Publication Details Paperback, 240mm(H) x 170mm(W), 32 pp text and 4 pp cover, 2 colour, saddle stitched, ISBN 978-1-925455-97-7
Author and/or Editor name/s Author: Stephen Jones Copy editor: Julie Ewington
Author and/or Editor bio/s Stephen Jones has been involved in video art as an artist, engineer, researcher and curator since 1974. One of Australia’s pioneers of video art, his work has been shown in several important group exhibitions in which video art has featured. As one of the earliest Australian researchers in the field of video art, he co-curated the Videotapes From Australia collection that toured North America, Australia and the Venice Biennale in 1979-80. Jones has been directly involved in the support of works utilising art and technology since 1976 through to the present, both in installation and technical support for artists.
Year of publication 2020
Publisher Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane, Queensland
Abstract Comprising over twenty works that cover both activist documentary and synthetic forms, ‘Cognitive Dissidents: Reasons to be Cheerful’ explores the development of Australian video art from the 1970s to the 2000s.
Video’s capacity for self-reflexivity established it early on as a fluid and expansive medium. Firstly, as a documentary form, video has both reflected and informed political movements and social experimentation. Secondly, new image-making possibilities using video feedback – in which the image generates itself – have been central concerns.
‘Cognitive Dissidents’ explores artists’ recognition of the widely applicable experimental aspects of video, where it is seen as a live medium, and where immediate and cultural/political feedback was central to the artists’ thinking or their immediate needs.
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