In 1973 video celebrated its tenth anniversary, and Nam June Paik made what would become the cult tape of the history of video—Global Groove. That same year the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, started its collection of videos by acquiring Limite E (1973), a work by Jean Otth. 

Since then, from experimenting with the medium to using it to record actions, from the TV set to projection, from the frontal relationship with viewers to their involvement in the installation space, video has developed in a number of radically different ways. And it is now, with Making Space, that MCBA (Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne – Switzerland), sets out to cover forty years of video art in large strides, in the spaces opened up by the moving image, in a museum that has always given it a special place.

Making Space brings together works whose common denominator is the recording or reconstructing of the space that can be seen, the space inhabited by the artist’s body, and lastly the space enlivened by the presence of onlookers. It explores the way in which artists have played with the medium itself, creating scenarios where television features itself as an object and a means of broadcasting, subversively misappropriating both the medium and the message.

Some of the remarkable artists shown are Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Francis Alÿs, Emmanuelle Antille, René Bauermeister, Dara Birnbaum, Dan Graham, Joan Jonas, Kim Sooja, Ana Mendieta, Bruce Nauman, Jean Otth, Nam June Paik, Pipilotti Rist, Anri Sala, Gerry Schum, Richard Serra and Bill Viola among others.

The exhibition will be shown from October 18, 2013–January 5, 2014 in MCBA (Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausane – Switzerland).