The luminous image - talking back to the media. The new media exhibition.
Iconic exhibitions in the 20th century.
In 1964, artists acquired a new instrument, the Sony Portapak video camera, that enabled them to make moving images, translate them artistically and distribute them; a revolution. This did not mean, however, that from that moment onward, video art was on show in Dutch museums - on the contrary.
Yet there were serious attempts to offer video art a podium. The NOS, for example, produced special programmes with and about video artists. In the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, curator Dorine Mignot championed the medium and in 1985, two Amsterdam-based artists, Raoul Marroquin and David Garcia, took the initiative for the manifestation ‘Talking Back To The Media’.
In this episode in the series ‘Iconic exhibitions in the 20th century’, art historian Sanneke Huisman provides some insight into the background to and developments in video art, whereby she draws a line from the start to now: artists in the eighties had to relate to television, and artists today have to relate to the Internet.
Saskia Bos, who, as programme maker for the NOS and later as director of De Appel was directly involved in the development, discusses the emancipation of video art and the relationship with the political-social reality.
The episode is supported with sources from the history of Dutch radio and television.
