Beck has been commissioning artists to create his music videos for years and legendary music video director Michel Gondry just had a gallery show in New York City. These are just two instances the are evidence of the blurring between what we think of as video art and the art of the music video. This trend (if we can call it that) is the subject of Playback, an exhibition at the Musee d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. With a large roster and multiple venues, the show illustrates the history and diversity of the art/music video genre. Works by Andy Warhol, Laurie Anderson, and Rodney Graham sit alongside newer works by Michael Bell-Smith, Paper Rad, and YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES. With numerous screenings throughout the city, the best place for those not in Paris to see the show is on the Playback myspace page, which links to a number of videos in the show. Notable highlights include Jill Miller's I am Making art Too, a witty, playful, and pointed update of John Baldessari's I am Making Art, and art world darlings Los Super Elegantes' telenovela Dieciseis/Sixteen, directed by Miguel Calderon. In a time when most video art has become multi-screen installation, Playback makes a strong case that single channel video, in the form of the music video, is alive and well, with an audience and a distribution network to rival single channel video's heyday.
Is it true that most video art is now multi screen and that single channel video had a 'heyday' when it was massively & generally available & is now in sad decline?
Anecdotally, even in galleries, I'd suggest not, though how one could accurately survey this I don't know.
Certainly on the web there's currently a fantastic flowering of what is effectively the single channel art video,
enough to sustain a daily posting on dvblog, one in four of which approximately would come under a strict category of "art video" (and for every piece we show there's loads more we don't).
Secondly, is it the case that because two things simply *look* alike they fulfill the
same social or artistic or technical function? -this seems an extraordinarily superficial way of assessing
things - I could carve a comb out of a carrot & it might fool you at a distance but it would make a lousy comb.
The relationship between the music video and the art video is actually something quite old fashioned - in one direction it's design or craft appropriating fine art notions and techniques.
In the other it's fine art breathing in new life from the energy & raw vitality of popular culture, something Bach, for example, would have easily recognised - see the end of the Goldberg Variations.
But..two *profoundly* different sets of practices…
Of course the artist likes to sell art but no-one stands over her second guessing what will be popular then instructing her ( maybe the cop in her head does, but that usually makes for poor art & it's a hit and miss affair) - which is precisely what happens to the practitioners of present day popular culture once the business end gets its vampire teeth in ( which is why so many popular music careers start brilliantly and end with a long , sad tailing off)
Exactly the same case applies to TV commercials, the dichotomy there being even sharper because of the even more nakedly -if that is possible- commercial intent of the ads.
This isn't to advocate ignoring either music vids or ads, but lets not have our arms twisted by over excited curators into swallowing frameworks that are glib, attractive but ultimately utterly misleading and damaging.
Hello -this was a reply to the article by Caitlin Jones on the main page - I left a comment there but it then appears here as if I've started a new thread…
It seems a slightly confusing way of doing things..is there no way the text of the original article could appear at the head of the thread, for clarity's sake?
michael
Ok -forget the above -I see how it works.. doh..