LB/Online Video Festival
Past exhibition
Overview
On this Friday, December 11, we have finalized the selection of works for the Online Video Festival. The idea for this festival arose before the pandemic, and it is being held at a fitting moment, when everyone is changing their habits and beginning new ways to appreciate art. This festival is an innovative initiative on the international scene, showing videos on a platform that is perfectly suited to the nature of this medium of communication – online.
Video art is an artistic movement that bears the name of a communication media – initially analog but now digital – which since its advent has gone on to become the main means for human relationships in current society. In its early years, video competed with the movie camera, offering advantages in terms of speed, mobility and cost. Its use was popularized and it gained the form as we know it today, with a language all its own. The image in movement acquired a social force greater than words. Precisely for this reason its artistic appropriation is legitimate.
Historically, the term “video art” encompasses everything from geometric and abstract contents to documentaries and social records – a vast spectrum of aesthetic and semantic approaches. For this reason, various subdesignations for video art have emerged, since video is a medium rather than an aesthetic movement: everything fits within video art. The criterion for choosing the 32 videos presented here prioritized the aspect of historical experimentalism, with a view to how historical artists from various parts of the world aesthetically approached the new medium called video. As you can see, they were very creative, and anticipated visual solutions that we use yet today with admirable freedom. These artists thus furnished the recipe for the creation of many of the current works of video art. Some used technological limitations of their respective time as creative elements, for example, the degree of image resolution. The social content of the videos was a second-order criterion, directly linked to the innovative use of the video in the period when each work was conceived.
These videos are spread throughout the current media platforms. Recovering them, putting them side-by-side, allows the viewer to understand the true artistic value of these works. And we must bear in mind that just as they exist today in the social media, tomorrow they can be deleted. The consideration of these videos as works of art, together with traditional artworks, ensures their survival in high-quality collections and museums.
The innovative format of this show, which has presented video works over a period of months, for the public to watch and rewatch, is a very clear positioning in relation to the excessive commercialization of current art. This initiative was constructed as a joint effort together with Luciana, a partner in the selection of this show, with whom I have worked on cultural projects for more than 20 years. Its presentation has been extended until the month of April. Welcome to the show! We would like very much to hear your freely expressed opinion. Thank you.
Analivia
December 2020
