Scratch video revisited

Nick Cope revisits Scratch video, the radical video-art movement of the early 1980s that exploited new editing technologies to oppose and ‘détourn’ broadcast television. Cope re-evaluates the history of Scratch’s development, including its initial rejection by many critics and its swift recuperation into mainstream aesthetics. Shedding new light on the history of Scratch, Cope shows how key aspects of the movement have been overlooked – often as a result of the London-centric focus of critics and exhibitions – and how it anticipated the creative possibilities of digital technologies and, as a kind of audiovisual music, embodied an original aesthetic mode