Re-enacting Early Video Art as a Research Tool for Media Art Histories

This paper will discuss re-enactment as a relevant tool for practice-based research to investigate pioneering video performances and video artworks from the 1970s and 1980s from a theoretical, art-historical and curatorial point of view. Since the early 2000s, the re-enactment of artists’ performance has been growing as an art practice internationally and has been investigated in several studies and exhibitions. In this paper, I will propose that the re-enactment of early video artworks can open up critical analysis on the original work—its nature, form and content—as well as on collective and personal memory and mediation. Re-enactment becomes a research tool that investigates the nature of video which was at the time a relatively new medium. Re-enactment informs the research into the original piece, its documentation, the relationships between the artist and the body, the work and the viewer. It investigates the effects of analogue video over the viewer and the artist in comparison with the digital video employed in the re-enactment and its documentation. The paper will analyse case studies from the research projects REWIND, REWINDItalia and EWVA (European Women’s Video Art in the 70s and 80s)

Rewind Italia: Early Video Art in Italy

Published in association with AHRC funded research projects REWIND–Italia Artists Video in Italy in 70s and 80s. "Italy was a vibrant center of video art production and experimentation throughout the 1970s and 1980s, attracting artists from all over the world and laying the foundation for video art as a concept in the global art and film communities. With vibrant illustrations, compelling interviews, and essays by leading scholars in the field, this collection highlights Italy's key place in the history of video as an art form.

Body, Sign and Double: a Parallel Analysis of Elaine Shemilt’s Doppelganger, Federica Marangoni’s The Box of Life and Sanja Ivekovic ́’s Instructions N°1 and Make up - Make down

Body, identity, self-representation, sexuality, stereotypical images of women portrayed by the society and the media, and the condition of female professional artists: these themes were expressed and developed in several early video works in the 70s and early 80s by women artists that didn’t have direct knowledge or contact between each other. This simultaneity of thematic is an unusual phenomenon that reveals common, contemporary sensibilities within both Europe and the USA

Approaches, Strategies and Theoretical and Practice-Based Research Methods to investigate and archive video art:Some reflections from the REWIND projects

This paper will discuss methodologies, approaches and issues, emerging out of three major research projects that have investigated early histories of video art in Europe: REWIND (2004 ongoing), REWINDItalia (2011-2014) and EWVA (2015-2018). The paper will discuss how the projects have engaged with the history of the apparatus, the identity and status of the artworks, preservation methods, and the legacy of these video artworks today. A particular focus will be on semi-structured questionnaires for interviews structured to capture oral histories, memories and recollections, that in some cases would have been otherwise lost to future knowledge and the uncovering of lost artworks and their available documentation. The speakers directly involved in the projects - will discuss solutions, risks and experiences encountered in the projects and future research perspectives for re-covering, collecting, archiving and narrating the histories of early video art in Europe. The paper will discuss also different practice-based research methods, platforms and engagement strategies, including re-installation and re-enactment