Background & History

When Resolution: A Critique of Video Art was published by LACE in 1986, it was one of the first critical texts to consider video as an art medium, and included essays by many prominent critics and scholars, ranging from Jean Baudrillard to Beverle Houston. The accompanying exhibition of single-channel videos was an important survey of U.S. artists working in video during the early to mid 1980s. The one-day symposium that took place on May 3, 1986, was an important occasion when critics, scholars and artists came together to explore what later became the tenets of discourse on video art. Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, published in 1996, similarly defined the independent and increasingly global video practice of the late 1980s and 1990s. Now, more than ten years later, Resolution 3, the third chapter of the Resolution legacy, aims to be another field-defining event like its two predecessors.

On the occasion of LACE’s thirtieth anniversary, Resolution 3 investigates LACE’s history as one of the key presenters of video art in Los Angeles while assessing the global, ubiquitous presence of video in almost every aspect of our contemporary lives—ranging from YouTube postings to surveillance in the so-called “war on terror” to elaborate installations in elite museums and galleries. Pitzer College, a member of The Claremont Colleges, brings to this project an institutional commitment to social justice and intercultural understanding. Pitzer’s Media Studies program is specifically interested in combining critical theory and creative practice, a quality that is exemplified by video art, both in 1986 and in 2008. Resolution 3 is co-directed by Pitzer College Associate Professor of Media Studies Ming-Yuen S. Ma and LACE Executive Director Carol Stakenas.