| Chapter Introduction: | Introduction |
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as new art forms, practices, and technology pluralised fields, resulting in various hybridisations which were related to “…media, technologies and performance disciplines”.54 With increasing interest and momentum, artists experimenting with progressive forms had defined themselves and their art by presenting a challenge to mainstream and traditional institutions of art. Established modern art galleries, or museums such as MoMA, which had previously been more interested in dealing with traditional historical works and contemporary static forms, would now face the prospect of becoming disassociated from the progressive impetus of contemporary art. Significantly, artists within this new era would employ new technology in order to explore psychoanalytical and political conceptions of the subject. Through this, they attempted to engage with and speak directly to the viewer in order to establish a more immediate (or temporal-based) relationship and intimacy between the construction and the viewer. Utilising a popular communicative form opened the door for new types of relationships to be formed with the viewer. Conventional work during this time had been criticised for being presented in a way that had blocked, or opposed, the original intents of artists who had calculated that their work be shown to “…a newly receptive audience”.55
By contrast with other conceptual art practices and artistic forms of expression associated with “high-art” (such as painting which had been reduced to a “blank canvas”), video art was understood to be a more direct form of expression. Yet, although video's presence and entry into the art arena at this time had provided a new aesthetic sexuality and logic, it would not be marked by a total separation or indifference from older, more established art forms. As stated by Elwes, “although predominantly exploited as an agent of change, early video shared formal concerns with mainstream painting and sculpture, then dominated by Modernism and minimalism”.56 What had been especially significant about employing video as a new art form during this time was that artists had felt that they were employing a medium full of potential that would allow a certain premeditation, distance, and empirical objectivity free from critical or discursive analysis, unlike the more established art forms of film, painting, or sculpture. As a new art form, while also