scholarly journals Video Art: “A White Cube” or “A Black Box”?

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 114-123
Author(s):  
Alexandra Dmitrievna Staruseva-Persheeva

Video art is a hybrid, combining features of both contemporary art as well as screen arts. It brings together different ways of perception working both in a manner of a movie which transfers the viewer into virtual daydreaming (Matthew Barney, Steeve McQueen), and in a manner of a painting or sculpture which gives a viewer some intense corporal experience (Tony Oursler). Accordingly, there are two ways of presenting video art: in a white cube and a black box. In 1970-s video art used to be presented in white cubes of contemporary art galleries where they nailed the screens right to the wall. In a white cube video comes into the viewers sight together with other items in display, therefore a show-piece comes into contact with other ones in a spectators minds eye. Moreover, a white cube gives visitors an opportunity to be in charge of their time of viewing, which implies, that the white cube perception appears rather chaotic and the final cut of a video in the spectators mind becomes unpredictable, what is characteristic of video. In 2000-s when both video and film technologies got replaced by the digital one, all the moving pictures started to resemble one another. A well-lit room of a white cube was not appropriate for high definition videos, whereas a black box is usually associated with a cinema hall and consequently a video presented in such a cinematic manner makes a viewer unconsciously expect to see a cinematic piece of art. Video today is an indispensable figurant of any significant exhibition of contemporary art and it is defined as an artistic (not cinematic) media. Traditionally video is being exhibited in a white cube of a gallery; however, there is now a distinct tendency to present video art in a black box, that is in a cinematic way. As a result its getting harder and harder to distinguish video art from experimental cinema. Nowadays the very strategy of presentation of video may help this media to retain identity or to lose it.

Poetics ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 263-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Françoise Benhamou ◽  
Nathalie Moureau ◽  
Dominique Sagot-Duvauroux

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Parola

This essay derives from the primary need to make order between direct and indirect sources available for the reconstruction of the history of video art in Italy in the seventies. In fact, during the researches for the Ph.D. thesis it became clear that in most cases it is difficult to define, in terms of facts, which of the different historiographies should be taken into consideration to deepen the study of video art in Italy. Beyond legitimate differences of perspectives and methods, historiographical narratives all share similar issues and narrative structure. The first intention of the essay is, therefore, to compare the different historiographic narratives on Italian video art of the seventies, verifying their genealogy, the sources used and the accuracy of the narrated facts. For the selection of the corpus, it was decided to analyze in particular monographic volumes dealing with the history of the origins of video art in Italy. The aim was, in fact, to get a wide range of types of "narrations", as in the case of contemporary art and architecture magazines, which are examined in the second part of the essay. After the selection, for an analytical and comparative study of the various historiography, the essay focuses only on the Terza Biennale Internazionale della Giovane Pittura. Gennaio ’70. Comportamenti, oggetti e mediazioni (Third International Biennial of Young Painting. January '70. Behaviors, Objects and Mediations, 1970, Bologna), the exhibition which - after Lucio Fontana's pioneering experiments - is said to be the first sign of the arrival of videotape in Italy (called at the time videorecording), curated by Renato Barilli, Tommaso Trini, Andrea Emiliani and Maurizio Calvesi. The narration given so far of this exhibition appeared more mythological than historical and could be compared structurally to that of the many numerous beginnings that historiographyies on international video art identify as ‘first’ and ‘generative’. In the first part of the essay the 'facts' related to Gennaio ’70, as narrated by historiography on video art, are compared. In the second part the survey is carried out through some of the direct sources identified during the research, with the aim of answering to questions raised by the comparison between historiographies. Concluding, it is important to underline that the tapes containing the videos transmitted have not been found and seem to have disappeared since the ending of the exhibition. Nevertheless, the deepening of the works and documentation transmitted during the exhibition is possible thanks to other types of sources which give us many valuable information regarding video techniques and practices at the beginning of 1970 in Italy.


2021 ◽  

The contributors to Nervous Systems reassess contemporary artists' and critics' engagement with social, political, biological, and other systems as a set of complex and relational parts: an approach commonly known as systems thinking. Demonstrating the continuing relevance of systems aesthetics within contemporary art, the contributors highlight the ways that artists adopt systems thinking to address political, social, and ecological anxieties. They cover a wide range of artists and topics, from the performances of the Argentinian collective the Rosario Group and the grid drawings of Charles Gaines to the video art of Singaporean artist Charles Lim and the mapping of global logistics infrastructures by contemporary artists like Hito Steyerl and Christoph Büchel. Together, the essays offer an expanded understanding of systems aesthetics in ways that affirm its importance beyond technological applications detached from cultural contexts. Contributors. Cristina Albu, Amanda Boetzkes, Brianne Cohen, Kris Cohen, Jaimey Hamilton Faris, Christine Filippone, Johanna Gosse, Francis Halsall, Judith Rodenbeck, Dawna Schuld, Luke Skrebowski, Timothy Stott, John Tyson


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Mateos-Ronco ◽  
Nieves Peiró Torralba

The art market operates in a very different way from conventional economic markets, ranging from its behaviors of supply and demand, the trading of goods, and the economic agents intervening in it. In addition, it is a highly unregulated market, with very little standardized information in economic terms. This paper focuses on art galleries, which are the most influential intermediaries in the Spanish primary contemporary fine-art market and perform a role that goes beyond the mere distribution of works of art. This study develops and applies a prospective methodology based on the subjective information compiled by experts, known as the Delphi method, to identify and evaluate the factors that determine the current situation and future outlook for Spanish contemporary art galleries. The results show, on one hand, that the method employed constitutes a valid option to provide reliable information. In addition, they show that the survival of these organizations will depend on their ability to adapt to the changing conditions of the economic environment, reactivating and internationalizing demand, and redirecting their business model towards sustainable management by implementing appropriate business management models and techniques.


Author(s):  
Michael F. Leruth

This book introduces readers to the iconoclastic work of the French media artist Fred Forest. A pioneer in the fields of video art in the 1960s and internet art in the 1990s, and cofounder of the Sociological Art Collective (1974) and the Aesthetics of Communication International Group (1983), Forest is best known as an ironic media hijacker and tinkerer of unconventional interfaces and alternative platforms for interactive communication that are accessible to the general public outside the exclusive precincts of the art world. He has also made headlines as an outspoken critic of the French contemporary art establishment, most famously by suing the Centre Pompidou in 1994 over its opaque acquisitions practices. This book surveys Forest’s work from the late 1960s to the present with particular emphasis on his prankster modus operandi, his advocacy of an existentially relevant form of counter-contemporary art―or “invisible system-art”―based on the principle of metacommunication (i.e., tasked with exploring the “immanent realities” of the virtual territory in which modern electronic communication takes place), his innovative “social” and “relational” use of a wide range of media from newspapers to Second Life, his attention-grabbing public interventions, and the unusual utopian dimension of his work. Never a hot commodity in the art world, Forest’s work has nonetheless garnered the attention and appreciation of a wide range of prominent intellectuals, critics, curators, technology innovators, and fellow artists including Marshall McLuhan, Edgar Morin, Vilém Flusser, Abraham Moles, Jean Duvignaud, Paul Virilio, Pierre Lévy, Pierre Restany, Frank Popper, Harald Szeeman, Robert C. Morgan, Vinton Cerf, Roy Ascott, and Eduardo Kac.


2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (10) ◽  
pp. 438-442
Author(s):  
Masato Miura ◽  
Jun Arai ◽  
Junichi Yamazaki ◽  
Hisayuki Sasaki ◽  
Makoto Okui ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-91
Author(s):  
Olesya Vitalyevna Stroeva

The article analyzes the problem of changing a perception of visual arts, as well as the transformation of art functioning mechanism emerged under the influence of media sphere evolution. The author treats the most popular genres of contemporary art: photography, hyperrealism and video art, analyzes a new type of media thinking, based on collective perception.


Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
Ronit Milano

This article aims to consider the contemporary art market vis-à-vis the concept of economic freedom. Drawn from a larger study, this paper offers a glimpse of the political function of the art market, which is essentially an economic field. What I demonstrate is an inevitable clash between a free market and between political constructions that effect levels of freedom—concentrating on the parameter of inequality. The article focuses on the case of commercial art galleries, and analyzes their operation under neoliberal conditions, which represent the implementation of the idea of freedom in the economic field. Subsequently, I demonstrate the how high levels of concentration in the art market erode the levels of the equality of the players in the field. Ultimately, I argue that this case offers an example of the more general operation of the art market, which follows neoliberal principles, and thereby undermines the concept of economic freedom that is intrinsic to them.


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