Marco Senaldi on the Untapped Value of TV Footage for Art History

In an editorial for Artribune Magazine #52, Marco Senaldi argues that television footage, long dismissed as inferior to photography, offers irreplaceable insights into contemporary art events. Drawing from his work on the RAI Storia program "Genio & Sregolatezza" with Alessandra Galletta, Senaldi describes unearthing archival videos from RAI (including non-digitized tapes), the Venice Biennale archives, and the Centro Pecci. He highlights specific examples: Gino De Dominicis at the 1972 Venice Biennale, where footage reveals additional figures on chairs near the ceiling, invisible to photographers; the 1968 "Arte povera + azioni povere" conference in Amalfi, where artists like Pino Pascali and critic Gillo Dorfles played soccer, showing artworks as props for "pure energy" (per Gilberto Zorio); and Mario Schifano painting on the program "Visti da vicino." Senaldi contends that these videos capture lost details—faces, clothing, behaviors—and may require rewriting recent art history. He contrasts the objectivity of anonymous video with the subjective "work of the photographer" inherent in still images.