1944-1988: AVANT-GARDE TELEVISION, POSTMODERNISM, AND THE EVENT
Outside of the archive, avant-garde television and television art—or the redirection of broadcast television to non-instrumentalist purposes—has, with a few important exceptions, vanished from both history and discourse. Within art history and media studies the consensus can be summarized in Dieter Daniels’ pronouncement that “no form of high television culture [resulted in] a lasting cultural asset to be preserved for future generations” (2004). Indeed, not only has “television art” disappeared from history and discourse, by the 2000s television itself started to disappear.
Margot’s latest project is rooted in television studies, art history, and social theory. It considers the role of television and the televisual in, first, the revival of the historical avant-garde in visual art of the 1960s; second, the emergence of postmodernism in visual art in the 1970s and 1980s; and finally, the emergence of event-based artwork that orchestrates social feedback situations.
Margot Bouman is a 2017-18 GIDEST Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor of Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design. She is Co-director of the Graduate Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies and Director of the Gender Studies program.