Setting a Precedent

Video Positive’s demise should not overshadow the success of the festivals. Despite claims that it had “an international reputation and influence,”397 the impact of Video Positive must be understood as confined to the Western world, and its longevity in memory can perhaps be attributed to the fact that many of the exhibiting artists still work within media art, a world that remains relatively small. Nationally, the impact of Video Positive is easier to ascertain, and although the festival did not survive FACT’s changing priorities, several broader media art festivals have emerged that have followed a similar model. The AV Festival was established in the North East of England in 2003, and has been produced on a biennial basis since 2006. Although working with contemporary art, music and film, and being spread across the region’s main cities, Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough, the AV Festival is built on a similar ethos of “collaboration and partnership,” and comprises a number of different events from exhibitions to symposia.398 Similarly, FACT and Cornerhouse, Manchester, and the now disbanded folly, Lancaster,399 launched a festival of new cinema, digital culture and art in 2009, Abandon Normal Devices (AND), which alternates between Liverpool and Manchester,400 thus demonstrating that the positive elements of a cross-city approach have been developed following the difficulties of Video Positive 1997.

The festivals that emerged in the aftermath of Video Positive demonstrate how effectively festivals can use art to change the functions of a city by interrupting its flow through public artworks, an idea that was at the forefront of Lewis Biggs’ mind when he developed the concept of the Liverpool Biennial.401 He stated that using the city as a canvas for art removes the institutionalised context within which art is traditionally consumed,402 and in a city where art festivals became integrated into the cultural scene, through events like Video

397 _{Foundation for Art & Creative Technology Business Plan: Update (1997/98), (Available: FACT} Archive, Box – Admin General 1; Folder – Business Plans 1997-2000), p.1

398

AV Festival (2012), About (Online)

399 _{For more information on the AND festival, see Abandon Normal Devices 2012} 400

Abandon Normal Devices (2012), About Us (Online)

401 _{Biggs, L. (FACT Board Member, former Director, Liverpool Biennial), interviewed by the author, 5} December 2011. Lewis Biggs first came to Liverpool as the Curator of Exhibitions and Displays in 1988 before being appointed at Tate Liverpool’s Director in 1990. In 1994 he launched Arts Transpennine in 1994, and was appointed as the Director of Liverpool Biennial ahead of the first event in 1999.

402 ibid.

Positive and Visionfest, the Liverpool Biennial easily filled the space left by the demise of both of these festivals.

Fig. 2.1.7 Using the city as a canvas: Vuk Cosic’s ASCII Architecture (2000) projected onto St George’s Hall, Liverpool, Video Positive 2000

As can also be said of the Liverpool Biennial today, Steven Bode stated in 2000 that Video Positive had:

Lit up the city of Liverpool on a regular basis over the course of the last eleven years, acting as a magnet for some of the most innovative and creative work in artists’ film, video and digital media from across the world.403

This was enabled by the existence of a network of art institutions that spanned the city, and Video Positive succeeded in generating an audience that became accustomed to biennial events which allowed them to experience different art forms in unconventional ways.

Fig. 2.1.8 Using the city as a canvas: Richard Wilson’s Turning the Place Over (2007), Liverpool Biennial 2007

403

Video Positive was instrumental in the development of this network of art institutions in Liverpool because, without premises for exhibition, Moviola had to become adept at forging relationships with other art organisations in the region. Alongside collaborating with a number of media art curators, including Steve Littman, Stephen Bode and Charles Esche, Moviola developed a lasting relationship with, notably, Tate Liverpool and the Bluecoat, both of which provided exhibition spaces in each of the Video Positive festivals. Furthermore, they also exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and many other galleries across Merseyside and Manchester. This created a network of art institutions that had experience of collaborating for the presentation of a city-wide event, and alongside Moviola’s decision to exhibit within Liverpool’s public spaces, Video Positive laid the foundations for future events. This network of institutions has proven to be essential in Liverpool’s attempts to foster an international art scene which could stand up to the seemingly overwhelming draw of London, and this was reflected in the Liverpool Culture Company’s Executive Summary of Liverpool’s Bid for European Capital of Culture (2002). In this document, the Culture Company stated that the city still had aspirations “to be a true Festival City,” and because of its “cultural infrastructure of international quality and renown [and] a strong indigenous cultural life,”404 it was well placed to host the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) year in 2008, a claim that contributed to the city securing the award.405

The quality of the art that was exhibited during the Video Positive festivals was also an important factor in the festivals’ success, with renowned video artists such as David Hall, Judith Goddard and Jeremy Welsh exhibiting works in 1989. Goddard’s work Silver Lining

(1989) was one of the pieces commissioned for the National Videowall Project,406 a bank of monitors that was installed at Tate Liverpool and used for the projection of single and multiple images within video artworks.

404

Liverpool Culture Company (2002), Executive Summary of Liverpool’s Bid for European Capital of Culture, Liverpool: Liverpool Culture Company, p.1

405 _{For more information on Liverpool 2008, see Chapter 3.3} 406

Fig. 2.1.9 The National Videowall Project, Tate Liverpool, Video Positive 1989

This presentational style offered artists and audiences the ability to “focus on individual images, move between big and small and juxtapose images” in a way that single monitor projections previously had not,407 and the Videowall provides a good example of how innovative and ground-breaking the work of Video Positive was at the time.

Understanding the context of media art presentation in the 1990s is important when assessing the impact of Video Positive, however, as constantly evolving technology and improving presentational standards can be seen as having rendered early media artworks as out-dated. This was demonstrated by an exhibition held at FACT in 2007, ‘Re: [Video Positive] Archiving Video Positively,’ which provided a retrospective of the Video Positive festivals. Re: [Video Positive]was current Director Mike Stubbs’ first show after joining the organisation, and having been one of Video Positive 1989’s exhibiting artists, he presented a show which contained a number of works from each of the festivals. Despite the success of Video Positive, Re: [Video Positive] failed to attract any significant coverage in the mainstream national press, with only Liverpool’s Daily Post newspaper reporting directly on the show.408 Specialist arts magazine Mute did run a critique of the exhibition, however,

407

Littman, S. (1989), “The National Videowall Project” in Video Positive ‘89 Catalogue, ed. L. Haskel, Liverpool: Merseyside Moviola, p.12, (p.12)

408 _{Baxter, L. (2007), “Arts Diary: Exhibition Looks at Speed of Change; FACT has Launched an On-line} Archive of Video Artworks,” Liverpool Daily Post, 5 September 2007

which stated that although Video Positive was innovative at the time, presenting the works again up to eighteen years later simply revealed “how bulky and old-fashioned” the technology had become.409

Fig. 2.1.10 Judith Goddard, The Garden of Earthly Delights (1991), first shown at Video Positive 1991 and re-screened at Re: [Video Positive], FACT, 2007

That the artworks could be perceived as having been “rendered obsolete by the pace of scientific change”410 is a dilemma in the field of media art, and Pryle Behrman’s article states that Re: [Video Positive] inadvertently created “a specific type of poignancy that is both unique to technologically-reliant media such as video art and wholly unintended in the original.”411 This reliance on presentational context and technology is a dilemma that persists in media art, and remains unresolved despite the aims of the Video Positive festival “to explore the boundaries of the works and working practices within the context of the medium.”412

409 _{Behrman, P. (2007), “Video Negative Positive,” mute, 13 November 2007} 410

ibid. 411

ibid.

412 _{Application for Regional Project Development Fund (written by Steve Littman – pre 1989),} (Available: FACT Archive: Box – Funding and Grants 1; Folder - ACE 1991)

2.2 Community: Collaboration Programme