1- More than half a century later, what are the similarities and differences in the social and media environment, and what are the implications for artists creating video works?
1960: lack equipment, create decentralized media
Civil Rights Movement (Feminist, Black)
Vietnam War
Politics, Drugs, Rock'n'roll
1980: better equipment
1990: cultural war
gay community battle against right-wing
lack of video art founding
low cost video equipment to consumer, digital camera
digital post producting editing
selling in "limited edition"
Television: 50% ownership, but representation on TV inaccurate
people of color / women
news coverage in Vietnam war
powershift: from matrial to information
2- Research an artist mentioned in the essay, see if you can find a artwork online and write a paragraph about it. You can check this portal with your CMU account: https://www-eai-org.cmu.idm.oclc.org/education
Works:
vito acconci praying
Kiss the Girls: Make Them Cry
Joan Braderman's Joan Does Dynasty
Tony Cokes's Black Celebration
In the 60s, video artists mainly created video art as a form of decentralized media. Due to the large ownership of television, society walked into the information era. The intention of many video art was to participate in series of discussions against (Feminist movements, Black movements, Vietnam War, AIDS activism...) the mainstream media due to the governmental control over the television programs. The video techniques in the 60s are primitive due to the lack of proper pieces of equipment. As the video equipment gets better in the 80s and 90s, commercialized digital cameras and post-production software allowed more artists to have their own voice.
Tony Cokes's Black Celebration is a video of 17 minutes long about black uprisings in Los Angeles, Boston, Newark, and Detroit. The video uses documentary footage of uprisings from the 1960s and some texts. No actual sound of the events is in the video, instead, industry rock music is used throughout the video. The intention, according to the artists, of the video is to look at the "riot" from a different angle than in the mainstream media controlled by the government which characterizes these "riots as criminal or irrational".
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