Illuminating video : an essential guide to video art.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 526-556) and index.

Introduction : complexities of an art form / Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer -- Video : shedding the Utopian moment / Martha Rosler -- A brief history of American documentary video / Deirdre Boyle -- Dé-collage/collage : notes toward a reexamination of the origins of video art / John G. Hanhardt -- Video art : what's TV got to do with it? / Kathy Rae Huffman -- And if the right hand did not know what the left hand is doing / Gary Hill -- Paradox in the evolution of an art form : great expectations and the making of a history / Marita Sturken -- Television, furniture, and sculpture : the room with the American view / Vito Acconci -- Performance, video, and trouble in the home / Kathy O'Dell --Video installation art : the body, the image, and the space-in-between / Margaret Morse -- Video in relation to architecture / Dan Graham -- The Rio experience : video's new architecture meets corporate sponsorship / Dara Birnbaum -- The art of the possible / Francesc Torres -- Mobility, as American as ... / Chip Lord -- Aligning The museum reaction piece / Howard Fried -- The feminism factor : video and its relation to feminism / Martha Gever -- The medium is the mess ... age / Bruce and Norman Yonemoto -- This is not a paradox / Judith Barry -- The wild things on the banks of the free flow / Dee Dee Halleck -- The fantasy beyond control / Lynn Hershman -- Reach out and touch someone : the romance of interactivity / Ann-Sargent Wooster -- Ethnicity, politics, and poetics : Latinos and media art / Coco Fusco -- Behind the image / Muntadas -- Interventions of the present : three interactive videodiscs, 1981-90 / Peter d'Agostino -- The cultural logic of video / Maureen Turim -- The smell of turpentine / Juan Downey -- The importance of being Ernie : taking a close look (and listen) / Bruce Ferguson -- Untitled / Joan Jonas -- Audience culture and the video screen / Norman M. Klein -- Significant others : social documentary as personal portraiture in women's video of the 1980s / Christine Tamblyn -- Video writing / Raymond Bellour -- Appropriation of contemporary reality : an anecdote / Tony Labat -- Directions/question : approaching a future mythology / Rita Myers -- Light and death / Mary Lucier -- The new epistemic space / Woody Vasulka -- Three tapes by Steina / Steina -- Video black : the mortality of the image / Bill Viola -- Phototropic / Tony Oursler.

"Illuminating Video is the most comprehensive collection of essays on video art, as well as an essential text for the general reader interested in new visual forms. It is a significant resource for anyone who is involved in new media, video art, art history, or contemporary social theory.The volume offers insights by several prominent artists in the field as well as revealing and instructive writings by both scholars and critics. It illustrates the complex, heterogeneous nature of video, and highlights its strong ties to the visual arts and social theory. While providing an essential critical context for understanding video's role as art, these writings show that video is at the forefront of contemporary cultural and aesthetic discourse. Using a wide range of strategies, from the poetic to the reconstructive, these essays provide a long-overdue academic-friendly context in which to evaluate video as art and its subsequent impact on social and cultural behavior.Editors Hall and Fifer have organized the book into five sections that address the varied aspects of video. From essays investigating the construction of a history of video; to articles on the relation(s) of video to other media, fine art, and culture; to pieces specifically created by leading video artists for this publication; Illuminating Video has much to offer any student or scholar of video production or aestheics."--Publisher description.

Also issued online.