Changing History, Changing practices: An Instance of Confrontation Between Video Art and Television

Abstract

Video art as a ‘movement’ within fine arts played an important role in the development of contemporary aesthetics. First, it provided artists with a conceptual frame and a space for ‘free experimentation’ in new technologies and their socio-cultural implications. Second, because video artists and the makers of TV programs were using the same technology video art generated a new discourse on the relationship between art and mass communication. The coexistence of two opposing aesthetic vantage points (modernist and postmodernist) within the same movement gives value and meaning to this category, which does not refer to a particular form or function of analogue video technologies, but rather includes works which investigate some of those forms and functions inside and outside the art world.