From Performance to Video Art

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From Performance to Video Art
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Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media, first
published in 1964
The period after World War-II in the US is
considered the final birth of television.  The
explosion of sets into the American marketplace
occurred in 1948-1949.
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Robert Rauschenberg, Soundings, 1968, a 36 by 8
foot voice responsive object. Nine 8 ft high
units, 3 layers deep of plexiglass panels, outer
panels silvered. Visitor is reflected and the
sounds she makes activate unique sounds from
Soundings.
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Video performance Bruce Nauman, Stamping in the
Studio, 1968, 60 minutes (excerpt, 5 minutes)
http//www.virtual-circuit.org/art_cinema/Nauman/N
auman/Stamping.html From Rewind Video Art
and Alternative Media in the United States
1968-1980Media N 6494.V53 S97 1995Program 2
Investigations of the Phenomenal World Space,
Sound, and Light
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Video performance 1977Martha Rosler, Vital
Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained38
minutesI did my best to interrupt voyeurism by
having a long shot a stationary shot that
fatigues the viewer and diminishes aspects of the
characters presence on the screen. It becomes
boring to look at something without camera
mobility and without reaction shots. (Rosler,
1981) http//artfem.tv/id11/actionshowpage/pag
e_typevideo/page_idvital_statistics_of_a_citizen
_simply_obtained_by_martha_rosler_flv/ From
Rewind Video Art and Alternative Media in the
United States 1968-1980Media N 6494.V53 S97
1995Program 4 Gendered Confrontations
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Joseph Beuys, Siberian Symphony First Movement,
FESTUM FLUXORUM FLUXUS, performed February 1963
at the Düsseldorf Art Academy where Beuys was
Professor of Monumental Sculpture
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George Maciunas (Lithuanian-American (19311978)
Fluxus Manifesto, 1963
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Yoko Ono (Japan, b. 1933) Cut Piece, performance,
1964 (Japan) and (right)1965 (NYC,Carnegie Hall)

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Shigeko Kubota (American b. Japan, 1937, married
to Nam June Paik) Vagina Painting,performance,
July 4th, 1965, New York City, Perpetual Fluxus
Festival, (red paint on white paper, paint brush
attached to crotch of underpants)
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Nam June Paik, 1961 Fluxus Festival of New Music,
Weisbaden, German
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Nam June Paik (American, b. Seoul, Korea, 1932 -
2006)Zen for Head, Fluxus performance, 1962
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Nam June Paik and John Cage in Marcel Duchamp and
John Cage still from performance video by
Shigeko Kubota, 1972
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Paik, (left) Zen for TV, 1963(right) TV Buddha,
1974
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Paik (left) began interfering with television
imagesin the early 1960s (right) TV Magnet,
1965Some day artists will work with
capacitors, resistors and semi-conductors as
they work today with brushes, violins and junk.
Paik
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(left) Mooreman, Paik, Joseph Beuys, Fluxus
Action, 1966 (left) with Yoko Ono and John
Lennon (1971) (right, below) Moorman performing
Paik's Concerto for TV Cello and Videotapes
(1971) at Galeria Bonino, New York, November 23,
1971
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• http//www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/global-grove/v
  ideo/1/

Nam June Paik, Global Groove, 1974 Paik in
studio of WGBH, which broadcast Global
Groove 'This is a glimpse of a video landscape
of tomorrow when you will be able to switch on
any TV station on the earth and TV guides will
be as fat as the Manhattan telephone book.'
- Paik
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Nam June Paik, Video Fish, 1975, Three channel
video installation with aquariums, water, 45 live
Japanese fish, Pompidou Center (Paris)
collection, 7 of 15 monitors
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Paik, Video Flag, (1985-1996)70 video monitors,
4 laser disc players, computer, timers,
electrical devices, wood and metal housing on
rubber wheels, 94 3/8 x 139 3/4 x 47 3/4 in.
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Nam June Paik in collaboration with Norman
Ballard, Paul Garrin, David Hartnett, and Stephen
Vitiello, Modulation in Sync, 2000. Three-channel
video and stereo sound installation with 100
monitors, seven projectors, two lasers, water,
mirrors, projection screens, and metal structure,
variable dimensions. Paik retrospective,
Guggenheim NYC
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Fashion Avenue from Nam June Paik's Suite 212
series, on Seoul Square Media Canvas, 2011. For
current exhibition, Mediascape, à pas de Nam June
Paik, video series is projected every night onto
the huge screen 256 feet high and 325 feet wide
42,000 LEDs
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Laurie Anderson (US b. 1947) Duets on Ice,
performance in New York City and Genoa, Italy,
1973-4, playing Bach while wearing ice skates
embedded in ice. When ice melted the performance
ended.
Compare Edouard Manet The Old Musician, 1862,
artist as wanderer, rag picker
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Laurie Anderson, Performance United States Part
II, 1980The Orpheum, New York (right) album
covers United States I-IV, 1984
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Laurie Anderson, United States Part I, 1980,
Orpheum TheaterMultiple disjunctive narratives.
Voice through the harmonizer shifts from voice
of authority (deep, masculine) to female (her
own). The woman repeatedly asks Hello, excuse
me, can you tell me where I am? The response is
You can read the signs.
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Andersons United States Part I opens with her
modified voice-of-authority reading

• A certain American religious sect has been
  looking at conditions of the world during the
  Flood. According to their calculations, during
  the Flood the winds, tides and currents were in
  an overall southeasterly direction. This would
  mean that in order for Noah's Ark to have ended
  up on Mount Ararat, it would have to have started
  out several thousand miles to the west. This
  would then locate pre-Flood civilization
  somewhere in the area of Upstate New York, and
  the Garden of Eden roughly in New York City.
• Now, in order to get from one place to another,
  something must move. No one in New York remembers
  moving, and there are no traces of Biblical
  history in the Upstate New York area. So we are
  led to the only available conclusion in this time
  warp, and that is that the Ark has simply not
  left yet.

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(below right) Poster from Andersons The End of
the Moon, 2005, BAM performance(top) at NASA as
the agencys first artist-in-residence, 2004
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Doug Aitken, Sleepwalkers, Jan-Feb, 2007, 8
projections on MoMA NYC exterior
walls (Youtube.com trailer) http//www.youtube.com
/watch?vLJaTjc3TMyo
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Mona Hatoum (b.1952, Beirut, Lebanon) Palestinian
parents were exiled to Lebanon in 1948 with the
establishment of the Israeli state. During a
visit to London in 1975, civil war broke out in
Lebanon and Hatoum was forced to stay in London.
Hatoum identifies as Palestinian and is based in
London. (right) video still from So Much I Want
to Say, 1983
I was completely taken in by Minimal and
Conceptual Art when I was on my first degree
course. Going to University afterwards . when I
got into the area of installation and object
making, I wouldn't say I went back to a minimal
aesthetic as such, it was more a kind of
reductive approach.
Hatoum, Light at the End, 1989, London, iron
frame and six electric heating elements
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Mona Hatoum, still from Measures of Distance,
15-minute video, 1988. Letters written by
Hatoum's mother in Beirut to her daughter in
London appear as Arabic text moving over the
screen and are read aloud in English by Hatoum.
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On a visit to Lebanon, Hatoum filmed her mother
in the shower. She taped her mother talking to
her about her own feelings, her sexuality, her
husbands objections to Hatoums art, including
this film.
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Shirin Neshat (b. 1957, Iranian, based in New
York 2 images from the 1994 Women of Allah
series right Allegiance with Wakefulness, ink
on photograph of artists feet with calligraphy
- Persian poetry about themes such as exile,
diaspora, identity, femininity and martyrdom.
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Shirin Neshat, still from The Shadow under the
Web, film transferred to DVD and projected as
installation, 1997. Neshat synthesizes new image
technology Iranian, American, and European film
aesthetics the poetry, music and songs of her
homeland, and the global fusion sounds of Phillip
Glass. Two years after producing this work she
was declared an enemy of the Iranian state.
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Leaving has offered me incredible personal
development, a sense of independence that I don't
think I would have had. But there's also a great
sense of isolation. And I've permanently lost a
complete sense of center. I can never call any
place home. I will forever be in a state of
in-between. - Neshat, 2000
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Kimsooja (b. 1957, South Korea) BFA (1980) and MA
(1984) from Hong-Ik University, Seoul Kimsooja
is the 2013 Venice Biennale artist for the Korean
Pavillion. Her installation will be titledTo
Breathe Bottari Below stills from video,
Needle Woman (1999-present) On six screens laid
out in a rectangle, the artist shows herself
filmed from behind, standing in the middle of
cosmopolitan city centers including New York,
Delhi, Shanghai and Tokyo,
http//www.art21.org/videos/segment-kimsooja-in-sy
stems
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vSpes0Uk8btY