The history of art, and in particular the history of film and video art is often presented as a sequence of masterpieces or important creators’ biographies.
A habit of searching for meaning within the image distracts us from the materiality of the medium itself. Erika Balsom’s After Uniqueness brings our attention back to how the inner is created by the outer: technology, the carrier, screening formats, and distribution modes.
From lithographs to photographs and from film to digital files, Balsom traces how choices by artists, distributors, and curators create the meaning behind the work. Should video works be published in limited editions? Should we screen films in unsuitable conditions or wait for the perfect ones and thus put them at risk of an archival existence? What can be considered the original, a damaged film or a flawless digital copy? The book shows how our answers to these questions inform our perception of the moving image and determine its place in the history of art.
