Navigating the Frame: Videoart, Lines of Flight, Deixis

This chapter approaches the media archaeology of contemporary telepresence arguing that some key aspects of such a configuration shall be found in videoart from the 1970s. To demonstrate this thesis, the text delves in particular into the symptomatic use of spatiality across on- and off-screen dimensions. The concept of deixis and de-/re-/territorialisation prove to be useful lenses to look at the way in which artists use technology and their body to craft an image of presence that represents the antecedent of what we experience today via video-calling, telerobotics and virtual reality in order to respond to distance and displacement.