Full Circle

So we have come full circle. I think this time however we should ask ourselves a slightly different question. Instead of is there a difference between video art and artful video, we should be asking what is the difference between video art and artful video? Answering it still won’t be any easier. I don’t think there exists a straight answer for that question. In some ways it will always be subjective, and relative cause we’re all just a bunch of crazy people, with crazy minds that think too much!

When I started this class I had no idea what to expect because I had never explored video beyond film, documentary, and t.v. and that’s pretty much it. So Approaches to Video Art was a medium I knew nothing about. Beginning with German Expressionism we looked at Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis, and Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet, not video art, but necessary to study as it set the historical time line for the emergence of film into video art. Around that same time period in the 1920’s and 1930’s, we explored Avant-Garde and Experimental Film looking at a series of short films including, Anemic Cinema by Marcel Duchamp, H2O by Ralph Steiner and Regen (Rain). These films show a development of the genre with experimentations in time and simplicity of content. Then there was Maya Deren and her experimental films of the 1940’s, which I thought were pretty exceptional, and in a documentary Jonas Mekas described this body of work as , “the holy grail of Avant-Garde.” She was able to transcend my state into one of dreamy sluggishness, that dream where you are being chased by someone or something and the harder you run the slower you go, you almost feel as though you can’t breath and you can’t move, like you’re running through water. She kind of sits right there in the middle of the two, in some ways she is video art, and others artful video. There are some intentions in the films that are clearly conceptual and images that are sculptural, but there also exists some form of narrative, even without words they still tell a story, and the length of time is longer, at least the length of an average short film.

Moving on and up to the 1960’s we learned about Nam June-Paik and the lovely Andy Warhol. The hand held video camcorder was reinstated and we began to see what we talk about when we talk about video art. What they have presented are simple events or images and the use of little to no editing, and in the case of Nam June-Paik the use of looping a video which makes it more like an art object than a video that begins and ends. I think this is where video art really started.

Next we have stop animation artists Jan Svankmajer and the Brothers Quay, who on the other hand relied on editing as a tool completely necessary to produce these amazing works. I love these pieces, all of them really, because they have brought these objects to life through video. Like making walking sculpture, and they are so good at it. This to me is clearly video art, what else could it be if not a category of it’s own. But it is art and it is video, the purpose of it is art, the tool is video, without this tool it would still be art, the objects themselves are art.

I’m going to skip ahead to the end because this is where it all began to fit into place. We looked at some student work by Shannon Wright and Chris Kasper and then the contemporary artists Bill Viola, Gary Hill, Paul McCarthy, Mathew Barney and Shirin Neshat. This is where we saw video art in so many different ways. This is where we learned just how endless the possibilities are for this medium. From Shannon Wrights Gruel and Air Drill, to Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle, we see that video art just like art can be simple or complex, high and low, long and short. In Air Drill, Shannon Wright suspended her body horizontally in some sort of contraption that resembles a girdle, a straight jacket and a belay, and demonstrated swimming moves in the air. This was done with little to most likely no editing, involved a simple task, and took very little time so it is easy to define her work as video art. Matthew Barney had a different more refined approach, with elaborate costumes and sculptural sets and a motion picture length video, we see more cinematic influence in his work. For me what keeps him in the video art genre is where and how his work is displayed. The sets, like I said are sculpture, and the videos are played on small monitors in the gallery as you walk around and become a part of his creation. His work is meant to be seen as moving sculpture and without seeing it in person I believe thats what he has done.

So while there are some defining factors that set video art apart from artful video, time duration, performance of simple task, looping a video, limiting editing, there will always be a line that must be decided upon by the viewer and the artist.  This distinction must be made by the person who is making it.  I’m sure that some video is made by an artist and wants it to be seen as art.  While other videos are made for other reasons and maybe the creator doesn’t even want their own work described as art or themselves to be described as artists.  While Matthew Barney does not fit all the criteria his work still represents video art to me and for some, the grotesqueness of Paul McCarthy may elicit responses that say “how can that be art?” We will always question the motives of artists and we will always try to define art, but I don’t think we ever will. It’s the pain we all feel as artists wanting to be validated that our work is art and it is good art, but the definition is always changing, and it is always in the hands of someone else. So we keep working and exploring, experimenting and producing. It may be the end of this class, but it is just the beginning for me.

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