VIDEOARTE

Born from an interest in exploring the expressive potential of new technological media, video art is an artistic discipline that uses video as a creative tool. It originated with the introduction of video recorders and televisions to the market between the late 1950s and early 1960s. By convention, the origin of this discipline is dated to 1963, when Nam June Paik, a member of the Fluxus group, exhibited his televisions at a German gallery in his first solo exhibition, Exposition of Music – Electronic Television.

I PIONIERI

One of the pioneers, if not the founder, of video art is Nam June Paik, a Korean artist considered the first to transform the television into an art object, with his works TV Bra and TV Cello from the mid-1960s. In doing so, he removes the television from its domestic context, exploring the close relationship between performing arts and video. One of his best-known works is TV Buddha, which features a sculpture of Buddha watching his own live image on a screen placed in front of him. It stages a kind of struggle between the image of Eastern meditation and Western technology, as well as a reflection on our perception of ourselves through technology.

One of the greatest exponents of video art is Bill Viola, an American artist who has carved out a place for video in the art world, defining it as an excellent and powerful expressive and reflective medium. Regarding video, he stated:

“The fundamental aspect of video is not the images… Its essence, in my opinion, is movement—that is, something that exists in one moment and transforms itself in the next”.

His works are characterized by the use of slow motion and the selection of historical and evocative locations, which he employs to create living pictures. An example is Emergence (2002): a large vertical screen displays the image of a man emerging from the water as if reborn. The composition and scenography recall the fifteenth-century fresco Christ in Pietà by Masolino da Panicale, creating a dialogue between past, present, and spirituality.

Last but not least is the Swiss video artist known by the name Pipilotti Rist who stated:

“Video art is like a big bag: there is room for everything: technology, language, music, the flow of images, poetry, emotion, the premonition of death, sex and friendship”.

In her work Sip My Ocean, a video projected onto two adjacent walls shows a woman in a bikini swimming in the water amidst the waves as household objects sink around her, a scene accompanied by the lyrics of the pop song Wicked Game which almost obsessively repeat “I don’t want to fall in love”.

VIDEO OR ART?

What makes video a form of artistic production, and therefore a work of art, is its distinction from both television and cinema, from which it originates: it distances itself from television entertainment and the socioeconomic nature of TV programming, as well as from the genre divisions and narrative structures typical of cinema. Furthermore, from the beginning, this practice often questions its relationship with space. A notable example is the installation use of television by artists such as Nam June Paik, or the work Zidane, a 21st Century Portrait (2006) by Parreno and Douglas Gordon, where the installation setup is fundamental to the performative experience of the work.
Seventeen screens hang suspended in mid-air, each corresponding to one of the cameras that filmed footballer Zidane during the 2005 Real Madrid match. These screens are arranged within the space, inviting the visitor to move through and create their own path—and thus their own editing of the video. This exemplifies how the installation dimension is explored by video artists fascinated by the expressiveness and performativity of the video medium.

Alessandra Redondi

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