Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide To Video Art - Softcover

Doug Hall is an artist who as been working in video and related media since 1970. His work has been shown at major museums in North America and Europe, and is included in public and private collections. He is chair of the department of performance/video at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he has been a faculty member since 1980.

Sally Jo Fifer has a Bachelor of Arts in art history from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master's in communication from Stanford University. She is Executive Director of the Bay Area Video Coalition, a national arts/technology access and training center, helping artists produce programming ranging from video and installation art to performing-arts documentation.

"[This book] succeeds in marginalising itself from the most vital and productive discourses—and artists—of the 90s."—Sight & Sound

"The range and depth of the approaches—historical, aesthetic, thematic—and the inclusion of works by leading theoreticians, curators, writers, and artists represents a most ambitious and significant undertaking."—Lori Zippay, Director, Electronics Arts Intermix Inc.

"The anthology will serve as a valuable handbook and point-of-entry for readers intrigued with media art activity in the presence of mass media and our other cultural institutions."—Bob Riley, Curator of Media Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

"This sumptuous Aperture publication is wide ranging, scholarly, lively, and a truly essential guide to video art. Its 40 contributions give an exhaustive coverage . . . Contributors include Acconci, Bellour, Graham, Hanhardt, Lord, Muntadas, Rosler, Vasulka, Viola—the usual suspects and then some. This volume should stand as the model text for years to come."—Choice

"From the first portapak productions, video art has been a purposeful outsider on the margins of official aesthetic acceptability. This collection of 41 essays by American video artists, scholars, and critics illuminates the complex, heterogeneous nature of video art and highlights its ties to the visual arts and contemporary culture. The essays explore the impact of video technology in mass culture, narrative storytelling, and museum installations and as a means of promulgating alternative social and philosophical visions. This well-conceived book offers consistently good essays. In a field that lacks much critical discourse, it helps to provide a critical basis and context for understanding video's role as art and in society. Substantive and important."—Library Journal