From Performance to
Video/Electronic/Film-based Art
"The artist is a visionary about life. Only he can create disorder and still get away
with it. Only he can use technology to its fullest capacity. The artists have to use
technology because technology is becoming inseparable from lives."
– Billy Klüver
http://www.zakros.com/projects/eat/index.html
In 1966, Swedish engineer Billy Klüver founded E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and
Technology) with Robert Rauschenberg, Fred Waldhauer, and Robert Whitman.
(below) Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver, Soundings, 1968, audience
claps and makes lights go on and off behind plexiglass panels. Ludwig Museum,
Cologne
Joseph Beuys, Siberian Symphony, FESTUM FLUXORUM FLUXUS, 1963, Galerie
Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany
George Maciunas
(Lithuanian-American,
1931–1978) Fluxus
Manifesto, 1963
Yoko Ono (Japan, b. 1933) Cut Piece, performance, 1964 (Japan)
and (right)1965 (NYC,Carnegie Hall)
Shigeko Kubota (American b. Japan, 1937, married to Nam June Paik) Vagina Painting,
performance, July 4th, 1965, New York City, Perpetual Fluxus Festival, (red paint on
white paper, paint brush attached to crotch of underpants)
Nam June Paik (American, b. Seoul, Korea, 1932 - 2006)
Zen for Head, Fluxus performance, 1962
Nam June Paik, 1961 Fluxus Festival of New Music, Weisbaden, German
Nam June Paik and John Cage in Marcel Duchamp and John Cage
still from performance video by Shigeko Kubota, 1972
Nam June Paik, (left) Zen for TV, 1963
(right) TV Buddha, 1974
Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media, first published in 1964
The period after World War-II in the US is considered
the final birth of television. The explosion of
sets into the American marketplace occurred in
1948-1949.
Paik (left) began interfering with television images
in the early 1960s; (right) TV Magnet, 1965
“Some day artists will work with capacitors, resistors and semi-conductors
as they work today with brushes, violins and junk.” Paik
Nam June Paik, (left) TV Bra for Living Sculpture, 1969
(right) Opera Sextronique with Charlotte Moorman (US 1931-1991), 1969
(left) Mooreman, Paik, Joseph Beuys, Fluxus Action, 1966; (left) with Yoko Ono and
John Lennon (1971); (right, below) Moorman performing Paik's Concerto for TV Cello
and Videotapes (1971) at Galeria Bonino, New York, November 23, 1971
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/global-grove/video/1/
Nam June Paik,
Global Groove, 1974;
Paik in studio of
WGBH, which
broadcast Global
Groove
'This is a glimpse of a
video landscape of
tomorrow when
you will be able to
switch on any TV
station on the earth and
TV guides will be as fat
as the Manhattan
telephone book.'
- Paik
Paik, Video Fish, 1975, Three channel video installation with aquariums, water, 45 live
Japanese fish, Pompidou Center (Paris) collection, 7 of 15 monitors
Nam June Paik, Video Flag, (1985-1996)
70 video monitors, 4 laser disc players, computer, timers, electrical devices, wood and
metal housing on rubber wheels, 94 3/8 x 139 3/4 x 47 3/4 in.
Nam June Paik in collaboration with Norman Ballard, Paul Garrin, David Hartnett, and
Stephen Vitiello, Modulation in Sync, 2000. Three-channel video and stereo sound
installation with 100 monitors, seven projectors, two lasers, water, mirrors, projection
screens, and metal structure, variable dimensions. Paik retrospective, Guggenheim NYC
Video performance:
Bruce Nauman, Stamping in the Studio, 1968,
60 minutes (excerpt, 5 minutes)
From: Rewind: Video Art and Alternative Media in the United States 1968-1980
Media N 6494.V53 S97 1995
Program 2: “Investigations of the Phenomenal World: Space, Sound, and Light”
Video performance: 1977
Martha Rosler, Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained
38 minutes
“I did my best to interrupt voyeurism by having a long shot – a stationary shot
that fatigues the viewer and diminishes aspects of the character’s presence on
the screen. It becomes boring to look at something without camera mobility
and without reaction shots. (Rosler, 1981)
From: Rewind: Video Art and Alternative Media in the United States 1968-1980
Media N 6494.V53 S97 1995
Program 4: Gendered Confrontations
Video performance: 1978
Nam June Paik, Merce by Merce by Paik
28 minutes
A tribute to choreographer Merce Cunningham and artist Marcel Duchamp
Video was choreographed for 2-D monitor screen by Cunningham. Audio
includes voices of John Cage and Jasper Johns. Part 2 is by Paik and Shigeko
Kubota and includes montage-interview with Marcel Duchamp and meeting
between Cunningham and Leo Castelli.
“I think I understand time better than the video artists who came from paintingsculpture. Music is the manipulation of time. All music forms have different
structures and buildup. As painters understand abstract space, I understand
abstract time. Nam June Paik, 1974
From: Rewind: Video Art and Alternative Media in the United States 1968-1980
Media N 6494.V53 S97 1995
Program 5: Performance of Video-Imaging Tools
Doug Aitken (California b.1968) Sleepwalkers, Jan-Feb, 2007, 8 projections on MoMA NYC
exterior walls http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJaTjc3TMyo
Doug Aitken, Song I, video projection on the outside of the Hirshhorn museum,
Washington, DC, March 22, 2012 to May 13, 2012. Using eleven high-definition
video projectors, Aitken redefines cinematic space. Visitors to the National Mall
will see the first-ever work of 360-degree convex-screen cinema.
Laurie Anderson (US b. 1947)
Duets on Ice, street performance
in New York City and Genoa, Italy,
1973-4, playing Bach while
wearing ice skates embedded in
ice. When ice melted the
performance ended.
Laurie Anderson, Performance United States Part II, 1980
The Orpheum, New York; (right) album covers United States I-IV, 1984
Laurie Anderson, United States Part I, 1980, Orpheum Theater
Multiple disjunctive narratives. Voice through the harmonizer shifts from “voice of
authority (deep, masculine) to female (her own). The woman repeatedly asks “Hello,
excuse me, can you tell me where I am?” The response is “You can read the signs.”
(below right) Poster from Anderson’s The End of the Moon, 2005, performance
(top) at NASA as the agency’s first artist-in-residence, 2004
Mona Hatoum (b. 1952) PalestinianLebanese based in London
(right) video still from So Much I Want to
Say, 1983
Hatoum, Light at the End, 1989, London,
iron frame and six electric heating elements
Mona Hatoum, still from Measures of Distance, 15-minute video, 1988
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x31gw4_measures-of-distance-monahatoum_creation
Mona Hatoum, Current Disturbance, 1996, visitor hears the electric current feeding
flashing lightbulbs in a minimalist structure of metal cages. The bulbs light up and fade out at
irregular intervals, illuminating the room and the mass of wiring on the floor, creating a sense of
physical threat, a commentary on the dangers of contemporary separation and connection.
Postminimalist
detail
Mona Hatoum, Bunker, steel tubing,
maximum height, 15 ft.
White Cube, London 2011, Postminimalist
Detail showing “bullet-holes”
Mona Hatoum, Suspended,
chain swings with maps of capital
cities incised on the seats
White Cube, London 2011,
postminimalist installation
Pipilotti Rist (Swiss b. 1963) "Ever is
all over" video installation (two
overlapping projections), 1997
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
2007
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=45
59201253275818259#
Pipilotti Rist, I’m not the girl who misses much, 1986
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsC8FKNE8fg
Pipilotti Rist, Selfless In The Bath Of Lava, 1994, audio video installation (video still)
PS1 Long Island City, New York. Tiny screen under the floorboards near the entrance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89vgdELbVyQ
Pipilotti Rist: Pour Your Body Out, video/audio installation at MoMA NYC 2008
Tania Bruguera (b. 1968 Havana,
Cuba) Poetic Justice, 2002-2003, video
Installation, used tea bags, 8 onesecond selection from several
international historic newsreels, 8 LCD
screens, 8 DVD discs, 8 DVD players |
62.33' x 6.2' x 11.8'
Tania Bruguera, Poetic Justice (details), 2002-2003, video Installation
Shirin Neshat, Iranian based in New York – 2 photographs from 1994 Women of Allah
series; right: Allegiance with Wakefulness, ink on photograph of artist’s feet with feminist
Farsi poetry.
Shirin Neshat, still from The Shadow under the Web, film transferred to DVD and
projected as installation, 1997. Neshat synthesizes new image technology; Iranian,
American, and European film aesthetics; the poetry, music and songs of her homeland,
and the global fusion sounds of Phillip Glass. Two years after producing this work she
was declared an enemy of the Iranian state.
“Leaving has offered me incredible personal development, a sense of independence that
I don't think I would have had. But there's also a great sense of isolation. And I've
permanently lost a complete sense of center. I can never call any place home. I will
forever be in a state of in-between.”
- Neshat, 2000