TV Against TV: Video Art on Television
Film and Video Art, 2009, pp. 122-131
From the late 1960s to the late 1990s, a range of small-scale initiatives were made towards making a moving-image art for and with television. The majority of works created through these initiatives were conceived and defined "against" television, which, according to the author, removed the medium of video art away from its creative roots and closed down potentially productive dialogues between the two media. This essay offers a critical review of a selection of key achievements in video art history, largely drawn from Britain and the United States, together with an analysis of the rhetoric used in the communication between video art and television.
ITEM 2009.115 – available for viewing in the Research Centre
Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited
Fishtank – Richard Billingham
Nam June Paik
Wolf Vostell
Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, Kiss the Girls: Make Them Cry – Dara Birnbaum
Death Valley Days – Gorilla Tapes
Tory Stories – Peter Savage
Black Gate Cologne – Otto Piene
Black Gate Cologne – Aldo Tambellini
The Medium is the Message – Fred Barzyk
Fernsehgalerie, Land Art, Identifications – Gerry Schum
Self Burial – Keith Arnatt
TV as a Fireplace – Jan Dibbet
TV interruptions, This is a Television Receiver – David Hall
Beeldende Kunstenaars Maken Video – Openbaar Kunstbezit (Ger van Elk, Jan Dibbets, Stanley Brouwn, Marinus Boezem)
Struggling – Peter Donebauer
Late Night Line-up – TVX (John 'Hoppy' Hopkins)
Robert Vas
Marc Karlin