By Michael Nash

II(> lea'l that eall be id is thaI. we hav wit.Dc,sed the d alh of video art in thc Unit d Stall',. By "video art" I mean the fOflllal category defined by di!;Cj pIiDe-sperifi(: Great Society arts funding, theoretical N' 'islul1ce to e)cctJ'()nic m scull ure, and the self-scrving historiography of curators. e<'king job sex'III'it\" There 11I'e almost no 'vidt'o" fcstivals in UIC r., . aJiy:m r('. The "blne-chip" videO artistl-Gnry Hill, l am

The End of Video Art (and Television)

June Paik, Bill Viola-have been absorbed by the tmclitioual altS e tahli hltlenl and now CC)]]centrnte on creating coUrdibl vill 0 illl>tiillntion', Dc;('ijoD' t pr'Oduce film or video are dictated almost entirel,,- by distributioll i sues aDd pructi aJ emerging a,nd cstablislwd \'ideo artist like .'adie Belllr.i.ag.TnmKatin.Mal:)oll Higgs, and Bruce and Noi'i'n:m tOlulyc oughtsl1lvUI i(1n i/1 feature film projects, planned Cl)r recently completed. It wa' aid II decade ago tbat vide<> art may hlwe uei;lfl the only art [ot'm u lli'Lory bc>fore it had a :histoi'y,' no\v }'t.s histol'Y is history befol'e we 11nd a hanccto mourn its passin. Disestablishment of TV. the ultimate C81 e that unlted video artists and in(lependent documentarian for years, no longer galvanizes the field for a va.riety of rcasons. Distiliet philosophical and tylistio shifts have muted the dichotomy between video .RJ'tantl television, as artists andadivists seek to participate in 'tV clilture in order to revitalize tile medium's modal ities and pursuc the illusive goal of culll,II'al Media artists are making works for television'; television is rnaking occa,sioilal opportunities available to artists"; and most work practicing media critique has not only abandoned repudiation of the mediUIll, it ilow engages television's methodology as an eUieacious vernacular, "playing both ends against the middle" to make a kind of television that presents and critiques itself.' It is this success of video art, and the cultural shifts it enunciated and evinced, which is partially responsible for its "faBurc" as a fine arts form in the current decade: the media revolution is to some extent being televised or looks like television, and the battle lines are completely blurred.'

Once the great punching hag for new theory, 1'\' ' pre cuLing deconst.ruetion with a moving t. III fact, tele isioJl' critiqllC" of itself is marl' pervasive, and in :>Onlris III l'e than its critique by media a 11.. Ranging fl' m GlLr)' Shandling's deft faux talk 'lho\\' hit '['Ill: Larry 19f1.0'W. to ,John Krict'aJusi sand Bol amp's genre-mutating I;nons Hell IImi Stimpy. to lfl/8tf'ry Scit'twe T#ealm' 3{)()O's ophomol'ic I'u llning commentary 011 bad filni toUcavi ant,} Butl-head' sneering adolescent illt rroglltioll or adole cent mu ic vidM., t.o the' E ercady Battet'y COIlUTl reials, UhjqllitOll. ad parodies broken up by the pinkbulIII)' the wave, of "anti-television" programs k 'cpo televisioii one self-critiquing step ahead of \ri<1eo a.rt Lie t . cflbrts t.o ('I've as the loyal OPPol>ltioll." After a aecade of ,upj'('ting the. talk how format to Withering gratiou. David has rsis d 'elf'parody to the,indusb,-y !>l.$ndnrd, as witne d by his Sl4 millionp contra('t to ltO. t BS', new talk show. ow. Ilew 811('hol's, sPortscaster. T\>lTV' VJs, and ickelodeon's network promotions a.U mak it'a point to a.cknowledge' the lam Iless and alJ urdit:.y of Uleinedium', formats, e<)nventions, and protocols.

More than anythingcl e the fr,iendly fire to 'which television has subjected itself has made guerrill .hrids against the evil empire lurgelyirrclev811t, ti.u<1 like the U.S. now deprived of an ,an:hrival's ,threat, "alternative" video has lost its moral imperative. dd to this advertisement's--especially musi('. video'sannexation of the entire history or 20th Century " avant-garde film and video techniques for its of-the-wcek posturing of new consumer goods: the collapse ,of media art's secondary' role as purveyor of experimental visualizations has deprived it of even the fmmal ground on which i compan.ies, aud publi hers are pbi ed to ers.But it took 2? years to wire lip for cony l'ge intoma' "ive lIew tell) of cable TV----;and asizable minority of the There i a paucity of programming to fill culturill di'tr'ibution based Oil digital U .. still isn't wired; It will costbim- a 500-churinel environment (even with te.chnologi - cm rging in this dreds of billions of dollai'S to re,vire the bali't.he capacity given over to g neration."'Wheu fully implemented, country lind fully cOllvert thc installed vi >w) and a lack of capital to produce this will con'ipletethe cent\ll'y-Iong relo- hase QI' playback systems, so there is no !'or' "riarrowcasting" because TV produc. way thjlt the existing base of TV sets is tion has 'beenskewed towards rlmss cation of the dominant site of experience: frql3l the "pro cenium arch" goillg away for quite sometime, For at advertising budgets, Artists must exploit to the"home." leMt the next generation, the analog TV their ability to create low-budget prowill enjoy atransitional window and a gramming before .infomereials, home whole ievolut.ion will unfoldin im;reThe Transition slwpping, and every TV show The transitional winpow of 20 years into ments, a year at a time, a plat; made before -the present a digital system for the exchange of cul- form at a time, driven by,vhat moment gluts. the paths into Americ'a's homes. ture will be a crucial tillle for the Ilew TV spectators learn to media arts. More than the liTnits of t.ech- demand: Continued !,1lpage nology and economics, the limits of enduse demand will dictate the opporWni- TCI Cable is doing ties for thc new media, When the U.S. something that IS converted from radio to TV in the late either entil'ely 1940s and early 1950s, almost all pro- brilliant. or grams were versions of radio shows with massively the same of the early terms stupid.

The End of Video Art continued

While a lot of work has been created for television by artists up to this point in ... relationship to cxisting media arts '\ venues, the total wouldn't fill one chan\ nel for a year, and much of it has merely \ been attempts to use television to dis" tribute production created for entirely different distribution contexts. A generation ago, the emergence of cable technology was rhetorically em braced as an important new artists' venue, but public funding and community access, extensions of the Great Society models, were the almost exclusivc basis of "Guerrilla Television." What is required is a completely different approach to funding and programming and a takeover at the level of pl'Ogramming enterprises and production companies to recast entire venues via media arts-informed perspectives, but in a fashion that accepts who television audiences a I'e, how television distribution works, and how it will be radically altered in the next two decades. Simple multi-channel interactive programs-the use of scvcral channels with viewer options to make contcnt decisions, such as the multi-camera live sports program experiments in this country and Canada-may be one method whereby artists' intertcxtual strategies start to find their audience. Recent work by Van Gogh TV, such as their Documenta-based interactive television project of 1993, suggests how steps might be taken in bringing existing technologies such as phones, modems, video phones, and satellite Links together into a dynamic tele-community bulletin board for the exchange of information and public art. Those interested in combining critical and aesthetic strategies have an excellent opportunity to create demand for tl'Uly oppositional deconstruction by taking advantage of the limits of crude digital video over the next few years. With QuickTime and DVI only able to fill a small window on most personal computers, the screen must be occupied by companion content, so there may never be a better time to combine radical appLications of literary criticism with film and

television, though this is not in and of itself sufficient to redefine the possibilities of the new media. Interactive products that support repea of the 15th Atlanta Film and Video Fcsti,a!.
These COI'lUllents are revised froJ1l my statel11ent in the festival catalog, 15tJI Atlallta iii/III alUl

Video Festival (Atlanta: Imagc Film and Yidr:o Center, 1991). 11. To get a sense of how visible this convergence is, see the cover story by Philip Elmer-Dcwitt, "Thc Info Highway: Bringing a Rcvolution in
Entertainment. News and Communication, II

Time, April 12, 1993, and Ken Auletta, "Barry Diller's Search for the Future," The Y01'{,-er, February 22, 199B.
12. Over a "suggestive" but relatively tame'

thirty-second excerpt from TongufS Untied, Buchanan's spot der:IHred: "In the last three too shoclcing to show. This so-callcd art. has glorified homosexuality, r:xploited children. and PCI'verted the image of Jesus Christ. Even after good

tax dollars in pornographic and blasphcmous 2.rt

people protested, Bush eontinucd to fund this kind of art. Send Bush" messHg-e! Wc need H leader who'll fight for what we br:Jieve in. Yote
Put Buchanan for President.'

years, the Bush Administration has invest.ed our

Notes:
I. Bill Viola, "History, 10 Years, and the

Dreamtime," Video: A Retrospective (Long Beach: Long Beach Museum of Art, 1984), p. 19. 2. For example, videotapes by Mark RappapOlt, Shelly Silver, and Druce and Norman Yonemoto, all carefully configured as broadcast video art works. position thcmselves within stylistic terms and genre expectations. Their success hinges, in part: on being recognized as some

form of tclevision, however farout. Helping mass media to become its own worst enemy, the Yonemotos have refined ill Made in HollytOOod (l990) a perpetually self-critical and self-mutating fonn of soap opera experUy wafting simulated media culture to conversational art theory. A travelog' poised perfecUy within kitsch Americana, Rappaport's Postca:rds (1990) is an inspired marriage of postcard world view and television melodrama. Silver's The Hou.ses Thill Are I.eft (Part One) (1990) is an ambitious fihn/video dramatir: r:omedy pilot that also mixes in documentary and deconstructivc modes with exeeptional fluency. 3. Video art has occasionally found its way into the most adventurous programming of cable enterprises like ilITV, USA, HilO, and Bravo, and publie television-produced media art series like Alive 1'elevioion (formerly Alive Prom Off Cenier) and N,.'W These programs not only recyele existing art, but also help fund and, in the case of Alive, commission new work. There
have Ix'en a few reccn t forays into the realm of

the Deginning: Ernie Kovacs," High Performance, Winte, 1984, for a historical r:ontext of this phenomenon. See also my "Andy Kaufman's Last Laugh," Art 181m...., 1990, and Kov(U]s a'rut Kaufman (Long Beach: Long Beach Museum of Art, 1989). 7. Works by Robert Beck (The Feeling of Power: #6769, 1990), COllllie Coleman and Alan Powell (Stat-i<:, 1989), John CDss ("Out" Takes, 198f)), Alan Hende''Son, Riehard Metzger, and Ann Magnuson (The Pawcr of Pussy, 1091), Bob Paris (Hehold, I Come Quickly: 11,e Strange Revelations of R<'Verend Swaggart, 1990), and Elia Suleiman and Jayce Salloum (Introduction to the End of an /hgumenl. (Intifada): Speaking Jor vneself...Speaki'T1g for otJlers, 1990), all demon strate illuminating refinements in the application of critical theory to the textual analysis of television by engaging the medium's modalities. 8. Spoken and written texts are being used to inject critical dialogue into the body of the work in a didactic fashion. This is partly an extension of the social and politir:al commentary providcd by contempora.ry art, and this tendency also indicates the growing need for cultural criticism of and via electronic media. But, what partiCUlarly distinguishes this new wrinkle is the extent to which video artists arc now artir:ula ting r:ultural criticism, aesthetic t.heory and even sdfcritique
as interventions into the work ften estahlish-

VIll'ied

(1989) is a widely acclaimed tour deforce by Marlon Riggs, a Bay Area artist who makes
experimental works and more conventionul documentaries. It provides a remarkably rich ussess-

ment of t.he black gay experience through un arts variety show fonnat that combines poctry
and musical performance, personal narrative and

ethnographic documcnt.ary.
13, Examples are numerous, ranging from banalities

like Madonna's hyped-out book to artistir: triumphs like Todd Haynes' homocl'Otic tour de force Po;"on, which was attackcd by the radical right and did well theatrically and in home video. 14. Obviously, the public funding of art is now in perpetllHI jcopardy, but the more insidious effect Illlly be in the se.ifcensorship many art institutions implement to limit their individualliability. For exarnple. Dennis Bal'1'y was perceived as

being H major hero after the Contemporary Arts Cent.cr in Cincinnati beat a pornography charge precipitnted by an exhibition of the works of Robert Mnpplethorpe. Within a year, Barry and one of his curatol'S pulled a work by Andrew
Krasnow eontaining an American Flag made from human skin from thcir "Mechanic-a" exhibi-

commcrcial telcvision by independent feature

ing a separate "voice" for this commentary-assuming the role traditionally reserved for the art critic. Exa.mples of works employing self-cl'iticism include Vanalyne Grcene's A SP'J in the House that Ruth Built (1989), filled with expository asides that present a running play-by play of her motives in making a tape about her sexual and sociological obsession with basebaJl, coneluding with an ex-post facto assessment of what the tape "means"; Jeanne C. Finley's At tJle il'lusL'Um: A Pilglimage of Vanquished Objects (1989), a dev-

tion fo}' fear tha t they would be subject to further atlar:ks and loss of r:ommunity support.
Andrew in several interviews with the

author, Janua.ryMarch 1U9!.

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