Television, Furniture, and Sculpture + Marks

The television is furniture made to hold a separate world. Acconci refers to the TV as "fishbowl space" - a place where your physical form is repelled by a thin sheet of glass. The television in art  acts as a portal - much like a painting, but instead is able to more accurately represent a place by involving movement, sounds, and action. The TV becomes an alternate reality where you - your mental self -  resides in it's plane. Much like Wile E. Coyote ( your physical self) and the Roadrunner (your mental self) you are at odds with constraints of our reality. The physical self tied to our world's physics - our mental self boundless and running - our bodies constantly yearning to achieve the freedom of our mind. Acconci refers to our  televisions as "science turned pet." We tend to the television as a companion. We fall in love with characters it portrays, we scorn the villains, and we place ourselves inside the sitcom as we laugh along with the studio audience. The world on the TV is a placeless-place. When brought to a gallery the television transforms from furniture into an object. The totality of the television becomes viewable - not just the screen. It's frame is judged, analyzed. The TV becomes part of an installation, objects are created to surround it in an attempt to place the placeless-place. In many cases the objects in the installation try to make sense of the non-tangible- they begin to form a world that mimics that of the screen. The screen is a reminder of our own portal in our own home.

Marks writes to draw attention to how video art is recognized within gallery spaces and the art market. She argues that video art has become less experimental within the last decade due to rapid growth within the film community as well as the growth of free viewing platforms. In order to be seen in a gallery setting artists have began to change their work to fit the parameters of a typical gallery viewing, whether this be creating a video meant to be seen only partially or inserting screens into sculptural installations. The art market is known for it's tendency to prefer object over the less tangible video or web art, partly due to the idea of art as a souvenir or even the fluidity of the material and its existence being multiple places and intangible. Marks makes an interesting point about audience participation when viewing video art - that the viewer gains a  certain kind of freedom when forced to watch the whole duration of the film in a theater setting. The viewer is able to come and go freely with their attention, rather than focusing on the space their body takes up in the typical gallery setting.