I sometimes understand meditation not as trying to get somewhere, to achieve a higher/deeper consciousness, but rather as to get nowhere. Nowhere. To get exactly where you are and no further. You entirely release your life.
Now when a viewer sets to engage with a work of video art, what is their starting point? What is their position? Where are they? I guess, what is their state of receptivity? And is that in anyway under the control/direction of the artist? Should that be the artist’s concern at all?
I am reminded of Paul Schraeder’s theories about “transcendent film.” That there is a minimum of artifice allowed. And the mechanics of illusion are allowed to be evident.