What is Video Art?

Introduction: What is Video Art? — Definition & History

Film and video—and everything that comes with it—offer new possibilities for artists seeking ways of formal and conceptual experimentation. As a result, video art was born and would take the art world by storm, redefining art as we know it today. So what is video art? Where did it come from? And who are the most important video artists today?

Video art is an art form that emerged in the late 1950s and 1960s in which the medium is based on audiovisual technology in the form of film, sculpture, installation, video installation (multiple screens), and immersive or experiential art.

Video or film has, in fact, been connected with art from the start. Experimental film and avant-garde cinema explored non-conventional film—thus, artistic—film at the start of the 20th century, decades before video art. Think of Dada artists like Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray creating Dada films, exploring non-narrative film and abstraction, as did the cubist painter Fernand Léger with his famous Ballet Mécanique in 1924. The surrealists were also strongly invested in creating artistic films, think of Salvador Dali’s iconic Un Chien Andalou from 1929.

Still, at the time, video recording and film was a medium that was only within reach of corporate broadcasting centers. However, as television and video became more democratic and accessible midway through the 20th century—think of the television set in every modern living room and the arrival of SONY’s portable video cameras, the ease of access to audiovisual media changed evermore. It was made affordable for everyday consumers. And the availability of this new medium did not go unnoticed by artists.

Wolf Vostell was one of the first artists to use a working television set in his installation Deutscher Ausblick which was presented in 1959 to the public. Further, when it comes to the emergence of video art, it is impossible not to mention the artist Nam June Paik who, similarly to Wolf Vostell, established the television set as more than a domestic device—using the television as a ready-made in his ground-breaking video sculptures.

Between the likes of Wolf Vostell and Nam June Paik and today, we encounter numerous highly influential artists redefining art as we know it today using video as their medium. Below, we present twenty artists who use the possibilities of video and technology as powerful tools of (self-)expression. Please note: the list is based on objective data and career facts, using the Artfacts algorithm, presenting the most prominent historical and contemporary video artists today.[1]

20. Natascha Sadr Haghighian

Natascha Sadr Haghighian—born in 1957 in Teheran, Iran, and currently working and residing in Berlin, Germany—is a contemporary artist whose work is grounded in collectivity, authorship, and various mechanisms of the contemporary art world.

Her artistic practice is two-fold. First and foremost, she completes in-depth research about a specific case study or project. Secondly, she develops it into large-scale installations and/or combines it with performances, publications, and online interventions. In her work, Sadr Haghighian uncovers and bears witness to systematic injustice, which can be obscured by the workings of institutions and the economic system.

Her works function simultaneously as didactic investigations aiming to strengthen the feeling of community in society. Sadr Haghighian falls into the framework of institutional critique as she evaluates the infrastructure of the capitalist system. For instance, her project, bioswop.net, offers everybody an opportunity to trade one’s CV for another one coming from somebody else.[2]

19. Eija-Liisa Ahtila

Eija-Liisa Ahtila was born in 1959 in Hämmenlinna, Finland, where she currently lives and works. She is a visual artist and filmmaker. Similarly to the work of Sadr Hadhihian, Eija-Liisa Ahtila deconstructs the formalist system of filmmaking, where she focuses on film genres and operation modes of the film world. Her installations have a cinematic quality that interweaves realist and surreal narratives. 

Besides her formalist explorations, Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s works revolve around themes of human existence and its emotional and behavioral patterns. Ahtila’s art aims to give the viewer the possibility to make sense of their own life path from various simultaneously evolving narratives. Her video works appear to be both challenging to the characters in the video and the audience.

She gained worldwide recognition for her multi-panel cinematic installations which were exhibited at international exhibitions such as Manifesta (1998), Venice Biennale (1999 and 2005), Documenta 11 (2002), São Paulo Art Biennale (2008), and the Sydney Biennale (2002 and 2018).[3]

18. Sharon Hayes

Sharon Hayes was born in 1970 in Baltimore, the United States of America. Currently, she works and resides in Philadelphia. Hayes works with video, performance, and installation as her primary media. Her artistic practice is an activist one, which is engaged in political and social issues. In her video works, Hayes frequently engages with feminist and queer communities to explore the relationship between language, history, and power.

Sharon Hayes frequently chooses public space as a starting point for her video works. She participates in protests, demonstrations, and political speeches. Hayes’s performatives—a term selected by the artist herself—are a series of interventions in those public spaces. Sound art, which usually appears in audio recordings, aims to counter heteronormative and patriarchal culture. Hence, its presence, predominantly an audio recording of a human voice, is a symbolic reading of resistance.[4]

17. Sigalit Landau

Sigalit Landau—born in 1969 in Jerusalem, Israel, residing and working in Tel Aviv—works in sculpture, video, and installation. Landau—similarly to Natascha Sadr Haghighian—uses the medium of video to express criticism or concern on societal aspects. The Dead Sea and its water act as a source of inspiration where Landau submerges objects almost symbolically. Due to the geographical location of her videos, her work is characterized by vibrant aesthetics.  

Next to representing the human condition in her works, she shows the actual figure of a human body—frequently that of her own—as her subject. Her video works predominantly reference her home country Israel and the ongoing political division with Palestine. Her multimedia works act as a connecting bridge between two usually conflicted sides; east and west, the past and the future, the private and the collective.[5]

16. Edith Dekyndt

Edith Dekyndt was born in 1960 in Ypres, Belgium. and resides and works between Berlin and Belgium. Dekyndt is a visual artist working with video, sculpture, installation, drawing, and sound. She is interested in physical phenomena and ephemeral incidents. Her artistic practice explores light, time, and space. Engagement with sensual perceptions gives her art a conceptual and material depth.

Edith Dekyndt observes everyday objects as they undergo a process of transformation. Her investigations connect organic elements or natural phenomena—for instance, reactions of water and air within the physical exhibition context of her artworks. Dekyndt pairs physical sites where her video works are recorded with chemical phenomena to capture the behavior of everyday materials.

Her closer look at those daily processes draws attention to the working dynamics of human perception. What do we notice, but more importantly, what escapes our attention? This focus on ‘small’ or everyday processes adds a poetic dimension to her video work.[6]

15. Adrian Paci

Adrian Paci was born in 1969 in Shkoder, Albania, and currently resides and works in Milan, Italy. Paci is a visual artist working with video, performance, drawing, and sculpture. He decided to leave his home country in 1997 due to the outbreak of the Albanian Civil War. As a result, in his work, he frequently returns to the feeling of forced migration, the nostalgia it evokes, or the loss of personal identity it generates.

Adrian Paci frequently uses his own body, emphasizing the messages conveyed of geographical separation and loss. In his works, Paci discusses his own experiences, yet, it is in this subjectivity that the public can find connections to their own lives. By returning to his memories of times lived in Albania, Paci explores the role of an artist and art in times of crisis.[7]

14. Arthur Jafa

Arthur Jafa was born in 1960 in Tupelo, Mississippi, United States, and resides in Los Angeles. Jafa is a contemporary artist, filmmaker, and cinematographer. Before devoting himself to video art, he was internationally recognized as a filmmaker with iconic titles such as Daughters of the Dust, Crooklyn, and Eyes Wide Shut. Jafa’s work is driven by a recurrent question: “How might one identify and develop a specifically Black aesthetics equal to the ‘power, beauty, and alienation’ of Black music in US culture?”.

In his artistic practice, Arthur Jafa refers to universal and personal articulations of black identity. Original and found footage functions as a visual trademark. By juxtaposing archival and contemporary material, he opens the symbolic possibilities of an image. Jafa’s work is rooted in the past and present experiences of the Black community to prevent the persistence of systemic injustice.[8]

13. Oliver Ressler

Oliver Ressler was born in 1970 in Knittefeld, Austria, and resides and works in Vienna. Ressler uses visual art to raise awareness and as a form of resistance. Ressler predominantly works with video and installation, where he explores topics of democracy, migration, economics, and the climate crisis.

His works shed light on the failures of government policies frequently juxtaposed with activist movements that protest against them. Oliver Ressler blends art and activism, as he strongly advocates a sustainable approach to his artistic practice and the mechanisms of the art world. In addition to his work as an artist, Ressler organizes public programs, talks, and curates shows.[9]

12. Bouchra Khalili

Bouchra Khalili was born in 1975 in Casablanca, Marocco, and resides and works between Berlin, Germany, and Oslo, Norway. Khalili works with film, video, installation, photography, printmaking, and publishing media. In her artistic practice, she combines documentary cinema which examines the imperial and colonial systems of the past, their influences on forced migration, politics of memory of anti-colonial struggles, and international solidarity.

Her videos discuss the personal stories of people from the Middle East and North Africa traveling to Europe. Khalili’s art centers on those individual stories from which she uncovers a historical and geopolitical context of a region. In this form, she focuses on the self-representation of an individual and the autonomous agency of society.[10]

11. Bill Viola

Bill Viola was born in 1951 in New York and resides and works in Long Beach, California, the United States of America. Hailed as the Rembrandt of the video age, Viola is known not only for his large-scale works but also for their beautifully ‘crafted’ scenery. Throughout his career, Viola mastered aspects of light and time in video technologies, such as time-lapse, slow motion, and reversals.

His interventions in the pace of the depicted narrative give his works a symbolic meaning which refers to birth, life, death, or renewal. Viola frequently incorporates his interests in Judeo-Christian mysticism, the philosophies, and rituals of non-Western cultures and nature. A prolonged duration of a character’s sets of movements is a simultaneous exploration of the concept of the self. In addition to video works of metaphysical themes, Viola is also internationally known and recognized for his theatrical installations.[11]   

10. Stan Douglas

Stan Douglas was born in 1960 in Vancouver, Canada, and resides and works between Vancouver and Los Angeles, the United States of America. Douglas’s work interweaves authentic events with fictional narratives. In his artistic practice, he uses innovative technologies, such as mobile apps, virtual reality simulations, live cinema, or theatrical productions.

Diverse themes in his works allow the public to look critically at the media and how they shape our understanding of reality. For his investigations into cultural and collective memory, Stan Douglas uses pop-cultural sources and historical events. Although the viewer can frequently recognize the references, the video’s plot does not allow to predict the ending. The nonlinearity of the narratives often points to the universal feelings held by society, such as utopian thinking.[12]

9. Candice Breitz

Candice Breitz was born in 1972 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and resides and works between Cape Town, South Africa, and Berlin, Germany. Breitz is a video artist and a photographer. In her work, Breitz reflects on the impact of mainstream media on the stability of human identity. Both her video art and photography investigate the way a community, be it family or nationality to which one belongs, defines who we become in life.

Breitz focuses on human identity. In doing so, she maximizes the visibility of the unequal representation of the black community—a topic with a strong connection to her home country. Her videos often feature Hollywood actors. These celebrities represent global recognition of their identity and also their projected value in life.[13] 

8. Christian Jankowski

Christian Jankowski—born in 1968 in Göttingen, Germany, resides and works between New York and Berlin. Jankowski—is a fine art photographer, video artist, and installation artist. With a performative approach at the center of his multidisciplinary practice, his oeuvre consists of an engaging mix of fictional stories. The artist aims to tackle the paradoxes of the art world.

Jankowski’s video art aims to reflect or critique contemporary society—and the art world. His practice often discusses the relationship between authorship and creative originality.[14]

7. Peter Weibel

Peter Weibel—born in 1944 in Odesa, Ukraine, residing and working between Karlsruhe, Germany, and Vienna, Austria—is a post-conceptual artist, curator, and new media theoretician. He is well known for contributing to three avant-garde art movements throughout the exciting 1960s, encompassing visual poetry, Viennese film formalism, and Vienna Actions.

Alongside the likes of VALIE EXPORT, Ernst Schmidt Jr., and Hans Scheugl, Weibel paved the way for the development of immersive exhibitions, often referred to as Expanded Cinema. These contributions were a natural result of Weibel’s ongoing explorations in video technology, incorporating text, sculpture, and installation.[15]

6. Tony Oursler

Tony Oursler—born in 1957 in New York, in the United States, where the artist continues to work and reside—is a multimedia artist predominately occupied with installation and video. Similarly to Peter Weibel, Oursler is a pivotal figure in the field of new media art. Since the 1970s, he has been preoccupied with ‘expanding’ the two-dimensionality of video art into a three-dimensional moving image environment. Since then, Tony Oursler has explored the medium-specific boundaries of video technology.

Inspired by pop-cultural phenomena—think of social media, mysticism, conspiracy theories, or narrative evolution—the American artist often incorporates a human face that is distorted and fragmented into pieces. As a result, he manipulates the expression of the face, evoking an intriguing similarity between technological interventions and their effect on human social behavior.[16]

5. Pipilotti Rist

Pipilotti Rist was born in 1962 in Grabs, Switzerland, and resides and works in Zurich. Rist is seen as one of the pioneers of experimental video art and multimedia installations. She began her artistic career with single-channel videos, then progressed into large-scale immersive and audio-visual installations. 

Rists’ approach to new media art is characterized by kaleidoscopic projections, which change the exhibition space into a vibrant environment. She frequently explores the relationship between nature, technology, and the human body in her works. Her video works often rely on scenarios that seduce the viewer into subversive messages about human vulnerability, pleasure, and womanhood.[17]

4. Lynn Hershman Leeson

Lynn Hershman Leeson—born in 1948 in Cleveland, Ohio, the United States of America, residing and working between San Francisco and New York—is a multimedia artist who works with film, video, and painting. Hershman Leeson gained worldwide recognition for her video art based on in-depth research on the relationship between humans, science, and technology. In addition, Hershman Leeson was one of the first artists to start investigating the figure of the cyborg—a half-natural, half-technological creature. 

It is clear to say Leeson stands at the forefront of artists who investigated questions of gender, identity politics, and selfhood. The complexity of her research-based practice on the idea of the self is best illustrated in her project, The Roberta Breitmore Series (1974-1978).  During four years, the artist crafted a fictional character named Roberta Breitmore. Roberta had not only her physical appearance but also was engaged in real-life activities; obtaining a credit card, checking into a hotel, or renting an apartment. 

In this series, the boundary between a real and a fictional identity blurs, which truthfully relates to the possibilities of constructing one’s self in times of the Internet and virtual reality. As a result, the video art by Lynn Hershman Leeson openly speaks up about the surveillance aspect connected to technology.[18]

3. Douglas Gordon

Douglas Gordon—born in 1966 in Glasgow, Scotland, resides and works between Glasgow, Berlin, and New York—is a multimedia artist whose work encompasses video, film, installation, sculpture, photography, and text.

His work investigates dichotomies, such as good versus evil or black versus white. In addition to exploring the dynamics between opposites, Gordon’s work shifts from themes such as recognition, repetition, time, and memory. 24-Hour Psycho (1993) is one of the most famous works made by Douglas Gordon. The work is a take on the 1960s movie by Alfred Hitchcock, only now its running time is stretched to 24 hours. Gordon aims to engage in a dialogue with the public through his digital imagery.[19]

2. Christian Marclay

Christian Marclay—born in 1955 in California, the United States of America, resides and works in London, the United Kingdom—is a multimedia artist who fuses fine art and audio work. Fraenkel Gallery describes Marclay’s work since 1979 as a performance “with phonograph records and turntables to create his unique theater of found sound as inspired by Marcel Duchamp.”

Marclay is best known for transforming sound and music into visible, physical installations. He both explores and experiments with the possibilities of audio recordings, as he gained worldwide recognition with his 2010 installation The Clock. Here, Marclay edited television and film images of thousands of clocks in one video, in which all clocks were arranged to show the actual time.[20]

1. Francis Alÿs

Francis Alys—born in 1959 in Antwerp, Belgium, resides and works in Mexico City, Mexico—is an interdisciplinary artist occupied with video, photography, and various participatory actions. In his work, Alÿs depicts a range of geopolitical topics with a poetic quality. Each visual artwork is engaged in a different geographical region where he works with the local community.

The artist describes his practice as “a sort of discursive argument composed of episodes, metaphors, or parables.” Alÿs examines personal connections to their culture, land, or nature, yet his approach is very sensitive to the community and the place he is working with.[21]

Notes:

[1] Artfacts, Home of the Artist Ranking at https://artfacts.net consulted January 30, 2023.
[2] Bidoun, An Encounter with Natascha Sadr Haghighian at https://www.bidoun.org/articles/an-encounter-with-natascha-sadr-haghighian consulted February 20, 2023.
[3] Kunsthalle Zurich, Eija Liisa Ahtila at https://www.kunsthallezurich.ch/en/ausstellungen/940-eija-liisa-ahtila consulted February 20, 2023.
[4] Hezi Cohen Gallery, Sigalit Landau at https://hezicohengallery.com/artist-biography/?artist=Sigalit%20Landau consulted February 20, 2023.
[5] Sharon Hayes, About at http://shaze.info/about/ consulted February 20, 2023.
[6] Galerie Greta Meert, Edith Dekyndt at http://galeriegretameert.com/artists/edith-dekyndt/ consulted February 20, 2023. Aware Women Artists, Edith Dekyndt at https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/edith-dekyndt/ consulted February 20, 2023.
[7] Peter Kilchmann, Adrian Paci at https://www.peterkilchmann.com/artists/adrian-paci/biography consulted February 20, 2023.
[8] Serpentine Galleries, Arthur Jafa at https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/arthur-jafa-series-utterly-improbable-yet-extraordinary-renditions/ consulted February 20, 2023.
[9] Oliver Ressler, About at https://www.ressler.at/about/ consulted February 20, 2023.
[10] Mor Charpentier, Bouchra Khalili at https://www.mor-charpentier.com/artist/bouchra-khalili/ consulted February 20, 2023.
[11] Electronic Arts Intermix, Bill Viola at https://www.eai.org/artists/bill-viola/biography consulted February 20, 2023.
[12] Victoria Miro, Stan Douglas at https://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/39-stan-douglas/ consulted February 20, 2023.
[13] Marian Goodman, Candice Breitz at https://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/candice-breitz consulted February 20, 2023. HBK, Klasse Candice Breitz at https://www.hbk-bs.de/institute/freie-kunst/klasse-candice-breitz/ consulted February 20, 2023.
[14] Christian Jankowski, Biography at https://christianjankowski.com/biography/ consulted February 20, 2023.
[15] ZKM, Peter Weibel at https://zkm.de/de/person/peter-weibel consulted February 20, 2023.
[16] Lehmann Maupin, Tony Oursler at https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/tony-oursler/biography consulted February 20, 2023.
[17] Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Piplotti Rist at https://www.mca.com.au/pipilotti-rist/ consulted February 20, 2023.
[18] Arkive Gallery, Seduction (1985) at https://arkive.net/gallery/seduction consulted February 20, 2023.
[19] National Galleries Scotland, Douglas Gordon at https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/douglas-gordon consulted February 20, 2023.
[20] Fraenkel Gallery, Christian Marclay at https://fraenkelgallery.com/artists/christian-marclay consulted February 20, 2023.
[21] Peter Kilchmann, Francis Alÿs at https://www.peterkilchmann.com/artists/francis-alys/biography consulted February 20, 2023.

Last Updated on April 19, 2024