By Johan Pijnappel, 1993

Johan Pijnappel: What was your first contact with video art?

Tom van Vliet: What fascinated me 20 years ago was the combination of the moving image and sound. Film was very narrative, whereas there was something elusive about video; you never quite knew what was going to happen. McLuhan's expression, 'The medium is the message', was intriguing. Anyone could use video, it was just that easy. The sense of anarchy, which video still has, was very attractive.
At the end of the 60s, the Kijkhuis, a club in The Hague, was exploring the alliance between video and film. Meatball was also there and was somehow connected with the internationally known exhibition 'Sonsbeek buiten de Perken' (Sonsbeek Beyond the Bounds), which had included the first experiments with video. In Amsterdam there was the club of Jack More and the Videoheads which later became the Bank. Freaking with video machines, it grew out of the hippy movement. This is how my thinking about video evolved. Then there was the cross pollination
between the visual arts, video, performance and other more socially and politically engaged art.
There was a time when engaged art was not so in, certainly not in the European art world in the 80s. Now, particularly in the United States and the former Russian satellite countries, there is a strong push in this direction. Aesthetics have long since been abandoned. This renewal of engaged art parallels the developments in the early years of video art. Currently, only the performance art movement, in which video played a strong role, is no longer involved.

JP: Who were the engaged people in the early years?

TvV: The Lijnbaancentrum in Rotterdam, which later became the Rotterdam Video Centre, made socially involved productions and exhibitions. Felix Valk brought in the first video machines. In England there was a fairly strong movement with small clubs like The Fantasy Factory. Furthermore, many performance artists, including Marina Abramovic and Ulay, used video to record their work.
At the time, some people were already working with transparency, with light. For example, the American artist Dan Graham combined architecture and sheets of glass for an exhibition in the Netherlands. How to view videos was presented in Graham's 1986 installation Design for Interior Showing Video Tapes.

The first video art works weren't made by typical video artists, but by individuals far better known as visual artists, such as Nam June Paik and Wolf Vosteil. They were followed by a generation of artists who had never painted or sculpted; who also worked with the moving image and didn't fall back upon other forms of expression. The generation now emerging is again distancing itself somewhat from video images and developing images with computers instead. You notice quite a few male artists working with the computer. This was not the case in the video world, where there were a substantial number of women, far more than in film making and painting. This may have been because the conventions were not yet fixed. In this sense, video was democratic. In relation to film, video encouraged experimentation and allowed greater autonomy. Incidentally, there are a lot more women among curators of moving images.

JP: What does video mean to you?

TvV: I am increasingly intrigued by the nature of light. Video is primarily light with movement and information. Nan Hoover, whose video installations I greatly admire, first worked almost exclusively with slides and video screens. More recently she has been making charcoal drawings. While this seems primitive after all the years she spent working with video, the drawings clearly reveal her ongoing concern with light. Or take James Turrell, for example, whose studio is in a crater in Arizona. For an exhibition of his work in Madrid he made a space dome with a bed in it. As the bed slowly rose, the intensity of the light was changed electronically. The artist Gary Hill has a strong visual feeling for the projection of images in relation to literature. In an installation in the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven he projected texts onto the pages of blankbooks.

JP: How has the use of video in art changed for the viewer in the past 20 years.

TvV: We began at the World Wide Video Centre by collecting video tapes. It was actually a kind of postponed viewing. We even had television recordings. This must sound strange now since everyone has their own video recorder, but at the time no one did. Once we wrote the word 'video' in white letters on a window pane. No one knew what it meant; the word video simply did not exist. The idea of taking a tape, placing it in a machine, recording whatever you want and being able to play it back instantly struck people as unusual, if not crazy. This is hard to imagine now. Still, many people don't know what video actually is. In art, video is applied in a completely different way than in the corner videotheque. At our centre, people could view productions upon request. In this way a small group of viewers evolved. The collection of videotapes slowly grew through purchases and copies left behind by visiting artists, and now comprises 5,000 titles. A special aspect of the centre is that it began by showing what was on hand, and as a result of increased demand it grew organically into a distribution centre.

JP: How did the World Wide Video Festival originate?

TvV: After setting up the distribution branch of the centre, I realised that there was a need for larger international meeting places for viewing these sorts of production. In 1979 I attended one of the first video festivals, which was held in Rome. The first World Wide Video Festival, which lasted for two or three days, actually got off the ground in 1982. Our building was really small and we had to borrow the education bus of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague to get the art onto the sidewalk. The bus was parked in front of the World Wide Video Centre and housed Michel Cardena's video installation with the billiard balls. Now it would probably be impossible to do something like this given the context of the tiny work rooms where 60 people stood looking at a small screen, but it really was charming. The first festival was a big rowdy happening. The building was bursting at the seams. You had no idea who would show up and it was surprising that so many people came.
Among the artists there were Nam June Paik; Dara Birnbaum, whose works had a strong social dimension; and Dan Reeves, who worked out his syndromes from the Vietnam War using delayed images and toys. Elsa Stanfield and Madelon Hooykaas both showed installations and video tapes; and Nan Hoover's work strove for an aesthetic effect. There was also documentary work on the squatter's movement.

JP: What significance does the World Wide Video Festival have tor artists now?

TvV: From a happening with a strongly informative source, over the years the festival has grown into a meeting place where a very international public comes to see what's new. Initially, it presented a survey of developments that had taken place in the previous three or four years. Now it shows the work of the past year. It has become more multi-faceted with the inclusion of installations spread over all sorts of locations. Larger works are in The Hague Gemeentemuseum and in empty buildings, depending on the spirit of the artwork. The importance of the festival now for artists is that they get something out of it in the form of an exhibition or distribution.

I've always looked for new ways of presenting this art form. But how do you exhibit the content, which changes constantly? Well, take the television set. People watch it in the privacy of their homes. So, I simply bought air time on cable and television. Museums are built for paintings but since everyone has a television and chair, you can show video work right in people's homes.

JP: How did video evolve into three-dimensional art?

TvV: The use of videos in installations dramatically alters the impact of a given environment. Initial attempts at creating video sculptures incorporated videos in objects. An installation always changes and its surroundings determine its effect. The works of Shigeko Kubota recently exhibited in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam are by and large installations with a few sculptures. They acquire their final form through the effects of light and their setting.

JP: What is the museum world's influence on video art?

TvV: Since museums are frequently the organisations interested in mounting exhibitions, they have a great impact on how artists work. Video is a relatively expensive art form. Video installations fit into museums better than video tapes, which because of their frequently narrative character can be more easily shown on television. Though most museums still have auditoriums equipped with film projectors, nevertheless regular film showings, including experimental films and particularly art films, are history. Why does the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam reject Fellini but welcome Jeff Koons? The answer is that for art museums the moving image plays a subordinate role. This is fairly surprising considering how very important moving images are to man's understanding of life. While there are museums which, in fact, have video collections, they tend to treat them somewhat differently to installations. After all, you can display installations in the same way that you can hang paintings on the wall. Paintings are generally unique objects, whereas videos can be duplicated almost endlessly. This last aspect naturally makes it a difficult medium for the art trade. However, there was a short-lived trend in autographed video tapes. While it's fun to have a signed video, it is totally inappropriate because of this element of duplication. Many artists weren 't happy with this and with a view to sales, gallery owners concurred.

JP: Has the appreciation of museums for video tapes in signed, limited editions changed?

TvV: Films have fanished from museums and video tapes will experience a similar fate. After all, selecting video's is extremely time consuming. If you compare this selection process with that for paintings, you can see far more paintings in a day then video tapes, some of which last up to 60 minutes; and then you've only seen them once! Bear in mind that many video tapes can only really be understood after multiple viewings. Video tapes have a somewhat uncomfortable position in museums. For example, video showing rooms are frequently located near the toilets or below the stairs. An exception to this rule is the new museum in Bonn which houses the Oppenheimer Collection. There, video tapes are treated as though they were priceless paintings or drawings.
Lately, I find myself wondering whether what is presented in museums is determined by the content of an artist's work, an artist's reputation or style, or by the particular tradition of the museum.
What strikes me at the video exhibitions is that museum visitors spend a long time looking intently at moving pictures, in fact, far longer than at a painting. You also notice that certain artists take into account rhythm of the viewer when creating a video artwork. Thus, they develop video installations bearing in mind the period of time the museum public will spend observing the work of art. Fortunately, there are also some obstinate artists who force you to for two hours in order to truly see the entire istallation. Examples are Tony Oursler whose layered installations reveal many stories and Jean Michel Basquiat, whose paintings require a relatively long time to 'read'.

JP: For quite some time the reach of video art, whick originated in a climate of opposition, remained limited. Now there is a growing number of large media manifestations, such as the Mediale in Hamburg, and video art appears to be becoming a mature and accepted art form. Will this medium come even closer to people?

TvV: Some 20,000 to 30,000 visitors attended exhibitions such as Passages l'Images in Paris, and Video Positive in the Tate Gallery in Liverpool. Ten years ago, no one would have believed this. It is now clear that a radical development has taken place. In the future, more and more information will be transmitted via satellites. Art installations are still very physical things.
As far as the artists are concerned, they are far more involved in what is going on in the world now, such as environmental issues and the political situation in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe. There is some resistance to the established order, but since we no longer have any idea what exactly the status quo is, this resistance takes on a different meaning. Actually, it's longer a matter of being for or against something. It is extremely interesting to see how the media and especially artists respond to the situation in Eastern Europe. Also, many people nowadays travel throughout the world with small Hi-8 cameras.

JP: Can video transmissions via satellite bring about a form of direct democracy?

TvV: For me, satellites are a means of dissemination. Democracy is being able to see different things. This is particularly so when art can be viewed by satellite. In that sense, art is democratic. However, I don't think that bringing a truck load of art to people where they live would cause them to have an 'experience'. In that sense it has nothing to do with democracy. It's important that moving images be spread per satellite, in the same way that museums serve democracy by being everywhere.

JP: Do you think that the image in a video tape impresses people differently than that in a painting?

TvV: Yes, I do. Because a video presents moving images and has a particular time span, the mind apprehends it differently. I see paintings in my surroundings all day long, while I look at video images only for short periods of time. Yet the moods of video works that have really captivated me always linger in my mind.

JP: What is the relationship between technology and art in video art?

TvV: As a result of technological developments much has changed in the past 15 years, including video art. Initially one worked with a video camera and a screen, but using a large, flat image was impossible. Then the video projector was developed, which some thought only served to enlarge the image as in film. Of course, that's not how it works. The medium is determined by those who work in it. This is how y ou can see that video has developed a different language. In the beginning you worked with numerous screens, while now the choices, the materials available for presenting the work, are far greater.
The first LCD projectors, which operated like slide projectors with moving images, based on the tripletube projector, were developed several years ago. They allow artists to work more easily in space and set the mood. The link between the new technology and he visual arts also yields very specific applications. An example of this is the LCD screen, which is not encased in a box and only shows moving images. Some artists are gaining increasing mastery of the tools, such as Gary Hill, who has been using television as a video projector. Thus, technology provides artists with all kinds of new possibilities and, I turn, artists open up technology because they think differently about what you can do with specific equipment.

JP: One of your dreams was to work with a new way of presenting video art on a large architectural scale. Since then you have discovered Priva-Lite.

TvV: Priva-Lite interests me because I kept thinking, why do you have to have a box around a screen? You should be able to hook up a video plug directly to a window in order to project a moving image onto it. After talking about this for many years. I discovered Priva-Lite. The moment you turn on the electricity in such a window with a LCD film, you get a diffuse image that filters the light which can serve as a transparent projection screen. You can use it as a new medium: one moment the screen is visible, and the next it vanishes. You can show a moving image and let it suddenly disappear or keep several windows transparent and place an installation behind them, using other windows as a projection screen. Priva-Lite lets you develop very intense three-dimensional images. The current system cannot yet be connected to a video plug and therefore you still have to project it onto the window; but that doesn't take away from the concept.
Because of Priva-Lite's possibility for large applications, moving images can be introduced into the public arena to enliven the city scene. Until now video has usually been set inside a building. I think it would be exciting to experiment with artists versed in various disciplines, such as film and architecture, as well as with video artists, such as Bill Viola, and with the Ponton Media Art Lab to develop this medium's possibilities for art in spatial surroundings.

JP: How do you perceive the future of video?

TvV: The fact that we still displace ourselves physically, that we still go to and have places where we physically look at art, is rather primitive. I am sure that the entire context of art is going to change. Why was it first in caves, and why did it then move from caves to museums? Man's development is related to the idea, the source of inspiration, that you feel through art. Whether art reaches you by satellite or in your dreams ...it's all going to happen. Certain forms of traditional art will, of course, endure, just as books have survived video tape. People will always want to be able to touch things physically, just as Joseph Beuys melted fat with his body heat. The remaining question is what place will the virtual world occupy in that spectrum. Video art plays an important role within the development of visual thought processes.

– Johan Pijnappel

This interview first appeared in Art & Design, 1993