Strongly associated with analog videocassettes, the Japanese word bideo may sound to people in this country like an outdated medium bearing a thin film of dust. Then, if we are still waiting for bideo - a medium of the past - what are we doing?
The years from the late 1960s to mid-1970s saw a global groundswell for reconsideration of painting, sculpture and other conventional genres to discover the “outside” of the form and system called art. As a means of expanding expressive possibilities, many painters and sculptors picked up video cameras, which began to come into proliferation at that time, to create video pieces.
The word “video” was originally the first-person-singular form of the Latin verb videre (to see), and the Latin video means “I see.” It is therefore an extremely universal word referring to “seeing,” the very foundations of art, beyond the name of a medium or equipment.
This exhibition explores expressions pursued in video and film pieces in the 1960s and 1970s from five perspectives: Mirror and Reflection; the Dematerialization of Art; Object(ive)/Body/Medium; Expanded Frame: Time and Space; and Site. These topics are further connected to attempts by today’s artists to uncover the future possibilities of the video and film art in the 1960s and 1970s.
Waiting for Video means nothing other than keeping both perspectives on the potential of the past and on the future. Unfolded around the act of “seeing,” hidden potential of video expression in the 1960s and 1970s has not yet come to an end. If we keep waiting for video (“I see”) that is yet to come, new views will be opened up one after another before our eyes.

In the late 1960s, the arrival of video cameras for the general market inspired painters and sculptors to produce moving-image pieces. Seeing oneself immediately in a monitor, although now quite common, was a novel experience at that time. Many artists took advantage of the situation where one stared into a monitor to find oneself staring back in real time. As if facing a mirror, the viewer confronted another self of his/her own with a monitor in between.

Vito Acconci Centers, 1971 Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

From the late 60s to the 70s, some artists began to equate their ideas and actions with their works, without creating tangible products such as paintings and sculpture - a tendency that largely corresponded with one called “conceptual art.” Moving images were used as an important means for expression, because they were made up of unsubstantial flows of light and electrons, and were able to present ideas as processes rather than results.

John Baldessari I Am Making Art, 1971 Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

As we have seen in Chapter 2, conceptual art diluted the existence of substances. At about the same time, however, other works began to treat bodies of artists and viewers like things. Through moving images as the medium, the human body was made the object of fragmentation, experiment and observation.

Bruce Nauman Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk), 1968 Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. cBruce Nauman / ARS, New York / SPDA, Tokyo, 2009

Time and space expand infinitely: thus we have to prepare a frame to clip pieces from infinity and make time and space perceivable. Film and video images obtained by clipping from the world through the finder are one of the means of perceptive framing.

Bill Viola The Reflecting Pool, 1977-79 Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. cthe artist photo: Kira Perov

As we have seen in Chapters 2 and 3, the 60s and 70s saw a trend where art expanded out of the closed spaces and systems. Artists explored in various ways specificity and particularity of the “site” created by works of art.

Robert Smithson Spiral Jetty, 1970 Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. cRobert Smithson / VAGA, New York & SPDA, Tokyo, 2009

Vito Acconci
Francis Alys
John Baldessari
Lynda Benglis
Dara Birnbaum
Tacita Dean
Thomas Demand
VALIE EXPORT
Peter Fischli + David Weiss
Douglas Gordon
Dan Graham
Nancy Holt
Izumi Taro
Joan Jonas
Kawaguchi Tatsuo
Kobayashi Kohei
Gordon Matta-Clark
Jill Miller
Muraoka Saburo
Bruce Nauman
Nomura Hitoshi
Dennis Oppenheim
Paul Pfeiffer
Martha Rosler
Richard Serra
Robert Smithson
Uematsu Keiji
Bill Viola
Andy Warhol