In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: media art.
On The Hague's Spui
They were tough negotiations. The battle over the meter box was symbolic of that. The chairman of the Hague Film House, a former alderman, went at it hard. And the board of the World Wide Video Centre & Festival surrendered more and more of a dream that had started so beautifully. That dream was to land in a Herman Hertzberger-designed complex on the Spui in which a new theatre and a - unique for the Netherlands and perhaps for Europe1 - special building for media art. That building had a seven-by-seven-metre window at the front on which video art could be programmed, visible from the tram stop and from the music and dance theatre opposite (now Amare).
Halfway through construction, however, it became clear to the municipality that in the meantime the Filmhuis on the Denneweg was in danger of going bankrupt and could no longer afford the rent. Alderman Ans van den Berg decided that the Filmhuis should then move into World Wide Video's new location. This led to difficult negotiations about a forced cohabitation. This kind of thing happens to cultural institutions all the time and I have often used the metaphor of the meter cupboard.2
Viewing house
World Wide Video originated around 1980 under the name Kijkhuis, on the Noordeinde in The Hague, as an initiative of Tom van Vliet and some friends to give video art and permanent home. The Kijkhuis soon set up the international World Wide Video Festival, with a large number of makers from all parts of the world, some well known, most unknown at the time. In the 1989 edition, for example, there was work by Tony Ousler, Robert Wilson, Nam June Paik, David Byrne and Dutchman Frits Maats. In the 1992 edition, for example, Laurie Anderson and Bill Viola.
The legendary Jan Kassies was president of the Viewing House and honoured me by asking me to succeed him. I didn't know much about video art. However, a few years earlier I had organised an evening together with Cas Smithuysen for the Federation of Artists' Associations on "art on the tube": art on television and 'television' in art. With interesting speakers, such as columnist and former VPRO director Jan Blokker, and Peter Struycken, probably the first visual artist in the Netherlands who also ventured into computer art. And there was the founding father of Dutch video art, the sadly too soon forgotten Livinus van de Bunt with his son Jeep.
For a long time, many people, including in the art world itself, were smirking about video art: it was a hype. 'Art with a plug' would be over very soon. However, I could not imagine that; this art had to have a future, was perhaps the future. Granted, to conquer technology, artists sometimes had to be more concerned with 'the plug' than with artistic content, but that was precisely what would pass. At the South Holland Cultural Council, we did experiments with art on cable that suddenly brought video art into many ordinary living rooms, and organised 'Nederland Vier', an unusual exhibition of installations at Prinsenhof Delft.
Media art showed itself to be a many-headed phenomenon that could make love with many other disciplines: with literature, visual arts, dance, film, photography and theatre. Even with architecture as shown in Groningen in the early 1990s at the manifestation "What a wonderfull World". Rem Koolhaas' video bus shelter and American architect Bernard Tschumi's glass pavilion are the still-visible reminders of it3.
End of festival
From year to year, Tom van Vliet made his festivals more attractive to a growing group of international artists and connoisseurs. The festival expanded across more venues and increasingly found collaboration with fellow foreign institutions. International press was a regular guest. Irma Boom designed a wonderful series of catalogues over the years. But within the clear-cut world of patriotic media art, alliances or warm goodwill failed to materialise, not even with the Municipality of The Hague and the then Council for the Arts. And there was mutual chininess with fellow institutions, as you often see within just starting and/or marginal art forms begging for attention and subsidies, like piglets for mother's milk.
It was hard for Van Vliet to get rid of the image of difficult, inaccessible art and to parry the criticism of the Arts Council with new policies. Eventually, festival and office left The Hague - to the delight of the Filmhuis, which was able to use the space - and there were a few more fine festival editions in Amsterdam, at the Stedelijk Museum, Melkweg, the Terminal on the IJ. Then another negative advice from the Arts Council put a definitive end to it. Tom van Vliet has since been a much sought-after curator of exhibitions and events, in Spain, Brazil to China.
Instantly available and elusive
By now, media art is taken for granted. With occasional debates - as with photography or ceramics - about whether this is about the medium or the art. Does ceramics as an art form stand on its own and does it actually matter that the artwork is made of clay? Or are material and technique completely secondary to the artistic narrative?
It is both. There are artists who devote themselves entirely to that one medium and never cheat. And there are those who want to tell their story, by whatever means. See Wim T. Schippers or Grayson Perry.
Media art, the many-headed phenomenon of the early days, has become even more multiform. Digitisation made the camera and stand-alone computer much less important. Physical spaces matter less. Social media and NFTs4 make art visible to many more people, but at the same time in a way more elusive.
Established forms of media art have instead become more servile: applications in theatre, in dance, in commercial expressions. The multiplicity and certain elusiveness of contemporary media art raise questions about presentation and collection.
Not that museums have given up. The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam chose early on to have its own curator, a dedicated space for media art, exhibitions and cooperation with World Wide Video. Other museums, such as De Pont Tilburg or Frans Hals Haarlem were and are also active. This certainly also applies to the photography museums including Museum Hilversum and, in particular, to film institute Eye, which, for instance with 'Eye on Art', pays attention to the interface of film and other arts. Sound and Vision Hilversum is also showing interest. But is it enough, is there a line in all this?
Presenting and managing
I noticed in Boekman, Summer 2022, the book review of "Curating Digital Art" 5 edited by Annet Dekkers who has been having conversations with gallery owners, museum people and artists on this subject for at least a decade. The art form may not always be graspable, but neither is the context: how important is institutional space for media art that does not need institutions for its appearance? Surely the Internet offers 'open space'? Surely the Internet is stage and venue at the same time, is not workshop and gallery in one?
In the Netherlands, TV maker René Coelho's Montevideo was the first real gallery for media art. Alongside Wies Smals' gallery De Appel that focused on performances but also video installations. Many developments and name changes later - through Time Based Art and Netherlands Media Art Institute, among others - there is now LIMA6 which preserves, distributes and researches media art. One of LIMA's initiatives is Medianet.nl where, together with Stedelijk Museum and Frans Hals Museum, among others, a digital collection of fifty years of media art in the Netherlands has been realised. Another initiative is to work with Wikimedia and the other partners to get much more content on media art on Wikipedia.
The question remains whether there is a need for a physical institute of media art. Consider the discussion about a museum of Dutch history. Do we really need that in one place together or would it be better to make smart use of the Internet so that knowledge and images are available to all Dutch people at once? For media art, the aforementioned museums are nodes in a both digital and physical network anyway. And there is Nxt.Museum in Amsterdam, a private initiative that shows artworks created with modern technologies as an art hall (exhibitions, not a collection). No place for 'old-fashioned' video art, by the way.
I do feel something for a physical museum that gives a broad presentation of current developments as well as the history of Dutch media art. Perhaps this does not have to take place in the subsidised art circuit and we can hope for the initiative of yet another patron, as Museum Voorlinden, Museum More or Museum No Hero have done before.
Importantly, a museum for 'art with a plug' does have its own meter box.
1 The renowned ZKM/Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe opened in 1989, just a little before the creation of the Spuicomplex.
2 So many years later, as chairman of Dansmakers Amsterdam, I was involved in an attempt imposed by the City Council to join forces with other institutions to create a single Dance House.
4 Non-fungible tokens, see for example https://www.nftcryptokunst.nl
5 Dekkers, A.(ed.)(2021) Curating digital art: from presenting and collecting digital art to networked co-curation, Amsterdam
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
