Video Installation and the cinematic experience

Contemporary video art, whilst still including single channel or multi channel works (video works played on the one or multiple screens), has extended into another newish art form; installation. This is where the videos are shown, either projected or on a monitor, amongst an environment incorporating sculptural elements, objects, or intervened space. The video may be projected onto everyday objects, such as in Pipilotti Rist's Himalaya Sisters Living Room, or onto effigies, such as Tony Oursler's many contemporary works.

Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle is a pivotal contemporary work, in that it has the aura of a big budget Hollywood feature film/s, yet at it's centre it is conceptual and experimental.

2nd Wave Video Artists 1970s - 1980s

Australian video artist Peter Callas creates portraits of cultures from where he has lived, such as Australia, Papua New Guinea, Japan, Germany, Brazil, India, the US and Italy. He addresses multiculturalism and trans/cultural identity, as well as a retelling of history, or offering an alternative past.

VALIE EXPORT - performer, video artist, filmmaker, installation artist, photographer, sculptor and feminist - used video art (or as she termed it, 'expanded cinema') as a social mirror, reflecting back to society their own behaviours and reality.

Gary Hill, an American video artist, challenged the medium significantly, and incorporated text and spoken word with the moving image.

Bill Viola, perhaps one of the most recognised video artist, explores life, death, spirituality, and the unconscious, in his single channel and video installations.


We have started to see a shift away from video art being mainly a documentary tool for performance art, to becoming more of the experimental medium we see today.

More on early video art

Fluxus, an avant garde art group in the early to mid 1960s, included early video artists, performance artists and experimental film artists such as Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell.

The library has some fantastic resources including 'Video Art' (Michael Rush, 2003) and 'Video Art, a guided tour' (Catherine Elwes, 2005), as well as some actually video art recordings.

Early Video Art

I thought you guys might like to check out some early video artists who's work is YouTube...
Nam June Paik
Vito Acconci
Bruce Nauman
Dennis Oppenheim
VALIE EXPORT

A documentary on early experimentations in video art, titled The New Wave.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

And Video Art: A Retrospective
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

You might notice that early video art was used a lot for documenting performance art and body art and to comment critically on the media and television culture. Early video artists, such as Nam June Paik in Magnet TV 1965, and Peter Campus, also explored the technical boundaries of the medium.