Adrian Salas

Spring 2014
MIAS 200

Video Art as a Preservation Challenge

In the world of moving image archiving there is the two pronged issue of preservation
and restoration. Some can argue that these are a dichotomy of actions that are separate ventures
and really bare little relation to each other as archival actions. Others would argue the two
concepts are really located on a spectrum with varying gradations of relation to each other. The
two concepts though both share a concern with presentation of archived material. While the bulk
of literature on archiving and preservation usually reference film, video is the less sexy moving
image sibling. Video is nonetheless is just as important of a document of a wide variety of
historical and aesthetic moments, whether intentionally or incidentally. To further specify and
complicate the picture of video, this paper will specifically focus on early video art/artists video.
As a genre, these artist works can seems very broad and unrelated, often lacking any form of
traditional narrative structure or at times even technical consistency within the medium. This
schism and difference of artist video from established norms and practices though is in a way the
unifying keystone to the oeuvre. Artist film is in many ways about challenging conventional
ideas and aesthetics in the goal of expanding possibilities of expression, but in doing so the area
can then become a challenge of theories of presentation and curatorship that conservators and
archivists must wrestle with in the interest of saving a true representation of video works for
posterity.
To begin with, it is important to establish that video as a medium is just as endangered as
film, and in fact even more so in many ways. Defined in its most basic form by Leo Enticknap
video recording is done by, representing a visual image as a series of changing electrical
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modulations recorded onto magnetic tape.1 As Enticknap, proceeds to lay out in his history of
the medium, video was first developed and produced in the late 1940s, and early 1950s. As such
the time frame of video is, as a whole, much less than that of film. To further complicate videos
technical aspect even further, it is not as tied to uniform standards as film came to be with 35 and
16 mm film stocks. The story of videos physical carriers is a complicated tapestry of rapid
development and obsolescence of a proliferation of broadcast and home formats through the
years, beginning with the original broadcast recording solution developed for Bing Crosby to use
as a way to save his performances on tape reels for later use.
While I was researching the Getty Research Institutes (GRIs) collection of artist videos
from the Long Beach Museum of Art, video conservator Jonathan Furmanski continuously stated
that one of his biggest problems with undertaking conservation actions on the collection is the
challenge of obtaining decks to playback the inch U-matic tape cartridges that comprise the
lions share of the collection. Format obsolescence has rendered the U-matic decks as relics that
are no longer in use or production, and as such a very limited commodity. Often times
replacement of a broken deck is not a possibility, and it is only through cannibalizing parts from
multiple dysfunctional players that one can have working production unit for playback of tapes.
This is a story that can be repeated for nearly all analog magnetic tape formats. Making the
matter much more pressing is that magnetic tape as a medium is not as robust as properly stored
film has proven itself to be over the 100+ years of its existence. In a white paper prepared by the
Image Permanence Institute, it is stated:
Although it has been generally accepted that the life expectancy (LE) of magnetic
tape can be from ten to thirty years near normal room climate conditions, it is
1

Enticknap, Leo. Moving Image Technology. London:Wallflower, 2005. 176.

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important to understand that environmental storage conditions can optimize, or

seriously compromise, the life span of magnetic records.2
The video lifespan stated in this study is important, because it converges with what some
such as David Ross have called the half-inch revolution in 1965.3 This is posited as the
year when relatively affordable inch video cameras and recorders became available to
the public. As David Ross explicates in his essay, [t]he half-inch revolution not only
led to the possibility of utilizing decentralized distribution systems such as cable TV,
adapted to minority needs in a pluralistic society; it also greatly expanded the potential
of video as a medium for making art.4 With 1965 designated as an informal starting
point for video arts proliferation, and thirty years as the high end estimate for magnetic
medias viable lifespan, the conclusion that one must draw is that without intervention
much of video arts early history is in critical danger, if not already gone.
The necessity of undertaking conservation on video and video art should be
readily apparent to those who hope to save it for posterity. What clouds this picture then
is the concept of what Paolo Cherchi Usai refers to as The Model Image which he
refers to as an hypothesis [that] is based upon the existence of moving images which are
immune from decay.5 While Usai formulates his theory upon moving images committed
to film, this concept can easily be translated to the idea of video images. To draw out the
implication behind this idea, it is the positing that no preservation, conservation,
2

Bigourdan, Jean-Louis, James M. Reilly, Karen Santoro, and Gene Salesin. The Preservation
Of Magnetic Tape Collections: A Perspective. Rep. no. NEH GRANT # PA-50123-03. Rochester:
Image Permanence Institute, 2006. Print. 6.
3
Ross, David. "A Provisional Overview of Artists' Television in the U.S." New Artists Video: A
Critical Anthology. Ed. Gregory Battcock. 1st ed. New York: Dutton, 1978. 138-165. Print.
142.
4
Ibid.
5
Usai, Paolo Cherchi. The Death of Cinema. London : BFI, 2001. 40-41.

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restoration, or even presentation of a moving image on an analog carrier can ever be

unblemished and perfect. The technology required to play it will always introduce a
distortion of some sort. And to even further draw out what is essentially a thought
experiment on the concept of consuming moving images, even if a system is devised
capable of 100% accurate recreation of a captured work (which some could hazard to
argue that digital is, or will be capable of at some point), the ability to present a work in a
completely perfect environment will never be practical for a multitude of reasons,
ranging from broken equipment or lacking technical expertise, to having to view images
in non-ideal spaces, or with distracting crowds. All of these model image arguments
though boil down to a conservation professional needing to assure that they do not let the
perfect prevent one from accomplishing the necessary in saving video for future
generations.
The problem of presentation is already a complicated one when applied to works
designed with theatrical presentation in mind, but video art takes this problem even
further. Many works of video art are made with the presentation devised as just as
important as the content recorded onto video. As Sean Cubitt states, [t]here is no
essential form of video, nothing to which one can point as the primal source or goal of
video activity.6 He contrasts this conception of video with film by stating that despite the
variety of films produced, all of these cultural forms share, potentially if not actually,
another existence as electronic information prepared for display on a video screen or
projector.7 In essence, all films are designed to be presented in the same manner. In
technical terms this is very reductive, as there are some distinct variations in intended
6

Cubitt, Sean. Videography: Video Media as Art and Culture. New York : St. Martins, 1993.
Xv.
7
Ibid.

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presentation form such as aspect ratio, sound mix, and if the film is in 3D, but at the end
of the day, most filmic presentations are intended for screening in a black box cinema
environment dominated by a single screen.
Video art is not so clear cut in what form its intended venue is supposed to take
because as Sean Cubitt states, [v]ideo art is a practice which engages wholly in other
spaces, the world of gallery distribution, of sculptural installations, of performance art.8
The challenge for the curator or preservationist of video art grows to not just know the
contents of their media works, but also their contexts. As Ingrid Wiegand observes:
The video installation piece in itself also has several unique properties that make
it fertile for exploration and rewarding for the artist and viewer. It is essentially
sculpture - sometimes environmental, sometimes a sculptured object. But it is also
a sculpture with sound (often), and it is sculpture with time, because the works
static elements are part of the temporal event unfolding on the screen.9
Responsible archival practice in regards to installation should no longer just be about
securing the fixity of a master representational element in some appropriate form, but
also about securing the overall history of the objects unique display elements. Arguably
this would be an issue of ensuring that extensive supplementary documentation is always
associated with a video in some form, whether this would be meticulous paper records, or
creating sufficient preservation metadata to accompany digital files. Even if a video
installation is not able to be replicated for playback, which would not be practical in most
circumstances anyway, at least a potential viewer should be able to access sufficient
8

Cubitt, Sean. Timeshift : On Video Culture. New York : Routledge, 1991. 108.
Wiegand, Ingrid. "Varieties of the Video Installation" New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology.
Ed. Gregory Battcock. 1st ed. New York: Dutton, 1978. 181-191. Print. 183.
9

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information to provide an appropriate idea of what was the original intention of the
moving images they are viewing.
The extra work an archivist must put into the task of making sure a video piece
will always have an advocate to disseminate its unique situational context cannot
overshadow a few simple truths about video preservation. One has to acknowledge that
many of the early videos that were created are comparatively low resolution, singlechannel works, produced with relatively small monitors in mind as the display platform.
In its resource guide for video art exhibition, collection, and preservation, the Electronic
Arts Intermix heavily emphasizes the concept and definition of what constitutes a singlechannel video: [single-channel video] involves one information source, such as a DVD,
one playback device, for example a DVD player, and one display mode, such as a
monitor or projector.10 Replace DVD with U-matic or Beta-cam and one can easily
describe early video art. This definition on first glance would seem an almost redundant
description of what most people would consider the basic concept of an audio-visual
technical set-up, but the basic nature of this definition is the point. The definition is to
remind people working with media and video art that much of it was made with a path
dependent concept in mind. The idea of a single-path may have been the norm for a lot of
these works as they were produced in the past, but with advent of quick and relatively
easy digital information transfer and display, this concept may be beginning to get hazy,
since, for instance, anyone with access to a broadband connection can stream video from
a service like YouTube or Netflix to anything from a small 4-5 inch mobile phone screen,
all the way to a 75 inch LED monitor capable of 4k resolution or a digital projector
10

Note that this website claims to re-launching this page in Spring 2014: "Electronic Arts
Intermix (EAI)." EAI Online Resource Guide for Exhibiting, Collecting & Preserving Media Art.
Electronic Arts Intermix, n.d. Web. 13 June 2014. <http://www.eai.org/resourceguide/>.

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capable throwing an image as large as a rooms dimensions will allow. Even multichannel works described later, had a path dependence on moving from a player to a
display monitor or projector. These art videos, while not tied to the idea of the physical
cinema like a film, are still dependent on technology to be shown and displayed, and as
such one must take into account what the technological factors will necessarily be for
correct presentation of a work.
While most film is made for the screen, much of the oeuvre of video art is made
for the monitor, particularly in the pre-digital days. Writing on the state of video art
technology standards in the 1970s and in particular his hopes for the one-gun color video
camera, artist Les Levine begins his essay with One-Gun Video Art with a
consideration of relation of the artist to the screen:
The television screen is measured diagonally. Most televisions are approximately
eighteen inches across. Now you might well ask yourself, why would an artist be
satisfied with eighteen diagonal inches of space? The main issue that television
deals with is time. No matter how large a sculpture or painting or drawing or
anything else, we cannot identify the time base involved.11
Taking the context of the 1960s and 1970s as a time when video equipment kept
becoming more affordable and useable for people who were not corporate affiliated
entities, video became the best way for artists to explore concepts related to time and
movement, as well as space. And while artists could push the technology in ways that
were unexpected or challenging, they were still fundamentally tied to the standards of the
11

Levine, Les. "One-Gun Video Art" New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology. Ed. Gregory
Battcock. 1st ed. New York: Dutton, 1978. 76-94. Print. 77.

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technological eras in which they worked. In this case, it would be the 4:3 aspect ratio
monitor, of a size that is relatively small compared to what is available to most
consumers today.
To further complicate the works of artists who had single-channel video as the
focus of their practice or art, there are also those who delved into multi-channel
experimentation. Multi-channel works are pieces, which simultaneously present the
images from two or more video tapes on two or more monitors, [and] require the viewer
to distribute his or her attention among the channels and to maintain a continuous state of
awareness of alternate image possibilities.12 A work of this nature is an extremely
complex preservation challenge from a curatorial standpoint, because works like this
were in a way about creating an experience or art on the fly, as there is no one video, but
a continuous re-mix. It can be said that one could never actually conserve the piece, even
in the perfect model sense where one never conserves a work, but only a representation.
Instead one would more or less be collecting elements, which in theory would contain the
possibility of one day reconstructing the piece in its intended form. The possibility that
this reconstruction could ever be able to be accomplished becomes a sticky theoretical
subject though, as it could be argued that staging such an unfixed piece again would
actually be creating a different artwork altogether. It would seem the archivists role in
this situation though, is to best protect the content of the elements they do have and to
assume the philosophical debate should be compartmentalized to academia, when and if
the use of these pieces to stage a showing arises. Definitely not a clean solution, as it
assumes theory and practice are separate areas for separate people, but it would at least

12

Wiegand. 186.

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prevent stultifying gridlock from locking down an artwork (or recreation attempt thereof)
indefinitely.
As an interesting technical note, a monitor is not necessarily the same thing as a
television screen. Many works of video art are meant to play in a gallery or exhibition
space on loop for hours at a time. To accommodate this taxing environment display
environment, oftentimes presentation monitors were used rather than off the shelf
consumer television sets.13 These specialized cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors were
designed to better undergo the rigors of long term presentation than a normal TV set. The
use of CRT monitors for much of the early video art presents some vexing issues though
in regards to presenting a work in a manner that is consistent with the model image
standard. This issue is mainly that it is becoming harder and harder to find CRT monitors
in the present, as many manufacturers have discontinued them in order to concentrate on
flat panel LCD displays (and occasionally plasma, although this is quickly also falling out
of favor with manufacturers). The EAI Equipment and Technical issues page states that
many video art works were created with the specific properties of the CRT in mind, and

many artists do not believe that flat screen monitors are acceptable substitutes.14 The
problems this presents begins to manifest outward in more than one way. First, the CRT
monitors will only get harder to acquire as time goes on. One may come across them on
occasion, and perhaps even stockpile them, but still, this would essentially doom video
art to a complete death if one is to be zealous in only allowing videos to be shown on
their original playback system. Secondly, and this is a much bigger issue, much video art
has already been removed from its original eco-system.
13
14

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)

http://www.eai.org/resourceguide/preservation/singlechannel/equiptech.html

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Video art going forward may very well no longer be, strictly speaking, on video.
Rather, preservation currents are moving forward towards digitization, much as with film.
Video is a format that is formulated with reproduction in mind, but since it has an analog
component it is subject to generational loss which, as anyone who has seen a 4th or 5th
generation VHS bootleg can attest, can become quite severe. This duplication and loss is
a hindrance in videos long term viability in its magnetic tape form, but it also is
recognized by many as part and parcel of the format. In reflecting on the nature of video,
Robert Stefanotty sounds an unambiguously celebratory tone in his comment: One of
the supreme joys of video tapes is that they self-destruct. They wear down gracefully; and
the very nature of the medium is that they cannot be limited.15 The comment is
interesting in that it applauds video tape for both being extremely distributable but also
very much tied to a moment due to their gradual degradation. It is immediate in other
words. Within videos physical makeup, it contains the seeds of both its destruction and
distribution, and with the introduction of digital preservation, this spectrum becomes
interrupted and the playback device becomes more agnostic. The result is that what was
once a self regulating system of playback has now slipped more loosely from the artists
hands and become much more open for de-contextualization by the public.
One needs to look at some of the distinct forms that video art presentations have
taken in order to completely understand why video art is a uniquely challenging aspect to
the conservator and preservationist. Tetsuo Kogawa observes that, [t]he early stage of
video art revealed its radical possibilities most explicitly; it was inseparably accompanied

15

Stefanotty, Robert. "Kissing the Unique Object Good-Bye" New Artists Video: A Critical
Anthology. Ed. Gregory Battcock. 1st ed. New York: Dutton, 1978. 166-168. Print. 167.

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by bodily performance actions.16 Early video art was embraced by the early artist
community as a resource in which avant-garde tendencies could be explored, since no
aesthetic had yet had time to codify the prescribed use of video as a medium. Making
video interactive with a performance element is only one example of the varied form of
video art. In Ingried Wiegands Videospace essay, a variety of very unique installation
pieces by various artists is detailed. A work by artist James Byrne called FloorCeiling
consists of a monitor face-up on the floor and one hanging facedown from the ceiling
simultaneously showing the same video tape of the artist playing with a camera and
perspective. Often cited video artist Nam June Paik, very much takes the installation
aspect of their pieces to heart. In one of Paiks works called Anti-Gravity Video, twenty
monitors are hung facing down from a ceiling while two channels of video play showing
fishes swimming by and occasionally being manipulated by some type of video effect.
Another work created by Maxi Cohen, is described as a fairly straight-forward tape
documenting the artists grandmother, but it is presented in a setting made to resemble the
grandmothers living room. The monitor showing the video itself is placed in a console
that is in the same style of old television sets. Again, it is apparent that with any of these
videos that a properly preserved (most likely digital) copy could be viewed in a variety of
manners, but there are contexts that viewers must be made aware of to have complete
understanding and appreciation of the artists intention.
To further elaborate on the idea of artists intention, a preservation professional
needs to engage with this concept with properly critical perspective. One can probably
never completely know an artists true intention, at least without the accompaniment of
16

Kogawa, Tetsuo. Video: The Access Medium Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices.
Eds. Michael Renov, Erika Suderburg. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1996. 51-60.
Print. 51.

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their archive of papers. Even working in consultation with still active artists, they could
change their interpretation of videos from their past as they develop new perspectives
over time. What the responsibility then of the archivist should be is to recognize that the
works they are dealing with represent a moment in time, and as such as much information
as can be gathered about that moment and used to contextualize a piece should be made
available to researchers, the public, exhibitors, and so on. Any important information that
shapes the video as a work, but is not on the video should be documented when available.
While this is important in any archival practice, in video art it becomes more crucial
because a lot of media carries with it basic assumptions that may not always hold true
with time based video works. For example, a 35mm film print can usually be assumed to
be made for viewing in a darkened room accompanied with whatever sound is encoded
on the present on the film stock, a framed painting can be assumed to be made to be
displayed on a wall, and most musical performances on LP can be assumed to be made
for listening through headphones or speakers on a Hi-fi set. The specific technical aspects
that each example would carry may be different from case to case, but there is usually an
overall assumed form that one can feel comfortable having these pieces inhabit. With
video art, this form is not always apparent or easy to ascertain aside from knowing that a
visual signal will eventually reach a monitor, or possibly a projector.
These aforementioned issues are ones that must be addressed in making
preservation decisions, because due to the obsolescence of many tape formats,
particularly the non-digital ones, reformatting of material will be a given in most cases
where there are enough resources available so that preservation is even an option. The
preservationist or conservator, will have to not only be a technician, but also a curator to
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ensure that video art can live in a way that is true to original aim, but not slavish to
recreating situations that may be impractical or even impossible. The attitude that will
need to be developed that of negotiated compromise, so that a work can best be saved for
future generations, without changing it so much that it becomes a fundamentally different
object or holding off from preservation practice so long in the process of insuring ideal
archiving of the model image that the work physically disappears as it runs out its
lifespan as magnetized tape.

Works Cited
Bigourdan, Jean-Louis, James M. Reilly, Karen Santoro, and Gene Salesin. The
Preservation of Magnetic Tape Collections: A Perspective. Rep. no. NEH
GRANT # PA-50123-03. Rochester: Image Permanence Institute, 2006. Print.

Cubitt, Sean. Timeshift : On Video Culture. New York : Routledge, 1991.

Cubitt, Sean. Videography: Video Media as Art and Culture. New York : St.
Martins, 1993.

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"Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)." EAI Online Resource Guide for Exhibiting, Collecting
& Preserving Media Art. Electronic Arts Intermix, n.d. Web. 13 June 2014.
<http://www.eai.org/resourceguide/>.
Enticknap, Leo. Moving Image Technology. London:Wallflower, 2005.

Kogawa, Tetsuo. Video: The Access Medium Resolutions: Contemporary

Video Practices. Eds. Michael Renov, Erika Suderburg. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota, 1996. 51-60. Print.

Levine, Les. "One-Gun Video Art" New Artists Video: A Critical Anthology. Ed.
Gregory Battcock. 1st ed. New York: Dutton, 1978. 76-94. Print.

Ross, David. "A Provisional Overview of Artists' Television in the U.S." New
Artists Video: A Critical Anthology. Ed. Gregory Battcock. 1st ed. New York:
Dutton, 1978. 138-165. Print.

Stefanotty, Robert. "Kissing the Unique Object Good-Bye" New Artists Video:
A Critical Anthology. Ed. Gregory Battcock. 1st ed. New York: Dutton, 1978.
166-168. Print.

Usai, Paolo Cherchi. The Death of Cinema. London : BFI, 2001.

Wiegand, Ingrid. "Varieties of the Video Installation" New Artists Video: A

Critical Anthology. Ed. Gregory Battcock. 1st ed. New York: Dutton, 1978.
181-191. Print.

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