Video Art in the Digital Age

The idea of a digital age co-op, which was briefly put forth in the concluding chapter of Wikinomics is something that media artists in particular ought to think about.  In the later half of the twentieth century, co-ops played a key role in establishing media arts communities around the world.  In the 1960’s, places like the Filmmaker’s Co-op in New York and the London Filmmaker’s Co-op (now LUX) provided artists with affordable access to filmmaking equipment.  In the 1970’s, similar artist run initiatives emerged for video production such as the Experimental Television Center in New York and Trinity Square Video in Toronto.

Video became an attractive medium for many visual artists because it provided greater flexibility for dissemination and the possibility to reach a larger audience.  Since the 1970s, video art distribution centres have popped up across the world, amassing libraries of works, many of which only exist within the collection of a particular centre.  For instance if we wanted to see the entire catalog of George Kuchar’s work, our only option would be to go to the Video Art Databank in Chicago.  In today’s era of digital reproduction and file sharing, artists’ videos remain some of the least accessible media.  Herein lies somewhat of a contradiction, while the distribution centres originally served to help disseminate the artist’s videos, today it seems as though they have become protectors of the works.  But who or what are they protecting the works from?  Would piracy pose a threat to these artists revenues?  It seems that self preservation on the part of the institutions themselves could be another factor at play here.

Some artists intend their videos to be ephemeral and are content to let them fade into obscurity, while other artists create work specifically for a future audience.  Some artists would say the best way to experience their work is sitting down in your own home where you can pause and rewind at will.  One can assume that artists who have submitted their videos to a distributing organization did so with the idea of preservation and dissemination in mind.  Nowadays the most effective way to preserve and disseminate something is via file sharing.  So are the video art distributors serving the artist’s best interests?  Or, are they helping to reinforce the idea (that many would say is antithetical to the medium of video) of art as an elite institution?  Will they have to more actively engage in collaborative principles such as openness, peering, sharing to stay relevant?

Today, an increasing number of artists are turning to the internet to produce or disseminate their work, realizing that they don’t need gallery shows to become successful.  Some galleries have recognized this trend and instead of fighting it, have decided to encourage it.  Take Saatchi Online for example, the website of an established private gallery in London that allows any artist to post  works on their website and sell them free of commission, it seems as though everyone benefits from this situation.  It is possible that a digital age co-op for disseminating video art could develop out of a collaborative effort with existing media arts distributors, or one could also emerge through artists’ own self organizing.  Whatever the case, options for practicing media artists are plentiful online and particularly for those who are committed to not distinguishing their work as either lo or hi-brow art.

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