Jim Moir Documentary on Video Art (and general video art chat).

[Sebastian Cobb]

I spotted this on iPlayer last night.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bpjw

Jim Moir, aka Vic Reeves, explores video art, revealing how different generations hacked the tools of television to pioneer new ways of creating art.

I found it fascinating, both how it came out as a new artform and something that was more diy than film (although I think that might be a bit dubious given 8/16mm). How people used effects like feedback and persistence in early cameras to make effects in themselves. The fact it was new and hadn't yet been dominated by men, and also the fact it could be DIY meant it was also jumped on by women and feminist art movements.

The early stuff was pretty linear, unedited, then I suppose as multiple machines became affordable and tape editing equipment became a thing it gave way to things like Scratch Video, which had some excellent electronic music in it then those techniques got used in videos (Paul Hardcastle's 19 is very similar to things like Amen: Survive the Coming Hard Times.

Two art groups that didn't get mentioned, probably for the same reasons were Videophreex and Psychic TV. This is probably because both of these took things further and built Pirate TV (or broadcast intrusion after proper tv stations closed down for the night) stations to show off their works. That's pretty cool and guerilla in itself, but it seems that gallerys were very sniffy about video art when it first came on the scene.

Now of course with things like youtube and how easy it is to make video, you have to do a fair bit, or do something strange for it to even be considered and the distribution mechanism's all there, unless you want to be in control of that and provide it by way of a physical installation.

Other links
Videophreex Work on Youtube
Wikipedia article on Network 21, a UK Pirate TV Station
Network 21 Youtube Channel
Website about a documentary on Videophreex, seemingly available for rent on Youtube, Amazon etc

[Malcy]

Cheers. I added this to my watch list on iPlayer a while back but forgot all about it because it's way down at the bottom.