Smashed cars and Chinese chewing: the five masterpieces of video art
(The Guardian Culture News)

Half a century ago, an art form flickered into life as mavericks from Nam June Paik to Bill Viola took up technology to transform the way we see the worldI was a bright-eyed young curator with a passion for the unconventional when video art first took off. Lured by its galvanising pandemonium, I jumped into its wide-open terrain. It was the mid-60s and portable equipment had just started appearing in shops. Although the gear was rudimentary, activist mavericks ran with it, suddenly able to storm a medium that had until then been the exclusive domain of broadcast TV. I was working at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and, keeping my ear to the ground, would attend events in alternative spaces housed in low-rent, rundown buildings across the city. I would race up splintery staircases just as artists rushed down them with newly completed videotapes tucked under their arms. I watched works on TV monitors and navigated my way through mazes of cables and cobbled-together equipment to experience `site-specific installations` - an unfolding new art form showing live feeds or prerecorded videos on carefully arranged TV sets. Continue reading...