Communication and transformation in video art

It is a well-established fact that the medium of video lacks a unified identity and lends itself best to a comparative and interdisciplinary investigation which is precisely what this dissertation undertakes. My departure point is the discipline of art history and artworks in video with a focus on the art of Bill Viola. However, I expand my topic to include, among other aspects, analogies with prehistoric cave art and depth psychology as practiced by Carl Jung. The aim of my dissertation is the discussion of neglected and suppressed qualities of the medium. I identify a dialogical dimension in the medium and compare it to a psychoanalytical session. True dialogue—where we fully see the other and are simultaneously seen for who we really are (bidirectionality is an intrinsic quality of video technology)—takes us into depths of consciousness and toward existential questions of meaning with strong religious overtones. I thus posit the dialogical and by extension the religious and un/conscious as disregarded qualities of the medium. The popular format of the video installation demonstrates a deep structural relationship with painted prehistoric caves which have also been associated with consciousness and a shamanic religion. These comparisons relate video art to psychoanalysis and shamanism and reveal the potentially transformational qualities of video (installation) art. Generally, extraordinarily beneficial things have an equally detrimental aspect to them which is clearly the case with the medium of video in its expression as commercial television. More importantly, the transformational qualities of video have not been recognized because of a deeply entrenched skepticism toward religion, consciousness, and dialogue, which has also strongly impacted the reception of Viola’s work that explicitly deals with them. It is time we overcame our prejudices and realized the powerfully connective and potentially transformational qualities of the medium of video in general and of Viola’s art in particular.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference