Dialéctica entre movilidad e inmovilidad en el videoarte: La imagen videográfica que tiende al estatismo

Abstract

From cinematic movement writing to the 'I see' of video, there is not only an etymological change, but also a change in the relationship to the moving image. In addition to the projected, untouchable, moving image of the cinema, there is a domestic image, controllable with the remote control. Digital technologies allow us to manipulate its movement, to remix it, to apply filters... This study is based on the analysis of how video art has given rise to works that take advantage of the hybrid quality of the medium. Analysing the use of slow motion, Serge Daney (1989) speaks of a dialectic between mobility and immobility installed in the contemporary image: if in cinema the vision of mobility has been linked to the immobility of the spectator, in the audiovisual installation, the spectator moves in front of an image that is less and less mobile. After analysing the large number of video works that tend towards statism, our hypothesis is that this tendency is a reaction to the hyper-mobility of the spectator and to his or her enormous capacity to manipulate the image; a sort of death drive of the kinetic image, which seeks its limit almost abandoning that which defines it. This tendency, which began in the 80s and 90s, has been reinforced subsequently, and it is possible to classificate the different strategies between mobility and immobility: extreme ralentis of Douglas Gordon; pictorial videos of Bill Viola and Sam Taylor Word; video-portraits of Robert Wilson and Fiona Tan; the stuttering image of Martin Arnold; suspended narratives of Rodney Graham and Bill Viola. The study of these works and their dissected, almost violated images demonstrates that these strategies demand a different kind of spectator, a more contemplative subject, one that rejects the trepidation of the consumable image and  re-think them.