface of discussions and accounts of video art. Foremost, they are both a result of my reading of these texts and the reason that led me to suggest thematic space as a way to understand and rethink this phenomenon. This further results in what I conclude this book with: video art’s inherent claim of plurality per se. Before tracing the particular thematic spaces of relevance for this particular inquiry, I will exemplify how the history as a found object can be reactivated by turning again to Michael Rush’s survey Video Art and then to Hanhardt’s anthology Video Culture. However, I do not go so far as to suggest that the found history is yet another thematic space.

History, histories and narratives: a retake The primary function of surveys is to present the history of a particular phenomenon in general terms based not only on a discursive consensus

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of a definition of the phenomenon in focus, but also on which of the past events and aspects that already circulate as ‘the past’ as it is found in the particular archives excavated are therefore arguably indispensable (in one way or another) in order to possibly claim a status of presenting the history of to its readers. Some of the aspects of this (presumed) generality have been discussed above (in terms of the notion of art, art history, canon and gender), but what remains is also to further scrutinize the different subjects that operate as thematic spaces framing these narratives and hence as organizing structures. A historical narrative does not only recall the unique or individual moments, but also creates a story through which we (its readers) gain the historical knowledge linguistically presented to us. In order to make a story out of diverse and single events, there obviously need to be narrative frames which move beyond the mere representations and analysis of single art works/ artists.4 As history is a mode of representing the past in narrative form, that is, conceptualizing the particular phenomenon historicized, this practice has to perform (even if tentatively) interpretations of the past, which furthermore inevitably demands rigorous selections of what it is to represent and how to (best) present it.5 A critical historical narrative thus accounts for how it is about the past, which is different from presenting a story as an already ‘found past’ (framed by a certain set of commonalities), also by and through the thematic space in which it takes place. The understanding, that is, the interpretation, of ‘what went on back then’ constitutes both ‘the-past-as-present’ in narrative chronologies – such as the surveys on video art’s history – as well as the present situation, the space and time, from which a history emerges (that is, from where the historian works) as a story-making practice. In an essay from 1997 that partly deals with surveys, Robert S. Nelson points out the different temporal moments that art history entails: ‘moments in the present and the lived past to distant pasts dimly remembered in a discipline that typically studies the histories of everything but itself, conveniently forgetting that it, too, has a history and is History.’6 However, since video art has not been around as long as the traditional art forms, a moment of correcting previous historical narratives has not yet occurred; there are no evident generational, ideological or theoretical clear distinctions between these historicizing monographs. But there is a difference in the more critical essays of the anthologies; the narratives and discussions of video art have become more depoliticized, less polemic, and the tendency to promote video as art has, by now, vanished. That is, this mode of history writing is engaged in the most conventional form of knowledge production/representation within academic art historical practices: the historical survey in the format of a monograph which, in turn, is a space within the discourse that controls and dominates the borders, hence the content of the narrative.7 ‘As the referent for the shifters “our”, “present”, and “past” changes, so do the narratives in which they are employed, and vice versa’, writes Nelson when discussing how time and place cause structural

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problems in relation to geographical areas as well as historical periods, since the locality of ‘the speaking voice’ positions time to place and ‘margin to center’ within her/his narrative.8 Understandings of what it means to write historical narratives have changed during the last decades (sometimes ascribed as the narrative turn).9 Most important is the increasingly common idea that one does not reconstruct the past, but constructs an interpretation of it in narrative form. Alun Munslow writes: ‘telling the truth about the past (even if it cannot be fully realized) requires the re-telling of the most likely story of the action and events of the past as accurately as possible by deploying both theory … and empiricism’.10 In practice, theory and the past will apparently not be conflated into one simply because the telling (that is, the story created) intervenes between them and is thus what the narrative ‘is’ when it does history. There is more to it than that: ‘because the process of “telling” or narrating constitutes a complete system of representation, how a history is told is as important as what is being told.’11 In the most basic sense, according to Munslow, a story is what is being told (‘a recount of a sequence of events’), whereas narration answers the question of how it is told.12 The differences between story, narrative and narration are, from this perspective, crucial when analysing historical narratives. Monographs, which implicitly address rather imprecise and varied groups of readers (students, teachers, researchers and others interested in the specific historical topic) rarely engage in this kind of meta-critical self-reflexion of their own creation. Whereas the narrative is the form, or mode, by which the acknowledged historical pasts are transformed into a story (by which we can speak of the past), the latter is to be equated to the content and is what I am concerned with here – however, in another sense than employed above. What I do argue here is that these narratives also have contents that cannot be exchanged with video art or video art’s history; whereas the past empirically went on back then, the story did not, which is why there has to be a context (perhaps organized as a sequence of past events) created in order to tell about the themes, artists, works, sites and so on making up the structure and core of the historicizing narrative. The issue here is thus how, and by which means, ideas and overall themes, the past is interpretatively accessed; this is what constitutes a thematic space in the following. As I have already concluded, the historical narratives about video art’s history (that is, the monographs) have not, with a few exceptions, extensively altered the form of art historical writing in any radical sense. That is, despite video art still being argued as art-differently, this conception has not precluded the conventional narrative modes based on chronology, canon, progression, invention, gendered compartmentalizations of artists and so on. Moreover, pertinent here is that the idea of the past as something that has been found (and consequently reconstructed) rather than created is not

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seriously contested. Throughout this book I have argued that history is not to be taken as synonymous in any sense with the past, as they are totally different in kind. From various, yet clearly chosen, departures, the past is narratively interrogated and analysed as content and expression within the mode of history. There are certain framing subjects – besides those already spoken of – that by consequence are as important as the indispensable moments of artists and art works in the making/creation of historical narratives. The competing approaches to which these historical narratives testify are foremost related to the contextualizing subjects – the thematic spaces – that frame these stories, and which further conceptualize history as a narrative construction. There are a few principal subjects that reoccur, amongst which the most noticeable are technology, the importance of performance, feminist video art, conceptual art, formalist modernism, postmodern/contemporary art and video art’s (occasionally contested) relation to cinema, experimental film and television. These are not always singled out as enclosed topics or themes, but rather (and some more than others) intertwined, yet clearly discernible as recurrent thematic spaces. For example, even though Michael Rush does not enter into a thorough discussion on notions and theories of and by art, he is very distinct when declaring the interlacing of video art, conceptual art and performance (the latter often refers to whether the artists themselves appear in the work). More than perhaps anything else, the persistence of pointing out conceptual ambiguities regarding art serves a rhetorical purpose: to make the reader attentive to the proclaimed otherness (or difference) of video art. It is also, as I see it, to hold onto an embraced situation of uncertainty, of art as in a state of continuous flux – an attitude which is of course nothing but favourable. But whether this could open up for serious engagement with the concepts employed is, unfortunately, not further developed. Instead of further requirements into the inchoate notion(s) of art, Rush outlines (instead) four different, but equally representative, approaches to video practices: the politically motivated artists, documentary film-makers (who, like the former, are driven by an urge to make real changes), artists linked to Fluxus or working conceptually, and finally, experimental film-makers (which is the smallest group).13 He exemplifies all these categories with particular artists and specific art works; however, he does not stay within the fine artist field which is otherwise his focus. Especially when describing the differences in accessing the technique (in the early phase) in relation to situations in different nations, some exceptions are made – the most conspicuous being that of the rather lengthy section on Godard representing video art in France.14 The empirical material is organized by distinguishing both different professions within the realm of video practices (for example, artists versus documentary film-makers) and their aims – as well as by gender, which I discussed in the previous chapter.

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However, the narrative of Video Art is structured in relation to three themes treated separately and thus not engaged throughout the book. Through the first of these – ‘Video and the Conceptual Body’ – Rush interrogates the implications of performance and conceptual art as they are argued as entwined with the video medium and resulting in distinct trajectories.15 These are not narrated in a strict chronological order. Instead, he highlights a selection of artists (sometimes chronology appears related to a particular artist’s oeuvre) which, in turn, represents particular strands. The narrative effect is that the story in its entirety returns like a time quasiloop but where each return (to, for example, the 1970s) implies different alternative viewpoints and themes. In this respect, then, the narrative of Video Art has moved beyond the strict chronologically ordered survey which would start at one point in time, ending in another. By going back and forth but taking different tracks each time, the space–time relation is multiplied and destabilizes the idea of the past as narratively cast as only one possible history, working instead towards a polyvalent set of thematic trajectories. In this sense, then, plurality as yet another thematic space of video art’s history is engaged. Still, this narrative strategy has not upset the set of canonized artworks or artists, or the principal subjects and themes already established in the early 1970s – the argued criteria for why each of the single events is inevitable to his story remain unclear (there are simply no tracks of so-called minor works, artists and events). As a consequence the value system, ideologies and aesthetic parameters of the art history that he practises move about as objective – as in undefined – yet constitutive issues. The historical event, which I argue is the actual process of interpreting and writing, is, in Rush’s work, still connected to the past, and therefore it is, in this sense, an example of a rather conventional historical practice. This is thus one example of what I mean by a found story, appearing as already-there but which is (obviously) possible to tell with only slight differences (for example, which works and artists to highlight). Rush’s interest and analysis are focused on the subject content and display situations of particular video art works, spelled out in traditional art historical fashion: biographical information is followed by a description of the work and then the presentation of an interpretation, art work by art work. In order to visualize the structure of this particular chapter and the different kinds of subjects addressed in the captions, the hierarchically arranged graphic opposite may be of assistance. The most obvious information revealed by this scheme is that Rush sometimes focuses on themes explored by artists in their works, at other times on the oeuvre of particular artists and even a specific city (Vienna) as the locus of prominent events in this particular narrative of video art; that is, as differing entrances to the different trajectories and themes, which testifies to an ambition to write, hence historicize, against the idea of a single

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trajectory and progression. What makes the structure somewhat misguiding when illustrated as above (by simply relating to the captions) is that the section on Tony Oursler actually ends with a presentation of a number of other artists argued to be ‘representative of artists for whom video is only one amongst many modes of expression’, followed by a conclusion where Rush refers to the 2001 Venice Biennale.16 This method of structuring the story of video art’s history (its past) is also present in the two following chapters: ‘Video and the New Narrative’ and ‘Extensions’. With regard to narrative and story, Rush dissolves the austere beginning-to-final-end time-based structure by privileging the return as a mode to include different historical trajectories, highlighting a set of subjects. What stands out in relation to earlier critically informed writings on video art is that the critical potential (or content) and technology remain rather unexplored, even if occasionally tacit for the overall discussions that he undertakes. The exception regarding technology appears in the last chapter since extensions primarily refers to digital technology, but also to the trend of installations implying screening in large format and often on several walls simultaneously (that is, when a video work consists of several synchronic projections), and ‘filmic art’ which borders on the realm of cinema.17 However, that video as a medium has

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become antiquated (and nowadays sometimes employed precisely due to its historicizing visual effect) as a technology, with rather limited possibilities if compared to digital technologies, of course may be phrased as if it belonged to a closed past. In the written discourse of video art, the manner of structuring different viewpoints by employing themes as structuring devices is in concordance with sections in the anthologies.18 There, however, the purpose of themes is primarily to assemble plural voices speaking within the same space but on different, even if related, issues. However, the fact that, for example, Hanhardt organized the essays around different themes, none of which explicitly addressed art history or the notion of art, clearly indicates that he had another agenda. Yet the effect is symptomatic of an ambition to keep (the) video art discourse at a safe distance from any proper art historical business. Naturally, it does not make much sense to try to fish out a coherent story or a palpable thematic space imbedded in the overall narrative of an anthology, even if a body of multiple, juxtaposed essays is chosen in order to emphasize a comprehensive but multi-voiced discussion reaching beyond each single essay. In relation to an understanding of traditional art history surveys, the format of the anthology could, however, be argued to upset ideas of progression and linearity, as well as aesthetics, as too limited concepts for narrowing down video works(/art) as a phenomenon. An anthology operates to reinforce plurality within the same presence by means of undoing the single authored voice.19 Yet another suggestion to interrogate the narratological difference between these two genres, or formats of knowledge production, could be through the concept of rhizome. Tentatively, it would point to the different directions of links, references and so on; whereas the historicizing monographs link and refer back to ‘a past’ (or simply to an unstable ‘before’), if time is thought of in vertical terms, the anthologies as collections of essays contemporary with each other (or not exploring the origins of a line of thought, for example) could thus be understood as rooting with each other in a rhizomatic contemporaneity.20 By assembling essays written (partly) in independence of the other participating writers, the risk of the one authorized voice/text is enervated and the poly-voiced space will maintain the credibility of diversity and (limited) opposition within the specific discourse: anomalies and paradoxes appear even if situated within a particularizing frame. There is no outspoken antipathy to the grand, overall narratives – I am only speaking of how anthologies relate to surveys and vice versa, and the different narrative effects that they have. In relation to how video art is understood, interpreted and also promoted – as reluctantly art, insisting on diversity, oppositions, critique and transgressing (almost by nature) – the anthology as resisting a totalizing narrative seems to better correspond with what I think of as the self-image of video art as always already a plural phenomenon.21 In this sense,

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the anthologies could furthermore be understood from Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia; where coexistent and even opposing ideas (voices/different types of speech) are simultaneously present.22 Regarding the anthologies, the juxtaposition of multiple voices is a strategy to maintain diversity, but also testifies to a situation where video art was not yet discursively framed as (fine) art. Therefore, the concurrence of various statements, subjects and references also serves to define video practices as poly-voiced practices per se. Yet the thematic captions reveal what the editor thinks are essential fields to address, in the case of Hanhardt’s Video Culture: theory and practice, video and television, and film and video. Aside from the first, the others are – as noted above – central, hence reoccurring, issues which frame the very discourse of video art, and therefore also its history (directing and restricting the past). This structure frames the different voices into different and clearly separated themes to a certain degree, but is not what I mean by thematic space. The latter takes a much more firm grip in framing the narrative, and is therefore rather to be understood in terms of the single-voiced story of monographs. However, like Hanhardt, Hall and Fifer’s Illuminating Video also subordinates the essays thematically (which is the usual format of collections). Except for the already discussed section entitled ‘Histories’, the essays are situated under the following captions: ‘Furniture/Sculpture/ Architecture’; ‘Audience/Reception: Access/Control’; ‘Syntax and Genre’; and ‘Telling Stories’. Not all of the anthologies addressed here share this thematic structure, but rather keep the different essays as unframed as possible: Podesta’s Resolution: A Critique of Video Art, Battcock’s New Artists Video and Renov and Suderburg’s Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices. These publications are, therefore, even more open, since the editors do not arrange the essays into separate categories. Regarding issues discussed, this does not imply, however, that the subjects of the essays in these publications differ noticeably from those sub-dividing the collected texts regarding the topics or theoretical perspectives; the relation between video practices/art and television is, for example, an issue present in every single one of these publications, but is addressed and interrogated from rather different points of view.23 Film and/ or cinema is another subject that reoccurs – not least in exhibition contexts (as noted in my introduction). In the monographs, thematic spaces operate more in depth and more forcefully in relation to what these narratives incorporate than do the thematizations within the anthologies. Both Elwes and Meigh-Andrews, being video artists themselves, write, so to speak, from the inside of the artistic practice. To what extent the above is an effect of this or not, I can only speculate, but the locus of Meigh-Andrews’ book is a detailed account of technological developments and, secondly, of how artists have used technology, especially in their work processes. But, like Elwes and Spielmann, he has great practical

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knowledge of recording, image-processing and displaying technologies, which he describes and employs as interpretative tools.24 Less attention is thus given to the art works that he uses to exemplify the technology. The same – but to a somewhat lesser extent – is also the case in Elwes and Liljefors respectively.

Technology as thematic space Video technology – including the various devices developed and employed – is at the heart of much writing on the subject of video art’s history.25 As it was a completely new medium entering artists’ productions, it was obviously of great importance to initially address the specifics of the medium, but also to argue for its relevance as precisely an artistic medium (despite – but also due to – the fact that the apparatuses employed were shared with many other fields and branches of image production). However, technology is not only accounted for as the mere technique by which the represented art works are made, but develops into the one aspect which permeates entire narratives and appears at times as the primary subject elucidated by references to art works – instead of vice versa. The technology trajectory constructed, hence operative, as a thematic space rests on two notions in particular: invention and the real. Returning to the idea of thematic space as a nest, these concepts are then nesting in ‘technology’ in this much broader sense. The locus is, however, the notion of invention, which generally operates in two different respects. Firstly, the most obvious reference to invention in this context is that of technological advancements in the form of new apparatuses and various editing devices. In terms of historical narrating, technology is present both as the core subject from which chronology is organized and as the medium by which the art works are given aesthetic meaning. Intimately related to this is that technological inventions regarding image distribution and display affect, it would seem, how to perceive of video as art. This further affects the possible sites of where art can happen, as well as, in effect, how this is mirrored in the overall narrative structures. Secondly, my own interpretation of how invention functions here is as a reformulation of ideas of the (modernist) innovative avant-garde, that is, as an idea and criteria which has been transferred to the medium per se and as such operates in the sense of an acclaimed feature of art acknowledged and/or claimed as postmodern, contemporary and/or advanced. As I have made clear above, ideas of what art history was capable of – and not least of what it was not able to deal adequately with – were highly contested when video art entered the field of visual arts. In contrast to the principal focus on particular artists and their (critical) works, it is here – also – the capability of the new technique that operates as a differentiating

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aspect to what conventional art history was thought to be apt to address in the first place (as did, for example, Belting). What differentiates narratives on the history of video art from surveys dealing with traditional art forms of the same time is that the historical construction does not primarily pivot around specific artists and art works: here the technology of the medium per se plays a significant part. Scrutinizing video art history from an ontological perspective, it becomes rather instantly obvious that technology is one of the more evident ways to also engage conceptually with video art in relation to both its past and its present. Accordingly, knowledge production about video art’s history stems from facts and information about technological aspects, which enter art discourse from another angle than the traditional art forms which were still the constitutive practices and objects of the notion of art. My point is thus that video technology becomes an epistemological issue that disturbs conventional art history discursively. That is: how do we know art, and how do we make it knowledgeable within the realm of art history? The detailed information and considerations of medium implications speak to the technologically well-read reader; it is good to recall that video art, initially, was (or rather became) art despite the medium and not as a consequence of it. (Another, but not directly comparable, change was enforced by appropriation art; that is, a proper art work could apparently be a copy, and the discourse of art history thereby needed to figure out how to include this strategy of making not only images, but art.) To learn about video art is hence to also learn about the various technological devices through which it is made. This is, of course, not in any general sense different from the majority of art historical survey writing focusing on a particular medium or period, but what is radically different is the extent to which the medium is addressed (which is not the same as writing on, for example, contemporary painting, where critical analysis of content, the artist and presumed theoretical shifts are re/constructed). What is of interest here is how technology operates within the discourse of video art history. This implies that my focus is precisely that which was met with reluctance: the unwillingness of the art historian to deal with the actual apparatuses and devices, merely with the conceptual space of technology, hence the narrative and historicizing effects of it. Naturally, the role and effects operate differently depending on if technology is the overall framing thematic space of a survey, or the key issue of an essay in an anthology. Video technology is far from principally addressed as the mere material ground/medium on which the art work happens, or from a formalist perspective (even if that was argued especially in the early period of the 1960s and 1970s), but operates in some of the narratives as an agent equal to artists and art works in the sense of narratively causing historical progression.26 The fact that video technology (and the various electronic and digital devices

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employed in the working and display processes) has constantly undergone changes and developments is unavoidably a subject of these narratives, as every new device opens up more and other possibilities in the creation of art works and how to display moving images. The rapid changes, developments and inventions regarding technology – we are talking about a time span of 40 to 50 years if digital media and new media art are also included – and the likewise increasingly lower prices making access to this medium possible for an increasing group of artists, are all reasons why the medium of video art is continuously focused on as an equally important object, as are artists and their specific works. One of the immediate effects of this perspective, especially when technology operates as the thematic space in which the historicizing narrative takes place, is that it is not necessarily how good, aesthetically advanced, interesting or innovative an art work is regarding what and how it represents, but rather the skill and experimental approach of employing and working both with and against the technique. In this respect, then, the historical narrative is based on a different value system than that of, for example, postmodern and contemporary painting, installation art or conceptual art, in relation to which working processes are rarely or rather briefly accounted for (technical/media aspects are comparable to detailed information of what kind of paint and brushes, not to the case of mixed media where the many components used are handled as too many to list in detail). Occasionally, detailed information on technological issues is not merely a question of presenting objective (material) facts to the reader, but more importantly, what this does to a particular narrative, which in turn affects definitions of video art and hence the discourse. As I discussed in the two first chapters, there was initially (in the early phase of video art) not only disagreements but also confusion about where and with what to begin the history, hence the narratives; that is, whether to locate video art’s past in the discourse of fine art, film or in the realm of (image) technology in a broad sense; the discursive past also determines the content of a historicizing narrative. As there were, and still are, benefits to be had from defining particular video practices as art – and the fine art context as an interesting field to work in and with – contemporary advanced image-making techniques make it again a question of how to define something as art or not.27 Art, obviously, still plays an important part in this context. The two surveys where video technology (that is, the medium) is the main thematic space are Meigh-Andrews and Spielmann’s books, and to a lesser extent, also in terms of how it is addressed in Elwes and Liljefors respectively. Rush and Martin do not highlight much content or other significance from technological facts or events. Despite its focus on technology, the narrative in Spielmann’s Video: The Reflexive Medium is in several respects different from Meigh-Andrews, and this is already signalled in her title, as she prefers the term medium rather than art (which, of course, indicates her own professional

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field). But her ambition is to create a theory of the video medium as it evolves and is reflected in the hands of artists. This is done by drawing mainly on the medium’s distinct character of simultaneously recoding and displaying (elsewhere but in the context of especially early video art, this is often discussed in relation to the notion of the real).28 She also distinguishes between the terms technology and medium, since the latter, she argues, incorporates aspects of aesthetics and display situation (as different conceptual sites for interpretation). She speaks of a ‘genealogy of media’ which includes the invention of a particular technology (the genesis) and its transformation into a medium.29 Thoroughly discussing the medium from a set of aspects and different professional fields and display situations, her theoretical analysis circles around the term ‘yardstick’, whose meaning differs depending on the character of the video work in focus and its contexts. Her language and the terms she employs are, I admit, very far from those I usually encounter within the field of art history and theory; this is the survey which, then, might actually do what the others cannot, since its historical narrative is rather far off from the discipline of – even contemporary – art history (at least as I know it).30 Video: The Reflexive Medium seems to respond to the interpretative capacity called for by, for example, Hall and Fifer, Belting and Meigh-Andrews. In this context the book confronts the argued lack of media-oriented knowledge and debate within art history (until recently), and thereby reopens the discourse of video art to a broader field of video aesthetics linguistically marked by paraphrasing the agents as ‘image technicians’.31 As a ‘new’ technology, video ‘constitutes an epistemological break’ which Spielmann relates to the discourse of ‘related technologies’ – and not ‘art’.32 Nevertheless, the major part of her book constitutes a substantial analysis of video works (of which art works are a prominent part) where speed, capacity and operationality (all particular to different media) are the categories which ‘determine the syntax of an electronic vocabulary’ and constitute the base for any aesthetics, according to her.33 This takes place in the third chapter, entitled ‘Video Aesthetics’, where Spielmann interrogates a set of concepts in relation to particular technological employments by specific artists (to some extent like Meigh-Andrews structures his narrative). It is especially in this part of the book that the content and aim are closest to what could arguably be called art history/theory, since she engages in content analysis. However, here the aesthetic concerns of the chosen video works she discusses are directly related not only to content but to the specific technological prerequisites employed. Spielmann explains how the video works actually function, and why images can appear as they do (related to speed, syntax, image manipulation and so on). Even though the art works that she engages with are much the same as in the other video art history narratives, Dara Birnbaum’s work is described differently and thus gets new meaning. Not only is the fact that Birnbaum appropriated television images accounted for (again), but also how her

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particular usage of the technique per se underscores the critical intent with the piece.34 On Birnbaum’s methods of revealing the constructedness of television images in her most recalled work, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, Spielmann writes: This method exhibits a political dimension, because by displaying the mediatization of media images, Birnbaum renders visible the fact that the more these images self-referentially repeat the media system’s formats, the less they refer to an actual existence in reality. The index of a level of secondary mediatization exemplified in the video work contributes to understanding how video can be used for public monitoring and surveillance. Birnbaum points out that such images, precisely because they appear immediate and, with that, ‘real’, allow their status as images to be easily overlooked and can similarly be considered ‘unmediated’ reality, a perception television consistently suggests to its viewers. If, by contrast, the segmented form of presenting pictoriality is not to be misunderstood as an image of reality, it is necessary to recognize the sovereignty of such media images, the traits of whose construction are analyzable in the videographic process of reflexion.35

The purpose of this long quotation is to highlight the level of knowledge which the reader must not only engage with here but also possess in order to be able to follow her line of argument. In this respect, Video: The Reflexive Medium is further distinguished from the other surveys. Another example of deviation is disclosed by how Spielmann approaches the original event of video art: Paik’s screening at the Café au Go Go in 1965. Instead of promoting this event as the origin, she focuses on the technological aspects when writing: On the other hand, Paik’s version of events needs correcting. That is because rewinding was not possible with the Portapak Sony brought out in 1965, so that Paik was in any case dependent on additional technology to play his tape and, in fact, on the long-available video recorder, which belongs to the professional realm of television and not the new video technology. The hour of video’s birth as a medium, therefore, does not arrive with the introduction of the Sony Portapak camera and not with Paik.36

Here, obviously, the myth is about to fall and does so by correction, through a precise knowledge of technology, for she continues: ‘It is Andy Warhol’s achievement to have recorded the first videotape at the technological conjunction of television and video and to have displayed it in an installation together with film.’37 Video is thus a much more complicated issue here due to technological aspects revealed by more exact information of what was both on the market and, more importantly, employed by the artists respectively. Spielmann further notes that it was ‘the technical imperfection of video’ that attracted ‘television activists such as Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider’.38 Moreover, chronology enters into this, as Spielmann marks a ‘first group’ of video users working in the field entitled alternative television.39 It is the second

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group which brings video as a creative medium into the fine art context. The perspective on Gillette and Schneider’s practices differs from that of Rush who speaks of them more as artists and focuses on the art context, hence overlooking a detailed account of the technological aspects. Here, Rush simply notes that: ‘the cable television movement was an important, if little noted, element of early Video art.’40 Focusing on the same time span, agents and – actually – the same technology, and the innovations and inventions connected thereto, Video: The Reflexive Medium is marked linguistically by its somewhat different perspective and hence, partly, discourse in constructing an alternative narrative, and also tracing its ‘various stages of evolution, cultural, and institutional development’.41 Technology as a tentative thematic space is here marked by the ambition to explore the ‘aesthetically differentiated medium’, which may also take place within a fine art context. As I am trying here to invent the concept of thematic space, hence figuring out how to use it, my suggestion in relation to Video: The Reflexive Medium is that Spielmann’s way of not only addressing video technology, but narratively working from within it, alters and transforms the possibilities to also actually think about art history differently.42 In A History of Video Art, Meigh-Andrews structures the entire historical narrative on technology and new inventions, employing the appearance of new devices as chronologically ordered instances to which he juxtaposes art works as examples of how particular technological devices have been used and how this affects aesthetic aspects. He claims that he does not employ technological issues for his interpretations of the meaning content of the art works, but as a mere organizing method of the narrative.43 Nevertheless, it makes A History of Video Art as much a survey on the linear and progressive history of the moving image technology available for creative purposes as it is a construction of a story of the art form as constituted by artists and their work. Unlike the others, he also illustrates his text with images of technological devices, which gives prominence to the equipment addressed as also visually represented alongside stills from video art works. How much his interest in the technological aspects may have to do with him being an artist himself, I can only speculate, but that he therefore has more knowledge, another interest, and entry to the field is made clear in his introduction. Compared with the other publications here, it is, however, evident to me that his concerns diverge from those interrogated by the art historians; he is very specific about the importance of understanding video art as ‘technologydependent’. My query is: which art is not? The interesting question here is rather: what is historically, theoretically and aesthetically to be drawn from his line of argument? The first part of A History of Video Art is entitled ‘The Origins of Video Art: The Historical and Cultural Context’ and begins with a rather common way of addressing the historical settings of an emerging art form as it tells of where

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and when it all started. Technology as a subject is not that conspicuous in the first chapters, since it is in most cases subordinate to the account of the various possibilities for artists to use broadcasting and other electronic imaging technology equipment (by, for example, setting up collective studios). Further on and amongst the numerous examples of video works that exemplify how the specific employment of a particular technology is argued to have played a decisive role for a (radical) change regarding the aesthetic concerns of artists, there are certain ones that highlight the relation between technology and aesthetic outcome better than others (by ‘better’ I mean here in a pedagogical sense for those who are not themselves well informed on these aspects, that is, when the information is more intimately connected to interpretations of what a video work means, and how). For example, Brian Hoey’s Videvent (1973–75) is described in terms of the technology employed in order to also elucidate the aesthetic insights of Hoey; namely, that he instantly realized the technological potential of particular devices for working interactively with the audience.44 With a few more examples Meigh-Andrews connects an interest in the live event and interactivity – the concerns with getting more – and indepth – involved with the real shared by many artists – with what was actually technically possible to realize. The concept of the innovative is transferred to what is technologically possible, not to think about art, or image, differently; what used to be located in the realm of the individual (avant-garde) artist’s creativity and talent to break away from mainstream practices is here as much located in the doings of the technology. Moreover, even if fairly briefly, he also connects different issues of image technology to political, social and cultural changes during the 1960s and 1970s in the Western world, hence situating the former in a historically broad context in this part of the book.45 Published in 2006, A History of Video Art nevertheless responds to several of the questions raised in relation to the discourse of fine art and art history previously argued to be more or less incapable of involving broader societal issues. However, as the text proceeds, technology as both a subject and an organizing device for the narrative becomes increasingly noticeable as a thematic space in which the story unfolds.46 For example, the chapter entitled ‘Beyond the Lens: Abstract Video Imagery and Image Processing’ is concerned with the relation between specific technological devices – such as image synthesizers (for example, for image distortions, as in Ture Sjölander’s and Bror Wikström’s work Time for National Swedish Television in 1966, or the developing of the so-called ‘Paik/Abe video synthesizer’ in 1969) – and the aesthetic (visual) experiments and ambitions of specific artists’ practices.47 Despite Meigh-Andrews’ own viewpoint that he does not depart or substantially relate technological aspects to the analysis of artworks, which is how I understand his initial statements, I find his discussions and analysis of the latter highly informed and framed not only by information on which technique has been used but as precisely an interpretative tool of how to

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make significant meanings out of a particular video work’s content (which I rather think is often subordinated here to the technology and working process). The type of technology and how it is employed is not subordinate to the traditional content meaning of a work here; they are instead tightly inter-related throughout his analysis.48 In this particular chapter the artists who come to represent not only their own work but also, as a consequence of Meigh-Andrews’ interpretative perspective, a certain technological device or even the co-production of one, deviate the most from both the surveys that depart from the US and those by art historians respectively. Therefore, one rather obvious conclusion to be made here is that the author’s in-depth knowledge of the technological particularities of specific artworks operates as constitutive for the narrative at large, hence creating a somewhat different story of video art’s history than found elsewhere. Given that video art’s history is narrated here as foremost the aesthetic practices of the video medium, it is a paradox to argue that technology is not crucial for meaning production. On the contrary, the benefits of MeighAndrews closely involving the medium with aesthetic issues is that it constitutes a solid basis for also discussing meaning as communicated. The second and third parts of the book are framed precisely as responses or relations to technical contexts and changes. This is an historical narrative in which the diverseness of image-making technologies is the centre around which a multitude of aesthetic possibilities revolve and are accordingly accounted for, often in detail, and which furthermore has implications for Meigh-Andrews’ choices regarding which artists and art works he addresses in depth, but also refers to. In relation to canon, there is a return in the second part to those artists and video works that I have argued are unquestionably part of a video art canon. Here the names of the artists and the titles of video works are highlighted directly under the captions in the table of contents. The achievements and innovative usage of technology are directly connected to specific names, of which some are particularly well established as indispensable for any historical narrative on video art: for example, Jonas, Serra, Hall, Birnbaum, Viola, Robert Cahen, Woody Vasulka, Snow and Hill. But also – to Meigh-Andrews’ credit – names that are rarely highlighted elsewhere appear repeatedly (that is, compared to the other publications investigated here), like Peter Donebauer.49 The concepts of innovation and novelty which permeate many theoretically informed historical narratives on modernist as well as postmodern art are transformed here from being located as the agency of avant-garde artists to the realm of technology per se. That is, they are continuously operating as crucial narratological and evaluative methods by which innovative art works are distinguished from lesser ones. But since their location has been transferred in both time and space (from being employed as defining concepts of modernist art to being used in relation to the historically later postmodern

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video art), the way they import meaning is also transformed. My point here is that, depending on the thematic space, which is here technology, not only is the structure of this particular narrative affected, but it also both confines and therefore charges video art history with specific meanings inasmuch as it operates as a criterion of what that history involves. Furthermore, when juxtaposed, these concepts and the narrative site, as well as the part played by technology, operate as establishing an historical lineage that moves beyond the other two categories of indispensable events: particularly claimed (canonized) artists and art works. In these narratives technological inventions in the form of new apparatuses furthermore serve the function as historical evidence that, seemingly, do not always need to be interpreted but rather appear as objective facts to which one can link (chronologically) particular artists, art works and modes of visual aesthetics. However, as technology is far from only employed – narratively – as a material device, it also comes to mean in the same way that other signs and events do. For instance, the appearance of the Portapak is more often than not narratively framed as almost an historical myth (not in the sense of it not being true, but by the manner of which the event of Paik using it for the first time is narrated: as the birth of video art, hence causing both video art and later on its history, the uncut – and therefore almost real – displaying of the recording he made). In short: situating video technology (in a broad sense) as the core of a narrative has three particularly different reasons and outcomes. There was the initial need to present and foremost argue for video as a medium not at all necessarily in opposition to art-making, but as a new artistic medium. Yet at the same time, technology was the factor that kept video art practices linked to a much broader field of creative video practices and hence offered a site of paralogy (as a gatekeeper to art history, crudely speaking).50 Secondly, some narratives are propelled by technological developments instead of discussing art based on changes in the art world and art theory. And, thirdly, there are narratives like Meigh-Andrews’ which is more a history of technologies used for making art than it is a story of aims, themes and theories of video art and artists.

Plurality, critical engagements and subversion: a future site of criticality? In order to conclude this project, I turn to yet another subject; or actually, several different but inter-related concepts that I think have seriously shaped and altered not only definitions of the art form, but also the historical narratives based on the process of legitimizing video as art-differently. The following is thus a conclusion in the shape of suggestions rather than proper

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claims. I propose yet another thematic space in which I think that video art’s history is situated rather firmly: plurality. In and through the juxtapositions, or intertwinement, of ideas and practices of critical engagements turned into a precondition, the argued potential for subversion as immanent also in the very mechanics of the technology, and the evasive connection to ideas of the contemporary plurality, is recurrently claimed. It is, furthermore, related to the idea of self-image, although I hesitate to emphasize this as conceptually functional to such an extent that it could be claimed as a thematic space. It might sound odd to think in terms of a self-image in relation to an art form, a video art discourse even, but all of these issues which have shaped the video art discourse, of which the surveys and many of the essays addressed here are the creators and instigators, at least approach such a state, or situation.51 I do not dive into the realm of psychology or psychoanalysis, but depart from self-image simply understood as an image of a self, which is not necessarily unwilling to change altogether but yet is firmly situated, reasonably possible to partake in negotiations, justified and cast through experiences, and with a readiness to state ‘this is what I am’; yet is thinkable in terms of plurality, hence advocating the paradoxical rather than the dichotomical. Therefore, as also conceptually always already in a state of intertwinedness, it would further support the idea of a self-image produced by, hence based on, a phenomenon (that is, video) in need of self-definition, yet simultaneously claiming a state of the plural as conditional of the former. I would argue that video art as historicized is immersed with this. It would promote a position, or situation, encouraging difference not as an option but as a way of claiming the notion, hence inhabiting, of art; in other words, a video art culture defined and framed by specific and operative notions that comes from within, so to speak. Or so it seems. There have been many definitions of postmodern art, and of what constitutes the most significant ruptures with its immediate past: that is, high (formalist) modernism. In the contexts of the new art forms emerging both at the time of the rupture and as causing it, the critical potential of art is a recurring aspect (not to say feature) often made manifest. It therefore became something of a mode imbedded in particular postmodern art trajectories.52 It is through this idea that much video art makes historical sense within the narratives of its history as it evolves in these surveys and anthologies. Plurality is a key notion that permeates the discourse on video art and it is invoked in relation to nearly all of the major subjects by which video art’s history is narrated. Plurality as an immanent situation, or condition, of video art is announced in relation to the many and various fields of creative video production and other art forms from which video artists/video art producers arrived in the first place. That is, the agents of video art ensure the plural roots of video art’s beginning – many from other fields than the art world (working in other art media and other fields of moving image

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production – like Godard, for example – and as professionals unlinked to art schools and so on) – hence also working as one aspect framing what the history of video art can be about. Not only does this professional diversity need to be remembered, but it needs to be repeatedly acknowledged as a foundation of the field of video creativity adjacent to which video art was legitimized as art (by deviation from the realms of other video productions), hence historicized. This recalls Rush’s statement that there are either schools or themes that are readily recognizable to frame video art by. And although the origin of video as art is solidly located in and by Paik’s video screening event at the Café au Go Go in 1965, the diverse roots could instead make this into a point of departure – leaving the singularity of an origin behind: recalling Cottingham’s illustration again. Acknowledging this event as precisely an event amongst other possible starting points would, gently, alter ideas of historical progression and old-fashioned practices of art history. My own suggestion has been to introduce the idea of paramodernism, in order to doubt the (formalist) modernism–postmodernism dichotomy as always of a paradigmatic status. Plurality is also a buzzword of postmodern theories of art, but a plurality which I have argued above comes, partly, from rather particular understandings of especially high modernism. Postmodern art is generally defined as a broad field of art production and the era when media like video and photography were no longer possible to sidestep within art institutions as well as art history. Video art is thus one of those crucial phenomena that force the notion of art to be seriously reconsidered, less strictly. This is what these stories tell us. Furthermore, plurality is present in relation to the ideas both of video art as decidedly highly critical, theoretically informed and conceptual in ‘its’ take on the visual, and that video art was art despite the moving image deviating from the notion of art hitherto. It is in this context a strategy that would (initially) function as a safeguard towards the strict realm of art history and fine art. It is related to and invoked by the history of the many technological devices and apparatuses that precede video, hence the historical archive(s) as directly given, as it seems, as a legitimizing source that defies the specific trajectories of progressive linearity in terms of visuality and aesthetics that art history was defined by. For example, Meigh-Andrews begins A History of Video Art as follows: Towards the end of the middle decade of the twentieth century, a perplexing and complex art form emerged in Europe and the United States. Variously called video art, artists’ video, experimental film, artists’ television, ‘the new television’ – even ‘Guerilla TV’, the genre drew on a diverse range of art movements, theoretical ideas, and technological advances, as well as political and social activism. In this period of dynamic social, economical and cultural change, much new art was formally and politically radical – artists who took up working

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with video in this period were highly influenced by movements and ideas from Fluxism, performance art, Body Art, Arte Povera, Pop Art, Minimalist sculpture, Conceptual art, avant-garde music, experimental film, contemporary dance and theatre and a diverse range of other cross-disciplinary cultural activities and theoretical discourses.53

This quote places a rather extreme heterogeneous claim on what video art relates to and what is conveyed. This much dispersed net of connections is an illustration of video art discourse that by no means singles out A History of Video Art and I hope I have made this clear; it is evident in Battcock’s collection of texts and the questions he proposed as essential for understanding the art of this new medium. In his ‘Foreword’ to Illuminating Video, David A. Ross writes: Video art has continually benefited from its inherently radical character. On one hand, it has always been associated with the concepts of superindependent alternatives to the hegemony of commercial television. From its earliest Portapak productions, video has been the purposeful outsider, attempting not merely a critical stance but models for a less alienated and alienating set of uses for the technology that has reshaped our century. On the other hand, its root within the art world linked it to the complex Fluxus sensibility and to those other conceptualists who used blank irony, appropriation, and inversion often to critique a commodified culture and its attendant forms of representation and reification. These oppositional practices … tended to explore the complex individual and social relationships within a culture undergoing extreme transformations.54

According to Ross ‘it is in fact the emergence of the artist’s voice – clear, insightful, powerful, and fully controlled by the artist – that forms the foundation of video as an art form’.55 Important here is that this art form, actually video art discourse, makes claims from both within and outside the more strict understanding of the art world simultaneously. Yet what plurality achieves and how it operates as a narrative strategy per se is not a subject for any serious consideration in the surveys claiming to tell (versions of) video art’s history. One of the crucial aspects of thinking, hence discussing, video art as artdifferently stems from the rather profound and widespread view that the notion of art (as in back then) had undergone a paradigmatic shift, but also, and of course as an effect, that art history could not adequately deal with the video medium. This is where the idea of video art as an expression of a new and decidedly contemporary situation of art emerged. It was contemporary back then – alongside the other art forms that emerged at the same point in time and often in conjunction with each other – since it enforced a much broader take on (fine) art. This is an issue which is given much attention by scholars such as Belting and Danto (though he did not relate this to video

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art), but which also permeates the historical surveys as much as the more critical writing present in the anthologies. Yet the connection to ideas of the contemporary is evasive. It is not a subject in its own right, hence does not appear manifestly as a defining criterion. Still I make this claim. Not only did the video medium’s entrance into the field of art production, as an artistic medium, effectuate art; it also did that in simultaneity with its own emergence and by and of itself (that is, video art professionals). The legitimizing of video works as art and the historicizing process was as much a product from within as an effect of empowerment, undertaken as a strategy to undermine the preferential right of interpretation, and – by uncritical inclusion – to give video works the status of art. Much postwar as well as contemporary and advanced art of today rests on a presumption of being performative: not only calling for change, but causing change. This is where I want to connect plurality and contemporaneity (the state, and status, of being contemporary) to the idea of video art as – also – a site of critical engagements. I think of contemporary not as a fixed quality, but as practices and attitudes located in particular, identifiable sites and times, and as expressing a high awareness of the same.56 Irit Rogoff writes that contemporaneity is a ‘coordinating principle’ – a definition more apt in this context.57 For example, the emphasis on how to understand video art collaborations is as activism: here video art/creative production (the slash is placed here since the separation of the two realms is perhaps vague) works from within the shared site of technology, but with an attitude of outsideness regarding not only aesthetic and political aims but ideological views. The argued potential for subversion regarding video art is also present in the very mechanics of the technology. Activism as a strategy (or even an art form?) is shared by the ways of working and ambitions of performance and conceptual artists, as with the somewhat later field of institutional critique and relational aesthetics respectively.58 Video art is here imbued with a social and cultural awareness that is referred to and discussed not only in terms of content and representation, but importantly also as an aspect that reveals video art’s detachment from traditional (that is, non-contemporary, even synchronous) art; again an aspect of plurality and the status of art-differently. Another example: as I noted in the fourth chapter in relation to feminism and so-called women artists, video art – especially in the historical surveys – is interpreted in connection with theoretical fields also emerging within academia and critical writings on art. Moreover, activism is the instance where most of the canonized and, for the historical record, indispensable women artists enter the historical narratives: feminism operates at the site of plurality, it testifies to the awareness of (the authors’) ideological changes within the discipline of art history and the institutionalized art world, and it functions as a performative force expressed through art. Feminist art cannot be claimed as anything but actions and expressions aiming at problematizing or even subverting

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socio-cultural dis/agreements; as such it (though I am uncomfortable with the singular form) borders on activism. Feminist video art vacillates on that important line separating (theoretically) art from what is going on out there in reality. One is perhaps not permitted to make wishes in a context such as this, but one can always point out the lack of theoretical approaches; namely, post-colonial theory. It is not to be seen in either the historicizing surveys addressed here or amongst the multifarious voices speaking from within the anthologies; an archive of thoughts and actions that (still) operates as a blind spot in this context. Having expressed a rather critical attitude to especially the narratives that historicize video art, I should also, perhaps, think through how video art’s history could be written differently. In order to at least make suggestions, I turn to Irit Rogoff’s concept of criticality and her ideas, or even plea, for unlearning. As a notion relevant to theoretical writings on particularly engaged contemporary art, criticality was definitely not in flux within art historical discourse at the time when video art was in the process of being, partly, defined as (fine) art. Probably it is still not in flux, even if it is involved in specific theoretical concerns. Rogoff’s argument is that criticality ‘goes beyond conjunctives such as those that bring together “art and politics” or “theory and practice” or “analysis and action”. In such a practice we aspire to experience the relations between the two as a form of embodiment which cannot be separated into their independent components.’59 The notion refers to a ‘shift away from critique and towards criticality’. My argument, with which I conclude this book, implicates a transfer of some crucial aspects from Rogoff’s actual activation of criticality as an embodied, but destabilizing, practice that continuously defies permanence.60 The position, rather than the site, of criticality is here a suggestive understanding of the formation of a discourse of video art and its history. Whereas the art form – as it is understood from within, so to speak – may be argued to embody (an embryo of) criticality, the theoretical and historicizing practices which tried to define and frame it (which would be the opposite of what Rogoff intends with the notion) do not. However, there is a conceptual site where both of these phenomena became intertwined points towards a future position as departing from video art that performs critical theory and thereby destabilized the notion of art by claiming a position as art-differently. If initially there was reluctance towards the notion of art, video-as-art still had to inhabit that particular discursive space. My suggestion here is thus that video art’s inhabitation, to use Rogoff’s phrase, of art was (only) made possible, or at least endurable, by accessing it by a different mode.61 I do not argue that there was ever a plan or strategy by video art agents of different but thinkable collaborative professions, but that video art discourse as it is historicized and was legitimized both performs and claims difference from the inside of the larger discourse of visual/fine art. That advocators for video as art were also critical about the notion of art

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hitherto, and the ideologies and aesthetic value system with which it was, and partly still is, employed and practised, is beside the point here. But the critical actions and perspectives performed and visualized respectively as video art are of crucial importance. If video art was once a critical art form per se, alongside, for example, conceptual art, and then co-inhabited art from the position of criticality, the potential for making, rather than causing, difference by critique would not be thwarted but in and of the present. As I argued above, critical engagement as a (Roslerian) condition of (advanced) video art is not as manifest as the trajectory departing from technology and video medium specificities; it is not to be found as a separate subject or in the captions in the body of texts which I have been concerned with here. Yet my claim here is that the importance of the critical permeates both the initial legitimizing process constituting video works as art, but also the arguments on video art’s relation to television, film, art history, art institutions and the art market, as well as to society at large. That is, video art is to a large extent historically narrated as art that investigates, questions and performs political, hence ideological, critique. Feminism serves as the most obvious example of the latter, but one that is partly transformed into a genre carried out by women artists specifically and that, by extension, actually weakens the potential for a position marked by the criticality of much feminist-informed video art. Despite the notion of criticality being historically later than the emergence of video art, my suggestion for a video art history written differently is that criticality can also be engaged as an analytical concept within the historicizing process as a way of understanding, hence narrating and (aesthetically) evaluating, a manifest body of works, to such an extent that it is narratively transformed into a thematic space (inhabiting other ways of actions and thoughts).62 Particular video art events of the past, that is, of video art’s history, are valued as historically significant due to their explicit postmodern critical stance of questioning and doubting. As this particular significance is continuously emphasized throughout the historicizing process – that which I am arguing for here – it evolves into a particular narrative space of tectonic impact. Moreover, criticality in this context must not be established as a metaphor,63 describing postwar art in general terms, but must more specifically reclaim the more serious branch of video art production. As a concept it would then operate both as an imperative for art production, as content, and – over time – as a particular category for analysis, and valuation, of certain art works. It would furthermore serve to distinguish not only video art, but also the branches of, for example, conceptual and performance art that are claimed as performative; that is, as art discursively different from both traditional art forms and the myopic, self-referencing, high modernism.64 Regarding narratives of video art’s history, it is the critical potential understood as both an inherent aspect of

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the video medium itself, the (self-assumed) raison d’être of the art form, and the ambition of particular artistic practices and/or video art works. To further elucidate my point: in the 1960s and 1970s, one of the most distinguished targets criticized by video artists and collaborative groups were commercial TV productions – again, as it is historically narrated. Initially, they worked literally in the production space of the latter, renting broadcast equipment. This, however, is what goes for the American engagement, involvement and production of video art particularly. Different from high modernist painting and art produced in the studio of the artist, video artists (in spe, as video was not yet really considered art) – but not only they – moved so to speak inside of the institution/production site of their investigations in order to produce interpretations hence suggesting various understandings of the world (on a micro as well as a macro level). Here, the Rogoffian inhabitation has perhaps its most specific relevance. Thus, if video art entailed an immanent critical potential due to both the technology and the new invested sites for art to perform socio-cultural engagement from, towards and within, art history from now on could benefit from unlearning many aspects of conventional art history and aim for a position called for by Rogoff’s plea for criticality.

Notes 1

Kurt Johannesson, Retorik eller konsten att övertyga, Norstedts, Stockholm, (1998) 2008, p. 284. My translation.

2

I am aware that concepts can also operate as discursive sites, as, for example, the notion ‘art’. But I am aiming here at subjects employed to circumscribe a set of practices.

3

This idea of a nest stems from Mitchell’s discussions on McLuhan’s idea of ‘sensory ratios’. See W.J.T. Mitchell, ‘There Are No Visual Media’, Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 4, no. 2, August 2005, pp. 257–266.

4

Lena Liepe, ‘Bilden, den historiska tolkningen och verkligheten: Om ikonografins teori och praktik’, Bild och berättelse. Föredrag framlagda vid det 17:e nordiska symposiet för ikonografisk forskning, Kakskerta, Finland, 19–24 september 2000, Helena Edgren, Marianne Roos (red.), Picta nr. 4, Åbo 2003, pp. 147–156.

5

See, for example, Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1984; Roland Barthes and Lionel Duisit, ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives’, New Literary History, vol. 6, no. 2, 1975, pp. 237–272; Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, translated by Jane E. Lewin, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, (1983) 1986; Hélène Bowen Raddeker, Sceptical History: Feminist and Postmodern Approaches in Practice, Routledge, London and New York, 2007.

6

Robert S. Nelson, ‘The Map of Art History’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 79, no. 1, March 1997, pp. 28–40, at 28. In the section entitled ‘Surveys’, Nelson investigates the different editions of the History of Art survey by the Jansons, which was first published in 1962.

7

Compare Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1991, pp. 83 and 26.

8

Nelson, p. 35.

9

For example, Barthes writes: ‘The narratives of the world are numberless. Narrative is first and foremost a prodigious variety of genres, themselves distributed amongst different substances – as

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though any material were fit to receive man’s stories … narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting (think of Carpaccio’s Saint Ursula), stained glass windows, cinema, comics, news items, conversations. Moreover, within this almost infinite diversity of forms, narrative is present in every age, in every place, in every society; it begins with the very history of man-kind and has never been nor never will be a people without narrative. All classes, all human groups, have their narratives … narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: It is simply there, like life itself …’: Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text, essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath, Fontana Press, London, (1977) 1990, p. 79. 10

Alun Munslow, Narrative and History, Palgrave Macmillan, London and New York, 2007, p. 3. Emphasis in original. Munslow is here referring to a debate between E.H. Carr and Geoffrey Elton who advocated these two as either/or. Munslow is primarily addressing students and the book is structured as a handbook of how notions, theories and practices of historical narratives are created and hence can be studied as ‘stories’. While presenting clear and distinct arguments and explanations, the book, however, also claims a universal relevance for large parts of the discussions he undertakes – a comprehension that I do not easily agree with. One of his standpoints implies that there are three kinds of historians: constructionist, reconstructionist and deconstructionist respectively. The point of referring to a publication like Munslow’s here is to suggest what a critical historian/historical narrative should exercise as a minimum of selfconsciousness and self-reflexivity in relation to the position from which one writes/in relation to the construction parameters of the story created.

11

Ibid., p. 4. Emphasis in original.

12

Munslow speaks of the necessity of ‘followability’ (p. 32). Thus, what I speak of here as indispensable moments/events (and he refers to as ‘facts’) have to be organized into a sequence in order to make sense in the historical narrative: both their narrative function and their meaning are derivable from the sequential context.

13

Michael Rush, Video Art, Thames & Hudson, London, 2003, p. 14.

14

Ibid., p. 41.

15

Ibid., pp. 62–123.

16

Ibid., p. 121.

17

Ibid., p. 169: here he declares that video media, by now, ‘is unimportant to artists’.

18

I do not mean that the survey authors must have taken the structures and organizing principles directly from the anthologies (as if they were theoretical and narrative manuals of how to process the past into history), but that the monographs actually do mirror the same themes.

19 On paralogy, see Jean-Francoise Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, (1979) 1984. In his context, paralogy means the movement against established ways of reasoning and is foremost a strategy to counter meta-narratives. A survey is not a meta-narrative in the Lyotardian sense of the concept. However, in order to distinguish the different modes of knowledge production that I am interrogating here, the concept is hopefully clarifying. Yet in the context of the discipline of art history, the historical survey operates as a meta-narrative and constitutes history as an objective, progressive, universal, truth-claiming narrative with a totalizing structure – that is, in its worst, most traditional form. 20

On rhizome, see Gilles Deleuze and Felíx Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Mille plateaux. Capitalisme et schizophrenia, 1980), translated by Brian Massumi, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1987.

21

On a meta-theoretical level, the differences between the format of anthologies and monographs could, for example, also be related to and problematized from Hassan’s sets of modernist versus postmodern concepts as he presented them in Ihab Hassan, The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture, Ohio State University Press, Columbus, 1987. See especially ‘Toward a Concept of Postmodernism’, pp. 84–96. On pluralism, see, for example, Ihab Hassan, ‘Pluralism in Postmodern Perspective’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 3, 1986, pp. 503–520.

22

Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogical Principle, translated by Wlad Godzich, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1984.

23

For example, Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, Dutton, New York, 1970, has a section entitled ‘Part Five: Television as a Creative Medium’. In Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, eds, Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, Aperture and Bay Area Video Coalition, New York, 1990, television as a subject appears in different sections (that is, there is no section addressing television

and also: making stories, thinking through thematic space 191

exclusively, as in John G. Hanhardt, ed., Video Culture: A Critical Investigation, Peregrine Smith Books, Layton, in association with Visual Studies Workshop Press, New York, (1986) 1990): for example, Kathy Rae Huffman, ‘Video Art: What’s TV Got to Do with It?’, pp. 81–90; Vito Acconci, ‘Television, Furniture, and Sculpture: The Room with the American View’, pp. 125–134. Very different perspectives on television (as medium, culture, concept and so on) are examined in the following examples: Michael Nash, ‘Vision after Television: Technocultural Convergence, Hypermedia, and the New Media Arts Field’, in Michael Renov and Erika Suderburg, eds, Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, pp. 382–399; Beverly Houston, ‘Television and Video Text: A Crisis of Desire’, in Patti Podesta, ed., Resolution: A Critique of Video Art, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), Los Angeles, 1986, pp. 110–124; and Richard Lorber, ‘Epistemological TV’, in Gregory Battcock, ed., New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1978, pp. 95–102. 24

Chris Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art: The Development of Form and Function, Berg, Oxford, 2006, p. 3.

25

I leave the subject of television out here. Much has been written on the shared technological equipment and, especially, early video art’s relation to commercial TV as well as a discourse to both enter (from an activist perspective) and deviate from (in order to establish video as art). The same goes for so-called independent and experimental film and TV.

26

Compare Ina Blom, ‘The Autobiography of Video: Outline for a Revisionist Account of Early Video Art’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 39, no. 2, 2013, pp. 276–295.

27

In relation to the expanding field of image technological innovations and the practice of them within art contexts, Edward A. Shanken has written extensively. His writings concerns the effects on the concept(s) of art, hence history. See, for example, Shanken, ed., Art and Electronic Media, Phaidon, London, 2009; Shanken, ‘Art in the Information Age: Technology and Conceptual Art’, Leonardo, vol. 35, no. 4, 2002, pp. 433–438; Shanken, ‘Alternative Nows and Thens to Be’, in Piotr Krajewski and Violetta Kutlubasis-Krajewska, 14th Media Art Biennale WRO 2011: Alternative Now, The WRO Art Center, Wroclaw, 2012, pp. 8–13.

28

This is also what prompted Krauss to expound on what she termed the narcissism of video art: Rosalind Krauss, ‘Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism’ (1976), in Hanhardt, (1986) 1990, pp. 179–191.

29

Yvonne Spielmann, Video: The Reflexive Medium, translated by Anja Welle and Stan Jones, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2008, especially pp. 19–23 (originally published as Video. Das reflexive Medium, Suhrkamp Press, Frankfurt, 2005).

30

The theoretical fields that Spielmann departs from are also different from those in the other surveys, drawing mainly from media theory.

31

Spielmann, for example, pp. 25–26. Both ‘image technician’ and ‘video artists’ are marked by quotation marks (for example, p. 73).

32

Ibid., p. 19.

33

Ibid., p. 133.

34

Ibid., pp. 153–159.

35

Ibid., p. 158.

36

Ibid., p. 77.

37

Ibid., p. 78.

38

Ibid., p. 80.

39

Ibid., p. 81.

40

Rush, 2003, p. 20.

41

Spielmann, p. 13.

42

Compare Blom.

43

Meigh-Andrews, p. 3.

44

Ibid., pp. 48–49.

45

Ibid., especially pp. 59–60.

192 video art historicized

46

The third chapter, ‘Technology, Access and Context: Social and Political Activists and their Role in the Development of Video Art’, ends with a rather brief account of the then new technology, but the reason for withholding this information from the previous discussions is, however, not made clear, which makes it appear almost like an appendix: Meigh-Andrews, pp. 68–70.

47

Ibid., pp. 113–117.

48

Ibid., for example, pp. 133–136 on Richard Monkhouse and the Spectre, described as a ‘video synth’.

49

Ibid., pp. 183–185.

50

See, for example, Meigh-Andrews on shared media (pp. 63–64).

51

Compare Amelia Jones, Self/Image: Technology, Representation and the Contemporary Subject, Routledge, London and New York, 2006.

52

See any art historical survey on Western art of this period.

53

Meigh-Andrews, p. 2. He also has sections addressing music and cinema, politely arguing their relevance for video art and artists working beyond the boundaries of specific mediums and genres. The importance of John Cage for the work of Paik is furthermore an aspect of relevance which is noted (for example, pp. 10–16).

54

David A. Ross, ‘Foreword’, in Hall and Fifer, pp. 10–11.

55

Ibid., p. 11. My emphasis.

56

I want to emphasize here that I do not share Terry Smith’s ideas on what contemporary art, or contemporaneity, implies. See his most recent work on the subject: Contemporary Art: World Currents, Laurence King Publishing, London, 2011. For a critique of Smith’s theories and narrative strategies of (a)historicizing postmodern and contemporary art, see Dan Karlholm, ‘Contemporary, Now and Forever’, Art History, vol. 36, no. 1, 2013, pp. 226–231.

57

Irit Rogoff, ‘Om det kritiska’, Paletten, no. 2, 2008, p. 36. Translated into Swedish by Niclas Nilsson, and back to English by me. Originally from ‘Unfolding the Critical@Tanzkongress Deutschland’, Berlin, 2006.

58

See Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods, Les presses du reel, Dijon, (1998) 2002.

59

Irit Rogoff, ‘“Smuggling” – An Embodied Criticality’, 2006, p. 1, http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/ rogoff1/en (accessed 20 April 2013). Emphasis in original.

60

Rogoff, 2008, p. 35.

61

Rogoff, 2006, p. 2.

62

More recently, Dieter Roelstraete has spoken of re-enactment of the concept of art as an opportunity for contemporary art to deal seriously and ‘reproductively’ with both the past and the present by investing in realism. Realism is here understood as deeply concerned with politics and ideologies foremost as they occur in times of crisis. See Dieter Roelstraete, ‘After the Historiographic Turn: Current Findings’, e-flux Journal, no. 6, May 2009, pp. 1–10.

63

Compare Ricoeur.

64

Criticality is thus not necessarily synonymous with institutional critique as it initially emerged in works by artists such as Broodthaers, Buren and Haacke. However, institutional critique developed into a movement, hence an art theoretical concept, also embracing artistic practices that performed critique of ‘site-specificity, globalization, and the relation of visual culture to urban and metropolitan environments’: John C. Welchman, ‘Introduction’, in Welchman, ed., Institutional Critique and After, JRP Ringier, Zurich, 2006, p. 11. In this later and extended understanding of art as performing socio-cultural critique, the two concepts draw nearer to each other.

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Stearns, Robert, ‘The Kitchen’, in Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot, eds, Video Art: An Anthology, The Raindance Foundation, New York and London, 1976, pp. 160–161. Steedman, Carolyn, ‘After the Archive’, Comparative Critical Studies, vol. 8, nos 2–3, Edinburgh University Press, 2011, pp. 321–340. Stefanotty, Robert, ‘Kissing the Unique Object Good-Bye’, in Gregory Battcock, ed., New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1978, pp. 167–168. Steiner, Christopher, ‘Can the Canon Burst?’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 78, no. 2, 1996, pp. 213–217. Stokstad, Marilyn, ed., Art History, 3rd edition, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, 2008. Stooss, Toni and Thomas Kellein, eds, Nam June Paik: Video Time – Video Space, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1993. Sturken, Marita, ‘Paradox in the Evolution of an Art Form: Great Expectations and the Making of a History’, in Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, eds, Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art, Aperture and Bay Area Video Coalition, New York, 1990, pp. 101–121. Sturken, Marita, ‘The Politics of Video Memory: Electronic Erasure and Inscriptions’, in Michael Renov and Erika Suderburg, eds, Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 1996, pp. 1–12. Sung-Min, Hong, ‘Korean Video Art Now: From Collage to Montage’, Art AsiaPacific, no. 27, 2000, pp. 76–81. Taubin, Amy, ‘For Nam June Paik: Notes on an Oversight’, in Patti Podesta, ed., Resolution: A Critique of Video Art, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), Los Angeles, 1986, pp. 99–104. Thompson, Willie, Postmodernism and History, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2004. Tickner, Lisa, ‘Feminism, Art History, and Sexual Difference’, Genders, no. 3, University of Texas Press, 1988, pp. 92–128. Tuer, Dot, ‘Screens of Resistance: Feminism and Video Art’, Canadian Woman Studies/ Les cahiers de la femme, vol. 11, no. 1, 1989, pp. 73–74. TV as a Creative Medium, Howard Wise Gallery, New York, 1969. Viola, Bill, ‘The European Scene and Other Observations’, in Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot, eds, Video Art: An Anthology, The Raindance Foundation, New York and London, 1976, pp. 268–278. Wallenstein, Sven-Olov, ed., Svar på frågan: Vad var det postmoderna?, Axl Books, Stockholm, 2009. Wark, Jayne, ‘Conceptual Art and Feminism: Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin, and Martha Wilson’, Woman’s Art Journal, vol. 22, no. 1, 2001, pp. 44–50. Warneke, Georgia, After Identity: Rethinking Race, Sex, and Gender, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007. Welchman, John C., ed., Institutional Critique and After, JRP Ringier, Zurich, 2006.

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INDEX

Bold page numbers indicate figures which appear in the text. – Video as a Female Terrain (Landesmuseum) 155 21.3 (Morris) 1, 42 A Abramović, Marina 101, 141, 148, 163n111 Acconci, Vito 9, 12, 33, 35, 55n11, 61n93, 61n94, 101, 108, 109, 118, 120, 132n54, 139–141, 145–146, 152, 157n27, 157n28, 158n31, 191n23 activism 79 artists as activists 84, 86 cultural 161n88 dada and surrealism 76 feminism 153, 159n56 groups 23 political 91, 115, 122, 151, 152, 157n23 television activists 178 video art collectives as 186–187 video 52, 65n173, 131n34, 184 aesthetics 3, 4, 33, 34, 36, 38, 40, 51, 69, 122, 166, 172, 188 aestheticizing imperative 48 anti-surrealist 76

artists, role of 46 awareness 32 and canon 104, 111, 112, 115, 124, 126 and collectives 141 contamination 49 formalist 29, 48, 75 history of art 7, 67, 73, 170 ideas 10 interpretations of work 53, 87 legacy of 42 material base of video art 83 modernism 8, 64n140 modernist 41 optical prerogative 43 Paik 138, 139 plurality of 80 present 90 and technique 76–77, 79 and technology 22, 27, 179, 180–182 TV sets 21, 55n10 qualities 47 valuations 88, 106 of video art 51, 113–117, 119, 146–147, 177 video as art 52, 70, 85, 91 white cube 47

214 video art historicized

‘After Alfred Barr’ (Cottingham) 78 Ahtila, Eija-Liisa 128 aim of video art 21, 22, 27–28, 30, 32, 46, 47–48, 51, 70, 84, 107, 169, 186 Alliata, Vicky 30, 60n85 Almy, Max 130n24 American invention, video art seen as 24–25 Ant Farm, The 55n11, 61n61, 101 anthologies Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art (Hall and Fifer) 12, 24, 35, 73, 79, 84, 106, 107, 109, 173, 185 New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology (Battcock) 13, 29–30, 31–32, 71, 117, 173 Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices (Renov and Suderburg) 13, 24–25, 74–75, 107, 173 Video Art: An Anthology (Schneider and Korot) 12–13, 24, 25, 28–29, 72, 108–109 Video Culture: A Critical Investigation (Hanhardt) 13, 29, 34–36, 108, 173 see also individual authors Anthro/Socio (Naumann) 128 Antin, Eleanor 144 art advanced 33, 46, 174, 176, 186, 188 and art history, delay between 1–2 concept of 2, 13–14, 19–20, 32, 36, 38, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46–54, 69, 71, 75, 84, 85, 91, 128, 129n7, contemporary 6, 10, 24, 39, 43, 44–45, 46, 64n140, 67, 70, 81, 84, 109, 110, 119, 120, 122, 124–125, 126, 135, 150, 169, 174, 175, 176, 185–186, 187

-differently 3, 9, 67, 125, 168, 182, 186, 187 legibility 32 material 23, 37, 38, 40, 49, 83, 87, 111, 153, 175, 182 and media 8, 26, 27, 33, 37, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50–51, 58n51, 85, 111, 118, 119, 183 modernist 37, 39, 42, 43, 61n88, 64n142, 72, 75, 77, 90, 113, 181 museumization of 106–107, 124, 139 new media art 19, 86, 111, 133, 176 ontology of 45–46, 48–49 origins of video art 14, 20–21, 25, 35, 36, 41, 69, 72, 73–74, 79, 81, 85–92, 107, 109, 135, 137, 138, 150, 178, 184 paradigm 37–45, 67 philosophical turn 39, 40–41, 42, 46, 88, 90 photography as 76–77 post-historical 40 postmodern 26, 37, 40, 42, 43, 62n116, 64n143, 90, 124, 135, 152, 181, 183, 184 postwar 7, 62n117, 188, technologicalization of 76–77 video art as 30–34, 35–36, 47, 49–50, 69, 128–129 art form, video art as, emergence of 2–3, 8, 19–25 art history and art, delay between 1–2 changing theories and perspectives 7–8 crisis in, 1980s and 1990s 68 formalist aesthetic theory, focus on 75 history as a found object 166–174 limitations of 71–84 as myopic 74–75

index 215

as panopticon 74 paradigm shifts in art 37–45, 67 plurality in 14, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 52, 64n142, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 80, 87, 90, 106, 107, 112, 114–115, 116, 126, 170, 172, 182–186 practices 2, 4–5, 6, 7, 38, 40–41, 45, 46, 68, 69, 72–75, 81, 85, 91, 102, 105, 106 scrutiny of, need for 67, 165 socially responsible 71 status of 67–71 and technology 68–69 technology in 175 see also canon Art History after Modernism (Belting) 68 art institutions 23–24, 32, 34, 45, 47, 69, 70, 72, 75–76, 77, 79, 82, 94n19, 110, 140, 184, 188 artists and canon 116, 117 choice of art form 112–113, 119, 145–146 concept of 46 Dantonian see Danto, Arthur goals of 30 historically 38 male, see gender performances by, recording of 22 practice of 52–53 women, see gender see also individual artists Ashley, Robert 130n24 authenticity 44 avant-garde absorption into art world 75 controversial status as lost 64n142 Dada and surrealism 50 films 35 institutionalized 38 invention 174, 180

modernist 43, 64n140 re-reading 77 subversive attempts by 39 B Bal, Mieke 49, 64n145, 65n157, 92n3, 94n22, 131n47 Barney, Matthew 10, 57n29 Baron, Judith van 31, 60n79 Barry, Judith 108, 109 Barthes, Roland 89, 92n3, 189–190n9 Battcock, Gregory 13, 17n36, 27, 28, 29–30, 31–32, 33, 35, 36, 46, 48, 55n11, 56n20, 59n65, 59n66, 59n71, 59n72, 59n73, 59n74, 60n75, 60n76, 60n77, 60n79, 60n80, 60n81, 60n83, 60n85, 60n86, 60n87, 63n186, 71–72, 94n25, 98n96, 117, 118, 131n30, 137, 139, 156n6, 157n7, 157n20, 157n21, 158n31, 159n57, 160n68, 173, 185, 191n23 Belting, Hans 42, 59n67, 63n120, 63n124, 63n126, 63n128, 63n129, 63n137, 64n147, 68–69, 81, 84, 92n3, 93n5, 93n6, 93n11, 93n12, 94n21, 94n23, 94n36, 95n41, 97n72, 97n80, 97n95, 132n52, 175, 177, 185 Benglis, Lynda 118, 144, 159n51 Beuys, Joseph 102 Birnbaum, Dara 36, 57n29127, 94n19, 101, 107, 108, 109, 126, 127, 128, 130n24, 130n26, 133n81, 133n82, 133n83, 141, 149, 150, 158n41, 158n42, 158n43, 163n111, 177–178, 181 Blumental, Lyn 107, 108, 130n24 Bourgeoisie, Louise 121 Boutourline, Serge 58n45 Bowes, Ed 130n24 Brakhage, Stan 59n60, 98n101

216 video art historicized

Brillo Boxes (Warhol) 40, 69 broad scope of video art 121 Broude, Norma 135 Brzyski, Anna 96n58, 104, 112, 122–123, 129n4, 129n7, 130n9, 130n14, 131n39, 132n52, 132n53, 132n54, 133n67, 133n68, 133n71 Buchanan, Nancy 108 Bucker, Barbara 159n51 Burki, Marie José 57n29 C Cahen, Robert 158n33, 181 Campus, Peter 12, 33, 35, 36, 61n93, 61n94, 108, 118 canon as absent 102–103, 106–115 archives of work 112 as art historical traps 115–128 artists 118 artist’s choice of art form 112–113, 119 benefits of 123, 126 broad scope of video art 121 categorization of video art 118–119 complex art works 125 concept and methods of 103–105 as cultural quarantine 105 definition 104 destabilized 117 dominance of knowledge, method of 111–112 as excluding force 120 factors in canonization 116 as formed outside institutions 126–127 as implying preceding aspects 120 linearity 120 marginal works 121 narratives and interpretative texts, art as existing in 123–124

and plurality 106, 112 presence of in video art 117–118 as proof of history 120 in publications 127–128 reasons to resist 115–116 repetition of names 122 subjectivity in choice for 113 as systematic structure 116 and technology of video art 125–126 canonization, processes of 103, 104, 105, 106, 110, 112, 113, 116, 119, 124, 128, 135 Caramelle, Ernst 57n29 Centre Pompidou, Paris 101 Chakin, Joseph 130n24 Chase, Doris 159n51 Cherry, Deborah 154, 163n112 Chong, Ping 130n24 Clarke, Shirley 130n24, 159n51 Climbing Around My Room (Gunning) 128 Coleman, James 57n29 collections first collections of video art 23 see also individual authors collectives 23, 80, 83, 123, 126, 135, 141, 180 compulsive categorizations 136, 148–149 concept of art 2, 13–14, 19–20, 32, 36, 38, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46–54, 69, 71, 75, 84, 85, 91, 128, 129n7 Conrad, Tony 57n29 contamination of video art 49 contemporaneity 5, 14, 110, 125, 172 art 6, 10, 24, 39, 43, 44–45, 46, 64n140, 67, 70, 81, 84, 109, 110, 119, 120, 122, 124–125, 126, 135, 150, 169, 174, 175, 176, 185–186, 187 and plurality 183, 186

index 217

Corps étranger (Hatoum) 133n85 Cottingham, Laura 56n12, 77, 78, 85, 98n96, 115, 184 critical engagement 3, 14, 23, 28, 29, 33, 34–35, 37, 183, 186, 187–189 critical video art 47–48 criticality 14, 41, 48, 119, 121, 122, 127, 135, 138, 162n108, 187–189, 192n64 critique, performative 47, 48 chronology 2, 6, 7, 8, 19, 21, 27, 42, 80, 82, 83, 85, 88, 91, 95n40, 102–103, 106, 111, 113, 120, 140, 145, 167, 168, 170, 174, 178, 179; see also linearity culture, video 35 D D’Agostino, Peter 109, 130n24 Dantes Triptych (Viola) 128 Danto, Arthur 37–44, 46, 50, 62n115, 63n119, 63n121, 63n122, 63n123, 63n124, 63n125, 63n128, 63n129, 63n130, 63n131, 63n134, 64n147, 69, 88, 90, 93n15, 94n36, 97n95, 99n116, 132n52, 185 Das Ende der Kunstgeschichte (Belting) 68 Da Vinci, Monica 30, 60n85, 132n54 Derrida, Jacques 136–137, 156n5 discourses, organization of written 172–174 display of video art 2, 5, 6, 23, 25, 26, 33–34, 53, 68, 69, 70, 87, 88–89, 93n12, 107, 126, 162n103, 170, 176, 177, 178, diversity, see plurality Douglas, Stan 10, 57n29 Downey, Juan 30, 60n85, 132n24 Draeger, Christopher 128 Duchamp, Marcel 47, 62n115, 63n128, 82, 87, 97n79, 107

Documenta 25, 26, 32–34, 36, 57n29, 61n88, 61n91, 61n92, 61n93, 61n95, 61n96, 61n98, 72 E education in video art, beginnings of 23 Elwes, Catherine 9–10, 11, 16n24, 51, 55n11, 56n20, 57n32, 62n116, 63n118, 63n128, 65n164, 81, 82, 83, 94n21, 97n76, 97n84, 98n105, 113, 131n45, 133n83, 133n85, 137, 138, 140, 142, 146, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153–154, 156n6, 157n10, 157n15, 157n28, 158n30, 158n41, 158n42, 158n43, 158n44, 159n47, 160n57, 160n70, 160n71, 160n73, 162n94, 162n100, 161n101, 161n102, 162n105, 162n106, 162n108, 163n109, 173, 174, 176 Empire (Warhol) 20 Emshwiller, Ed 61n94, 130n24 ephemeral nature of video tapes 114 epistemology and art 40 exhibitions Documenta 25, 26, 32–34, 36, 57n29, 61n88, 61n91, 61n92, 61n93, 61n95, 61n96, 61n98, 72 Dream and Reality: Modern and Contemporary Women Artists from Turkey (2012) 159n46 Exposition of Electronic Music – Electronic TV (1963) 21, 26, 157n14 First Generation: Women and Video, The 1970–75 (1993) 143–145, 147, 151, 159n51 Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe (2010) 159n46 Gender Battle (2007) 159n46

218 video art historicized

exhibitions (continued) Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art (2007) 159n46 – Video as a Female Terrain (2000) 155 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: 45 Years of Art and Feminism (2007) 159n46 Konstfeminism: strategier och effekter i Sverige från 1970-talet till idag (2007) 159n46 Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–79) 127, 141, 178 TV as a Creative Medium (1969) 25, 26–27, 58n43, 58n45 TV Dé-coll/age No. 1 (1963 [1958]) 21 TV Trouble (1963) 21, 56n13 Vidéo Vintage 1963–1983 (2012) 55n6, 101–102, 121n1 Videoskulptur: Retrospectiv und Aktuel, 1963–89 (1989) 61n100 WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007) 159n46, 160n60 Women Artists: elles@ centrepompidou (2009) 132n66, 159n46 Expanded Cinema (Youngblood) 12, 27–28, 36 Exposition of Electronic Music – Electronic TV (Paik) 21, 26, 157n14 F Feingold, Ken 130n24 feminism 152 agenda 146 feminist video art 149–156, 159n56, 162n102, 169, 187 interventions 3, 7, 153, 163n111 and sexual difference 152 in video art 127–128 see also gender

Fifer, Sally Jo 12, 15n1, 17n33, 24, 55n8, 55n9, 55n11, 56n13, 57n33, 58n43, 59n66, 65n153, 72–74, 73–74, 84, 93n18, 94n20, 94n21, 94n26, 94n28, 94n30, 94n33, 95n37, 95n38, 99n121, 106, 109–110, 111, 120, 121, 130n12, 130n13, 130n15, 131n30, 131n31, 131n34, 131n42, 132n60, 133n83, 141, 156n3, 158n44, 160n57, 160n68, 173, 177, 190n23, 192n54 fine art 20, 24, 28, 51, 52, 70, 73, 121, 122 canon formation 110, 115 photography as 77 video art as 30–34, 35–36, 37, 39, 47, 49–50, 53, 69, 84, 85, 88, 118, 124, 128–129, 176, 179, 187 First Generation: Women and Video, The 1970–75 (Hanley) 143–145, 147, 151, 159n51 Fiske, John 89 Fitzgerald, Kit 130n24 Floyd, Kathryn Mae 33, 61n88, 61n89 Fluxus 20, 22, 56n16, 63n28, 69, 87, 98n104, 98n107, 116, 157n23, 169, 185 formalist thinking in art 29, 32, 41–42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 72, 75, 76, 77, 111, 139, 169, 175, 183, 184 found history 166–174 founding fathers 137–142 founding mothers 142–149 Freed, Hermine 61n94, 144, 149, 159n51 Frenkel, Vera 57n29 Fuses (Schneemann) 28 G Galerie Parnass 21, 54n6, 62n111, 157n14

index 219

Garrard, Mary D. 135 Geiger, Anna Bella 102, 159n51 Geller, Matthew 130n24 gender 2, 3, 14, 36, 44, 62n112, 75, 89, 95n41, 105, 116, 124, 128, 132n66, 139, 143, 150, 162n99, 163n111, 167, 168 as absent in early narratives 136 artists’ choice of art form 145–146 as categorization method 141–142 compulsive categorizations 136, 148–149 and evaluative and ideologically charged language 145 father-to-son metaphor 137–142 female/feminity 141, 145, 150, 152, 154, 16 feminine practices 155 ‘feminist agenda, emergence of 146 feminist video art 149–156, 159n56, 162n102, 169, 187 First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75 (Hanley) 143–145, 147, 151, 159n51 first women artists 145 founding mothers 142–149 genealogies and 145 heirs of male artists, women as 146 male dominance of video art 135, 147–153 masculinity 142 postmodernism and video art 135 in publications 143, 148–149 self-portraits 152–153 Video Culture: A Critical Investigation (Hanhardt) 36 written archives, importance of 146–147 geneology 40, 42, 45, 63n128, 72, 91, 115, 116, 128, 136, 140, 143, 145, 146, 148, 150, 177

geography and origin of video art 24–25 Gever, Martha 48, 57n26, 65n155, 96n62, 157n17, 160n68, 161n84 Gistafson, Julie 159n51 Gillette, Frank 26, 33, 35, 58n45, 61n94, 62n111, 108, 178–179 Godard, Jean-Luc 27, 50, 86, 98n101, 99n120, 101, 102, 107, 148, 169, 184 Gorewitz, Shalom 130n24 Graham, Dan 109, 137, 141 Greenberg, Clement 43, 75, 90, 99n116 Greenbergian modernism 41–42, 43 Gunning, Lucy 128 H Halfsleep (Hoover) 133n85 Hall, David 10, 52, 61n94 Hall, Doug 12, 15n1, 17n33, 24, 55n8, 55n9, 55n11, 56n13, 57n33, 58n43, 59n66, 65n153, 72–74, 73–74, 84, 93n18, 94n20, 94n21, 94n26, 94n28, 94n30, 94n33, 95n37, 95n38, 99n121, 106, 109–110, 111, 120, 121, 130n12, 130n13, 130n15, 131n30, 131n31, 131n34, 131n42, 132n60, 133n83, 141, 156n3, 158n44, 160n57, 160n68, 173, 177, 190n23, 192n54 Hanhardt, John 13, 17n37, 29, 34–36, 48, 55n8, 55n9, 55n11, 56n13, 56n16, 59n64, 59n65, 60n80, 61n101, 61n102, 61n104, 61n105, 62n106, 62n113, 65n161, 70, 72, 93n16, 94n31, 98n100, 98n101, 98n103, 98n105, 98n107, 108, 131n28, 131n30, 133n82, 133n83, 137, 157n8, 158n31, 160n57, 160n68, 162n100, 166, 172, 173, 191n23, 191n28

220 video art historicized

Hanley, JoAnn 143–145, 144, 147, 150–151, 159n51, 159n53, 159n54, 159n55, 161n84, 161n87, 162n89, 162n100 Hartney, Mick 133n85 Hatoum, Mona 133n85 – Video as a Female Terrain (Landesmuseum) 155 Hershman, Lyn 12, 107, 109, 158n33, 160n68, 161n86 Herzogenrath, Wulf 16n10, 33–34, 58n39, 58n32, 59n58, 61n95, 61n96, 61n97, 61n100 hesitations about video art history 71–84, 105 reluctance 5, 8, 14, 31, 46, 70, 75, 87, 91, 115, 129, 131n49, 135, 136, 172, 175, 187 resistance 13, 54, 73, 75, 80, 84, 110, 116, 119, 122, 124 Hill, Gary 9, 12, 54, 57n29, 69, 93n14, 101, 109, 127, 128, 130n24, 140, 141, 145, 146, 158n32, 158n33, 162n103, 181 historical narratives 3, 5, 7–8, 10, 14, 20, 22, 24, 32, 33, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 51, 53, 57n30, 69, 71, 72, 76, 79, 83, 85, 87, 89, 102, 105, 106, 109, 110, 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, 127, 142, 146, 147, 150, 155, 165, 167–169, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 186, 190n10 see also thematic spaces; individual titles ‘Historiography/Feminisms/ Strategies’ (Cherry) 154 history as a found object 166–174 geography and origin of 24–25 past versus 4–6 of video art 24

History of Video Art, A: The Development of Form and Function (Meigh-Andrews) 11, 41, 68, 84, 112, 179–181, 184–185 Hoey, Brian 180 Holt, Nancy 35, 108, 141, 159n51, 161n86 Hoover, Nan 10, 12, 61n94, 133n85, 158 Hopkins, John 139 House, The (Ahtila) 128 I Idemitsu, Makao 159n51 identity 64n148 self-image of video art 6, 35, 73, 122, 138, 145, 172, 183 modernist 42 politics 54 idioms art 31 of painting 45 Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art (Hall and Fifer) 12, 24, 35, 73, 79, 84, 106, 107, 109, 173, 185 I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much (Rist) 128 institutionalization art discourse 8, 45, 46, 47, 73, 110, 131n49 art world 14, 48, 50, 81, 139, 186 concept of art 44 modernism 38 narrative 5 of video art 6, 7, 79, 80, 91, 125 see also art institutions invention 174 of video art 14, 20–21, 25, 35, 36, 41, 69, 72, 73–74, 79, 81, 85–92, 107, 109, 135, 137, 138, 150, 178, 184 feminist 149–156, 159n56, 162n102, 169, 187

index 221

J Jenkins, Keith 4, 15n5, 16n11, 16n12, 63n27 Jensen, Robert 127, 128, 132n54, 132n59, 132n61, 132n64, 133n78, 133n80, 133n84 Jonas, Joan 33, 61n93, 61n94, 101, 109, 118, 120, 144, 145, 148, 149, 150, 159n51, 181 K Kiessling, Dieter 133n85 Kitchen Live Audio Test Laboratory 23 Klonk, Charlotte 47, 64n151, 129n4 Knight, Julia 16n10, 153, 159n54, 159n56, 160n73, 161n76, 162n104, Kogawa, Tetsuo 25, 58n37 Korot, Beryl 12–13, 17n35, 24, 25, 28–29, 35, 36, 55n11, 56n20, 57n27, 58n39, 59n64, 59n67, 59n68, 59n69, 61n93, 62n106, 64n150, 72, 98n96, 108, 133n83, 158n31, 159n51, 159n57, 160n68 Kramer, Margia 108 Krauss, Rosalind 29, 50, 57n27, 60n75, 62n115, 64n143, 65n161, 65n162, 93n4, 132n54, 158n36, 162n100, 191n28 Kubota, Shigeko 36, 57n34, 61n93, 108, 150, 159n51, 162n102 L Labat, Tony 109, 130n24 Landesmuseum, Vienna 155 Léger, Fernand 87, 139 legitimization art institutions, power of 70, 75 and early texts on video art 6 historical archive as source of 184 and preceding events 87

process of 2, 4, 6, 8, 13–14, 23, 24, 25, 33, 34, 49, 82, 182, 186 video as art 72, 79, 87, 184 Liljefors, Max 9–10, 16n24, 21, 23, 26, 54n5, 54n6, 55n7, 55n8, 55n11, 56n12, 56n13, 56n18, 56n20, 57n23, 58n43, 58n47, 62n116, 81, 82, 83, 94n21, 95n48, 97n81, 97n84, 97n85, 97n87, 98n102, 98n105, 118, 119, 132n57, 133n83, 133n85, 137, 140, 141, 149, 156n6, 157n8, 157n14, 157n28, 158n30, 158n33, 158n34, 158n41, 160n57, 160n71, 160n73, 161n88, 162n100, 174, 176 limitations of art history 71–84 linearity 72, 80, 83, 91, 106, 108, 109, 117, 119–120, 128, 136, 140–141, 172, 184 location and canon 104 innovation and novelty 180, 181–182 marginal 109 of origin of video art 24–25, 149, 176, 184 where art happens 49 Logue, Joan 130n24 Lord, Chip 130n24 Lucier, Mary 9, 36, 108, 109, 159n51 Lyotard, Jean-Francoise 148, 190n19

M McQueen, Steve 10 Making Art History: A Changing Discipline and its Institutions (Mansfield) 103–104 male artists dominance of 135, 147 equal treatment with female artists 136

222 video art historicized

male artists (continued) and modernism 44 postmodern writings 135 see also gender, individual artists Malevich, Kazimir 121 Man Ray 87, 139 Mannik, Andres 23, 62n116 Mansfield, Elizabeth C. 103–104, 129n5, 129n6, 129n7, 130n11, 131n36, 132n52, 133n69 Marshall, Stuart 10 Martin, Sylvia 10, 17n27, 23, 26, 34, 54n6, 55n7, 55n8, 56n15, 56n17, 56n19, 57n25, 57n28, 58n43, 58n48, 61n99, 82, 83, 128, 133n82, 133n83, 140, 145, 148, 157n27, 157n28, 158n32, 158n33, 160n64, 161n73, 161n75, 161n86, 163n111, 176 masculinity 142 see also gender Meigh-Andrews, Chris 11, 17n29, 23, 24, 34, 35, 41, 50–51, 52, 53, 54n1, 54n6, 55n8, 55n11, 56n19, 56n20, 57n23, 57n24, 57n25, 57n34, 59n67, 61n100, 61n103, 62n116, 63n128, 63n135, 65n159, 65n171, 65n173, 65n174, 68, 70, 81, 83, 84, 86, 93n11, 94n19, 94n21, 97n84, 97n85, 97n89, 98n97, 98n99, 98n101, 98n103, 112, 113, 118, 127, 138, 131n40, 131n43, 132n56, 133n81, 133n83, 133n85, 137, 138, 139, 141, 142, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 156n6, 157n15, 157n19, 157n24, 158n31, 158n33, 158n40, 158n42, 158n43, 158n44, 160n57, 160n69, 160n71, 160n72, 160n73, 162n92, 162n100, 162n102,

162n104, 162n108, 173–174, 176, 177, 179–181, 182, 184– 185, 191n24, 191n43, 192n46, 192n50, 192n53 Meskimmon, Marsha 99n119, 142, 146, 156n2, 159n49, 160n67 Michishita, Kyoko 159n51 modernism 3, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41–43, 44, 45, 68, 70, 76, 92, 121, 124 formalist 169, 183, 184 high 8, 38, 43, 44, 183, 184, 188 male artists 44 normative 38, 76 Moholy-Nagy, László 139 Monk, Meredith 130n24 Moorman, Charlotte 26, 45n58, 139 Morris, Robert 1, 15n2, 15n3, 42, 61n94 ‘Moving Pictures’ (Martin) 82 Munslow, Alun 15n5, 168, 190n10, 190n12 Muntadas, Antonio 61n93, 109, 130n24 museumization of art 75, 79, 106–107, 124, 125, 139 and canon 106–107, 116, 121, 124 museums Centre Pompidou, Paris 101 growth of interest shown by 23–24, 34 Landesmuseum, Vienna 155 Museum Fridericianum 33 and preferences 48 as site for video art 49, 51, 52, 53, 83, 86, 97n87, 139, 141, 148 women artists 132n66 myth and video art 77, 79 N narrative, narration and story, differences between 168

index 223

Nash, Michael 53–54, 55n11, 65n179, 191n23 nation-bound phenomena, video art as 24–25 Nauman, Bruce 9, 10, 33, 35, 56n20, 57n29, 61n94, 98n97, 101, 108, 118, 120, 128, 137, 140, 141, 144, 145, 146, 152, 157n28, 158n31, 158n32, 163n111 negotiation 38, 43, 45, 49, 53, 183 re-negotiation 14, 38 44, 46, 48, 57n30, 64n140, 68, 91, 92, 104, 110, 114, 122 Nelson, Robert S. 15n5, 16n16, 95n41, 129n4, 167–168, 189n6, 189n8 New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology (Battcock) 13, 29–30, 31–32, 71, 117, 173 O Ode to a Sad Song (Draeger) 128 Ono, Yoko 144–145 ontology of art 45–6, 48–49, 77, 128 origins art and/or technology 85–92 of video art 14, 20–21, 25, 35, 36, 41, 69, 72, 73–74, 79, 81, 85–92, 107, 109, 135, 137, 138, 150, 178, 184 original, concept of 7, 46, 135 Oursler, Tony 57n29, 109, 130n24, 132n63, 171 P Paik, Nam June 10, 12, 20, 21–22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 33, 35, 50, 52, 54, 54n3, 54n6, 55n7, 56n13, 56n16, 56n17, 57n32, 57n34, 58n45, 58n47, 59n56, 60n75, 61n93, 61n94, 62n111, 69, 81, 82, 87, 88, 89, 93n12, 96n48, 96n60, 96n66,

97n79, 98n104, 98n107, 99n120, 101, 107, 108, 118, 120, 126, 127, 128, 130n25, 132n55, 133n82, 135, 137–140, 141, 144, 145, 156n6, 157n7, 157n14, 157n17, 157n19, 157n20, 158n32, 163n111, 178, 182, 184, 192n53 painting 44–45 Pane, Gina 101, 158n38 Panofsky, Erwin 1, 15n2 panopticon 74 paradigms of art, changing 30, 37–45, 46, 64n142, 67, 88, 90, 125, 185 paradox 80, 116, 117, 122, 129, 142, 172, 181, 183 ‘Paradox in the Evolution of an Art Form: Great Expectations and the Making of a History’ (Sturken) 79–80 paramodernism 37, 39–40, 42, 44, 76 Partisan Canons (Brzyski) 122, 125 past interpretation of in narratives 168 significant 87 versus history 4–6 philosophical turn in art 40–41 photography 76–77 Picasso, Pablo 121 place of origin of video art 24–25 where art happens 49 see also location plurality in art history 14, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 52, 64n142, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 80, 87, 90, 106, 107, 112, 114–115, 116, 126, 170, 172, 182–186 Podesta, Patti 56n17, 58n42, 97n79, 107–108, 130n23, 130n24, 130n25, 130n26, 130n27, 173, 191n23

224 video art historicized

political art 9, 10, 23, 27, 43, 50, 51, 54, 67, 76, 77, 79, 81, 86, 91, 110, 115, 122, 147, 150, 151, 152, 153–154, 156, 169, 184, 186, 188 Pollock, Griselda 97n95, 132n52, 132n62, 150, 156n2, 157n25, 160n66, 161n85, 163n109, 163n114 Portapaks 22–23, 33, 35 post-historical art 40, 44 postmodernism 40, 42, 67, 135 pre-history of video art 85–88 Preziosi, Donald 16n18, 64n147, 68, 71, 74, 92n4, 94n22, 94n23, 95n40, 97n95, 132n52 professionalization in video art 23, 50, 73, 86, 119, 120, 184 purpose of video art 32 R Raddeker, Hélène Bowen 15n5, 16n9, 16n12, 63n138, 89–90, 99n112, 99n117, 131n47, 156n4, 189n5 Reese, Marshall 130n24 Reiback, Earl 58n45 Renov, Michael 13, 17n38, 24–25, 55n11, 57n35, 58n37, 58n38, 74– 75, 94n18, 95n39, 95n42, 130n19, 130n22, 131n30, 133n82, 133n83, 107, 137, 141, 158n44, 158n45, 160n57, 160n68, 173, 191n23 resistance 13, 54, 73, 75, 80, 84, 110, 116, 119, 122, 124 and canon 115–116 towards video art history 71–84 Resolution: A Critique of Video Art (Podesta) 107–108 Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices (Renov and Suderburg) 13, 24–25, 74–75, 107, 173

Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science (Preziosi) 68 Reynaud, Bérénice 25, 58n37, 58n38 Rist, Pipilotti 10, 120, 128, 132n63, 145, 163n111 Rogoff, Irit 14, 61n88, 186, 187, 189, 192n57, 192n59, 192n60, 192n61 Rosenbach, Ulrike 12, 61n93, 61n94, 120, 144, 150, 159n51, 161n73, 161n86, 162n102 Rosler, Martha 47–48, 50, 65n153, 65n154, 65n156, 72, 75, 76–77, 79, 80, 84, 86, 89, 93n18, 94n21, 94n27, 95n46, 95n47, 96n50, 96n52, 96n54, 96n56, 96n57, 96n59, 96n61, 96n62, 96n66, 98n105, 99n120, 101, 106–107, 108, 109, 111, 120, 127, 128, 130n15, 130n16, 131n37, 135, 138–139, 144, 145, 148, 149, 150, 156n3, 156n6, 157n15, 157n17, 157n18, 157n20, 157n22, 159n51, 160n58, 161n86, 162n102, 162n111 Ross, David A. 34, 55n11, 56n20, 57n33, 61n98, 72, 91, 185, 94n28, 99n121, 132n54, 133n82, 156n6, 157n9, 157n14, 157n19, 160n57, 185, 192n54 Rossellini, Roberto 148 Rush, Michael 9, 15n7, 16n20, 16n22, 22, 24, 28, 50, 51, 54n1, 54n6, 55n8, 55n11, 56n12, 56n16, 56n19, 56n20, 57n21, 57n34, 58n42, 58n43, 62n116, 63n128, 65n158, 65n159, 65n160, 65n161, 65n162, 80–82, 83, 86, 96n70, 97n73, 97n74, 97n84, 97n85, 98n97, 98n101, 98n107, 111, 112, 128, 131n44, 133n83, 137, 138, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 148–149, 156n6, 157n12, 157n16, 157n28,

index 225

158n33, 158n30, 158n38, 158n39, 158n41, 159n50, 160n57, 160n59, 160n62, 160n69, 161n75, 161n76, 161n77, 162n100, 166, 169–172, 176, 179, 184, 190n13, 191n40 Ryan, Paul 26, 58n45 S Sanborn, John 107, 130n24 Sceptical History (Raddeker) 89–90 scepticism 8, 43, 70, 89–90, 91 Schneemann, Carolee 28, 145 Schneckenburger, Manfred 33 Schneider, Ira 12–13, 17n35, 24, 25, 28–29, 35, 36, 55n11, 56n20, 57n27, 58n39, 59n64, 59n67, 59n68, 59n69, 61n93, 62n106, 64n150, 72, 98n96, 108, 133n83, 158n31, 159n51, 159n57, 160n68 sculpture 3, 9, 26, 30, 32, 35, 36, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 52, 53, 62n111, 79, 80, 83, 92, 93n12, 139, 152, 157n28, 184 Seaman, Bill 12, 158n33 Seery, John 58n45 Segalove, Ilene 159n51, 161n73 self-image of video art 6, 35, 73, 122, 138, 145, 172, 183 Serra, Richard 35, 61n94, 108, 141, 181 Shepard, Sam 130n24 Siegel, Erik 58n45 Sjölander, Ture 180 Sleep (Warhol) 20 Smith, Michael 130n24 Smith, Stephanie 10, 132n63, 163n111 Smith, Terry 62n115, 64n140, 64n143, 125, 126, 133n67, 133n75, 133n76, 133n79, 192n56, Snow, Michael 59n60, 98n101, 181 Sollins, Susan 143, 159n52

Spielmann, Yvonne 11–12, 17n31, 26, 35, 51–52, 53, 55n8, 55n11, 56n20, 58n43, 58n47, 58n52, 62n116, 65n163, 65n165, 65n166, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 88, 94n21, 97n73, 97n85, 97n88, 98n101, 98n105, 98n108, 111, 113, 114, 124, 127, 131n48, 133n82, 133n83, 133n85, 137, 148, 153, 156n6, 157n15, 158n29, 158n30, 158n33, 158n41, 160n71, 173, 176–179, 191n29, 191n30, 191n31, 191n41 State of Division (Hartney) 133n85 Steele, Lisa 108, 159n51 Stefanotty, Robert 46 Stewart, Edward 10, 132n63, 163n111 story, narrative and narration, differences between 168 Sturgeon, John 130n24 Sturken, Marita 1, 15n1, 26, 58n43, 58n48, 58n49, 72, 75, 79–80, 93n18, 94n21, 94n36, 95n44, 95n48, 96n64, 96n67, 96n69, 97n85, 106, 124, 130n15, 133n73, 135, 156n3, 156n6, 161n88 subversion 14, 34, 39, 43, 49, 64n142, 68, 73, 80, 106, 111, 119, 122, 124–125, 183, 186–187 subjectivity 41, 44, 47, 60n80, 63n129, 71, 89, 90, 92n4, 99n116, 104, 106, 113, 120, 130n13, 142, 152, 153 Suderburg, Erika 13, 17n38, 24–25, 55n11, 57n35, 58n37, 58n38, 74– 75, 94n18, 95n39, 95n42, 130n19, 130n22, 131n30, 133n82, 133n83, 107, 137, 141, 158n44, 158n45, 160n57, 160n68, 173, 191n23 ‘Surreality of Videotape, The’ (Wiegand) 47

226 video art historicized

survey books differences between 12 as genre 7–8 History of Video Art, A: The Development of Form and Function (Meigh-Andrews) 11, 112 surveys, defined and concept of 8 Video: The Reflexive Medium (Spielmann) 11–12 Video Art: A Guided Tour (Elwes) 9–10 video art history in 6 Video Art (Martin) 10 Video Art (Rush) 9 Videokonsten: en Introduktion (Liljefors) 9–10 see also individual authors T Tadlock, Thomas 58n45 Tall Ship (Hill) 128 Tambellini, Aldo 58n45 Taylor-Wood, Sam 10, 163n111 technique and aesthetics 76–77 technology anti-technological culture 76–77 and art history 68–69 and canon 125–126 History of Video Art, A: The Development of Form and Function (Meigh-Andrews) 179–181 innovation and novelty 181–182 invention 174 and meaning production 181 origins of video art 85–92 in publications 174–182 technologicalization of art 76–77 as thematic space 174–182 Video: The Reflexive Medium (Spielmann) 176–179 and video art 50–52 in video art history 175

Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (Birnbaum) 127, 141, 178 television European/American 56n12 programmes, use of 21 and video art 31 ‘Temporality of Video Art, The’ (Belting) 68 temporality of as art form 68–69 thematic spaces activism 186–187 contemporaneity 186–187 critical engagement 187–189 and found history 166–174 innovation and novelty 181–182 organization of written discourses 172–174 plurality 183–185 subversion 186–187 technology 174–182 use of concept 165–166 Time (Sjölander and Wikström) 180 topos 165 TV art 21 TV as a Creative Medium (Vostell) 25, 26–27, 58n43, 58n45 TV Bra for Living Sculpture (Moorman) 26 TV Décoll/age No. 1 (Vostell) 21 TV Trouble (Vostell) 21, 56n13 U Untitled (Kiessling) 133n85 V VALIE EXPORT 101, 144, 148–149, 150 Vasulka, Steina 12, 23, 101, 109, 130n24, 132n63, 138, 147, 159n51, 160n73 Vasulka, Woody 12, 23, 93n17, 101, 109, 130n24, 138, 181

index 227

‘Video: The Access Medium’ (Kogawa) 25 Video: The Reflexive Medium (Spielmann) 11–12, 51–52, 88, 113, 114, 176–179 video art as art 30–34, 35–36, 47, 49–50, 69, 128–129 critical 47, 111, 148, 149 definitions 19–20 early video art 14, 20–21, 25, 35, 36, 41, 69, 72, 73–74, 79, 81, 85–92, 107, 109, 135, 137, 138, 150, 178, 184 context for 25–37 father-to-son metaphor 139–142 feminist 149–156 as fine art 30–34, 35–36, 47, 49–50, 69 Video Art: A Guided Tour (Elwes) 9–10, 82, 113 Video Art: An Anthology (Schneider and Korot) 12–13, 24, 25, 28–29, 72, 108–109 Video Art (Martin) 10, 34 Video Art (Rush) 9, 22, 80–82, 141, 169–172 Video Culture: A Critical Investigation (Hanhardt) 13, 29, 34–36, 108, 173 Video Flag X (Paik) 128 video tapes, ephemeral nature of 114 Vidéo Vintage 1963–1983 55n6, 101–102, 121n1 Videokonsten: en Introduktion (Liljefors) 9–10, 21, 83, 118 Videvent (Hoey) 180 Viola, Bill 9, 10, 36, 54, 57n29, 58n39, 61n93, 108, 109, 127, 128, 130n24, 132n55, 140, 141, 142, 145, 146, 158n32, 158n33, 181

‘Vision After Television: Technocultural Convergence, Hypermedia and the New Media Arts Field’ (Nash) 53–54 visual art, 36, 37, 64n148, 174 Vostell, Wolf 21, 24, 26–27, 28, 33, 35, 54n6, 55n8, 55n9, 56n13, 57n25, 57n32, 81, 94n31, 98n107, 108, 137, 138, 156n6 W Warhol, Andy 20, 22, 28, 40, 47, 56n19, 57n34, 59n60, 62n115, 63n128, 69, 81, 98n107, 108, 137, 178 Weiner, Laurence 102 Weintraub, Joe 58n45 Western invention, video art seen as 24–25 where of art, the 49 white cube 47, 65n152, 76 Wiegand, Ingrid 32, 47, 60n87, 64n150, 139, 157n21 Wikström, Bror 180 Wilson, Robert 130n24 Y Yonemoto, Bruce 107, 109, 130n24 Yonemoto, Norman 107, 109, 130n24 Yook, KeunByung 57n29 Youngblood, Gene 12, 27–28, 36, 38, 46, 47, 55n11, 56n12, 58n43, 58n47, 58n50, 58n51, 58n53, 59n59, 59n60, 59n61, 63n120, 137, 157n9, 190n23 Z Zen TV (Paik) 21