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1
Astronomers would use a comparison for illustration: if sculpture
was as old as the Venus from Willendorf it would be the size of
an orange. In terms of video art which has only existed since
1963 its equivalent would only be the size of a grain of sand.
Just grown to almost visible size it is already at its end. It
can’t maintain its producer, the distribution stagnates and it
has not been able to consolidate its position within the art world.
Videotape and -player have turned out only to be a technical interim
solution, already disappearing from the market.
But video art has survived all the technical changes, because
video itself doesn’t depend on a carrier-medium like a videotape.
More important, being its source, is the executing medium: video
is the electronically mobilized image.
"New Media", catchword and cover for video and computer, took
up the cause of this idea and reduced it to their common denominator.
Hence it’s clear that computer is just a tool, not a new carrier-medium.
Videotapes have never managed to establish an adequate position
in the art market, only in combination with "established" artforms
like video-sculpture or video-installation. New Media have characterized
New Art Forms and with original and following edition they have
managed to install a territory for videoart in the market.
Discussions about copyright and pirate copies accompany film and
New Media like a shadow, no matter whether it concerns the making
of a work with "found footage" or the sale of a tape. After the
failed attempts to establish video art as a replicable product
in the 60ies and early 70ies, the author is left empty-handed,
the value of his work is zero. And the middlemen mostly turned
out to not be quite so kosher about their deals. What the consequences
will be in the copyrightless infinite space of internet is unpredictable.
For everybody filmstills are already available in the net - thank
you for your interest, we hope you have enjoyed the show.
2
The electronically moved image is cinematic. It is the overlap
of "old" and New Media. That means New Media - Old Categories.
That has always been video in relation to film: the most obvious
difference between video and film is the instant image in the
live-camera. Other variations are merely minimal. Perception of
a moving image or a computer animation follows the very same rules.
Whether the observer’s choices with an interactive nonlinear film
can only be perceived successively, in a linear way, remains
an open question. Results from the perceptive psychology and consciousness-
and brain research will have to provide the solution whether our
perception is changed and how. And by the way "conventional" film
is not at all particularly linear or just one-dimensional, as
regards its formal content. After all "multi-sense" is the typical
sign of the art-code.1 In any case, changes can only result from reception. The new
medium video at least seems well preserved in the state of everlasting
youth, due to a lack of information, access and circulation. To
the effect, that its technical and aesthetic knowledge is only
seeping through the sections of interested public, professionals
and experts very slowly.
The art of electronically mobilized images is closely connected
to the developements in film as an art medium, which has developed
entirely from visual art. It clearly delimits from cinema. A good
film director with the right ensemble could more or less achieve
a piece of work on an art level, but the film itself will never
be art. It just "reproduces" a different art form.2
This has been postulated and film’s visual and acoustic presence
have been constantly increased and actualized from the first few
Nickelodeons at the turn of the century, to early 20ies’ cinema
culture, television and Internet.
A film can only qualify to be art, if the linear narrative continuum
is abolished, as well as its linear time, space, image and sound.
Beyond the illusion of merely redoubled images of reality, beyond
the mere translation of linear literary models, it creates "space-time"
and "time-space", in a multi-sense and open version, but with
entirely film-specific means, as: "A piece of art can only emerge,
if created due to its material’s demands and possibilities."3
3
Along with new editing methods and electronically processed images
the artist’s production has been changed drastically: New Media
cause New Working Processes.
It had been possible to influence celluloid by hand, really, despite
invisible chemical processes and exact mechanical frame-sequences
in the projector: Before the use of live-material had become common,
film had been first painted, later cooked, perforated, peppered
and salted.
Video techniques liquify an image to an electronical stream. Physical
manipulations of the hardware are still possible to a certain
extent. Paik, for example, used colour excerpts from cameras or
manipulated images beyond recognition. The TV-monitor was shot,
nailed, buried and also used in a subversive way, like in the
closed-circuit-installations with delay or by inserting wire into
the player.
The treatment of television contrary to its determined sense,
in opposition to visual habits and habits of use has been very
much part of that time and its ideas, performed in the Happening
and Fluxus movements. The birth of video as an artform belonged
to an era of radical changes in art and society, which have been
nested among the discussions about the tasks and positions of
art.4
Nevertheless video has never managed to throw a spanner in the
works. In its further developments video has become increasingly
hermetic. One has to agree with Wolf Vostell, who pointed out,
that the hiss, the electronical void had been the only original
video-image. But it disappeared, it was muted. The tape which
formally ran open was banned in a plastic casing. "Error 42" can
be solved by turning the machine off and on again. Any other problems
will make you visit a service department.
Artists have lost interest in the hardware. Even if one comes
across a burning camera, they seem to only squeeze the last few
drops of æsthetic refinement out of the medium, rather than questioning
or destroying it.
Computer has finally become technically hermetic, in the sense
of a black box. Long gone are the days, when one could still clamp
a blunt pencil to a printer. Manipulations are only possible via
the inherent electronical way. Every working-process can be reversed,
anything can be undone - nonlinear. Nothing is ever fixed.
With these new working processes, one has to be aware of the danger
of just using them in their industrially conceived way. Everybody
seems easily satisfied, if the tool computer works expectedly.
A "bit" out of place and you had better forget about it. This
is how subversive use has been eliminated. This is possibly the
reason why advertisement, TV, feature film and art have be-come
the spitting image of each other.
4
The development from a real haptical intervention to the black
box had the consequence: New Media offer New Results. Nonlinearity
does not only refer to the process, also the result is in a state
of flux, it remains just an interim product and is never final.
It follows, that interactivity can be driven further than video
or simple electronical switchings ever could. It is interactivity
that breaks up the encounter between art work and observer. The
responsibility for the piece’s structure and drama has been handed
over to the "user-observer". But the popularity of this research
is proportional to the degree of disillusionment one experiences
when using interactive works. Despite the "user-observer’s" struggle
with long discussions and instructions, which rather remind him
of his combined fax-answer-phone, confusing him about what refers
to what, where to click, kick, tip or aim and thus letting him
forget which influence he could possibly have by doing so, the
whole field remains very uncertain ("Wasn’t there a similar card
game?"). He might even blame it on his insufficiency, if he can
neither see nor hear anything reliable, incredible or even interesting.
The piece he is working at changes its shape indifferently and
there is only an invisible and silent reward. His actions are
more like trying to hit a nail with a hammer in complete darkness.
By doing so he could achieve something comparably indifferent
and structurally simple.
Communication remains rudimentary or non-communicative, "assuming,
that communication would simply be transmission/ reception of
information, even if it could be reversed by feed-back."5 This construction of speech and inherent response "builds a simulation-model
of communication, in which reciprocal or antagonistic attitudes
or the ambivalence of their exchange have been excluded from the
start."6 The only active "authority" is neither "user-observer", nor "transmitter-receiver",
but the code7 .
The medium remains the message, until its code is also picked
out as a central theme. Only if the piece approves with the user,
only if the user exerts influence on the piece interactivity emerges.
Until then also a taperecorder has plenty of buttons to play with;
at least you can change the tape.
5
Up to now the world has been organized by categories. Their breaking
up has become the new and frightening sign of our time. A mongrel
used to still be a dog, a refined rose still a rose. But everything
has become topsy-turvy: a cow recently rather yields medicine
than milk, a mouse delivers a human ear, an implanted chip takes
the blood pressure. Phantom or hybrid? Here we come back to the
monitor, copying millionfold phantom pictures of reality into
our living-rooms. But a word of honour: doesn’t the sheep Dolly
look different from all the other sheep? What is appearance, what
is reality? What is the difference between a mobile phone, a calculator
and a remote control? Let’s make this a little harder: what if
the calculator would have a trendy handy look? Who is the true
and who is the real Heino? What is real, what is the copy?
Pictures used to have the authority to reproduce and thereby belonged
to an organizing category. And although it has become generally
accepted that pictures never refer8 or relate to anything but themselves, the observer automatically
wants to recognize or discover its references. So far this search
had been seemingly successful, in a way. But the trust in reality
and naturalistic images had been undermined by the new working
processes and conclusions, like digital editing and digital elaboration.
They have provoked the observer’s inner distance.
Mass media have also started to intensely use these new techniques,
like interlock-punch, motive-isolation, colour- and light- estrangement
effects, fades and quick time changes and thereby lost their "naturalism".
The new visual language in media has become abstract compared
to the early broadcasts in 1968. Although black and white they
gave an almost haptical feel: Elastoplast fixing the microphon,
immensely long sequences, unsmooth timing and a Dietmar Schönherr
uncertain at which camera to look at.
Bill Viola has pointed out that one of the differences between
a painted and a filmed triptychon is, (despite all manipulations)
that the person visible on the screen must have existed at some
point.9 That we would all believe in Dietmar Schönherr’s case, but Kyoko
Date, the virtual clip-girl made in Japan, proves Viola’s idea
to have been out-dated long ago.
In spite of changing conditions, the picture has always been a
replacement for reality. Early Stone Age cave paintings have already
been showing animals as a "true and direct continuation" of reality.
"A real animal" for magical actions. The "idea, that art is the
continuation of reality has never disappeared completely,
although today’s art sees itself in opposition to the world."10 It remains difficult to define the "realness" about a visual
impression. At least fantasy provokes the same driving force as
"real" events do.11
6
New Media, film and electronically animated images are used in
many more fields of application than just in art: clip, feature
film, documentary, performance, theatre, advertisement, TV-productions
and "screen-design". Even more: today " … æsthetical fascination
is everywhere", since "anything that redoubles, even the most
banal and ordinary reality becomes a sign of art and therefore
æsthetical." "Consequently art is everywhere. Art is in the centre
of reality."12
Mass Media have increasingly been using any Stylistic Device,
even those which have been originally invented for an art context
like mixed editing, seemingly dilettantic camera work, fuzziness,
torn panning shots. But no stylistic novelty or content characterizes
a particular field of use. The borderlines between the subjects
are invisible. It is impossible to distinguish art on the face
of it. The inflationary use of the term "art" in any other company’s
name also doesn’t help.
Luckily advertising is on the spot with its honourable services
in the name of humanity: "Don’t immitate, innovate" further more
"Be yourself". But will advertisement help to make the position
clearer? Or television? Soap-operas and quiz-shows seem to be
more real than reality. "Neighbours", "Coronation Street", "Blind
Date" and "E. R."; to name just a few, visually and emotionally
lull the observer with promises, others are real tear-jerkers
and instead of putting up with real life we would rather accept
its pastiche.
Art demands a final differentiation: stylistic devices must not
be used as standardized packaging in order to simplify a hygienic
transport of events, products or takes. They should be used to
question, express and put things differently. It is about "Duke
Spirit Supercool Kool Killer Viper Spider Eddie Kola".13
In the early 80´s videoclips rose to compete with, even made the
running for a new artistic visual language, but never met the
high expectations. There had only been a short period of innovation,
but very soon the new stylistic novelties had fossilized to superficial
rubbish. With few exceptions - mere boredom, which the clips still
multiply. The reason had been their lack of artistic desire, their
close attachment to economy and their crafty framework.
7
The same goes for Internet projects, CD-Roms and interactive television.
They simply cannot (yet?) escape from old-fashioned methods of
commercial art. "At the era of New Media & Masscommunication
there is no need to be all by yourself at your monitor: press
6 for right and 2 for up …" most of their instructions and mottos
are simply obsolete. Their level of knowledge badly limps and
lags behind the standard of Jean Baudrillard’s or Niklas Luhmann’s
theoretical media-discussion and they have never come beyond their
short- sighted, naive-affirmative fooling about. One has to note:
relevance of art is not because of its wwwdotxyz address.
They are only used for handy communication ("give us a ring").
This narrow choice from all possible application is based on phenomena
which have only slightly developed. For some time we have been
bewailing "the rush of our time. We have been using telegraphs,
high speed trains, stenography, photography, high speed printing
machines etc., none of them valued to be cultural possessions
per se, but they have brought a haste of transmitting intellectual
results hitherto unexperienced. But it is this hurry that gives
the individual the permanent pressure of being deluged by material,
we fail to put up and deal with."14
Meanwhile more and more are taking seat on Virilio’s "throne",
the "last vehicle", the chair in front of their monitor, where
they are ego-centered "banned from the outside world, the real
space of geophysical expanse, alienated from their brutish body,
their physical weight."15 Communication has been increasingly condensed and on is present
level it influences our life vehemently. This development had
been looming long ago and has in fact expanded only gradually.
At present it reaches its peak in the vision of an "intelligent"
milk carton, which is supposed to order its own supply from the
supermarket - unfortunately it doesn’t take care of the payment,
just as other unrestricted information is not necessarily "free".
8
Dark rumbling, roaring, whispering. Something is flickering, vibrates
lightly, twitches obviously, but remains blurred. Is the picture
upside down? Did I hear somebody talking? Let’s see what happens
in the next room.
A camera. If I walk down here, I can see this, aha, and if … from
there, then … like that, I see. Interesting, all these possibilities
video has. Relieved, we can approvingly say goodbye, to some video-works,
especially to those, even Simple Simon considers as art.
Usually it is much easier to notice if something isn’t art. In
"Citizen Kane" it is said: "It is a piece of cake to make money
- if you have no other aim in life than making money." Turning
this argument on its head, it means that it is difficult not to
make money or that it has to be a matter of art if one can’t make
money. This obvious conclusion seems to have sunk deeply into
the producer’s brains.
Since the 18th century art has been kicked off its traditional
purposes in religion and church, in monarchy and court. It is
left to the art-market’s discretion, floating, like a "stranger
in country and society"16 - sometimes independent or conformist, sometimes successful or
unnoticed. It is left to the artist’s choice whether to play the
part of a propagandist, "avantgardist", Messiah, or "l’artist
pour l’art". The definition is up to him and he will need prophetic
qualities and an uncompromising nature in order to find a conclusion.
Anyhow, facing one’s complete isolation is not funny. This courage
doesn’t quite make a genius, but he will surely be obliged to
pay tribute to life, and at least the artist can leave his life’s
work to the honourable critiques, distributors and consultants.
Who would claim that it was no art to make money with art?
"For me art is not produced in order to promote nice things to
look at, or to add another new step in the discussion about contemporary
art and art theory. For me art is a means to achieve another level
of cognition."17 Quoting Bill Viola further he says: "The individual is the self,
the root of all political, social and historical changes. Transforming
the self is my highest ideal. Only then it gains relevance for
other people’s feelings, only then it becomes part of the masses,
logically connected."18
Viola’s frankness has repeatedly been held against him, but he
continues. His tape "Truth through Mass Individuation", from 1976
refers to C. G. Jung’s term. Individuation is "an idea of the
best one can possible do", since there is "no cure and no revolution
…, which hasn’t been set by an individual in the first place."19
According to Jung’s subjective approach, a personal access is
the deciding factor for the artistic quality of a piece of art.
Just here and like that condensation can happen. The prophetic,
revolutionary or simply the changed potency of art remains questionable,
but sheltering with other related disciplines, the mimicry, has
to be refused. Art has to make up its mind. Art has to remain
different.
1 Niklas Luhmann, "Die Realität der Massenmedien", Opladen 1996
2 Adolf Behne, "Der Film als Kunstwerk", 1921, in: Birgit Hein/
WulfHerzogenrath (ed.), "Film als Film - 1910 bis heute", Köln
1977
3 Walther Ruttmann, "Kunst und Kino", 1917, in: Walter Schobert,
"Der deutsche Avant-Garde Film der 20er Jahre", München 1989
4 Gerda Lampalzer, "Videokunst - historischer Überblick und
theoretische Zugänge", Wien 1992
5 Jean Baudrillard, "Requiem für die Medien", 1972, in: Jean Baudrillard:
"Kool Killer oder der Aufstand der Zeichen", Berlin 1978
6 ibid.
7 ibid., and Luhmann, ibid.
8 Luhmann, ibid., and Norbert Bolz, "Am Ende der Gutenberg Galaxis",
München 1993, and Jean Baudrillard, "Der symbolische Tausch und
der Tod",
München 1991
9 "Das Ganze wieder zusammenfügen", Bill Viola im Gespräch mit
Otto Neumaier und Alexander Pühringer, in: "Bill Viola",
Ausstellungskatalog Salzburger Kunstverein, 1994
10 Arnold Hauser, "Sozialgeschichte der Kunst und Literatur", München
1953
11 Alexander Mitscherlich, "Krankheit als Konflikt", Frankfurt 1966,
Part 1
12 Baudrillard, "Der symbolische Tausch", ibid.
13 ein Zitat New Yorker Graffiti aus: Jean Baudrillard, "Kool Killer
oder der
Aufstand der Zeichen", in: Baudrillard, "Kool Killer", ibid.
14 Walther Ruttmann, "Malerei mit Zeit", um 1919, in: Hein/Herzogenrath,
ibid.
15 Paul Virilio, "Rasender Stillstand", München 1992
16 Oskar Bätschmann, "Ausstellungskünstler - Kult und Karriere im
modernen
Kunstsystem", Köln 1997
17 Neumaier/Pühringer, ibid.
18 Nicoletta Torcelli: "Bill Viola, ein Interview",
in: Kunstbulletin (ohne Nummer), 1993
19 C. G. Jung, "Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Ich und dem Unbewußten",
München 1990 |
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