Television and Video Art.

Though television shows motion pictures, its history is not like that of film.  For one thing, television was the gradual result of technological advancements scattered throughout Europe and the United States.  For another, television, at least in the United States, was perfected to mimic broadcast radio.  And like radio, it was thus a medium whose content was determined by those who made the machine.

Broadcasting was therefore inseparable from the idea of television, at least until the debut of consumer video technology in the late 1960s and 1970s.  By that time, television was not only synonymous with broadcasting, it was associated with a standardized rhythm of seeing, conditioned by everything from shot length to commercial breaks.  David Antin's essay "Television: Video's Frightful Parent" makes a number of interesting claims about video art practice's bloodline with the broadcasting that would seem, at least at the level of content, to be a very distant relative.  The first claim seeks to explain why video art seems so especially boring: the answer he offers is that broadcast television, or commercial television, has conditioned our viewing expectations not just at the level of production values, but at the level of time.  As he notes, we rarely ever see more than 12 minutes of any particular program at any given time; within an hour we can be subject to more than 20 different "segments," whether programming or commercial.  Given that television, as an object, has since its public introduction been inseparable from broadcasting for most viewers, including those seeking the experience of high art, Antin almost notes something rather perceptive: that television never had a "modernist" moment, unlike the arts that video practitioners seek to be seen with, as Benjamin Buchloh frequently reminds us.  This is true to the extent that one of modernism's central goals was to rediscover what was essential to its materials and build a practice upon that. 

Thus we are bored because we are prejudiced.  But Benjamin Buchloh wants to challenge this claim a bit, and does so with respect to Martha Rosler's video "A Simple Case for Torture," which we'll watch some of in a minute.  As he notes, no one should be expected to stand in a gallery for more than 30 minutes.  I ask you: is he right? 

Another important claim that Antin makes is a very old one--money determines aesthetics.  This has been true for many, many centuries--as I mentioned yesterday, when we think of painting we think of someone responding with pigment to an inspiration, but the painting of the Renaissance, for example--so fundamental to our inspirations, even now--was never made this way.  It was always work-for-hire, with contracts drawn up between client and painter on the basis of a preliminary drawing and a promise of particular qualities of pigment, right down to the weight or concentration of their pigments.  It's pretty funny for us to read how much the video equipment cost in 1975, just to make things that look far shittier than we get from the cameras on our phones--but it's not as if no one recognized their shabbiness, obviously.  How did video artists respond to their lack of refined materials for production?

Here are a list of some of the videos we watched in class.  You can find most on YouTube:

Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman, TV Cello, 1967
Richard Serra, Television Delivers People, 1969
Dara Birnbaum, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978
Dara Birnbaum, The Damnation of Faust: Evocation, 1983
Jenny Holzer, Sign on a Truck, 1984
Martha Rosler, A Simple Case for Torture, 1983
Martin Arnold, Passage a l'acte, 1993