nfo

Description

Transcript

(PBS Digital Studios logo)

Video art. What is it even? Moving pictures that someone somewhere decided to call art? Distinct
from all the other moving pictures that are apparently not art? The explosion of technology that has
reshaped our lives so dramatically in the past 50-odd years has also had a profound impact on the lives
of artists. Since the 1960s, artists have picked up video cameras for numerous reasons and involved
moving images in their work in countless ways, but what of it? Why does it need special designation and
what sets apart these moving pictures from all the others? This is the case for video art.

The first mechanisms for recording moving pictures were not terribly portable and even when they
became more so, they weren't easy to buy or use. Early cinema was experimental because well, there
was no other way to do it. No one had done this before. They were making up what it was that should
be done with this technology and figuring out how we'd watch it, whether it should be served to the
public one by one or in a communal setting. Cinema caught fire and took hold and as it evolved, artists
made films, too.

Italian futurists made films and dadaists made films as abstraction was explored in painting, so it was in
moving pictures. Marcel Duchamp experimented with the medium, as did abstract painter Fernand
Leger, whose non-narrative "Ballet Mecanique" made expert use of found footage. Cinema was used to
great effect by the surrealists as well, bringing to startling life their trippy visions. Art and film have
always been intertwined without clear boundaries dividing them, but it wasn't until the Sony Portapack
was introduced in the mid 1960s that video art was truly born.

Battery powered and self contained, the camera and recorder system could be carried and operated by
a single person, requiring neither studio nor crew. Artists loved it, especially early adopters Nam June
Paik and Shigeko Kubota. Although Paik was no stranger to moving image. His 1964 work "Zen for Film"
is composed of an upright piano, a double bass, and a home movie screen, onto which is projected 30
minutes of clear, unprocessed, 16mm film. It was about as minimal as film could be, nothing appearing
on the screen except for the dust and scratches inevitable in the projection process. No images to get
lost in, just the mechanism itself to consider and behold.
Paik was captivated by the technologies that proliferated in modern life in the '60s and '70s and he was
unafraid to use them as raw material, re-imagining and re-engineering them into hybrid works, bridging
video, sculpture, experimental music, and performance. He collaborated with Charlotte Moorman on
his "TV Cello", which Moorman performed by running her bow across a stack of TVs that played
prerecorded images of her doing the same.

Television entered the lives and consciousness of many in the years following World War II and artists
were eager to think through its implications. Joan Jonas's 1972 "Vertical Roll" is titled after the
technological glitch common to TV at the time. She structured a performance in front of the camera
that accounted for the video's rolling bar which fragments her body into disjointed frames. Jonas and
others used the medium to consider and critique how women were represented in film and on TV,
taking control of the means of production and distribution.

With the advent of the Portapack, making moving pictures became cheap and easy. Women and people
of color and artists living around the world could pick up a camera and make a moving picture, and you
didn't need the blessing of the narrow art world to do it. Video art appeared at a time of a great
intermingling of media, when artists unabashedly combined the traditional arts of painting, sculpture,
and drawing with theater, dance, music, and film. Experimentation came from all directions. Filmmaker
Stan Vanderbeek called it "expanded cinema" when films exited movie theaters, entered unusual
spaces, and challenged the role of the passive spectator.

Carolee Schneemann's 1967 work "Snows" involved performers, films, slides, strobe lights, and a
revolving light sculpture. The movement of audience members in certain seats would trip an electronic
system that activated elements of the installation. Art wasn't just sitting there anymore and you weren't
supposed to either. Video has allowed artists to document performances that are fleeting and seen by
few, giving it form, allowing it to live on and be represented in museums, galleries, libraries, and
archives.

Some of these performances were public and others private, performed by the artists only for the
audience of the camera. Bruce Nauman made a number of films in the late '60s in his studio, just him
and the camera, recording his actions as he performed self-directed tasks like bouncing in the corner or
walking in an exaggerated manner around the perimeter of a square. His rationale was, "If I was an
artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art." Here, the artist's
body was the raw material and the process of making the work itself.
From the beginning, video art has excelled at analyzing itself and the technologies that create it.
Anthony McCall's 1973 "Line Describing a Cone" is just that: an animated film of a white dot on a black
background that traces a circle and becomes a thin, arcing white line. It's projected on to a wall in a
room with mist from a smoke machine and the beam of light forms a three dimensional hollow cone.
Unlike traditional cinema consumed by a reclining spectator, these moving pictures are sculptural, filling
the whole room and begging the viewer to walk around even through the projection, but video art
doesn't just examine its own existence and it lives far outside galleries.

Since its inception, it's been able to exist in public spaces of many kinds, able to integrate into life in
ways a single fragile oil painting simply cannot. For Dara Birnbaum's work "Technology/Transformation:
Wonder Woman", she isolated and repeated the moment in the TV show when Linda Carter as Diana
Prince transforms into a superhero. The piece was first shown not in an art context, but broadcast on
cable TV. For the first time, new technologies made possible the remix culture that in time would
become second nature.

Artists pulled from the ocean of existing media and freely adapted it for their own purposes. This was
not TV as a device for conformity and control, but as a means of expression and opposition. Video can
follow artists out in the world, documenting guerilla performances, and recording actions of all kinds. It
can share voices and images and stories of those far from the centers of the art world. It has allowed
artists to share personal accounts, like Howardena Pindell's 1980 recounting of the instances of racism
she'd encountered in life.

Like no other medium, video has been an enormously powerful and elastic tool for addressing and
exploring identity and reconsidering histories. As technology has progressed way beyond the Portapack,
artists have pushed available technologies to do remarkable things and make possible images and
experiences that far outstrip blurry little images on monitors, although those can be pretty cool, too.

The internet has allowed video art to not only be shared far and wide, but to also exist within and
through online platforms. The category has expanded to include experiences in virtual and augmented
reality and the line between video art and not video art is blurrier than ever.

Poppy: Celebrities are important. Celebrities are important.

Sarah: But it's always been blurry. That haziness is a reminder that art doesn't belong to galleries or
museums and it isn't created by people who are fundamentally different than you. Art is what we
collectively decide it is and artists are people who make art, including you.

Guy Ben Ner, Stealing Beauty: Honey, I'm home.

Sarah: So when you see a glow emerging from a darkened gallery or a pair of headphones danging
seductively from a hook, take a leap into the unknown. Revel in not knowing what will happen next.
Trust that it can widen your understanding of what can be done with new technologies beyond what's
prescribed by our corporate overlords. Let it help you get to know your world a little better, to
understand what film is, what TV is, what digital moving images are, and begin to fathom the complexity
of the layered, tabbed, archived digital atmosphere we're all breathing.

Pipilotti Rist has likened her video installations to handbags because, she says, "There's room in them for
everything: painting, technology, language, music, lousy flowing pictures, poetry, commotion,
premonitions of death, sex, and friendliness". Video art doesn't really describe what this is very well,
but neither do any of the other names, really. Video is a catch-all term, describing a moving image
captured on magnetic tape or in digital format, but video comes from Latin, meaning 'I see' and in the
way it reflects how we now understand and process and see the world, it works well enough.

Video: I wanna love you. Yes and you treat you right. I wanna love you. Yeah, everyday and every night
night. We sing together, yeah, yeah, with a roof that's over our heads, we share the shelter of my single
bed. We'll share the same roof, yeah, yeah

VIDEO ART FROM PHILLIPINE

EXHIBITIONS

13/02/2021-04/04/2021
The video program consists seven works by six artists produced by Small Projects (Tromsø) an artist run
gallery. The video program is a part of an on going survey of Contemporary Video Art in the

Philippines.

13/02-04/04/2021

The works reflect the present state of contemporary

Philippine society.

Curator is Jet Pascua.

The Artists: Jonathan Olarte, Pat Kay Laudencia, Roberth Fuentes, Isola Tong, Baldemor Bagabaldo and
Rico Entico.

Duration 31:06 min.

The birth of Philippine video art can be traced back

to the experimental filmmakers of the 1970's, who

had interactions with German filmmakers such as

Harun Farocki, Werner Herzog and many more

through workshops and screenings organized by the

Goethe Institut Manila, as well as the establishment

of the Mowelfund (Movie Workers Welfare

Foundation). Its contemporary practice is also partly

influenced by the conceptual artist and art professor,

Roberto Chabet.

Small Projects is founded in Manila by Filipino artist

Jet Pascua. The video screening is a cooperation

between SDG and Small Projects.

WORKS

1. Hollow Blocks

Jonathan Olarte (1993)

The video is a walk around, and through a

community that is being forcefully evicted by a

private corporation.

2. Passenger

Pat Kay Laudencia (1997)

Passenger is about the feeling of exhaustion, isolation and fear that accompanies a woman's daily

commute across Manila.

3. Basura (Waste)

Roberth Fuentes (1992)

A performative video and a kind of exorcism of the

many issues of Bantayan Island, where the artist

lives.

4. The Wrath of Yorac

Isola Tong (1987) Referencing a character named Yorac from a 1992

film on environmental spirits, the video is part of a series called "Trans Interiorities" where Isola explores
their trans subjectivity, (trans)sexuality, ecology. anxieties, intimacies, their HIV and becomings.

5. I've Been Here

Jonathan Olarte (1993) A dramatized documentary on (((o)))'s attempt to

escape the apparent realities of modern day society.

6. Sins Senses Saints

Hiyas Baldemor Bagabaldo (1993) Sins Senses Saints is an experimental video about

the pressure of conforming to the society.

7. Precedence of Life According to Mr. Ped Xing Rico Entico (b.1980)

A day in the life of the traffic light man.

Profile photo: Basura (Waste) by Robert Fuentes, Art video. Photo: SDG/Anita Bjørnback

HOLLOW BLOCKS By Jonathan Jose Zamora Olarte

Ang "Hollow Blocks" ay isang experimental short film na naglalarawan sa deka-dekadang problemang
patuloy pa ring hinaharap ng mga maralitang tagalunsod: kahirapan, kawalan ng maayos na tirahan, at
kawalan ng tulong mula sa pamahalaan. Itinatampok ng maikling pelikula ang kasalukuyang kalagayan
ng mga maralitang-lunsod sa gitna ng krisis at tunggaliang namamayagpag sa kalunsuran.

4 mins

Awards:

Second Prize, Ika-32 Gawad CCP Para sa Alternatibong Pelikula At Video [Experimental

Category]

Roberth Fuentes uses his body to perform and uses the camera as a tool to not only document and
make films, he tells a story of himself and his community. Roberth deals with the many issues facing him
and his community including environmental issues, specifically garbage and plastic in our oceans.
Coming from a family of fishermen himself, the issues connected to the sea are dear to him. Bantayan
Island mainly relies on the sea for income and food, his mission is to use his work to bring awareness on
his home island but also to other places because we are connected.

We now all know what rumble strips really do. But how about those road signs that says "Ped Xing?"
What or who is it anyway?

If you're thinking that it's an Asian name made to honor the person who invented pedestrian lanes, you
are wrong. In fact, Ped Xing is just a shorthand version for Pedestrian Crossing:

Ped-estrian cross (X)-ing. Ped Xing.

Ped Xing signs are made to warn oncoming motorists of a pedestrian lane or an area where people cross
the road. They are usually in areas where there is no intersection and a pedestrian crossing is needed for
easy access to major establishments such as hospitals, schools, among others. They can also be found in
intersections that lack pedestrian lanes.

If it isn't obvious, you are to slow down upon seeing this sign and watch out for people that are waiting
to cross. Remember, pedestrians are road users too. We must all do our part to ensure the safety of
everyone.

Ang PED XING o Pedestrian Crossing ay nagbibigay babala sa mga parating na motorista na mayroon
pedestrian lane o may lugar kung saan may mga taong tumatawid.

Nasa pedestrian ang right-of-way kapag siya ay tumatawid gamit ang ped xing.