Against realism, for reality : video art and experimental cinema of the 1960s-1970s

The article surveys examples of the 1960s–1970s video art and experimental cinema (mostly from the USA), which are analysed and grouped in terms of their representation of reality. It is revealed in which ways these art practices confront with the dominating ideologies of representation embodied in commercial cinema and television, what new relationships between image and reality they suggest and how they encourage a critical and active perception of images of reality and works of art. The author discusses works that deconstruct the alleged objectivity of the images of reality and neutrality, reject the function to represent reality and focus on the reality of the instrument of cinema or video art. In other works, the attention shifts from mediated images to the real space of their installation, time of experience and perception (the necessity to connect and edit many sources of images in one’s consciousness and actively obtain meaning), and encourages reflecting the observation itself and analysing one's function as a spectator. The third group of works discussed here questions the possibilities of the authenticity of the image; the image is used as a means of memory, self-perception and autobiography or a political instrument to transform reality