"Participation instead of consumption" was the motto;
exemplary for this was
Nam June Paik's first one-person show in 1963 in the
Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, which carried the suggestive title
Participation TV and has long since become legendary. The Korean, who
had been living in Germany since 1956, presented twelve television sets
with a "disturbed" image program which the viewer could alter with the
help of available magnets. In a simple way, a medium of distribution was
turned into a medium of communication. The abstract patterns didn't
transport any messages, but referred to the properties of the electronic
image itself entirely in keeping with Marshall McLuhan's motto
"The medium is the message."
John Cage: Untitled, 1987, Deutsche Bank Collection
In contrast with these early attempts at a creative reevaluation of
television, the introduction of the
portable video camera in 1965 marked a quantum leap. If, strictly
speaking, the beginnings of video art should really be called television
art, today's VHS
video, a cheap method of recording image information on magnetic tape,
provided the preconditions for the birth of the new genre. In the process,
the comparatively economical technology and the easy handling of the
so-called
"portapak" opened up new perspectives. While many artists
consciously chose a
low-tech aesthetic by doing without reworking processes, others were
increasingly fascinated by the technology. Certain artists, including
Paik, began working with engineers to research new possibilities both in
the creation of images and in their post-production, or received
opportunities to work together with financial firms and research centers.
The model of the artist engineer is, of course, no invention of the media
age - one need only think of exceptional figures such as
Leonardo da Vinci.
Again and again, the supposedly autonomous art
of Modernism investigated the synergetic effect existing between art and
science. In particular, the
Bauhaus not only worked towards dismantling the hierarchy between the
so-called "fine" and "applied" arts, but also committed itself to
liberating the arts in the direction of science and technology.
Laszlo Moholy Nagy, for instance, stands for this; his intense involvement
with photographic techniques as well as the
Light-Space Modulator he developed at the Bauhaus anticipated later
experiments. In this vein, in the 1960s, the Zero artist
Otto Piene worked at the legendary
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which to this day
remains one of the most important homes for creative minds of every
persuasion - IT freaks, biotechnology experts, or artists.
Nam June Paik: video sculpture, German Pavilion, Venice Biennial, 1993
©Photo: Archiv Wulf Herzogenrath / Verlag der Kunst
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Along with the electronic techniques of cutting and
montage, the first video generation was primarily interested in the
medium's "painterly" potential. Instead of creating footage that was
faithful to reality, they were concerned with color, dynamics, and rhythm
- the images learned to dance, much as they had done in the avant-garde
films of the 1920s. On the other hand, exploring the technique also meant
exploring oneself. For a large number of artists, video opened up entirely
new perspectives of artistic self-portrayal. The video performances of
Bruce Nauman,
Martha Rosler, Vito
Acconci,
Ulrike Rosenbach,
Marina Abramovic/Ulay, and others deliberately play with the aura of the
private, thus countering the mass medium's claim to pure objectivity.
Coupled with phenomenological, psychoanalytical, media-theoretical, and
feminist considerations, the TV screen became an arena for investigating
habits of seeing in an increasingly mediatized culture.
Bruce Nauman: Untitled (Gray), 1971, Deutsche Bank Collection
More mediatization meant more channels and thus more information, bringing
competing interests to bear - particularly in the USA. Opinion making was
no longer reserved for the state broadcasting monopoly, but was spread
over various public spheres. This process of differentiating among the
public also calls for a critical awareness: parallel to the civil rights
movements of the 60s and 70s, student revolts, an incipient
feminism, and the socio-political campaigns against the
Vietnam War, video art used
found footage to investigate the way the media create images of reality.
Here, too, Paik pointed the way early on: stringing television commercials
together in the tape Waiting for Commercials (1972), for instance,
or, in Electronic Opera No.1 from 1969, portraying a distorted
Richard Nixon to the soundtrack of
Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Other artists such as
Dara Birnbaum or
Klaus vom Bruch also practiced the appropriation of media imagery in the
form of
Appropriation Art, which
deconstructed the glossy appearance of television.
This performance
dimension of early video art clashed with the metaphor of the TV screen as
a "window to the world" that had been coursing throughout the prevailing
media debates of the time. Television wasn't supposed to transport
anything, it was supposed to be reflected upon - an aim that
Valie Export aptly expressed in her action Facing a Family from
1971, where a family gathers before a TV set in a cozy living room idyll,
only to encounter their own mirror image.
While a generation of
young artists took the television out of the intimacy of the private
living room and brought it into the gallery, there were also efforts to
use TV as a medium to disseminate artistically produced video tapes or
programs. During the 1970s, there were already 19 million households in
the Federal Republic of Germany that owned a television set - a huge
potential for an art scene in search of new methods of form and
presentation and, entirely in keeping with the spirit of the time, who
were setting their sights on breaking apart the triangular construction of
studio/gallery/museum. At the time, the cameraman and director
Gerry Schum was one of the first to risk a leap into the living room with
his Television Gallery.
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