Paradigm Shift: This exhibition traces the major revolutions in video art

In 1979, Andy Warhol launched his first TV show, Fashion. As an artist, he was already familiar with the moving image thanks to films like Chelsea Girls and his famous Screen Tests, but the show brought his work – and conversations with some of the world’s leading creatives at the time – to a new audience altogether. Needless to say, Warhol earned his place in Paradigm Shift, a new exhibition at 180 Strand that traces revolutions in moving-image culture.

The show offers a “wide-screen” look at the history of moving image, says curator and Dazed co-founder Jefferson Hack, tracing the story from Warhol in the 70s through to the likes of Martine Syms and Telfar TV. Elsewhere, it showcases artists who’ve “remixed and hacked” found material including Arthur Jafa and Mark Leckey, those who use animation like Meriem Bennani and Josèfa Ntjam, and others whose work deals more explicitly with questions of selfhood and identity, such as Nan Goldin and Gillian Wearing.

“The films shown are all part of their own social paradigm or perception shifts,” says Hack. And why now? “Because we’re in a time of peak polarisation around identity politics, and I wanted to show that identity is a fluid construct, that it’s in constant motion.”

“This is an important moment to return to a sensorial relationship with art, and video art offers that in a very exciting and alive way,” he adds. Compared with objects like paintings and sculptures, it’s also relatively difficult to commoditise – often, as with Warhol, breaking out of typically ‘arty’ spaces is the whole point. In other words, video art is rarely made to cater to the whims of the art market. “So there is a kind of purity to the output.”

Another theme that emerges across Paradigm Shift is the central importance of technology, from TV to the VHS, to gaming systems, social media, and the iPhone. “There was no rock ‘n’ roll before the electric guitar, no acid house before the 808 machine,” says Hack. “Same with video art. It’s all contingent on technology and how artists interpret that in their own idiosyncratic ways.”

Historically, artists have been at the forefront of “playing” and “dreaming” with new technologies, he adds, and this story is laid out clearly in the show. “I think [a] major factor over the last 30 years, for video- and film-based art, is the accessibility of filming and editing tools. Now the screen is really a stage where anyone can be creator, broadcaster, participant, commentator and author.”

This has also sped up the rate of moving image creation, and everything that comes with it. “We’ve hit a point now – and I think this is the real paradigm shift that I’m referring to in the exhibition – where all subculture, the minute it emerges, is almost immediately co-opted,” Hack says, citing Dick Hebdige’s idea that all subcultures start out as modes of resistance and gradually get “co-opted” or folded into the status quo. “Everything that was once radical becomes reduced in power. What’s changed is that now instead of it happening over a decade it happens almost instantly.” The really “radical” work that’s going on today, he suggests, lies in developing creative strategies that can respond to this new landscape.

That said, Paradigm Shift aims to get us away from the screens that dominate our lives as much as it celebrates screens of eras gone by. (Tired of looking at bad screen. Can’t wait to go to 180 Strand and look at good screen.) “The immersive nature of the show means it’s impossible to replicate the IRL experience on a phone or laptop,” says Hack, while films like Jafa’s APEX (2013) aren’t even available to watch online. Ultimately, he hopes that people will treat it like a trip to see a great film with friends at the cinema and come away inspired “to turn on a camera and make a work themselves”. With many of history’s most important and captivating video works all in one place, that seems like a pretty safe bet.

Paradigm Shift features work by Sophia Al-Maria, Meriem Bennani, Dara Birnbaum, Foday Dumbuya, Cao Fei, Tremaine Emory, Nan Goldin, Arthur Jafa, Derek Jarman, JulianKnxx Mark Leckey, Josèfa Ntjam, Pipilotti Rist, Martine Syms, TELFAR, Ryan Trecartin, Gillian Wearing, and Andy Warhol. The show runs at 180 Strand until December 21.