On Wednesday, June 10, 2026 , we will meet at the House of Arts at 5 p.m. for the fifth installment of Distorted Sessions, a series of accompanying programs for the exhibition Distorted Image. Chapters from the Beginnings of Video Art. This time, the event will consist of two parts. The first will be a guided tour with curator Lenka Dolanová, and the second part will be a meeting with artist Tomáš Ruller, who will present various ways of presenting video art on media used in the 1980s and 1990s.

PROGRAM

5:00–5:30 PM Guided tour of the exhibition with the curator, focusing on the (non)presence of women artists in video art. The discussion will cover the work of Dóra Maurer, Jana Želibská, Izabella Gustowska, Jolanta Marcolla, and Anna Kutera.

5:30–7:00 PM Tomáš Ruller will present the specifics of analog video art technology. He will guide us through examples of typical forms of video art, ranging from manipulated screens and their “decollages” through television objects and sculptures to installations and environments based on the “site-specific” principle, all the way to “interactive” works. He will introduce us to various types of video cameras, recorders, and recording media (B-max, VHS, U-matic, B-cam, S-VHS, VHS-C, V8, Hi8, and laser discs), various signal processing techniques, post-production editing, and effects (transitions, keying, etc.), all the way to different presentation methods (single-channel, multi-channel), on multi-displays, and mega-projections. It will also address the issue of transcoding (in the international standards PAL, SECAM, NTSC), related to the limitations of international distribution. It will highlight the advantages of video technology over celluloid film (in terms of the length of continuous recordings, real-time monitoring of the recorded image in a “closed-circuit” system, and the immediate ability to play back and copy). It will demonstrate how artists utilized the specific characteristics of this medium (e.g., the necessity of time synchronization of individual frames) and addressed the dilemma arising from quality degradation with each transfer, including the long-term instability of magnetic recordings. The topic concludes with the fundamental transformation of the medium brought about by the transition to digital technologies, which ushered in the era of “multimedia art.” It will raise questions regarding the relationship between video and film in the context of the concept of the “moving image” and its connection to the terms “new media art” or the relationship between “multimedia” and “intermedia” art. It will also highlight the convergence of “video art” with the history of “performance art.”