Video Killed the Radio Star

From the rise of neoliberalism under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to the last events of the Cold War, the 1980s marked a profound reorientation of Western culture. The decade was shaped by the last years of the 1970s, which saw the emergence of postcolonial, queer and feminist discourses challenging the then-dominant cultural paradigm and was defined by paradoxes increasingly mediated by images. Pop culture’s gleaming surfaces encountered the deep fractures of global politics; new technologies collided with old ideologies; MTV’s debut and Chernobyl’s fallout reached audiences through the same screens.

Drawing from the Mudam Collection, international loans and archival materials, Video Killed the Radio Star: The 1980s and Their Cultural Echoes revisits the ‘long 1980s’, a pivotal period starting in the late 1970s and ending in the early 1990s, in which image overtook voice, access replaced ownership and aesthetics assumed a new political and cultural force. The exhibition examines the shifting perceptions and sensibilities of a world on the cusp of hyper-mediation.

On the occasion of Mudam’s twentieth anniversary, Video Killed the Radio Star reflects the collection’s longstanding and formative engagement with the period. By revisiting this decade and tracing its reverberations, the exhibition explores how the transformations of the 1980s still inform the present. In dialogue with contemporary history, it invites viewers to question what is often overlooked by Western art history. From this standpoint, the exhibition incorporates more recent artistic practices, as well as archival material, to develop a broader argument around the 1980s.