PAST AND CURRENT
VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
VITO ACCONCI
Vito Hannibal Acconci is an American designer,
landscape architect, performance and
installation artist. He was born in 1940 in The
Bronx, New York.
He began his career as a poet, editing 0 TO 9 in
the late 1960s. During that time, he found
himself transformed into a performance and
video artist using his own body as a subject for
his artistic works through the forms of
photography, film, video and performance. His
first critic for his art was Cindy Nemser whom
wrote about Acconci in Arts Magazine in 1971.
After critics came rolling in he continued to
create permanent sculptures and installations.
In the 1980s, his first permanent installation
was completed, it was called Way Station I
(Study Chamber) this piece of work sparked
major controversy as it was placed on a college
campus. Due to controversy, the piece was set
on fire and destroyed in 1985. The installation
was a small trapezoidal-shaped steel structure
with sliding tiles painted to look like playing
cards on the slanted face; one could enter this
structure through a door and descend a set of
stairs to a desk and chair. The piece was
situated on the Middlebury College campus
alongside a sidewalk that ran by a group of
dormitories and towards the edge of the
campus. Unfortunately, the structure was
repeatedly vandalized and ultimately destroyed
with a blowtorch in 1985.
When asked about the destroyed piece of work
situated at Middlebury College, in an interview
with Steve OBanion, he recalled thinking that
whoever tried to destroy his work was either
angry or nave because steel cant burn. He
voiced his despair but also he felt that the
destruction of his work might have been a
godsend as he felt that the piece was not done
correctly.
His work in instillation artistry includes 'The Red
Tapes', 'Undertone' and 'Command
Performance'. His style tends to be in the form
of CCTV live feed. His majority majored in using
TV monitor as in some instillation works a small
TV monitor would show the live feed of the
person sat on the chair who has been asked to
DOUGLAS GORDON
Douglas Gordon is a Scottish artist. He was born
on the 20th September 1966 in Glasgow,
Scotland. He has won the Turner Prize in 1996
and the Premio 2000 award at the 47th Venice
Biennale for his works.
Most of Gordons work consists the themes of
memory, repetition in various forms. His work
has often overturned the traditional uses of
video formats by experimenting with time
elements with multiple of monitors. In his work
he has reused older film footage in his work, the
best known art works that he created was 24
Hour Psycho which consisted of Alfred
Hitchcocks infamous film Psycho and made it
last 24 hours. 24 Hour Psycho is one of his
most famous works he has produced as part of
his video installation works, it is slowed down to
approximately two frames a second rather than
the typical 24 frame per second film time frame.
He uses a technique of manipulating time by
using the style of video installation that is single
channel as the work only uses one screen.
Another of his work is called In Between
Darkness and Light, which shows Exorcist
(1973) and The Song of Bernadette (1943) two
films that are about adolescent girls that are
driven by external forces. These two films are
projected on either side of a single freestanding
semi-transparent screen so they can see both
simultaneously.
Gordons first exhibition was in 1986, but he
exhibited his famous works 24 Hour Psycho in
the spaces of a tramway, Glasgow in 1993.
Many of his work are ow in permanent
residence in galleries as for example Zidane, un
portrait du 21e sicle (2006) was purchased by
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In
addition, his colour photograph Monster
(1996-1997) is in permanent collection of the
Honolulu Museum of Art.
He uses un-familiarising techniques in his work
to encourage the audiences to reconsider the
means of the process of processing visual
information. In many of his work, he
manipulates time and space through the forms
of video installation.
BILL VIOLA
Bill Viola is a contemporary video instillation artist
whose artistic expression majority depends on the
themes of fundamental human experiences like
birth, death and other aspects of consciousness.
His artistic expression depend upon electronic,
sound and image technology in New Media. He
was born in 1951 in Queens, New York.
He takes inspiration for his works on his near-
death experience where on family vacation, he
nearly drowned in a lake where he experience to
his description of the most beautiful world Ive
ever seen in my life and without fear and
peaceful.
Some of his video art pieces include 'Reverse
Television', 'An Ocean without a Shore', 'The Night
Journey', 'Bodies of Light' and 'The Tristan Project'.
His main technique to all of his video instillation art
is using the technique of slitting screens with the
use of projectors and screens to accomplish this
technique.
The type of audiences his work will attract people
that have gone through similar fundamental life
experiences in a beautiful yet visual pleasing for
the audiences so that he tries to broadcast across
his life experiences as well as making the audience
relate.
For the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the
Deichtorhallen Hamburg is presenting a major
exhibition by Bill Viola. With numerous projects
and exhibitions at venues including the Grand
Palais in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New
York. As part of the exhibition, he will be displaying
his monumental video installations that will
transform the architecture of the darkened Hal for
Contempory Art at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg
into a twenty-first-century cathedral that will
simultaneously become an extraordinary stage for
the relevance and inspiration of the spiritual
dimension in contemporary art today.
Like Vito Acconci, Bill viola uses the non-narrative
forms in his works. Non-narrative form explains
that the content of the video installation includes
alternative, poetic, abstract, metaphorical,
surrealist, avant-garde, absurdist, anti-narrative,
underground; carnival etc. non-narrative
filmmaking is very artistic and experimental.
Vito Acconci- Command Performance
Vito Acconci- Undertone
'Perform' by the TV monitor in front of them.
The artist will show the person on the chair
commands for a performance and behind the
chair there is a CCTV camera set up in order to
record the performer on the chair. The artist
uses this interesting technique because it
would not only show the video that has been
projected it involves the audience therefore
making it interactive as people can be the
performer not only through one screen only by
multiple.
Vito Acconci uses the non-narrative forms in his
works. Non-narrative form explains that the
content of the video installation includes
alternative, poetic, abstract, metaphorical,
surrealist, avant-garde, absurdist, anti-
narrative, underground; carnival etc. non-
narrative filmmaking is very artistic and
experimental. As for an example, in
Undertone he artistically distorts his body for
performance without telling a story, by using
artistic forms of video installation he can create
distortion, surrealism atmospheres for the
audiences by using his body for performance.
According to The New York Times, they
thought that Vito Acconci is An Artist as
Influential as He Is Eccentric. They also said in
an article covering his work Vito Acconci, who
bushwhacked the path of video art in New York
in the 1960s and early 1970s, makes many of
todays young artists look tame. Also said I
cant think of any artist who has produced a
more cogent symbol for our teetering political
present, when entire countries are walking the
plank and taking the plunge, and we have no
way of knowing whether the result will be a big
splash or a big splat.
Although, Vito Acconci video installations are
effective in showing distortion with reality
through CCTV camera set up but it wont be of
any inspiration for my video installation
because my final project is of narrative means
and very light hearted.
Douglas Gordon- 24 Hour Psycho Bill Viola-An Ocean without Shore
Douglas Gordon- In Between Darkness
and Light
Unlike Vito Acconci, Douglas Gordon uses the
narrative form in his works. Narrative form
explains that the content of the video
installation is telling the audience a story, for
example in 24 Hour Psycho he uses the
narrative from Alfred Hitchcocks film Psycho
but manipulates the time frames to make the
narrative flow a lot slower than the original
intension.
Vito Acconci uses split screens for his video
installations this is effective because he can
divert attention to the different screens and
create abnormal distortion whereas Douglas Not only he uses the non-narrative form he will
Gordon uses projectors to attract singular sometimes use the narrative form, which means that
attention from the audiences, the projectors the content of the video installation is telling the
help to create atmosphere because the video audience a story. As in some of his works, he uses
can be projected all around the room whereas story that connect with the fundamental human
screens cant. experiences in order for the video installation to
connect with the audiences.
According to The Guardian reviewing his
works focusing on the underground filmmaker According to the Aesthetica Magazine, they
Jonas Mekas, This almost parodically radical reviewed Bill Violas installation at Yorkshire
cinematic gesture might be more effective if Sculpture Park to be Violas work strips away the
Gordon actually stuck to it. It might leave the debris of everyday life, transporting the viewer back
numbed audience with a sense of the darkness to the very core of their existence. A must see
that is the past. Yet he is inconsistent. There exhibition in a must see venue, if you have never
are brief sequences of vegetables being before visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, now is
chopped, apes in Berlin zoo, and Mekas playing the time to do so.
the accordion. Although, Bill Violas video installations are of both
narrative and non-narrative forms, I can take some
For my video installation, I will be taking
inspiration from his work in the sense of artistically
inspiration from Douglas Gordons works
because of the narrative form that he uses to placing the screens to show a set as for example in
tell the audience a story by using split screens my film I have a picnic scene. I would put a blanket on
to show difference periods of the story. As the floor with that screen on top of it to give an extra
inspiration of his video installations, I would sense for the audience that they are included at the
like to use for my final project split screens to picnic.
show different stages of the love story.