Art and the Moving Image

Abstract

Designed to celebrate the Reina Sofia Museum's newly acquired collection of video, First Generation Art and Moving Image (1963-1986) is more than an exhibition--it is an experience. (1) There are thirty-two installations and wall projections along with a database of eighty videos that viewers can browse. exhibition and collection address the range of approaches artists used to explore the possibilities of this new time-based medium utilizing all of the entrances and exits on the third floor of the museum to channel the viewer through a historic survey that is international and inclusive, placing impressive works by lesser known artists next to those by household names. Both collection and exhibition are curated by Berta Sichel, director of the Audio Visual Department at the museum, which is located in Madrid. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the first room, the 1963 work by Wolf Vostell, 6-TV-De-Collage (reconstructed by Vostell in 1995), is paired with three works by Nam June Paik from the same year, when both artists were manipulating television signals. importance of their contributions to this very early phase is clearly recognized. Although Robert Whitman's 1953 installation The Bathroom Sink is a 16 mm film later transferred to video, it is included in this space to acknowledge his role in introducing the moving image to the art world. This sensitivity characterizes the exhibition. Each narrative is examined from multiple perspectives as if to question the very history it is presenting. It is a nonlinear journey through an explosion of ideas that are still fresh. Most of the works are from the 1970s, an era when popular culture and media culture were pivotal influences on artists who were seeking alternatives to high modernism. became a playground for video artists who manipulated the physical object and critiqued its content. Mary Lucier's Untitled Display System For Burned Vidicon Tubes (1975-77) uses monitors to display abstractions created by scarring the tubes while Eugenia Balcells's forty-eight channels of abstract images in TV Weave (1985) reduces broadcast television to a system of signs and symbols. Antoni Muntadas's Between Lines (1979) reinterprets the news by fragmenting the image, thus asking the viewer to question the information received. Dara Birnbaum's PM Magazine (1982) appropriates images, turning them into hyper media moments that ridicule their sources while seducing the viewer. David Hall's TV Interruptions appeared on Scottish television in 1971 unexplained and unexpected. large selection of works by women (twelve of the thirty-two installations) speaks to the vitality of feminism in challenging the status quo. In works by Marina Abramovic, Ana Bella Geiger, Joan Jonas, Ana Mendieta, Ulrike Rosenbach, Carolee Schneeman, and Hannah Wilke, the body is used in performance to define an emotional space as aggressive as it is urgent. These works, situated in close proximity to the minimalist approach of Gary Hill and Thierry Kuntzel, underline the gender politics of the era. In conjunction with the exhibition, there was a series of lectures on creating, collecting, and conserving video. There is also a catalog with eight essays, some of them reprints of seminal articles on video art. Primera Generacion, distinguished by impeccable research and an enlightening installation, presents an all too rare opportunity to experience the energy of a formative period whose ideas and influence are critical. I interviewed Sichel in Madrid in late January. I was curious how an institution begins a collection of historic works forty-five years into that history and how a curator's point of view expresses itself within that construct. PERRY BARD: Tell me about your background. When did you become interested in media? What were you looking at? BERTA SICHEL: In a way I was always interested in media because I have a BA in Journalism and a Master's degree in communications systems from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. …