Smashed Cars and Chinese Chewing

Video art varies in style and format. For example, Nam June Paik with her TV Buddha uses a video of a still buddha statue that sits in front of the screen it plays on. Then there’s Bill Viola with his He Weeps for You which is a close-up shot of a water-dropping that after it drops you hear it land on a drum. Both of these are a single video playing but are dramatically different in style and format. Bill Viola is bringing in the viewer to the work while Nam June Paik is forcing the viewer to think about the way we think. Video art can be a combination of multiple videos. Pipilotti Rist uses two different videos in her Ever is Over All. One video shows her happily breaking car windows with a tall flower. The other video is a happy flow of the same kinds of tall flowers in a field. Then there’s Zhang Peili who uses three videos stacked on top of each other in his Eating. Peili’s videos had one of a cheek chewing the second being from an angle on the arm of a person raising a fork into their mouth and then the third video is of the plate that is being emptied. Even though both of these artists used multiple videos the style in which they did was different.