The Problematic of Video Art in the Museum, 1968–1990 By Cyrus M ...

participating and coexisting, in one sense, with painting/sculpture/film/theatre, video as art would enjoy a unique independence—free from associative or historical allegiance to traditional forms. That is, “video artists felt they were working on a clean sheet of paper”.⁵⁷

By contrast, film as an art form had a long history that had been part of a wider and far more established discursive field, linked to theoretical discussions and various historicises related to art. In its emergent position and effective penetration as a new tool of the avant-garde, video art's effective incorporation into society and culture thus replaced the “gap”, or void, that had resulted from the popularity of traditional forms and methods of art within the progressive nature of contemporary culture. As such, the new aesthetic sexuality and scripture of video art would bring together various elements of performance, sound, and duration into documentaries (or fictionalised representations) of artistic events. Through this, video artists were able to employ the new art to critique the status quo. (The revolutionary attitudes of these filmmakers/artists had reflected a need to alter society by providing an alternative medium—one that would vary from or be independent of mass culture.) As mentioned previously, the art of video art-making generally grew out of the artist's involvement in performance art and other (often politically motivated or inclined) apposite ideological experiments. Exploiting the open and yet undefined parameters of the medium, artists working with video attempted to gather a fresh or critical perspective over the current live events of the age by capturing them onto tape. (A critique of mass popular culture would be inherent in the use of video.) Video art would often be employed by artists in their attempts to deconstruct, or expose, the corruptions inherent in media representations and propaganda, in order to initiate change.⁵⁸ The Frankfurt School would prefigure many sentiments and attitudes of the early video artists; Horkheimer and Adorno had pointed out in 1944: