Nauman and Graham's Politics of Presencing: Boredom Exposing Inauthenticity of 1960s–70s Time-Consciousness

Abstract

©2019 by the board of trustees of the university of illinois bruce nauman and dan graham are among the pioneers of video art, having started exploring the potential of the medium for performance and installation as early as the late 1960s. The ephemerality of the technically imperfect video image suited those video art­ ists who were interested in conceptual works, in actions, and in events, which stressed the primacy of idea and process over finished works. Artists working conceptually, such as Nam Jun Paik, Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Dan Graham, Joan Jonas, and Bruce Nauman, are above all concerned with the live character of video, the directness and simultaneity of recording and reproduction. As this article is intended to show, this specific “presentness” of the so­called live media (television, video, digital, and networked media) played a significant role in tuning the broader cultural context of the 1960s and 1970s toward what Pamela Lee identified as “chrono­ phobia” or a crisis of time (Lee xii).