It was led by Aart van Barneveld who died in 1990.
In 1994, TBA was absorbed into MonteVideo to become NIMK. NIMK itself was dissolved in 2002. The collection moved to LIMA.
Rob Perré wrote a short history of organisations that supported video art in Amsterdam in the 20th century. It was an introduction for the book ‘The Magnetic Era. Video Art in the Netherlands 1970-1985’ (NAi Publishers Rotterdam 2003).
Below are some paragraphs about TBA from Rob's article:
On 22 March 1982 the Dutch and foreign video artists living in the Netherlands received a letter from De Appel. It was an invitation to attend a meeting for the setting up of a new institute for video art. It was a known fact that De Appel wanted to drop its video activities because they took up too much time and because the foundation wanted to concentrate more on site-specific projects. All the same, it was a remarkable document, as MonteVideo had already been in existence for four years. It gives the impression that MonteVideo, and in particular its director, were not taken very seriously by the art world. Coëlho described his position: ‘[…] I came from the world of television, which a sizeable proportion of the video artists tend to rebel against’.16 De Appel, on the other hand, was at that time an institute with a very high reputation among artists in the Netherlands and abroad and among a small, élitist public of art-lovers. So some arrogance could be expected from it.
It was at that meeting that the Association of Video Artists was set up, with Madelon Hooykaas as the first chairperson. The main purpose of the association was to set up a foundation ‘for the distribution and promotion of video works’.17 Time Based Arts (TBA)
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TBA initiated and organised a large number of large-scale projects. In ‘Talking Back to the Media’ (1985), an international group of artists responded via various mass media to the images presented by those same media. Aorta, the Rijksacademie, De Appel, Shaffy Theater, the Amsterdam cable and VPRO radio collaborated on the project. A year later ‘The Box’ was organised, a project by the artist Daniel Brun. Artists and others involved debated the new technologies and their consequences live on the cable. ‘Geluid herzien’ [Sound check] (1986) was a large-scale international audio art project, once again involving a number of other institutes too (such as Christofori in Amsterdam and the Apollohuis in Eindhoven). TBA had the lowest threshold of the three. It was easy for the public to walk in and ask something or to view tapes (TBA had an extensive archive). This was because the premises beside the Bloemgracht had always had the atmosphere of a place where all kinds of people could meet, almost a kind of club.
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In the meantime its colleague Time Based Arts had got into deeper and deeper trouble because the government went back on its original plans – though only after it had let all the institutes, particularly TBA, plod on for a couple of years and make plans. This gave the unfortunate structure of the institute the chance to play up. It was like an unhappy marriage that runs on the rocks during a recession. The Foundation and the Association did not end up in the street, but only by the skin of their teeth. To make matters worse, Aart van Barneveld, to whom acting as a mediator had become second nature, died in 1990. It became increasingly clear that, now that the TBA had no subsidy and was riven by internal conflicts, it had no chance of survival. Wary approaches were made to MonteVideo, delicately steering clear of old wounds. The first specific joint project was Kanaal Zero, a monthly art programme on the Amsterdam cable, with the artist Claudio Goulart as series editor. With the aid of a project subsidy from the Amsterdam local authority, it was eventually able to transmit seventy-five broadcasts. It provided a venue for many artists, particularly Dutch ones.
In 1993 Time Based Arts was incorporated in MonteVideo. Although it was called a merger, insiders knew how the roles were divided: the TBA collection was transferred to MonteVideo. From then on MonteVideo adopted the name of the Netherlands Institute for Media Art, MonteVideo/Time Based Arts, a tactical and polite mouthful, but the ‘real’ name MonteVideo has never disappeared from popular parlance.
