The Relationship between Video Art and Space: Examining Video Art through Spatial Elements of the Exhibition Spaces. Youngsun Park, Post Doc.
Yonsei Communication Research Institute
Video Art, once considered as an alternative art medium, has become a dominant art form. The first video art exhibition was by Nam June Paik in 1963. The exhibition was titled Exposition of Music – Electronic Television. In his exhibition, television was used as an artistic medium which turned against television itself. Edith Decker, who wrote a doctoral thesis on Nam June Paik in 1985, explained the significance of television emerging as an experimental art medium in the 1960s.[i]Since the beginning of 1970s, television which showed images became a media of artistic expression occupying a part of modern art. The video art is expressed as artistic possibility of technology or to be the extension of art and movie. As the scope of video art gradually enlarged, the electronic technology and space composition became important elements of video art. Recently, many video art exhibitions are held in Korean galleries, but many people are still unfamiliar with video art. As the works and exhibition of Nam June Paik have been introduced through broadcasting, most people understand that only the works like Nam June Paik’s are of video art. If so, what is the definition of video art in the general dictionary? A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art defines Video Art as follows. Video Art: a broad term applied to works created by visual artists in which video and television equipment and technology is used in any of various ways.[ii] This definition reflects a vagueness and broadness in understanding video artworks. A more concrete and narrower definition of Video Art is given in the Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes. Video Art: The pioneer here is Nam June Paik, who realized early in the 1960s that magnets applied to points outside a live TV screen could distort its kinetic image. Paik later placed an electrified wire across a reel of recorded videotapes, thereby causing erasure every few seconds; he was among the first to assemble several monitors into unified objects called Video Sculptures. Once the cost of portable cameras decreased, video became a popular art medium, much like photography before it, so that one measure of artistry became the creation of work different from the very common run. Some used video to document live performances; others, such as Amy Greenfield, exploited its different scale to ‘film’ performances that were never meant to be seen live. Stephen Beck eschewed the camera completely for synthesizers that could create images never seen before; Bill Viola and Bucky Schwartz, among others, realized perceptual incongruities unique to the new medium, while David Gigliotti and Mary Lucier used several monitors to portray a continuous image that ran from screen to screen.[iii] The Dictionary of Art provides other categories of Video Art recognizing many forms and diversities. Video Art: term used to describe art that uses both the apparatus and processes of television and video. It can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast, viewed in galleries or other venues, or distributed as tape or discs; sculptural installations, which may incorporate one or more television receivers or monitors, displaying ‘live’ or recorded images and sound; and performances in which video representations are included.[iv] Video art defined from these dictionaries deliver just fundamental and literal knowledge. Sean Cubitt expressed a more negative view of the origins of Video Art, where he said, “It’s impossible to see Video Art history, both because the evidence is fading, and because it was never a single history in any case.”[v]These different views indicate that video art history tends to mythologize individual artists or to record individual events separately. It also demonstrates how the term Video Art is over-simplified and there remains a need to offer categories or define forms. <The relationship between video art and exhibition space> Though video art drew attentions since the first half of 1970s, it was not easy to exhibit works of video art in the existing mainstream galleries. They could attract young artists by exhibiting non-commercial art works such as performance and video installation art in exhibition spaces run by artists. Therefore, now it is possible to exhibit video art in various new spaces as well as art museum and gallery. We can examine various works of video art through spatial elements of various exhibition spaces. Single channel video and the gallery spaceSingle channel video is screened on TV Monitor in exhibition space such as a gallery rather than movie theater, or screened on a wall of exhibition place by using a video projector. Single channel video screening by using video projector can be done in movie theater, but the reason why it’s screened in gallery’s exhibition space is that it’s important where to exhibit single channel video. That is, the relationship between video and exhibition place takes very important role. Like single channel video, the harmony with exhibition place is very important for multi-channel video too. In addition, different to single channel video, many spatial languages have to be calculated such as arrangement of video images in order, showing location for spectators, space between screens, and size of various images. Steve McQueen, Deadpan, 1997
16mm black and white film, video transfer, silent. 4min. 30 secs. Steve McQueen’s artwork, Deadpan, was exhibited by projecting single channel video in dark space within four-sided wall. This single channel video was made as a silent, black and white film and it was transformed to video format in order to exhibit at the gallery space. In the video image of the work, McQueen is standing stationary and a house is seen behind. Suddenly, the house is slowly falling down over McQueen. Stationary McQueen doesn’t move in such a situation, and fortunately, the window of the house is open and McQueen is standing at the right position through the window and safe when the house falls down. This scene is repeatedly shown in different angles and the speed of collapse varies making spectators interested and tensed. The work was screened by using a projector, and the image was on the floor of exhibition space. And so it feels like a side of the house falls down into actual exhibition place out of the video image.If screened in a movie theater, such a connection of image and space cannot be experienced. In his own words, Steve McQueen explained as follows: “Because the film is projected on the back wall of the gallery, completely covering it from ceiling to floor and from one side to the other, it has a kind of all encompassing effect. You get pulled into the event… It’s supposed to be a silent experience, because when people enter the room, they become more aware of themselves, their own breath… I’d like to put people in a situation where they are aware of themselves while they watch the piece.”[vi] In this way, Steve McQueen accomplishes his own video art through the connection of image and gallery space other than showing only the image of his single channel video in a cinema setting.
Video art with sculptural space The scope of using television is enlarged too in media art. Television set can be used as a dimensional fixture with 3D spatial language from a simple tool showing video image. Meanwhile, it takes the role of television machine too as a 3D fixture with the size and location of television set. Acting like a statue through the combination of television in 3D space and its image, it is also called as ‘moving electronic sculpture’ or ‘video sculpture.’ Bill Viola, Heaven and Earth, (1992) In Heaven and Earth, a column like structure is enclosed in a small alcove. Two wood columns extend from floor to ceiling, separated by a gap of several inches. In this gap, the exposed tubes of two black and white video monitors are positioned facing each other but not touching. The upper monitor shows an image of an old woman’s face on the verge of death, and the lower monitor shows the face of a new baby only days old. The images are silent and the entire structure is enclosed in a small room. Curators David Ross and Peter Sellars state, “Since the surface of each monitor screen is glass, the reflection of the image on the opposing screen can be seen through the surface of each image, with the birth-face and death-face reflecting and containing each other.”[vii] Heaven and Earth is a full round sculpture with a video element in it. At eye level, the viewers are drawn into the spaces between the two monitors. The reflections and the lights between them attract the viewers to imagine the authenticity of spaces formed by two pieces. The personal space of sculpture is highlighted by the intimacy between the two monitors between death and birth. Heaven and Earth has strong sculpture space elements. Video art and outside space Dan Graham, Video Piece for Two Glass Office Buildings, 1976. Dan Graham’s artwork Video Piece for Two Glass Office Buildings takes place over an urban space with a live feedback system rather than a gallery space. Graham shows video installation using urban space in two identical office buildings lying across from each other. In each building, a mirror wall is installed to reflect at each other with the glass window. And the monitor and camera are installed in front of the glass window. The installed walls reflect the space between the mirror and the outside of the opposite building. In addition, installed video camera takes the mirror wall and it is screened on the monitor. The camera image on the left building is seen on the monitor of right building. This image on the monitor of right building is shown delayed about 8 seconds.
This work shows the inside and outside images of different places from different views. It shows different views of image on actual situation in actual place. It shows people working in opposite buildings at different views through mirror, camera and monitor. Also, scenes in a building are shown in another building’s monitor as scenes of 8 seconds past. In order to show the different views including the private space of those people working in public places, Graham uses office building space rather than gallery space. Although Graham showed such live-feedback video installation in a gallery setting too, public space exhibitions delivered much stronger messages. Future of Video Art As arts and cultures evolve over time, video art has also expanded its forms. The elements that compose video art have extended greatly which defines video art today. This paper discussed few art works centered in spatial element among many other elements. As the role of expressive art media is enlarged, the use of space became an important factor in video art. Video Art no longer exists only in the space of television monitor. The exhibition space of video art is not restricted only to the gallery space. It is now found in dedicated exhibition spaces and even in open public spaces. Emancipated from the fixed space, every space now serves as an open canvas for video artist. The scope of video art is expanding as the artists’ space usage gets diversified. From the examples discussed here, we can see that video art is an expanded form of film, sculpture, and installation art. Just by examining the spatial elements of video art, we can see that video art is an expanded medium of other arts. The future of video art in the 21st century will be characterized as an art form that can take place in all art mediums.
[i] See Edith Decker-Phillips, Paik Video, Barrytown, New York, 1998, pp.33-40. [ii] Ian Chilvers, ed. A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art, Oxford University Press, London, 1998, p.637.
[iii] Richard Kostelanetz, ed. A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, Schirmer, New York, 1993, p.644.
[iv] Jane Turner, ed. The Dictionary of Art, Grove’s, New York, 1996, p.419.
[v] Sean Cubitt, Timeshift on Video Culture, Routledge, London, 1991 , p.86-67.
[vi] Patricia Bickers. “Let’s Get Physical: Steve McQueen interviewed by Patricia Bickers,” Art Monthly, No. 202, Dec 1996-Jan1997, p.2.
[vii] David Ross & Peter Sellars, eds. Bill Viola, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1992.
