I thought this bit of conversation between Corey Arcangel and Dara Birnbaum was interesting because of the way they talk about displaying there work, and the problems that can come from making work for display in a specific venue. In a slight side note - as a video artist its frustrating to read a long prospectus that starts off asking for work in all media, then there is no consideration for the technical requirements of video listed, and the bottom it eventually says the no film or video should be submitted. It seems like it happens quite bit.

CA: I think I’m definitely in a parallel situation today when it comes to the question of context. You made videos and found it interesting to place them in clubs; my videos go on view in galleries, but I’ll also put them online. And just as the galleries weren’t interested in your video work because they thought it was just TV, they weren’t so interested in my work at the beginning. They just didn’t see it as art.



DB: I initially avoided galleries like the plague. I didn’t want to translate popular imagery from television and film into painting and photography. I wanted to use video on video; I wanted to use television on television. A lot of us who went into video at the beginning did so because we thought art shouldn’t be made in limited editions, and in video we finally had an eminently reproducible medium that could get out into the hands of many. It was a populist form, and our great hope was to do something that made it to Kim’s Video store. You know? I didn’t want to be collected. I wanted to talk. Looking back, there were different test runs to promote this way of distribution for artists, but nothing ever truly supported that vision.



CA: But that last assertion makes me wonder: Is there even such a thing as a bastardized medium today? Sure, if you’re talking specifically about the art context and its inevitable waves of style. In larger culture, however, you now have to consider all the developments in distribution. The fact is that you can put anything up on the Internet and there will be five people who want it, no matter how weird or obscure the information. The niche exists; someone’s going to find you, period. That means there can’t ever be, in terms of expression and audience, a wrong move. Now, for me, this creates a dilemma I’m still dealing with. On the one hand, it’s great, because I’m conceivably able to just chase my wildest, weirdest dreams. But it’s also completely paralyzing; if I were to make just what I “liked,” it could just as well be all about hockey or something like that. So I use the art context to bring me back.



DB: How does that dilemma unfold with your video games? Aren’t they bastardized? As much as we want to let go, there is, I think, still contradiction in art and culture along the lines of, for example, the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition “High and Low” [1990]. Such exhibits have supposedly come together to allow for comparative views, but this actually only reinforces a “low,” bastardized component in the art world—until, that is, the art world can see a gateway into it. And that gateway is usually a reinforcement of art-historical values and views. And then come those critical interrogations where people make something of it, saying, “Oh, how interesting that he uses these video games that are obsolete.” Because that’s a cool word in the art world: obsolete. [laughter]



CA: Well, you’re right to some extent. I can put a video game online and the core audience will be drawn like a magnet to it, while in the art context, some people just won’t even go there—although, as I get older, I find that more people are willing to accept it, because everyone else is getting older, too. There’s a generational shift. I guess I tried to address the problem with I Shot Andy Warhol [2002] and Super Mario Clouds [2002], which were meant to be blind to both audiences, meaning that art people would see the work one way and like it while Internet people would see it another way and like it. I wanted these parallel rails on the train track. I Shot Andy Warhol doesn’t totally work online, though, because your average computer dork doesn’t care about Warhol. The Clouds really worked, on the other hand, for the reasons you describe. In the art context, it brings to mind the history of landscape and video installation.

The rest of the article is up at artforum here:
http://artforum.com/inprint/issue=200903&id=22117