What Is Global Video?

Three books and three decades: What is video art in the age of ubiquitous video? And what has it been over the last 30 years?These questions formed the foundation for this weekend's Resolution 3 Symposium at Pitzer College, when dozens of artists, critics, students and others gathered to talk about the current state of video.

The project started in 1986 when the gallery Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitionshosted a similar symposium, presented an exhibition and published a book titled Resolution: A Critique of Video Art. The answers then centered on the need for smart conversations about a growing movement designed to resist the domination of mass media and television, when artists and activists offered alternative views of history and politics.

A second book followed 10 years later, titled Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices; here the emphasis was on the array of video practices - from home video to wedding videos to sex videos and more. The book's editors downplayed the significance of technology, noting that technologies get used and mis-used in interesting and creative ways.
The new book will be subtitled "Video Praxis in Global Spaces" and the questions are about the global reach and potential of video. To ground the discussion, I was asked to participate in a dialog with video artist Richard Fung, who was born in Trinidad, is of Chinese descent and currently lives in Toronto. He has made a long list of videos from the early 1990s forward and his own work has shifted and changed over the years.
Richard talked a lot about the need to understand one's own history and language of images, and he talked about experimental practices in storytelling and history. He also showed some of his recent work, including Jehad in Motion, a double-screen portrait of a Palestinian Canadian named Jehad Aliweiwi who is shown both in Hebron and Toronto. At one point, he says, "I feel like I'm two different people living in distinctly dissimilar worlds," and the video beautifully captures this split.
One of the audience members asked Richard to talk about the meaning of the term "global," to which Richard, in his characteristically smart and poetic way, replied, "It's wherever you are." The global, in other words, is both everywhere and here. He's right, of course, and yet it seems so easy to slip into a more provincial vision, one that is grounded in a particular city and its immediate demands...
(Image: made with the great tool Wordle)