That’s entertainment! New Norwegian performance video

From Woman of the World by Ane Lan

 Atelier Nord presents art in the cinema

For the second year, Atelier Nord presents Norwegian film- and video art at The Norwegian Short Film Festival in Grimstad. This year’s program is a presentation of younger artists who work with performance-based video. Several of the artists are already established nationally and internationally, while others are emerging. All have studied at art academies in Norway. While some work across both the film and art scene, for most of them the gallery space is a more natural exhibition arena than the cinema. Within the institutions of visual art, film and video are frequently part of extensive installations including sculptural elements and also often several image channels, the spatial presentation of which is fundamental. And yet an increasing number of film and video artists desire optimal screening conditions, with full control of light and sound. The traditional design of a neutral, white space or a “white cube” therefore increasingly resembles the “black box” of the movie theatre. It might seem as if the institutionally imposed division between film and art is, in some areas, beginning to break down.

Atelier Nord wishes to contribute to exploring and challenging the established division between art and film. The program at The Norwegian Short Film Festival in Grimstad is one manifestation of this ambition.

The program will be introduced by the programme curator, and shows works that explore the close exchange between recent performance video and contemporary entertainment and media culture. It includes for instance freestyle discodance, references to horror and porn film, a reinterpretation of a famous scene from a Wagner-opera and fan produced content based on forms of Internet marketing. Common for all works is that the performances they show are staged and carried out with regard to being recorded, and are often represented in a visual language we recognise from various media and genres. Whereas there are great aesthetic variations between the works with respect to image quality, framing and the extent to which the performers address the camera directly, they show, with few exceptions, a lone actor who carries out a bodily or verbal act in front of the camera. In these works the video medium is thus not primarily a means for documentation of a performance presented for a live audience or in a studio, but an integrated part of the performative project itself.

Historically the introduction of video in art practice at the end of the 1960’s, was closely connected to performance art. When the portable Portapak camera was introduced at the consumer market in 1967, numerous artists turned the camera towards themselves and their own bodies The performative element consisted in many of these early works in that the artist her- or himself carried out a bodily act in front of the camera, or in that the artist addressed the audience directly through the camera. Documentation was a central function for the video medium in this early stage. Video expanded the impact of performance considerably, enabling one-time performances for a non-present or future audience. Through video technology a performance could be made endlessly present. The video camera also changed the nature of performance, enabling an intimacy in which artists would do things in front of the camera that they may not do in the presence of a live audience. When incorporated as an element in live performance, video equipment altered the experience of theatrical space by disrupting spatial continuity and adding a layer of technological mediated presence and reception. Several influential artists from this period such as Lynda Benglis, Vito Acconci and Joan Jonas, utilized this play of distance and intimacy to explore different psychosocial relations. The possibility to, through the video medium, create and control new configurations of time and space was particularly important in feminist performance video, where the articulation of female subjectivity was a fundamental concern.

The relationship to commercial mass media culture was central also in early performance video, but was then to another extent marked by antagonism and opposition. Commercial film and television was considered to be the “other” and direct antagonist of video art, and was by many artists seen to further cultural hegemony and homogenisation. Early video art was thus closer to its contemporary art movements of minimalist and conceptual art than Madison Avenue, cable television and Hollywood. For instance contributed the exploration of duration, perception and process found in much video art of the time to conceptual art’s challenging of the object-based conception of art. The notion that artistic production was tied to the shaping of specific “artistic” materials was replaced by “concept” or idea as the important artistic element, and the ideal of a finished work was exchanged for an interest in process.
The works included in the program That’s entertainment! continue the trajectory shaped by of the historical connection between video and performance art. Yet the works also break with early performance video in significant ways, which must be seen in relation to the present media situation at large. Today the possibility to turn the camera towards oneself or others and distribute the result, live or recorded, is available for most people who have access to a computer and an Internet connection. “Performance,” understood both as self-representation and as achievement, has become a key feature of media culture, for instance through reality television and social media. Direct address to the camera and the audience is no longer a formal feature characteristic for performance video or video diaries, but one of the most frequent expression forms at video blogs and Youtube. This changes how we perceive performing in front of a camera – the basic feature of performance video. Digital video makes the image come closer to that of cinema and prevailing notions of video art necessarily being of “low” aesthetic quality – which indeed might be the case with much early video art – are today radically challenged.

In addition, in the works in the program there are only a few cases where the artist her- or himself carries out the performative act. The role of the artist in recent performance video is thus as much behind the camera, as a director – and often also as photographer, editor, and sound technician. In this context, the wider media and entertainment culture does not represent an opponent as much as a reservoir of conventions and expression forms that can be utilised, transgressed and criticised in the exploration of various themes. Hence we can talk of an expanded notion of performance, where the way in which the expressive repertoire of commercial media culture is employed, becomes part of the artist’s performative project.

Atelier Nord is a project base for media art and unstable art forms, and has as its aim to create better conditions for these art forms, while also maintaining a critical reflection in relation to them. Atelier Nord’s work consists of supporting and promoting projects that work towards these goals, and has initiated a pilot project on the occasion of the development of a new infrastructure for digital cinema. The aim is to establish a more permanent, decentralised way of screening film and video art, as well as communicate these art forms to a broader national audience. The program That’s entartainment! at The Norwegian Short Film Festival in Grimstad is part of this project. The project is supported by Arts Council Norway and the Norwegian Film Institute.

Introduction by Ivar Smedstad, Artistic director of Atelier
Nord, and Susanne Ø. Sæther, programme curator.