Video Art: What it is and What Constitutes a “Prestigious” Video Piece?

What defines nostalgia depends solely on each individual’s memories of, perhaps, childhood or maybe those that will never repeat themselves ever again. Tattooed moments in life that were captured by the camera in the form of photography or video, somehow make humans believe that one exact moment in time can become immortal. Video footage intends to freeze the movement, voice, energy, and smile of a person or thing, to the point that viewers can almost smell and touch that person on the screen. How helpful to progress is video footage for humans? Or how can it be harmful? But specially, what does it mean to make art of out video? What constitutes its urgency to create through video art?

The 70’s movements mercifully strived for philosophers, artists, writers, dreamers and allies to become hugely involved in and aware of contemporary sociopolitical movements involving racial and gender equality. Artists began experimenting and trending new forms of art and new forms of human expression with technology.

Joan Jonas’ “vertical roll” tape is reasonably one of the first pieces of the early 70’s to create a wave of communal rebellion of traditional aesthetics of art and societal rules. Critics raved her work focusing on the apparatus of the space and the choice to use herself as the subject. The message of her piece was clear, to give light to the objectification of the female body. How technology, ran and constructed by male minds, keeps cutting and editing the female body until it’s distorted for the pleasure of ‘popular culture.’ In black and white, with disturbing and repetitive bangs, Jonas’ figure hits the jackpot of the new and hip video art click. Shannan Moulton, Pipilotti Rist, Hito Steyerel, Debbie Grossman, Jeff Wall, Nancy Davenport, and many other began dreaming and playing with the sinister and playful sides of Digital Art.

Suddenly the antitraditional approach to art became worthy of the spotlight again and mainstream caught up with it. Nowadays, video art has reached live streams, a combination of narcissism and acting, and the irony of happiness in daytime TV. Vic Berger is a commercial video artists who edit daytime shows by transforming them in what they really are, something funny and scary at the same time. Pierre Huyghe´s One Million Kingdoms´´ brought back the fun of digital and playfulness and allowed silliness and awkwardness to become an aesthetic for the curators to catch up with.

Video art and digital art is a feeling of belonging, it is your double evil twin reflecting on the screen, gazing back at you and reading your best-kept secrets.