Event

Aesthetics of Analog

The release of consumer-grade portable video cameras in the late 1960s launched an explosion in video experimentation and art-making. The aesthetics of analog videotape are bound up in the development of home video recorders and cameras, and have come to define a look most often associatedsometimes falselywith VHS: the glitches of amateur taping, humble or tawdry subject matter, the wanton appropriation of TV content, and a low-quality image that ghosts and warps as it decays from too much playback.

Guest-curated by Rebecca Cleman, the Distribution Director of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), Aesthetics of Analog presents an evening surveying the impact of home video aesthetics on individuals working within the fine arts context. Bringing together works by Dara Birnbaum, Cory Arcangel, and Charlemagne Palestine, among others, Aesthetics of Analog traces the unique technical attributes of consumer video technology while revealing aspects of video that are now viewed nostalgically as VHS aesthetics.