Video art, a new media

Video art, a new media

Asikin Hasan, Contributor, Jakarta

Jakarta, Bandung and Yogyakarta, three major cities that
world-famous researcher Claire Holt considered important points
on the map of Indonesia's modern art development, have witnessed
an increasing number of video art performances over the past two
years.

Video art is a new art medium, which gained popularity in the
U.S. in the first half of the 1960s and in Europe in later years,
along with the emergence of contemporary art. Nam June Paik - a
Korean American and member of the Pluxus movement - was the first
person to introduce the work, which later became popular under
the name of video art at A-go-go Cafe in New York.

Just like the works of other members of the Pluxus group,
Paik's are deemed progressive in that they remove boundaries in
art. Form, sound, movement, smell and everything else are blended
in a single work.

The general theory of esthetics no longer seems able to
identify this phenomenon. Anybody is free to construe it as art
or just anything else: anything goes, that's the spirit. It is
this reality that critic Arthur Danto fears will be the end of
art.

Today, video art is no longer an experiment or a form of
resistance, but it has begun to be accorded a place in important
international contemporary art forums.

Paintings, which in the past would dominate an exhibition
room, have been replaced by video art works. A previously silent
and solemn museum hall has now become noisy and displayed various
images of the new media yet to exist previously. Prestigious
forums such as biennale, triennial and the like, have now been
highlighted by video and new media works.

The emergence of video art works in a number of exhibition
rooms or performance halls shows a new development in our
contemporary art. In 1993, Krisna Murti, a contemporary fine
artist, for the first time introduced his video work, 12 Hours in
the Life of Dancer Agung Rai in the exhibition room of R-66,
Bandung.

Then in 1997, he displayed his other video work, My Ancestors
were the People from Sangiran, among others at Lontar Gallery,
Jakarta, Red-Point, Bandung and the Art Park in Solo. In Bandung
Art Event 2001, his other work, Wayang Machine was also featured.
Krisna is lucky as a number of his other video works have taken
part in a number of international art events: Biennale Havana,
Triennial Fukuoka, KIASMA- Helsinki and so forth.

In Jakarta, video art presentations now have a place and have
become the talk among art observers. In June 2001, Ruang Rupa, a
group of young artists interested in the new media, cooperated
with The Japan Foundation to organize Silent Forces, a multimedia
video art presentation featuring four video artists, namely Anne
Mie Van Kerckhoven (Belgium), Adrianto Sinaga (Indonesia),
Sebastian Diaz Morales (Argentine-Dutch), Aditya Satria
(Indonesian).

In September 2001, the Goethe Institute presented video art in
Quobo exhibition at the National Museum, In May and June 2002,
fine artist Teguh Ostenrik, in collaboration with composer Tony
Prabowo, presented his video work at Goethe House. Then eight
video artists from Finland showed the latest Finnish video art
works at Lontar Gallery, Utan Kayu.

Video art and the new art media have enjoyed great progress in
our community because the supporting instruments such as
handycams, digital cameras, computers and the Internet, are
easier to come by now. Besides, the reality now better known as
the virtual world and presented by means of these electronics
devices are close to our daily lives.

International exchanges through the Internet or by other
means, which are now widely open to artists, also constitute an
important factor. These facilities are great opportunities for
present-day artists and were not available in previous periods.

The presence of the new media has not only led us to question
the boundaries of art but also made us aware of the great
diversity of media in contemporary art. In New Media in Late
20th-Century Art, Michael Rush, a media observer, includes as
items of the new art media not only the video art but also
performance art, video installation, digital art, web art and so
forth. However, the latest development in various "events" in the
world is the blending of these new media, as seen in the works by
Milica Tomic (Yugoslavia), Shigeo Kubota (Japan-American) and
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook (Thailand). They blended performance art
with video art and call the combination a video performance, of
which the production is completely different from the
documentation of a performance.

Bavf-NAF festival (Bandung video, film and new media art
forum, held between Aug. 7 and Aug. 11, 2002 at the Nusantara
House, Bandung) seems to try to accommodate these fresh
developments.

That's why the festival also featured performance art, video
art and so forth. This festival, which was linked with the new
media, is a strategic step because the new media are yet to be
mapped out in the development of contemporary art.

An interesting aspect that stood out from these activities is
how artists from various cities and countries get along together.
A number of participants come from Japan, Australia, Germany,
Holland, Norway, Britain, Cuba, the United States and Spain. The
diverse group does not include participants from Jakarta,
Bandung, Yogyakarta, Solo and Bali.

Video art and new art media like this may need bigger
opportunities to be exposed to the community. In this way, our
minds' expand responding to today's art phenomenon, a genre of
art gaining greater currency in important international forums.