Starting with experimental film in the 60s, video art has revolutionised the art world. We celebrate the medium through its most groundbreaking pieces
Video art emerged in tandem with experimental film during the 1960s, as lively, open-ended alternatives away from the centre. Practitioners with contrarian agendas and backgrounds in disparate fields – music, performance, literature, visual art and the moving image – took to experimenting with audiovisual configurations. Feeling unconstrained, they explored consumer tools alone in their studios, or in the supportive environment of artist-run, nonprofit spaces.
During this early phase, contemporary art museums concentrated on concrete, commodifiable forms, namely painting and sculpture. Many considered the moving image anathema, horrified by how sound would invade adjacent sacrosanct white-cube spaces. Yet by the late 1990s, museums were finally contemplating video and media as exhibitable art forms.
