Not coming from a background in fine art, I’ve struggled with the fine art focus of much contemporary photography, much of which leaves me completely cold. I’ve also struggled to address this with tutors and peers, who have of occasion been quite definite that fine art isn’t such an integral part of contemporary photography as I think. And yet, on deciding for the current module to return to shooting video, it’s been indicative that I’ve been pointed in the direction of video art by everyone I’ve spoken with. 

If I’ve had any contact with video art, it’s generally been by accident or because there’s a crossover of some kind with a filmmaker. Every once in a while, I’ve come across video art in gallery spaces and the only one that has left any impression was a ridiculous black and wide film of a naked man bouncing on a trampoline from the 1960s, memorable only for its absurdity. I went to Mark Leckey’s retrospective at Tate Britain essentially because it was built around a motorway bridge, and I enjoyed it as an installation – less sure what I’d have made of Fiorucci Made Me Hardcoreif I’d come across it in isolation. Much of Agnes Varda’s installation work is an extension and reconfiguration of her films. Hassan Hajjaj’s recent exhibition at the Arnolfini included a brilliant film which was basically an extension of his portraits of musicians and performers, but playing with the juxtaposition so that the separate portraits appeared to be aware of one another. I’d had Tacita Dean recommended to me and went to her exhibition last year at the RA – and I’m afraid walked out after 10 minutes as I just didn’t get what on earth was supposed to be going on (without such knowledge, the whole thing was an ugly mess). 

It’s worth recalling the reasons for my return to video. First, with my new Sony, I’m now able to shoot video that looks the way I want it to look. Second, my background is in film and narrative form, primarily the novel. Third, I’m curious to learn just how video occurs in the context of the discipline of stills photography – I’ve heard repeatedly that working in video is something photographers do, but nothing about how that works and why it’s done. Last, I’m keen to bring what I’ve learned over the past year into the way I shoot the moving image and see what happens. 

The first book I tried engaging with, Still Moving(2008), is a collection of essays. It is, I swiftly discovered, an exercise in interrogating the medium, a solipsistic analysis of the technological, economic and ideological contexts of the making of still and moving images. The focus is here on the act, as often in academic works on photography, and rarely moves beyond that. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not interested in these conversations, at least not right now; what interests me is what I can learn and draw from my environment, physical and cultural, through the act of photographing. I have other means of doing this at my disposal – writing, walking, discussing, researching, looking, listening. When I listen to the world, what interests me is what I can hear and through experimentation, getting the most out of hearing; I’m much less interested in HOW I can hear, and it’s the same for me with photography. After a skim through of introductory paragraphs, Still Moving is consigned back to the shelf. 

The second, Moving Image(2015), is a collection of interviews, articles, reviews and the like, investigating the subject of video art. There is here, too, an overwhelming emphasis on interrogating the medium, a fascination with scratches on celluloid, repurposing tv adverts, the technologies of utopias and a telling discussion which attacks narrative cinema for being toxically ideological (I think there are better ways to destabilise ideologies than making difficult art which is only readable by your peer group). It is telling that Bill Viola, who I’d never heard of until beginning this investigation (such is the invisibility of video art beyond itself), and who makes work that is accessible and exquisitely crafted but philosophically astute (my personal definition of what makes for great art), has explicitly stated his gradual rejection of these obsessively abstract, obfuscating means of practice. 

In amongst this is the concept of ‘expanded cinema’, which envisions video art as a development of, not a reaction against, narrative film. Expanded cinema reconsiders the context in which the moving image can be experienced, whether in an art gallery, projected onto derelict buildings, through water, or whatever. I think this is useful as a defining concept that draws a line, however tentative, between the cinema-based film, in all its forms, I have come to develop considerable knowledge of, and video art. It – literally – expands cinema, suggesting novel opportunities and creative forms. In an era when the moving image is now nearly always experienced on a personal digital screen, this strikes me as crucially important. Other discussions comment on the relationship between film and context as a central part of the art – such that a work of video art can only be exhibited, indeed will only make sense, if the artist’s instructions for exhibition are followed. 

One of the great frustrations of video art – and one I suspect that keeps it from being better known – is its inaccessibility, which is a perhaps inevitable outcome of all the above. With non-time-based media, like photography, painting, sculpture, it’s easy to encounter this work second hand, through print and digital media. Even with time-based media such as cinema or theatre, it’s possible to encounter through DVD, scripts, streaming services, Youtube and so on. But video art appears difficult to experience remotely. There doesn’t seem to be a platform which lets you view video art: the majority of films being talked about aren’t available and so – and this is surely a bitter irony – the only way of accessing them is through the words of someone who isn’t the artists. There ARE platforms, but aimed at exhibitors and at a discouragingly high price tag. And whereas you can experience excerpts from a photobook online, there is not the complete caesura in experience as that between a still from a work of video art – which is an art of movement – and the video art itself. 

Anyway, the upshot of all this investigation is this: being a video artist and a filmmaker are not the same thing, though a filmmaker can also be a video artist (such as Agnes Varda, who is exemplary at both), and a video artist can also be a filmmaker (such as Steve McQueen, who likewise is exemplary at both). And the defining element, to me, is not to be found in interrogating the medium (which film has been doing anyway right from the outset – the Lumiere brothers played with still and moving images after all), but in the contexts in which video art is encountered. It is the markedly different possibilities and limitations of ‘expanded cinema’ which I will now need to investigate to see how my photography can be reconfigured as video art, rather than narrative film. Or whether I will continue to work as a filmmaker, but draw on the experience and knowledge acquired through the practice of photography. 

Beckman, K., & Ma, J. (eds.) 2008. Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 

Kholeif, O. (ed.) 2015.Moving Image. London: Whitechapel Gallery.