Remediations—Re-Viewing Art

Abstract

Under the direction of executive editor Lenore Malen, guest editors John G. Hanhardt and Maria Christina Villaseñor dedicated the entire Winter 1995 issue of Art Journal to the topic of video art. Ushered in by a brief and volatile history of production and innovation, the artform was by the mid-1990s proliferating dramatically, with artists' videos in museums and international exhibitions—a decisive coming of age for video art. Yet Hanhardt and Villaseñor lamented an insufficiency of rigorous theorization and critical discourse on the medium. Following another decade of startling growth of video and multimedia projects and installations, Art Journal reexamines video's temporal, errant, and mutable character in a thematic investigation sensitively organized by Yvonne Spielmann. She has strategically assembled essays by Sean Cubitt, Jean Gagnon, Christine Ross, and herself that together examine, from an international perspective, the significant innovations and pioneering artists of this technology and medium while indirectly speculating on its future. These thoughtful essays confirm that, in spite of its initial marginal critical reception, video art has had striking and substantial consequences for contemporary art.