World Wide Video

This issue of "Art & Design" explores the development and importance of video art since the introduction of the portable video recorder in 1965. From the 1960s both Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell tried to break down, independently of each other, the institutional character of television and the elite art world. Their experiences and those of many video artists like Nan Hoover, Bill Viola, Tony Oursler and Geral Idea who used video as a flexible and direct medium, were ignored for a long time. Towards the year 2000 the importance of dissolving traditional borders between art and society becomes more clear. Video art represents the dematerialization of art predicted by artists such as Marina Abramovic. Guest edited by Johan Pijnappel, "World Wide Video" is produced in conjunction with the World Wide Video Festival in The Hague in April 1993. It includes contributions by Christine van Assche of the Pompidou Centre, Paris; John Hahnhardt of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Judit Kopper of Magyar Television, Budapest.