Video Art: Dead or Alive?

Chris, Cynthia. Video Art: Dead or Alive. Afterimage; Nov/Dec 1996, Vol. 24 Issue 3, p4.
ISSN [03007472]

This article proved to be a little bit irrelevant because it was so old although the last one i read was incredible!! This pales in comparison, here's what i did salvage from it;
From what i gather the author thinks that video as a medium peaked in the 1990's and now due to budget cuts and is image as a medium for students and amateurs it is DEAD.
The temptation to cross over from video art to film and earn real money money money drew a lot of artists away from it. Video was seen then (and is now) as lacking in critical legitimacy when compared to film, and almost as a testing ground for artists that want to venture in to film making. Salla Tykka looks to be one of these people (that is a very shallow statement) but she draws on film history using a score reminiscent of Hitchcock, and her films have a kind of narrative, they are constructed and not performances with some sort of narrative.(note on her website 'the F wrod' haha) Her works Zoo and Cave are one of the very few video pieces that i actually sat down and watched, that along with the current exhibition of Yinka Shonibare. I was pissed off to find that his video looped after watching it for ages, i never did see the whole thing :( Video with narrative does not work as well as a reversed loop i feel. I find that if a video work is part of an installation i am less likely to watch it and more likely to give it as much attention as i would a painting. For this reason i decided to show my video works by themselves and not as part of a wider installation.
"Video, it has been noted, is a field in which it is harder than usual to make money"-Martha Rositer, 'Video, sharing the utopian moment'. No shit.
The article then goes on to state that few artists are 'able' to turn their work into something commercial. This lady is missing the point... In the early 90's it was TV culture, that has been replaced by net culture. Net culture is awesome. Anybody can make a video, most people in NZ own or have access to something that can capture footage. That doesn't make video redundant as a medium with this sudden influx of accidental snapshots and film that look good made by aunty Di and Granny Cush.