Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art

by Doug Hall, Sally Jo Fifer

This volume contains the insights of prominent artists in the field as well as critical writings by scholars and critics. It illustrates the complex, heterogeneous nature of video, and highlights its strong ties to the visual arts and social theory. While providing an essential critical context for understanding video's role as art, these writings show that video is at the forefront of contemporary cultural and aesthetic discourse. Using a wide range of strategies, from the poetic to the deconstructive, these essays provide a long overdue critical context in which to evaluate video as art and its subsequent impact on social and cultural behavior.

Genres: Art, Film

566 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Faith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read as a whole, this book is EXTREMELY repetitive and makes some very large generalizations, such as dividing video into three basic categories: activist, art, and television. The volume is worth reading for the artists' writings, however, which offer descriptions of difficult-to-find works.

[Anthropo cackia]

I started with the chapter "The cultural logic of video" by Maureen Turim with excitement since it's my topic. I could see from the beginning that the writer has very good knowledge and their text is full of references. However, it felt a bit structureless, as I couldn't understand what were they talking about, where is this going, and I couldn't really follow. Also there were some terms that I wish I would get more context about since personally I am not very familiar with, such as "psychoanalytic theory", "multinational capital". At the moment I am less tempted to try to read the other authors in the book.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most comprehensive writings on video. The title says so, "an essential guide."

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Has aged remarkably well, probably better than any other video book from the mid-1990s. Still quite relevant.

[William West]

The text for an amazing class I took, taught by Roy Grundmann. Some lousy essays, some really, really good ones. Overall, a fine anthology.