Postmodernism and Video Art : Criticism, Ideology, and Politics

This study traces the theories and artistic practices that articulated American experimental video through its key works and events, art critical discourse, as well as the politics of its funding and distribution during the 1970s into the 1980s, focusing on New York.

Liz Kim traces the theories and artistic practices that articulated American experimental video through its key works and events, art critical discourse, as well as the politics of its funding and distribution during the 1970s into the 1980s, focusing on New York. This is a historical examination of the relationship between experimental video and postmodernism in the context of the early New York video scene as a foundational crucible of ideas and practices. Video grew out of both the acculturation of television, as well as the resistance against its hegemonic forms, as it enabled hybrid user-generated content. As such, video became a testing ground for postmodern thought, as it sat at the perfect nexus of mass media, art, and the politics of representation. This book historicizes the theories of video art through the shifts in representations of cultural identities, and the changes within its critical and structural supports. Through this process, chapters uncover new roots of postmodernism through historical evidence, widening the scope of the term and its concepts. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, film studies, and media studies.