A Genealogy of Video

The author discusses the struggle that took place in New York City between 1968 and 1971 over whether video would be considered a tool of social change or a medium of art. The struggle is traced in terms of six dimensions: technological, theoretical, political, institutional, economic and cultural. The author’s position is that video mutated from a countercultural gesture to an art genre. The question asked is how this genre will articulate its own genealogy.