Video Theories: A Transdisciplinary Reader

Description

Breaking new ground as the first transdisciplinary reader in this field, Video Theories is a resource that will form the basis for further research and teaching. While theories of video have not yet formed an academic discipline comparable to the more canonized theories of photography, film, and television, the reader offers a major step toward bridging this "video gap" in media theory, which is remarkable considering today's omnipresence of the medium through online video portals and social media. Consisting of a selection of eighty-three annotated source texts and twelve chapter introductions written by the editors, this book considers fifty years of scholarly and artistic reflections on the topic, representing an intergenerational and international set of voices. This transdisciplinary reader offers a conceptual framework for diverging and contradictory viewpoints, following the continuous transformations of what video was, is, and will be.

Dieter Daniels is Professor in Media Theory and Art History at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig, Germany. Jan Thoben is Lecturer and Program Coordinator in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the University of the Arts Berlin, Germany.

The book by Daniels and Thoben is a game-changer both for Media Studies and for Art History, making available an important body of texts which have so far been either unknown, or inaccessible. The editors' knowledgeable selection and their intellectually rich proposal for ordering the historical discourses about the medium of video should raise objections and debate, but what will prevail is the phenomenal achievement of this publication that makes such debate possible in the first place. An essential source for anybody interested in visual media. * Andreas Broeckmann, Art Historian, Leuphana University, Germany * This book is a long overdue must-read primer for anyone thinking about and teaching the many meanings and epistemes of video. Read this book and you will find a compellingly structured overview of video theories and histories covering a wide range of discursive fields. * Hanna B. Hoelling, Associate Professor, University College London, UK and Research Professor, Bern University of the Arts, Switzerland * This exiting and much-needed volume brings together an impressive array of voices on video. Its interdisciplinary, transhistorical, and intercultural scope offers a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of the discursive field of video theories-a field that is as multifaceted and everchanging as the medium of video itself. The most laudable accomplishment of the book is that it celebrates the "hydra-headedness" of video without falling prey to it: the volume doesn't lose sight of the main (t)h(r)eads of the medium, nor does it attempt to silence any perspectives on video at the benefit of a singular canonical viewpoint. Instead, by structuring the volume around themes and by providing insightful introductions to each chapter, the volume manages to interconnect not only a multitude of heterogenous video theories, but also to critically relate artistic practices to written reflections, as well as the past, present and future of video. * Janna Houwen, Assistant Professor in the Department of Film and Literary Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands and author of Film and Video Intermediality: The Question of Medium Specificity in Contemporary Moving Images (2017) *