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Film and Culture Series
After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation
Images have never been as freely circulated as they are today. They have also never been so tightly controlled. As with the birth of photography, digital reproduction has created new possibilities for the duplication and consumption of images, offering greater dissemination and access. But digital reproduction has also stoked new anxieties concerning authenticity and ownership. From this contemporary vantage point, After Uniqueness traces the ambivalence of reproducibility through the intersecting histories of experimental cinema and the moving image in art, examining how artists, filmmakers, and theorists have found in the copy a utopian promise or a dangerous inauthenticity--or both at once.
From the sale of film in limited editions on the art market to the downloading of bootlegs, from the singularity of live cinema to video art broadcast on television, Erika Balsom investigates how the reproducibility of the moving image has been embraced, rejected, and negotiated by major figures including Stan Brakhage, Leo Castelli, and Gregory Markopoulos. Through a comparative analysis of selected distribution models and key case studies, she demonstrates how the question of image circulation is central to the history of film and video art. After Uniqueness shows that distribution channels are more than neutral pathways; they determine how we encounter, interpret, and write the history of the moving image as an art form.
From the sale of film in limited editions on the art market to the downloading of bootlegs, from the singularity of live cinema to video art broadcast on television, Erika Balsom investigates how the reproducibility of the moving image has been embraced, rejected, and negotiated by major figures including Stan Brakhage, Leo Castelli, and Gregory Markopoulos. Through a comparative analysis of selected distribution models and key case studies, she demonstrates how the question of image circulation is central to the history of film and video art. After Uniqueness shows that distribution channels are more than neutral pathways; they determine how we encounter, interpret, and write the history of the moving image as an art form.
312 pages, Paperback
Published March 21, 2017
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About the author
Erika Balsom
29 books12 followersErika Balsom is a Lecturer in Film Studies and Liberal Arts at King's College London and the author of Exhibition Cinema in Contemporary Art.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 23, 2018
Was wonderful for the subject matter it actually covered. It was extremely frustrating to have the author mention digital video as used to make inferior bootleg copies of film/video while clearly also being aware of digital video formats that perform at levels of fidelity equal to or surpassing the analog formats they could also reproduce. It seems the author was not ready to open a discussion on that subject because it would negate/make obsolete so many of the arguments made venerating film/in favor of film relative to early methods of reproduction.
I understand, as the author defined it, that the book is about the history of Film and Video and not "digital video/digital media," but the proliferation of high definition digital video is unavoidable and completely relevant to the subject matter. Never has uniqueness been so negated, than by the digital copy.
Despite that, the book was well worth my time. It was clearly written, easy to understand, and provided me with a lot of interesting things to think about from artists and researchers throughout the 20th century. It also introduced me to some great works of significance in film/video art and resources to find them (funnily enough, many of which were digital).
I understand, as the author defined it, that the book is about the history of Film and Video and not "digital video/digital media," but the proliferation of high definition digital video is unavoidable and completely relevant to the subject matter. Never has uniqueness been so negated, than by the digital copy.
Despite that, the book was well worth my time. It was clearly written, easy to understand, and provided me with a lot of interesting things to think about from artists and researchers throughout the 20th century. It also introduced me to some great works of significance in film/video art and resources to find them (funnily enough, many of which were digital).
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May 12, 2025fan vad jag tjatar om erika balsom här det är kanske lite ur proportion men den här boken har ett kapitel om regissören gregory markopoulos som verkligen är helt otroligt
June 1, 2025
tiresome, but well worth it
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews