Video Vintage 1963-1983 Exhibition

The Beirut Art Center is hosting an exhibition called “Video Vintage 1963 – 1983”, an exhibition of 72 videos by over 50 international artists selected from Centre Pompidou′s New Media Collection. The videos in this exhibition are presented in a vintage setting. The staged living rooms in the exhibition space invite visitors to view works of video art in their original historical dimension, in a homely atmosphere.

The exhibition is organized in three sections: “Performance and Self-filming”, “Television: Research, Experiments, Criticism”, and “Attitudes, Forms, Concepts”. In the 1960s and 70s, artists in Europe, North and South America used the first portable video cameras. The recordings of their performances were often socially and politically driven. One of the first to use video as an art medium was Nam June Paik. In 1965 he took up the first portable video camera, Sony′s Portapak, and began filming himself in close-ups. In 1980 Mona Hatoum filmed her performances using the same camera. The resulting works open the exhibition with the first thematic emphasis “Performance and Self-filming”.

The relationship between the medium of video and television makes up the second thematic in the exhibition. During this period, the television industry wanted to define itself apart from cinema by seeking new and different productions and aesthetics.

The third section is dedicated to more conceptual research produced by artists, who for the most part come from a background in fine arts, and to the integration of video works into museums. International artists employed video, questioning it as a medium by highlighting its properties and emphasizing the performative aspect through the body. In this section, there are works by Daniel Buren, Valie Export, and Marta Rosler among others.