Note: If you see this text you use a browser which does not support usual Web-standards. Therefore the design of Media Art Net will not display correctly. Contents are nevertheless provided. For greatest possible comfort and full functionality you should use one of the recommended browsers.

Themesicon: navigation pathArt and Cinematographyicon: navigation pathImmersion/Participation

Visual Summary

preview imagepreview imagepreview imagepreview imagepreview image

»That's the Only Now I Get« Immersion and Participation in Video Installations by Dan Graham, Steve McQueen, Douglas Gordon, Doug Aitken, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Sam Taylor-Wood
icon: authorUrsula Frohne

Film is taken back to its basic structures and subjected to critical analysis a hundred years after the medium was born. Contemporary artists are now addressing the history of the cinema's impact. Its technical devices have become cultural constants within our receptive behaviour. They include the darkened auditorium with its ‹cinematic quality›, the narrative standard that captures the narrative flow in pictorial sequences. and film editing, without whose visible montage technique the illusion of being ‹true to life› would not be possible. Here cinema and film are not interesting primarily as a genre, but as a stock of visual raw material. Two general tendencies can be identified among the many working approaches. There are video installations that respond affirmatively to the illusionistic effects created within cinematic parameters by enveloping the viewer in a kind of hypnotic reality-camouflage. In immersive installations like kind, the central interest is addressing themes in the social mainstream. The other type of video installation adopts a different, more conceptually defined approach, and exposes the cinema and media culture as a constructed spectacle. Found footage and icons of film and television history are processed to become initial reflections on the nature of cinematic images and their meaning for our collective identification patterns. Both tendencies draw attention to the conditions of the medium itself and make the viewer's position the actual theme of the staging concepts. [more]more

Text Sections
icon: heading Dissolving the Picture Frameicon: heading From the White Cube to the Black Boxicon: heading The Art of the Spectacleicon: heading The Aesthetic of the Remakeicon: heading Representation as Visceral Experienceicon: heading Dan Grahamicon: heading Steve McQueenicon: heading Spaces for Projection and Suggestionicon: heading Douglas Gordonicon: heading Doug Aitkenicon: heading Eija-Liisa Ahtilaicon: heading Framing the Viewericon: heading Sam Taylor-Wood