phenomenological linguistics of video, or, Vito Acconci Masturbating

This week (by which I mean last week, this post is a little overdue), Maia and I watched more early of early video art’s OGs of sorts that we had missed last week—Acconci, Rosler, Paik, Serra, and the Vasulkas. Most of the artists vary in content, but many of them find a common link in either formal experimentation with video or the use of video to record/alter performance. This seemed to be the case for the videos we watched last week too—Ant Farm and Nauman in the performative camp; Hall, Hill, and Campus falling more into the formal experimentation. In this week’s videos I found Martha Rosler and Vito Acconci representing the performance camp, with Nam June Paik, Richard Serra, and the Vasulka couple representing formal experimentation. This isn’t to say that there isn’t overlap between the two camps, or that the artists in them dealt only with formal or performance specific topics; what is important is that these “two camps” existed because these methods speak to the era and how artists were integrating this new video technology into their phenomenological art-language.

Let’s start with Paik, Serra, and the Vasulkas in the “formal experimentation” corner. As Martha Rosler noted in our first week’s readings, Nam June Paik is in many people’s minds the mythologized godfather of video art. Experimenting with the formal qualities of video art would make sense as an early video artist because it represented a rich mine of new visual and temporal experience. TV manipulation effects like those in Paik’s “Beatles Electroniques” have been made and remade so many times that they have found their contemporary existence in screen savers and pre-made Final Cut effects. People in my and Maia’s generation are probably among the very last who will be able to vaguely remember the days of video effects like these being MTV-cool and seen on a tube television instead of recreated on a computer or flat-screen. The Vasulka’s “Switch! Monitor! Drift!” incorporates both video manipulation as well as the idea of simultaneity that so many artists gravitated to, yet our generation has become so used to security cameras that neither of these aspects sounds very novel. Just like when watching early film like “The Arrival of a Train”, in order to appreciate it you have to put aside any memories of television or opinions based on them so we can try to see these videos as the incredible new experiences they represented for people in their day.

Talking about these early videos simply as novel visual experiences, like 3D movies or laser shows today, is reductionist. Yes, these were stimulating new forms of experience, but many artists quickly moved past simple formal exploration and used this new imagery as a communication tool. For many early video artists like Dan Graham and Nam June Paik, the medium was integral to the message. Not surprisingly, the importance of the medium had to do with the fact that so much of what artists were critiquing was Television culture and its medium-specific phenomenology. Making written, painted, or photographic work about television culture is all well and good, but making video about that same subject to be seen on a TV monitor communicates with people in the same sensory language as is being discussed. To me, it seems similar to how parents can feed kids the most brilliant words of wisdom about how to deal with peer problems or dating and we’ll nod politely before pocketing their advice, but when actual friends, peers, dates, or life experience supplies them with the same advice, it makes much more of an impact. The advice from parents is in the same English language as that from a peer, just like how painting and video both use a similar visual language—the difference is that the latter seems to come from the subject itself.

Richard Serra’s “Television Delivers People” is a perfect example of this medium reflexive video art. The video is an essay about how TV is a form of mass social control that delivers YOU the viewer to markets and advertisers en masse and how YOU the viewer are the product of a TV and thus controlled by media corporations—it is in effect the beginnings of an important cultural critique that has is now mainly delivered to current generations in the form of bumper stickers. Serra could have released this same essay in a printed journal or magazine, but he chose to present it scrolling up a screen a television prompter with charming elevator music playing over it. He is embodying the medium to speak to you as TV to cut it open and show you the absurdities and forces within it—something broadcasting companies surely wouldn’t let their TV medium do.

Let’s turn now to the performative corner of video art with Martha Rosler and Vito Acconci. While Rosler definitely uses video in a dialogue about television imagery and culture reception through it, but the focal point of her pieces are the performances. In “Semiotics of the Kitchen”, she stands the kitchen with an apron, doing the ABC’s by presenting “Apron, Bowl, Chopper, …” in the most aggressively apathetic tone possible. Her performance is about gender construction, her use of video gives us the secondary implication that these constructs are being delivered through television. I found this to be true with all the pieces we watched of hers—a central concept with video as a secondary comment about the concept’s relationship to television culture.

The videos we watched by Vito Acconci also seemed to have this primary-secondary structure to them, though the medium-commentary is less overt than in Rosler’s videos. To say that television/medium commentary is less obvious is a bit of an understatement; Acconci’s videos are a lot of things—bizarre, uncomfortable, sexual—but clear is not one of them. To me, his videos represent both the beauty and frustration that comes from what an MFA gives people license to do. If an uneducated man tried to masturbate in front of people he would be arrested, but because Acconci has a solid education and theory base for doing so he is validated as an artist. The themes of sexuality, power, and public-private space are interesting; at some point though, it’s still a hairy naked man rubbing one off.

To return to his theory base though, Acconci’s article we read is discussion of video installation and its role in re-contextualizing television as both its physical existence as furniture in American homes as well as the immateriality of television images. In the essay, he describes how when television was being pushed into people’s homes advertisers domesticated television technology by presenting it in homes as analogous to other already domestic objects—furniture. That people would domesticate technology like this makes sense, trying to place object-technology in a household would otherwise look awkward and out of place. So while the TV industry may not have been conspiring when they presented it as furniture, Acconci’s does have a point about the problem of TVs domestic presence making viewers more passive in their reception of information and culture through it.

What Acconci, Morse, and Graham all held in common with their essays was the importance of viewing video installation in person. We can get the idea of what an artist was trying to do by reading about it, but the effect and phenomenological meaning of any given piece is largely lost in translation. Luckily, Maia and I will be going down to Seattle soon to see some installations and videos. The necessity of experiencing video installation in person also has a tint of irony to it because, as Morse points out, in order for there to be an installation the artist needs a space, which is generally funded by larger institutions. So, while so much of video art and video installation exists to critique hegemonic media, the space utilized for their installation pieces is generally funded by one or another of them. You hear this commercial lineage story all the time now days about products and television channels, but I had never really thought about it in relation to the seemingly “infallible art gallery”. In another way, the fact that many of these spaces are provided by big industry almost serves to further the message of the artist. In these installations, not only is the artist using the television medium to critique it, they’re using its funding as well.

Until next week!

Essays we read:

Vito Acconci

- Television, Furniture, and Sculpture: The Room with the American View

Margaret Morse

- Video Installation Art: The Body, the Image, and the Space-in-Between

Dan Graham

- Video in Relation to Architecture

Videos we watched:

Martha Rosler

– Semiotics of the Kitchen –

http://www.ubu.com/film/rosler_semiotics.html

– Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained - http://www.ubu.com/film/rosler_vital.html

– Secretes from the Street: No Disclosure - http://www.ubu.com/film/rosler_secrets.html

– Martha Rosler Reads Vogue –

http://www.ubu.com/film/rosler_vogue.html

Nam June Paik

- Edited for Television –

http://www.ubu.com/film/paik_edited.html

- Beatles Electroniques –

http://www.ubu.com/film/paik_beatles.html

- Zen for Film –

http://www.ubu.com/film/paik_zen.html

- Good Morning Mr. Orwell -

http://www.ubu.com/film/paik_orwell.html

Richard Serra

- Hand Catching Lead -
http://www.ubu.com/film/serra_lead.html

- Television Delivers People -http://www.ubu.com/film/serra_television.html

- Surprise Attack –
http://www.ubu.com/film/serra_surprise.html

- Boomerang –
http://www.ubu.com/film/serra_boomerang.html

- Railroad Turnbridge -

http://www.ubu.com/film/serra_turnbridge.html

Vito Acconci

- Conversions –
http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci_conversions.html

- Pryings -
http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci_pryings.html

- Open Book -
http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci_book.html

- Seedbed -
http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci_seedbed.html

- Undertone -
http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci_undertone.html

- Theme Song -
http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci_theme.html

Steina and Woody Vasulka

- Switch! Monitor! Drift! -
http://www.ubu.com/film/vasulka_switch.html

- Calligrams -http://www.ubu.com/film/vasulka_calligrams.html