State of the Art: The Failure of Video Art Manifesto


'Jaime Davidovich Jaime Davidovich

1. Video art failed because the walls of the galleries have no windows.

2. Video art failed because people watch television, they do not look at television.

3. Video art failed because television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself.

4. Video art failed because Americans are the best entertained and the least well?informed people in the world.

5. Video art failed because Americans know a lot about the last 24 hours but very little of the last 24 years.

6. Video art failed because it is too intelligent.

7. Video art failed because painting and sculpture are the only recognizable medium of art.

8. Video art failed because Americans are watching TV 7 hours a day.

9. Video art failed because for intellectuals watching TV is as sex was for the Victorians.

10. Video art failed because artists did not want to integrate with the TV context.

11. Video art failed because it was developed outside the TV world.

12. Video art failed because art is cheap to produce and expensive to sell. Video art is expensive to produce and impossible to sell.

13. Video art failed because gallery directors see slides only on Mondays.

14. Video art failed because it was aimed at the wrong context.

15. Video art failed because it is boring by comparison to painting or sculpture.

16. Video art failed because it avoided confrontation.

17. Video art failed because nobody made any money by selling tapes.

18. Video art failed because TV is Dada by its own nature.

19. Video art failed because by the time the average child graduates from high school he or she has spent 150,000 hours watching television and 11,000 hours the classroom.

20. Video art failed because nobody turns off TV.

21. Video art failed because the Museum of Modern Art keeps showing video.

22. Video art failed because public access was never taken seriously.

23. Video art failed because there are no critics of video art.

24. Video art failed because the grant system is very incestuous.

25. Video art failed because it was trying to compete with network TV.

26. Video art failed because of MTV.

27. Video art failed because television is an addiction.

28. Video art failed because people feel hypnotized when they watch TV.

29. Video art failed because television is making people stupid.

30. Video art failed because nobody cares.

31. Video art failed because it ran out of video artists.

32. Video art failed because it did not create an infrastructure.

33. Video art failed because TV is not art.

34. Video art failed because it never developed an audience.

35. Video art failed because the over-reality of TV is too powerful.

36. Video art failed because it was not political.

THE SUCCESS OF VIDEO ART