Video Tapes in Germany - The Beginning:
The Sixties and Seventies - from Fluxus to Satellite Art Programs
Video art began in Germany in 1963. On the one side there was the first exhibition of Nam June Paik's manipulated televisions shown in the Gallery Parnaß in Wuppertal, in March, and on the other the first videotape work of art, "Sun in Your Head", produced by Wolf Vostell in the same year - whereby one naturally has to add that Vostell's piece was primarily concerned with film since video cameras and cassettes, as such, first existed in 1965. Only Wolf Vostell, living at that time in Cologne, was in fact referring to the videotape and monitor as he filmed a "disturbed", or in his own words, "de-collaged" television program. With the Fluxus counter-gesture, along with the revenge of TV users against the 'Big Brother', video art began, and namely in Europe. The next generation was anxious to use television. A leading ex­ponent was the filmmaker Gerry Schum. For television he produced a feature on 'multiples', followed by a 'Television Gallery' with special artworks meant es­ pecially for the viewers at home. Schum won the support of the German broadcasting networks SFB and WDR (Werner Höfer, Wibke von Bonin) whose help had already made it possible for Otto Piene to produce the first artists' television production (''Black Gate Cologne"). In 1969, along with Richard Long, Barry Flanagan, Dennis Oppenheim, Jan Dibbets and Walter de Maria among others, Gerry Schum produced "Land Art" as "Television Exhibition I", and thereby inspired artists like Imi Knoebel to produce their first, independent video projects - although the technical capabilities were limited to film at that time. There was merely a slide projector with a (light-X) and a wagon, moving at the same unchanging and re­ gular speed while filming houses, neon signs and perspectives that seemed to alter the form of the projection. A strict concept gave way to a visual poetry. The first independent artists to work exclusively with video were three women: Ulrike Rosenbach, Rebecca Horn and Friederike Pezold. These early video-works used as a point of reference body sculptures and, in black-and- white, abstracted bodily movements. In "Reflexionen über die Geburt der Venus" Ulrike Rosen­ bach incorporated her own slowly turning body into a pro­jection of Botticelli's painting, combining it with a Bob Dylan song in the background - the theme being a search for the true picture of woman and her image, appearing and disintegrating through her own self. In "Berlin - Übungen in neuen Stücken" Rebecca Horn relates small episodes that turn private experiences into sensual poetic entities. A life led in a constricting space expands by way of visionary stories, images, and dances. In the truest sense of the word Friederike Pezold studies the "bodily sign-language of a gender". She uses, for instance, a black triangle to represent the pudenda, and two circles to symbolize the nipples. Klaus vom Bruch's "Propeller- band" hinted at a new battery of younger, next generation artists that would combine their own performances with a rigidly rhythmic, repeating of quotes from war films and themes drawn from Germany's past. The computer would serve as the editor's helper, and the combination of original and found images, the formal rigidity, and pursuing the theme of "German history as the present" would then establish a new artistic quality. To conclude this era comes the documenta 6 (1977) - with an opening per satellite, conceptualized for works by Beuys, Paik and Davis, and, broadcast by the networks, WDR and HR, would reach eleven stations worldwide. Each work lasted nine minutes; each was of a different structure, form and content - as video art always was, and still is.
Wulf Herzogenrath. Sun in Your Head; Black Gate Cologne; Fernsehgalerie I: Land Art; Projektion X; Reflexionen über die Geburt der Venus; Berlin - Übungen in neun; Stücken; Die neue leibhaftige Zeichensprache; Das Propellerband; documenta 6 - Eröffnung per Satellit