Breaking new ground as the first transdisciplinary reader in this field, Video Theories is a resource that will form the basis for further research and teaching. While theories of video have not yet formed an academic discipline comparable to the more canonized theories of photography, film, and television, the reader offers a major step toward bridging this "video gap" in media theory, which is remarkable considering today's omnipresence of the medium through online video portals and social media.Consisting of a selection of eighty-three annotated source texts and twelve chapter introductions written by the editors, this book considers fifty years of scholarly and artistic reflections on the topic, representing an intergenerational and international set of voices. This transdisciplinary reader offers a conceptual framework for diverging and contradictory viewpoints, following the continuous transformations of what video was, is, and will be.

Essays reprinted by renowned theorists, such as Jacques Derrida, Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, Marshall McLuhan, Paul Virilio and Jacques Lacan.

AcknowledgmentsPrefaceDieter Daniels and Jan ThobenI Foundations1 Formations | Exemplary DiscoursesIntroductionDieter DanielsDraft for Gutenberg Video (1960). FacsimileMarshall McLuhanBiennale Seminar on Video, Venice 1977Marshall McLuhanVideotape: Thinking about a Medium (1968)Paul RyanGestures on Videotapes (1973)Vilém FlusserVideo (1973-1974)Vilém Flusser2 Medium Specificity and Hybridity: The Materiality of the Electronic ImageIntroductionJan ThobenVideo: From Technology to Medium (2006)Yvonne SpielmannSurrealism without the Unconscious (1991)Fredric JamesonBetween-the-Images (1990)Raymond BellourVideo as Dispositif (1988)Anne-Marie DuguetVideo Media (1993)Sean CubittIs There a Specific Videocity? (2002)Wolfgang ErnstVideo Intimus (2010)Siegfried ZielinskiToward an Autobiography of Video (2016)Ina BlomVideo, Flows, and Real Time (1996)Maurizio Lazzarato3 Video and the Self: Closed Circuit | Feedback | NarcissismIntroductionPeter Sachs Collopy (guest editor)Some Aspects of the Significance to Psychoanalysis of the Exposure of a Patient to the Televised Audiovisual Reproduction of His Activities (1969)Lawrence S. KubieSelf-Processing (1970)Paul RyanTwo Consciousness Projection(s) (1972)Dan GrahamEssay on Video, Architecture, and Television (1979)Dan GrahamVideo: The Aesthetics of Narcissism (1976)Rosalind KraussVideo Art, the Imaginary and the Parole Vide (1976)Stuart MarshallVital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained (1977)Martha RoslerNarcissism, Feminism, and Video Art: Some Solutions to a Problem in Representation (1981)Micki McGeeDiscover European Video: For a Catalogue of an Exhibition (1990)Vilém FlusserPrismatic Media, Transnational Circuits (2012)Krista Geneviève LynesScreen Births: Trans Vlogs as a Transformative Media for Self-Representation (2016)Tobias RaunII Relations4 Video | FilmIntroductionMarc RiesFilmgoing/Videogoing: Making Distinctions (1973)Douglas DavisVideo in the Work of Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews and Statements (1969-2001)Jean-Luc Godard (compiled and introduced by Thomas Helbig)The Withering Away of the State of the Art (1977)Hollis FramptonVideo and Film (1987)Gábor BódyOn Video (1988)Roy ArmesVideo: The Access Medium (1996)Tetsuo KogawaInterface (1995)Harun FarockiPenultimate Pictures (2018)Marc Ries5 Video | TelevisionIntroductionDieter DanielsThe Politics of Timeshifting (2011)Dylan MulvinGlobal Groove and Video Common Market (1970)Nam June PaikTelevision: Video's Frightful Parent (1975)David AntinTalking Back to the Media (1985)Dara Birnbaum[Portable Video] (1995)John Thornton Caldwell[The Videographic] (2002)John Ellis6 Video | Sound and SynthesisIntroductionJan ThobenThe Sound of One Line Scanning (1986/1990)Bill ViolaAFTERLUDE to the Exposition of EXPERIMENTAL TELEVISION (1964). FacsimileNam June PaikVersatile Color TV Synthesizer (1969)Nam June PaikVideo-Synthesizer (1969). FacsimileNam June PaikSoundings (1979)Gary HillLight and Darkness in the Electronic Landscape (1978)Barbara Buckner7 Video | Performance and TheaterIntroductionBarbara Büscher (guest editor)Transmission (1998)Joan JonasMoving Target: General Intentions (1996)Diller + ScofidioStudio Azzurro: Re-Inventing the Medium of Theater (2012)Valentina ValentiniIntermedial Interplay between Real-time Videos, Film, and Theatrical Scenes: Bert Neumann's Spaces for Frank Castorf's Dostoevsky project Erniedrigte und Beleidigte (2014)Birgit WiensMultiplication. The Wooster Group (2007)Nick Kaye8 Video | Internet: Online Video and the Consumer as ProducerIntroductionMartha Buskirk (guest editor)Do It 2 (2009)Cory Arcangel and Dara BirnbaumIn Defense of the Poor Image (2009)Hito SteyerlShiny Things So Bright (2017)Andreas TreskeYouTube and the Syrian Revolution: On the Impact of Video Recording on Social Protests (2017)Cécile BoëxNothing Is Unwatchable for All (2019)Alexandra JuhaszThe Dangers of Ubiquitous Video (2020)Siva VaidhyanathanIII Repercussions9 Sociality | Participation | UtopiasIntroductionDieter DanielsVideotopia (1972)Alfred Willener, Guy Milliard, Alex GantyGuerrilla Television (1971)Michael ShambergSubject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited (1985)Deirdre BoyleWomen's Video (1981)Anne-Marie Duguet10 Communities | Amateurism | Ethnographies | ParticipationIntroductionDieter Daniels[Wedding Videos] (1993)Sean Cubitt[Bootlegging Video] (2009)Lucas Hilderbrand[Splatter Videos, Scene Selection, and the Video Store] (2014)Tobias HauptsDegraded Images, Distorted Sounds: Nigerian Video and the Infrastructure of Piracy (2004)Brian LarkinThe Other Within (1989)Juan DowneyDefiant Images: The Kayapo Appropriation of Video (1992)Terence TurnerDecolonizing the Technologies of Knowledge: Video and Indigenous Epistemology (2003)Freya Schiwy11 Surveillance | Exposure | Testimony | ForensicsIntroductionDieter DanielsPhotographesomenon: Video Surveillance as a Paradoxical Image-Making Machine (2005)Winfried PauleitCCTV. The Stealthy Emergence of a Fifth Utility? (2002)Stephen GrahamThe Cultural Labor of Surveillance. Video Forensics, Computational Objectivity, and the Production of Visual Evidence (2013)Kelly GatesDrone Warfare at the Threshold of Detectability (2015)Eyal WeizmanWebcams, or Democratizing Publicity (2006)Wendy Hui Kyong Chun"The Woman in the Blue Bra": Follow the Video (2015/2017)Kathrin PetersIV Dialogues12 Artistic Practice and Video TheoryIntroductionDieter Daniels and Jan ThobenVideo 1965: Andy Warhol and Nam June Paik. A Specific Moment of Unspecificity (2018/2021)Dieter DanielsPop Goes the Videotape (1965)Andy WarholElectronic Video Recorder (1965). FacsimileNam June PaikBefore the Cinematic Turn: Video Projection in the 1970s (2015)Erika BalsomVideo as a Function of Reality (1974)Peter CampusVideor (1990)Jacques Derrida[Processual Video] (1980)Gary HillCompulsive Categorizations: Gender and Heritage in Video Art (2015)Malin Hedlin HaydenVideo as a Medium of Emancipation (1982)Ulrike RosenbachVideo in the Time of a Double, Political and Technological, Transition in the Former Eastern European Context (2009/2020)Marina Grzinic[Video Direction Theory] (1989)Boris Yukhananov (edited and annotated by Andreas Schmiedecker)Index