| Chapter Introduction: | Introduction |
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video works would often have to compete with more traditional forms of art. In some cases, this would result in video-based artworks being awkwardly positioned/presented within the museum, such as behind stairs or near public conveniences.14 Moreover, the durational form of these works would pose a pervasive dilemma for museums which found it necessary to consistently endeavour to re-establish and rearticulate the most effective mode of presentation.15 The durational movement of a museum's patrons would rarely be considered.
MoMA's commitment to the presentation of video-based works of art, however, would set an example for other institutions to replicate.16 This book explores MoMA's methods and policies in order to analyse others as a base from which other contemporary art institutions can be assessed comparatively too.
The Significance of Video Art
Throughout the mid-1970s until the present, contemporary video art as a vehicle for social, cultural, and political analysis has been a prominent element within global museum-based contemporary art exhibitions. For many, video art had stood for contemporary art.17 Yet video, as a form of technology, would be relatively short-lived in the twentieth century. Historically, it was contained between film and digital art. Artists would work with the medium of film from the dawn of cinema through to the present day. Periods of dramatic experimentation would proliferate in Europe during the years between World War I and World War II, and across the globe in the post-WWII period.
Digital means of production would be produced in the latter period of the twentieth century; its accessibility as a creative platform for artists would largely occur in the post-1990s. The short period in which video art would flourish would occur from the early 1960s to the middle of the 1990s, when its means of production would be subsumed into the digital era.
The reason for the deterioration of video art's prominence as a contemporary form of art is that artists would find that “…with digital technologies, the proper qualities of video itself which had been so attractive to artists of the 1970s were no longer considered as crucial”.18