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2019-04 Ewva European Women's Video Art in The 70sand 80s

http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/16391

JOHN LIBBEY PUBLISHING

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Cover image: Lydia Schouten, The lone ranger, lost in the jungle of erotic desire, 1981, still from video. Courtesy of the artist. EWVA European Women’s PROOF Video Art in the 70s and 80s

Edited by do Laura Leuzzi, Elaine Shemiltnot and Stephen Partridge Proofreading and copyediting by Laura Leuzzi and Alexandra Ross Photo editing by Laura Leuzzi anddistribute Adam Lockhart EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s iv

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

EWVA European Women’s Video Art in the 70s and 80s

A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9780 86196 734 6 (Hardback) PROOF

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Published by John Libbey Publishing Ltd, 205 Crescent Road, East Barnet, Herts EN4 8SB, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]; web site: www.johnlibbey.com Distributed worldwide by Indiana University Press, Herman B Wells Library – 350, 1320 E. 10th St., Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. www.iupress.indiana.edu

© 2019 Copyright John Libbey Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Unauthorised duplication contravenes applicable laws.

Printed and bound in the United States of America. Contents

Foreword Siegfried Zielinski vii PROOFPreface Laura Mulvey xi

Introduction Laura Leuzzi 1

Chapter 1 Self/Portraits: The Mirror, The Self and The Other. Identity and Representation in Early Women’s Video Art in Europe Laura Leuzzido 7 Chapter 2 Natural Interruptions Adam Lockhart 25

Chapter 3 Desire for More not Cinzia Cremona 41

Chapter 4 On Women’s Video Art in the context of Yugoslavia, 1969–91 Jon Blackwooddistribute 55

Chapter 5 Slender Margins and Delicate Tensions: Projects by European Video Pioneers Stansfield/Hooykaas Malcolm Dickson 67

Chapter 6 Elaine Shemilt in-conversation with Sean Cubitt 83

Chapter 7 Concretising the illogical: Immaterial Identities in Early Women’s Video Art Emile Josef Shemilt 101

Chapter 8 Without a trace … ? Stephen Partridge 111

Chapter 9 With Child: Motherhood and women’s video in the 1980s Catherine Elwes 123

Chapter 10 Feminism, Ireland and Women’s Video Art in the 1980s Maeve Connolly 139

Chapter 11 Highly Limited Access: Women and Early Video Art in Poland Marika Kuzmiczï 157 EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s vi

Chapter 12 Creating Crossroads: European Women’s Closed-Circuit Video Slavko Kacunko 177

Chapter 13PROOFEarly ‘Female’ Video Experiments in Nordic Countries in the 1970s and 1980s Lorella Scacco 195

Selected Bibliography 209

Biographies of the Contributors 211 Indexdo 217 not distribute Foreword

Foreword Siegfried Zielinski

hePROOF origin is a trap. Michel Fou- Basing their analyses on sources as cault, archaeologist of diverse as Plato’s critique of the im- sexuality, knowledge, and age in his ‘Allegory of the Cave’, T power, stressed this over and Husserl’s phenomenology, Lacan over again – following in the and Kristeva’s still incipient psycho- footsteps of Friedrich Nietzsche. In analysis, and above all a Marxist- seeking the provenance of complex inflected critique of ideology, these phenomena, there is never only a sin-dotheorists made it unmistakably clear gle point, a single truth from which all that the dominant power relations else derives. Interdiscursive contexts, were inscribed in the apparatical such as video art made by women, or structurenot of cinema technologies feminist video art, likewise develop themselves and that film undergoes from a set of historical conditions. complex processes of encoding, from Women’s revolt against patriar- the recording of external reality to its chal relations in Europe after the Sec- projection ondistribute the screen. ond World War, aspirations to break Laura Mulvey concretised these the taboos regulating established perspectives on the cinema in 1975, gender norms, an invalidation of the with her critique of traditional film. Vis- legitimacy of male domination in the ual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema be- art market and in cultural institutions came the paradigmatic text of feminist since the latter half of the 1960s – media critique, with concepts such as these were decisive for those condi- ‘phallocentrism’, ‘scopophilic in- tions. But there was also another set stinct’, and ‘a woman’s to-be-looked- of impulses resulting from techno-so- at-ness’ evolving into analytical cial, techno-political, and medial fac- leitmotifs in progressive thought on tors. cinema. In the following years, Italian- In the early 1970s, the writings of American cultural theorist Teresa de so-called theorists of the apparatus in Lauretis and the Korean-American art- the Parisian journals Cahiers du ist and theorist Theresa Hak Kyung cinéma and Tel Quel (Jean-Louis Cha, who was raped and murdered in Baudry, Jean-Louis Comolli, Marcelin lower Manhattan in 1982, helped to Pleynet) radically did away with the further develop the apparatus-heuris- naïve idea that the technologies of film tic into an important theoretical instru- and cinema were in any way neutral. ment for the women’s movement. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s viii

Enormous critical potential also Nauman, Nam June Paik, and Wolf unfolded in the immediate field of me- Vostell. Female artists discovered the dia technology itself. Laura Mulvey potential in this new aesthetic and po- and Peter Wollen’s critical-discursive litical instrument a little later, but with Riddles of the Sphynx was still, in greater energy and impact. The Men- 1977, produced on 16mm film (with struationsfilm that VALIE EXPORT music by the legendary Mike Ratledge made in 1967, now considered lost, of Soft Machine). At the same time, in was still filmed on 8mm cine film. The France and Switzerland with their joint provocative, now iconic projects in Ex- production company Son+Image, panded Cinema that VALIE EXPORT Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie and Peter Weibel made in the late Miéville had been working for several 1960s are not at all video works. Cut- PROOFyears already with the amateur’s ting (1968) was a multi-part perform- gadget – electronic video – which they ance using paper screen, slide preferred to cinematography because projectors, and a naked male actor of the lightness and flexibility of the (Weibel), whose body hair was medium. shaved with a razor into decorative Like this work, which was done in patterns by the director (EXPORT). the beginning with explicit reference EXPORT/Weibel’s Tap and Touch Cin- to the Russiando avant-garde artist ema (1969, German title: Tapp – und Dziga Vertov,1 the whole early period Tastkino) was an action piece that dis- of artistic engagement with the new pensed entirely with film as a medium; electronic medium was verynot explicitly that was the profound meaning of the political in character. The Raindance action, which understood itself to be Corporation, originating in the United above all a critique of the image- States but expanding to include other imaginary. The documentation that re- groups and cooperatives from otherdistributemains of another action featuring capitalist countries, understood video Peter Weibel reading through a mega- as a component part of social move- phone from an inflammatory text on ments and as a medium of interfer- the capitalist exploitation of sexuality ence: for a systematically decentral- in cinema while, among others, the ised television of many producers and filmmaker Werner Nekes is permitted for greater autonomy in possible cul- to stroke EXPORT’s breasts for a few tural expressions. This development seconds was also captured on cine had a techno-economic basis: the film. The confrontation between the new mobility of this video technology illusionary and the real was also the – its continuing reduction in size and guiding idea behind EXPORT’s Action price peaked with the Sony Portapak Pants: Genital Panic. But the originary introduced in Japan in 1967 and in the action is less well-known. Wearing US in 1968 – was what opened the jeans with a hole cut out at the geni- possibility of thinking a flexible, spon- tals, VALIE EXPORT squeezed her taneous, and autonomous applica- way through the rows of a movie thea- tion of the medium. ter, just prior to the start of a show, so There was already manifest artis- that the seated audience was pre- tic video work done in the second half sented with the object of male desire of the 1960s, by the likes of Bruce immediately at eye level. ix Foreword | EWVA

An early exhibition of exclusively briefly and impressively, her 1972 video art, organised by Willoughby work Organic Honey’s Visual Telepa- Sharp in New York, in August/Septem- thy. Ulrike Rosenbach’s earliest black- ber 1970, included only men. Here and-white videos also date back to Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, Dennis 1972. Friederike Pezold’s body-ana- Oppenheim, and others presented grammatical works first began ap- their first black-and-white tapes in pearing in 1973, following several half-inch reel format. videographic experiments in 1971. As Shigeko Kubota began assem- of 1973, VALIE EXPORT also turned to bling her Broken Diary videos film, and more intensively to the elec- (1972/73) in the Experimental Televi- tronic medium. In 1973 alone, EX- sion Center in Binghamton, New York, PORT produced the video sculpture in the finalPROOF days of the Fluxus move- Time and Countertime, early video in- ment. Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, stallations like Interrupted Movement George Maciunas, and a young Nam and Autohypnosis, the video tape Vis- June Paik were her artistic collabora- ual Text: Finger Poem, and the per- tors. At the now famous MoMA con- formance videos Asemia and ference Open Circuits in New York in Hyperbulia. 1974, from which resulted the book By the mid-1970s at the latest, The New Television: A Public/Privatedowith Martha Rosler’s grandiose par- Art, Kubota was the only female artist ody of female household labour, The invited to speak about her work. She Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), opened her speech like this: ‘Men women’snot art had taken hold of the new think: “I think, therefore I am”. / I, a electronic medium and begun to as- woman, feel: “I bleed, therefore I am”. sert itself politically, symbolically, and / Recently I’ve bled … ten thousand aesthetically. feet of half inch tape, every month. A projectdistribute like EWVA European Man shoots me every night … I can’t Women’s Video Art in the 70s and 80s, resist. I shoot him back in broad day- has supported the uncovering and light with a vidicon or tivicon, taping in de-marginalisation of these practices overexposure. / Video is Vengeance and the book will act as a key instru- and Victory of Vagina’.2 At the confer- ment to continue in this sense. ence, Joan Jonas was nevertheless able to deliver a statement from the audience, which she used to present, (Translation by Lauren K. Wolfe) Endnotes 1. Vertov’s famous film Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is still to this day mistranslated, both with respect to gender specificity and technological description. The original Russian title could be literally translated as ‘The Human with the Cinematographic Apparatus’. 2. Shigeko Kubota, ‘Women’s Video in the U.S. and Japan’, in Douglas Davis, Allison Simmons (eds.), The New Television – A Public/Private Art (New York: Electronics Art Intermix 1977; Cambridge/MA, London: MIT Press, 1978), p. 97. PROOF

do not distribute Preface

Preface Laura Mulvey

uropean Women’s Video Art with a wary approach to self-expres- in thePROOF 70s and 80s’ brings a sion, especially as an emanation of nearly forgotten moment in the female body and spontaneous ‘Ethe history of women’s art emotion.1 But as I learnt about this practice back to life, vividly extraordinary episode in feminist aes- evoking its special sense of excite- thetics, I found myself using terms ment and promise that still resonates such as ‘bringing back to life’, and across time. The essays trace an al- ‘magical coincidence’ to evoke both most magical coincidence betweendothe wonder of this art and its own the appearance (across the 1970s particular materiality, grounded in and 80s) of video technology and time and space, as cognitively rich as women’s urgent need, inspired by thatnot of cinema and dedicated to ex- early feminism, to find a new mode of perimenting with ideas and images expression through a new kind of art. specific to women’s experience of op- Repeatedly and from multiple per- pression. spectives, the book is a reminder of Feminist filmdistribute and video were both the way that the fragility and informal- dedicated to challenging patriarchal ity of the medium worked as a tradition, especially its exploitation of complement to a nascent feminist the image of woman in art and in aesthetic, which was able to benefit commodity culture. But the way the from the ephemeral and the immedi- absolute novelty of the medium af- ate. The stories told in these essays fected the encounter between women have opened my eyes to the history of artists and video comes across strik- a feminist art of which I have always ingly from different accounts of move- been aware but, I now feel, I have ments across different European never properly understood. countries. In itself, novelty brought lib- Working as a feminist with film in eration: video had no place in the the 1970s was a very different experi- history of art and gave women artists ence from the feminist encounter with an unprecedented freedom. As Elaine video. For instance, film had its own Shemilt puts it: important radical traditions and, in It was the freedom that we were 1979, I argued for ‘an objective alli- afforded. Every artist that used ance’ between a feminist aesthetic video had that, but I would argue and the avant-garde, with an empha- that creating moving imagery sis on materiality and on structure, where a film crew was not required EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s xii

was particularly liberating for alone, the video camera afforded the women.2 woman artist access to the feminist aspiration to move from the silence The equipment was easy to use, and isolation of the private into the a woman could handle the camera on public sphere. her own and, perhaps even more cru- In terms of themes, video en- cially, the form had not been contami- abled the intimate and the private to nated by years or even centuries, of be explored by women artists, and male domination. But Shemilt’s re- also, as eloquently discussed by marks point beyond this practical and Laura Leuzzi, offered new modes for ideological issue. If the new camera representation of the self, introspec- afforded freedom, what kind of new tion and subjectivity. Beyond themes PROOFlanguage, images and ideas did the relevant to women, video materialised new freedom then afford? new ways of conceiving time and It is here that the question of the space. As the image appears on the ‘specificity of the medium’ takes a fas- monitor the instant it is recorded, the cinating turn that leads directly to the time of ‘now’ can be expanded, or ‘specificity of women’s oppression’. fragmented, creating unexpected lev- Over and over again, across national els of simultaneity. Leuzzi points out and cultural differences,do themes recur that the formal device of instant feed- that are closely associated with the back brought extra dimensions to female body and most particularly feminist video self-portraiture, impor- motherhood. Then, in the process,not as tant, for instance for Elaine Shemilt’s Catherine Elwes points out, the mutu- Doppelgänger (1979–81): ally exclusive terms ‘mother’ and ‘art- ist’ are unsettled. While these images Artists could see themselves on the worked in deliberate opposition to thedistributevideo monitor whilst videotaping traditions of male art, more signifi- and the tape was available imme- diately after the shoot. The monitor cantly, they provided a completely could generate an instant double of new visibility to women’s own experi- the artist … .3 ences of their bodies. The new cam- eras enabled the artist to film herself And, as Maeve Connolly empha- intimately and the pregnant belly sizes, video could transport site spe- came to be a crucial visual trope, giv- cific performance from outside into ing visibility to something nearly uni- the interior of a gallery, creating a for- versally experienced, but universally mal dislocation of time and space that subject to patriarchal taboo, all too could, in the Irish context, evoke the often lived in isolation. But the image thematic dislocations of migration of motherhood inevitably leads further and post-colonial legacies. into feminist politics: the difficult task Throughout the essays in the of bringing this rich, complex inter- book, there is a further, more disturb- weaving of the physical, the emotional ing, temporal dimension. The com- and the social aspects of motherhood pletely new ways of visualising time, out of the unspoken world of women so essential to the work, are haunted into cultural discourse, in this case, by video’s own and actual ephemer- through video art. In this example ality and its uncertain future. On the xiii Preface | EWVA one hand, with a pre-history that re- cal and theoretical issues around me- lated strongly to performance art, es- dium specificity and the technological sentially a one-off form, the tentative, shifts that result in certain ‘carriers fragile, nature of the new language of becoming obsolete’. He also points video coincided with the tentative out that in the UK, with a similar activist move women were making into art spirit, key artists found a place for and self-expression. In a rejection of video in the art school curriculum un- the commodification of art, the new der the name ‘time-based art’.5 medium’s relation to the present, even Introducing After Uniqueness. A its uncertain future, could keep pre- History of Film and Video Art in Circu- tentiousness, preciousness and inci- lation (2017),6 Erika Balsom re- dentally, male artistic self-importance, phrases André Bazin’s question ‘What at bay. PROOF is cinema?’ as ‘Where is cinema?’ (us- But on the other hand, throughout ing the term ‘cinema’, obviously, as a the book, there is an undertow of catch-all). In ‘European Women’s mourning, first of all, for the lack of Video Art’ the problem of ‘Where?’ infrastructural support (mentioned, for resonates poignantly, from the very instance, in Irish and Polish contexts) beginnings of women’s work with that limited women’s video art prac- video when its ephemerality and re- tice and, then, for all the work thatdofusal of definition was almost part of failed to survive. In their conversation, its poetic instance, through the stories Sean Cubitt draws attention to the dif- of loss and disintegration. The book ficulty of making copies of tapes, in suggestsnot that ‘where?’, in this context, the first instance, but also to their ma- is a space for ideas and memories as terial vulnerability; while Elaine well as the physical presence of the Shemilt remembers: object (howeverdistribute welcome that would I did not feel as though video was be). I would like to end with a quota- a medium that was supposed to tion from VALIE EXPORT that ele- stand the test of time. It was de- gantly sums up the importance of the signed to be short term and usually book and the way that the political and part of an installation … I made a the artistic potentials of the video me- new body of work; it was all transi- dium were inextricably entwined: tory, short lived. It’s odd now to look The question of what women can back at the remaining videos with a give to art and what art can give to precious attitude.4 women can be answered like this: Malcolm Dickson traces the im- transferring the specific situation of portance of artists as activists and women into the artistic context es- propagandists for their medium. He tablishes signs and signals that are discusses Stansfield/Hooykaas’ com- new forms of artistic expression paratively successful preservation of that serve to change the historical their work, but also notes: the practi- understanding of women as well.7 EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s xiv

Endnotes 1. Laura Mulvey, ‘Film, Feminism and the Avant-garde’, in Id., Visual and Other Pleasures (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 111–126. 2. See p. 87 in this publication. 3. See p. 12 in this publication. 4. See p. 90 in this publication. 5. See p. 72 in this publication. 6. Erika Balsom, After Uniqueness. A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). 7. See p. 119 in this publication. PROOF

do not distribute Introduction

Introduction Laura Leuzzi n 2003, in her article on the New emerged from the profound agency YorkPROOF Women’s Video Festival and understanding of the necessity to (1972–80), Melinda Barlow com- investigate and uncover the contexts I mented ‘there could be no better in which women artists’ video was pro- time to undertake this task, for duced and first exhibited, in order to both the legacies of video and femi- trace how the artworks were distrib- nism are literally at peril’.1 Since then, uted and also to collect information studies exhibitions and research have about access to technology, expertise been dedicated to specific womendoand funding. Furthermore, it was clear artists – who have now become ‘main- that the loss of many works was par- stream’ – such as, for example, tially due to the ephemerality of many Marina Abramoviƒ. But overall, the earlynot video artworks, performances fundamental contribution of women and installations – to which women artists to video – especially in Europe were particularly committed, often be- – is yet marginalised and the legacy of cause they refused the commodifica- women artists’ early video is still pre- tion and reificationdistribute of their work. carious. A key aspect that emerged from In 2015, Elaine Shemilt (Principal preliminary studies was that some Investigator), Stephen Partridge (Co- early women’s video artworks ‘reso- Investigator), Adam Lockhart (Media nated’ with each other: many videos Archivist and I (Post Doctoral Re- showed similar approaches to the me- searcher) were awarded an Arts and dium, reflected upon common Humanities Research Council stand- themes and issues and employed ard grant to undertake the research similar metaphors and semantic ele- project ‘EWVA – European Women’s ments. Many artworks were linked to Video Art in the 70s and 80s’ at Dun- feminist theories and movements of can of Jordanstone College of Art and the time, challenging patriarchal con- Design at University of Dundee (Scot- cepts and power structures that in- land). formed the art system – including art The application to the Arts and schools and colleges, and more gen- Humanities Research Council was erally, our society. With its European prompted by the knowledge acquired scope and international collabora- during the AHRC funded projects the tions, EWVA offered a privileged and team was previously involved with: specialised platform to investigate REWIND and REWINDItalia. EWVA these aspects. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 2

The project was developed experiment with practice-based re- through a mixed methodology by col- search methods and platforms in re- lecting archival and bibliographical lationship to the subject of the materials and oral testimonies from investigation. Research, feedback artists, curators, cultural entrepre- and data gained and collected in neurs, conservators and producers. these events have been incorporated The documents, images and papers into the chapters of this book. collected were made available In 2015 I co-curated Autoritratti through our website (www.ewva.ac. with the London based curators Giulia uk) in the spirit of sharing knowledge, Casalini and Dr Diana Georgiu, foun- but also promoting women artists’ ders of the queer feminist organisa- profiles, supporting their careers, and tion CUNTemporary. Autoritratti was a PROOFadvocating for equality in the video art performative screening at the Show- history canon. room, London, that drew from the in- From the beginning of the pro- novative and experimental book ject, it was apparent that it was not Autoritratto [Self-portrait] by the femi- possible to give a full recollection of nist thinker Carla Lonzi.3 The book women artists’ video in Europe, given Autoritratto created dialogue among the geographical extent of the project. artists that interlaced interviews inde- A number of casedo studies were cho- pendently recorded by the author, sen from different countries, diverse from which an extraordinarily lively approaches to the medium and their portrait emerge from the personal and relevance, in order to stimulatenot re- professional exchanges and intercon- search and debate in the field and nections between the artists and the uncover under-researched work. critics. Engaging with multiple meth- These case studies have highlighted odological approaches and curatorial further themes, issues and how thedistributestrategies, including dialogue, autobi- social, political and cultural context ography, cross-genre and frag- have influenced and shaped these mented narratives, Autoritratti created practices. an entwined cross-generational and Another element that emerged international dialogue of voices (real during the interviews was the impor- or interpreted) and video artworks by tance of feminist groups in producing women artists from the 70s to today, and distributing video in the 70s and around concepts of identity, self-rep- 80s for many women artists. In the UK, resentation and definition. The event for example, the feminist group Cir- explored themes such as mother- cles, founded in 1979 by Felicity Spar- hood, the role of women within soci- row, Lis Rhodes, Jo Davis and ety, traditional popular culture at Annabel Nicolson, operated by dis- large, the status of women working as tributing and supporting women art- professional artists, intimacy, and the ists’ video and film.2 agency of the body. An iconic video During EVWA, a number of re- that was included in the screening search and exhibition events were or- was Ketty La Rocca’s Appendice per ganised to engage with research una supplica (Fig. 1), a work pro- communities, disseminate the find- duced by the video pioneer Gerry ings of the research, and test and Schum in 1972. The performative 3 Introduction | EWVA work explored issues such as gender, communication, language and dia- logue and acted as a milestone in Italian and European video art history and in our screening. A second iteration of this format, entitled Self/Portraits at the Cen- trespace, Visual Research Centre (DCA, DJCAD, University of Dundee) and co-curated with Casalini and Georgiou, developed further on Lonzi’s approach and engaged with theories fromPROOF the Italian feminist phi- losopher Adriana Cavarero’s book Relating Narratives: Storytelling and …, Marikki Hakola, Ketty La Rocca, Fig. 1. Ketty La Elaine Shemilt, Giny Vos, an exhibition Rocca Appendice Selfhood (2000), where an exploration per una supplica, of one’s own identity is framed as the curated by myself and Lockhart at 1972, still from Summerhall, Edinburgh (2 August – video. desire to hear one own story narrated Courtesy of The 4 by another person. 24 September 2017, Fig. 2). The exhi- Ketty La Rocca Another practice-based method-dobition explored the approach of Estate, Florence. ology consisted of the re-enactment women video artists to a wide range of early video works. In October 2016, of socio-political themes and issues I co-curated with Lockhart, Shemilt’s suchnot as peace-making, systems of Doppelgänger Redux, a live re-enact- power, dialogue, conflict, control and ment of the early video performance equality, in connection with contem- Doppelgänger (1979–1981).5 The re- porary contexts, debates, and histori- enactment acted as a fundamental cal events. distribute research tool to investigate the piece: In Autumn 2017, EWVA was in- it allowed for greater understanding of vited to participate in Neon Festival in how the artist took advantage of the Dundee as part of The Polyphonic Es- mechanisms and technical features of say on Memory curated by Dr Alexan- early video equipment and allowed dra Ross, Gayle Miekle and myself.6 her to decompose and recompose The curators investigated the EWVA the structure of the piece. The re-en- and REWIND archives and each se- actment embedded both the memory lected two video-works, exploring, of the original artwork and the live from a feminist approach, the theme engagement of the audience. The of memory from different perspectives production and the backstage of the and angles; including historical and video were revealed live to viewers for personal memory, archetypes and the first time. It created an intimate forms of narrative. The selection was environment and provided an en- reciprocally revealed only during the hanced emotional involvement by event and the curators developed a projecting the feed from the camera. discussion, responding live to the in- Other relevant exhibition and re- dividual works, offering opinions, search events developed during the comments and feedback based on project include The Time is Right for their own curatorial and art historical EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 4

Fig. 2. Marikki Hakola, The Time is Right for …, 1984, photo composit. Courtesy of the artist.

PROOF

do expertise, research and background. reassessment of women artists’ in- This semi-improvised dialogue stimu- volvement in early video art in lated an interesting responsenot from the strengthening their profiles and iden- audience which reacted to the selec- tities within the art historical canon. tion and the debate. The volume includes chapters on In March 2018, EWVA joined themes, elements, styles and trends, Threshold Space at Horsecross Artsdistributethat emerged as particularly signifi- to celebrate International Women’s cant across Europe in early video art- Day with an iteration of the series 3G works by women artists: self- Three Generations of Women Perform, portraiture, identity and repre- curated by Iliyana Nedkova and my- sentation in relation to art history, the- self. The event incorporated women ory and the canon (Leuzzi, Emile artists’ video with live performance Shemilt); ephemerality, traces of art- from the video pioneer Elaine Shemilt, works and the apparatus (Partridge); and young artists, creating an inter- the dichotomy between Nature and generational dialogue.7 Urban environments (Lockhart); ro- This book constitutes the main mance, agency of the body, sexuality output of the research conducted and eroticism (Cinzia Cremona); through EWVA and aims to retrace closed-circuit video (Slavko Kacunko); some of the stories of early women and how women video artists chal- artists’ video experimentation in lenged the traditional concepts and Europe, and their achievements, and stereotypes in relation to motherhood features chapters on some funda- (Catherine Elwes). Elaine Shemilt de- mental case studies of European velops a complex dialogue with the women artists’ early video artworks. media art theorist Sean Cubitt engag- This book aims to contribute to the ing with political contexts, transitions 5 Introduction | EWVA in mediums and themes in relation to inception of the medium differed from early women artists’ video in Europe. country to country in Europe, due Some chapters focus on select mainly to political and economic situ- under-researched case studies from ations and systems. specific European regions including We were honoured to open this the Balkans (Jon Blackwood), North- book with a preface and a foreword, ern Europe (Lorella Scacco), Poland by two esteemed theorists and aca- (Marika Kuïmicz) and Ireland (Maeve demics in the field, Laura Mulvey and Connolly). The chapter by Malcolm Siegfried Zielinski. Dickson is dedicated to the germinal In conclusion, the EWVA book work and legacy of the Scottish/Dutch aims to provide a tool for academics, video pioneers duo Stanfield/ curators and the general public, hop- Hooykaas.PROOF These chapters provide ing to uncover and reassess the many exceptional specialist analysis and histories of women artists, in order to assessment of how women artists ex- inform future conservation, study and perimented with the medium, also exhibition of the pieces, as well as providing a clear context of how the their induction into the canon. Endnotes do 1. Melinda Barlow, ‘Feminism 101: The New York Women’s Video Festival, 1972–1980’, Camera Obscura, 54, v. 18, n. 3, 2003, pp. 3–38, p. 4 for the quote. 2. Katy Deepwell, ‘Felicity Sparrow: forming Circles’, n. paradoxa, v. 34, 2014, pp. 86–95. 3. Autoritratti was part of the feminist program Nownot You can Go , organised at The Showroom, Raven Row and the ICA in London by the Feminist Duration Reading Group and coordinated by Helena Reckitt and Dimitra Gtizta. Autoritratti included videos by Anna Valeria Borsari, Cinzia Cremona, Catherine Elwes, Tina Keane, Ketty La Rocca, Federica Marangoni, Maria Teresa Sartori, Elaine Shemilt, and Elisabetta di Sopra. The event featured live performances by Catherine Elwes, Maria Teresa Sartori anddistribute Elaine Shemilt. 4. Self/Portraits included video artworks by Pilar Albarracin, Cinzia Cremona, Catherine Elwes, Francesca Fini, Antonie Frank Grahamsdaughter, Sigalit Landau, Tamara Krikorian, Muda Mathis & Pipilotti Rist, Lydia Schouten, Elaine Shemilt, Annegret Soltau. It featured live performances by Cinzia Cremona, Elaine Shemilt and Lydia Schouten. 5. The event was part of the festival Visions in the Nunnery, at the Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts, London, curated by Cinzia Cremona and Tessa Garland. 6. Neon Festival is a digital arts festival based in Dundee, started in 2009. The 8th edition of the festival in 2017 was dedicated to Media Archeology and was curated by Clare Brennan, Sarah Cook, Mark Daniels, and Donna Holford-Lovell. This edition of the Festival was a collaboration between DJCAD, University of Dundee and Abertay University. A polyphonic Essay on Memory included works by Antonie Frank Grahamsdaughter, Rose Garrard, Tamara Krikorian, Annegret Soltau, Maria Vedder & Bettina Gruber and Marion Urch. 7. The curated screening included videos by Klára Kuchta, Federica Marangoni, Elaine Shemilt and Teresa Wennberg. The event was closed by site-specific performances by Contemporary Art Practice students from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design led by artists Richard Layzell and Pernille Spence. PROOF

do not distribute Chapter 1

Self/Portraits: The Mirror, The Self and The Other. Identity andPROOF Representation in Early Women’s Video Art in Europe

Chapter 1 / Self/Portraits Laura Leuzzi

Self-Portrait and Gender promotional purposes.2 Relevant doexamples include Artemisia Gen- uring the Renaissance, a tileschi’s Self-portrait as Allegory of new sense of agency in the Painting, and Sofonisba Anguissola’s role and identity of the artist andnot Lavinia Fontana’s numerous D stimulated the self-portrait Autoritratti (self-portraits). as an independent genre. With advancing access to the art Since that period, many artists have profession and practice, the number explored this genre with different re- of women artists’distribute self-portraits in- sults and sensibilities, employing new creased significantly during the 20th and old media. For a number of rea- Century. For many of them, the self- sons, including unequal access to portrait became a tool to defy the con- professional artistic education, the ventional and stereotypical image of marginalisation from ‘high art’ genres the woman as a mother and a saint; and the expected role of women within to defy the idea of the female nude as society in the past, many women art- the embodiment of beauty and the ists were not allowed to become object of the voyeuristic male desire professionals in the field of art and and to renegotiate their repre- allowed to reach ‘the grandeur’.1 Con- sentation, with the aim to negate the sidering this, nonetheless, several key ‘male gaze’ (a famous definition cre- examples of women artists’ self-por- ated by Laura Mulvey in her famous traits are to be found in the Modern piece Visual Pleasure and Narrative Age. Self-portraits at the time not only Cinema in 1975).3 For example, as depicted the artist’s appearance, but noted by Whitney Chadwick, Surreal- also, and more importantly, repre- ist women artists frequently employed sented the status and achievements the self-portrait and self-repre- she obtained. Ultimately, self-portraits sentation and that, in Laura Iamurri’s were employed for professional and view, this can be explained by the EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 8

necessity to challenge ‘the ambigu- An image not meant to please, but as ous mythicisation of women so typical tool to express themselves, communi- of the Surrealist movement’ and to cate, engage and challenge society face, particularly through photogra- and its stereotypes. phy, ‘self-perception starting from In this paper, I will argue how the their own bodies’.4 category of the self-portrait is signifi- Marsha Meskimmon, for exam- cant to critically interpret and contex- ple, defines what she calls ‘occupa- tualise some key women artists and tional portraits’. Since the beginning early video artworks, which engaged of the 19th Century, the representation in and tried to defy some tropes and of women artists at work, as makers, topoi of this genre from various per- producers, in their demiurgic activity spectives. In this respect, video be- PROOFof creating art became a ‘simple’ but came a tool to de-territorialise the meaningful trope: it challenged the genre of self-portraiture, as a means very art historical canon that has mar- for female artists to actively position ginalised and excluded women. It rep- themselves in art history and to further resented a powerful statement: to challenge the art historical canon in affirm their status of professional art- general. ists and to proclaim their inde- pendence.5 do With second wave feminism, Early Video and Women many women artists felt the necessity Artists: Using their own and urgency to regain controlnot of their Body image and representation in a patriar- When video was made commercially chal society, and incarnated in main- available in the late 60s and early 70s stream media, to present themselves in the USA and in Europe, it appealed with no mediation, ultimately defyingdistributeto many visual artists as it presented the stereotypical equation woman/ several advantages.7 Besides being saint/sinner and the duality within the relatively less expensive than film, the patriarchal art system of artist/man technology was comparably easier to and woman/model.6 operate.8 Video did not require a large Themes previously sanitised by crew and artists were able to operate the hand of the male artist, including the equipment alone or in very small women’s sexuality, desire, aging and groups of two or three, creating an pregnancy, were finally developed intimate set: a safe space for experi- from a woman’s perspective, becom- mentation. Furthermore, video didn’t ing tools to question what is identity need processing and printing, as in and draft their own self-portrait. Sec- the case of film. The images could be ond wave feminism led to an unprece- viewed – while taping – on a feedback dented number of representations of monitor and the artist could check the the female body, including the artist’s shot constantly. The video could be body; self-representation and self- also replayed on the monitor after portraiture were explored in different shooting. All these elements favoured media and with different results, aim- the exploration of the body, identity ing to represent women from a and self-representation. woman’s perspective and for women. In 1976, the American video artist 9 Chapter 1 / Self/Portraits | EWVA

Hermine Freed pointed out that artists medium in Europe. In her analysis of used their own body because it en- strategies of re-mediating the image hanced a sense of control, allowing of the body, Elwes references the artist to work alone.9 This brings Hoover’s Landscape (1983, Figs. 1a- us to a point raised at the beginning b) in which the camera peruses the of this chapter. In a context of re-ap- artist’s hand from such close proxim- propriation of their own image as a ity that its creases and surfaces look way of self-representation, video was like a landscape and the female body particularly attractive to many women loses its sexual connotation.14 This artists in the 70s and 80s for these illusion is reinforced by intense blue reasons, also because it was per- sky in the background of this unusual ceived not to be dominated by male landscape. In this work, we can iden- tradition.10PROOFThe progressive availabil- tify several key elements of Hoover’s ity of the video camera coincided par- practice: the illusion, the use of light tially with second wave feminism and and the hand, which is a recurring female artists and feminist collectives element in her videos. On this issue, soon employed it in documentaries, Dieter Daniels commented: ‘[…] the performance documentation and art- hand is a self-portrait reduced to its ists’ videos.11 Women artists involved most essential elements’.15 The hand in video and performance in Europedoof the artist evokes the gesture of and especially in England, were well painting and manipulating matter, the aware of the risks of objectification ‘craftsmanship’, the traditional prac- that lay in the use of their body and ticenot (in Hoover’s case, drawing was nudity in their practice. They were her most beloved technique), but also keenly aware of the dangers of re-per- the status of the professional artist. petrating the ‘male gaze’, especially The hand becomes a metaphor for using a medium – video – that was what has beendistribute denied to women for employed by Broadcast TV. many centuries, and a portrait of the As noted by British artist and artist by a visual synecdoche. theorist Catherine Elwes, they ‘looked The body is central to Hoover’s for ways of problematizing the ap- early video practice and we can detect pearance of the female body whilst several other strategies employed by negotiating new forms of visibility’.12 the artist to re-mediate its image:16 in Elwes describes some approaches Movement in Light (1975–76), for ex- adopted by women video artists to ample, Hoover moves her body – bypass the ‘pitfalls of sexual repre- which is only partly visible – very sentation’. For example, Elwes dis- slowly in front of the camera. The slow cusses the case of Nan Hoover’s use motion combined once again with the of ‘the built in close-up lens of the ‘fragmentation’ – as well as the strong video camera to disrupt the unity of use of light – leads into abstract forms, the female body’.13 and as a consequence, totally de- Educated at the Corcoran Gallery sexualises the body. Two other ele- School in Washington from 1945 to ments contributed further to a 1954, Hoover moved to Amsterdam in de-objectifying effect of the artist’s 1969, and started to work with video body: colour and light. This can be in 1973, becoming a pioneer of the observed, for example, in Hoover’s EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 10

offering herself to the eye of the viewer. Hoover always stated she was not a feminist and defined herself as an ‘apolitical’, ‘free person’ and her approach was informed by ‘equality thinking’ as she used to think of her- self as an artist first and then as a woman. On this issue, Jansen com- ments that Hoover’s shadows and sil- houettes could as well be ‘male or female’. The de-sexualisation and ma- PROOF nipulation of Hoover’s own body ap- pear to be part of a process of neutralisation of the sexual connota- tion and de-personalisation of the self-portrait: the self-images are aimed to become something else, the body is a gateway to imagination. Al- do though the body seems to become a way to tell ‘other’ stories, and to avoid the artist’s own life story, at the very not same time it is a way to express their internal world and a desire to narrate it. The artist’s hand assumes a key distributerole in several artworks. A relevant example of this is The Motovun Tape (1976, Fig. 2) by the Croatian artist Figs. 1a-b. Nan Projection (1980). The camera cap- ðiva Kraus. The video was made on Hoover, Landscape, tures shadows of objects on the wall, the occasion of the Fourth Encounter 1983, stills from creating perspectives and illusions in Motovun which was dedicated to video. from ephemeral effects. The viewer Courtesy of LIMA the theme of identity – this was when Amsterdam. once again tries to identify forms and Kraus used video for the first time. In elements, deformed by lighting ef- The Motovun Tape, Kraus explored fects; at some point we detect a win- the theme of identity in relation to per- dow and the artist in the darkness, as sonal memory as well as the historic a shadow. At the end of the video, the memory of the city of Motovun artist slowly crosses the screen: a through the physical contact of her confirmation that we have not seen a hand. Originally, as shown in some ghost and, using Plato’s allegory of photographs taken during the shoot, the cave, the viewer is finally able to the video was meant to open with a see reality as it is, unmediated. The shot of the artist’s navel. The artist artist finally turns her back to the cam- reckons that Paolo Cardazzo – co-di- era, standing as an unintelligible pres- rector of Galleria del Cavallino and ence, avoiding capture once again, producer of the video – cut out this 11 Chapter 1 / Self/Portraits | EWVA sequence later in the post-production phase in Venice.17 The navel evokes fundamental concepts including the generative power of women’s body or in some religions such as Hinduism for example, the generation of the world. In the video, the portrait of the artist is reduced to a minimum: the hand, the hand that in Kraus’ practice also draws and paints, acts as a synecdoche of the artist. The video is ultimatelyPROOF an investigation into the theme of identity that leads us to both a collective and personal memory rep- phy it was mostly considered to be the Fig. 2. ðiva resented by the walls of the city of Kraus, The bearer of false and deceptive knowl- Motovun Tape, Motovun, that are charged with his- edge, an illusion (and Saint Paul 1976, still from tory, made of Istrian stone creating a 1 video. would use a similar perspective in Courtesy of the connection to the city of Venice, Cor, 13.12); in contrast, it could also artist. Kraus’ new adopted home (to wheredobe read as a symbol of the divine and she moved in the early 70s). This work a tool to reflect and capture spiritual opens up an investigation to the cen- essence of things (Saint Paul, 2Cor). trality of the representation of the hand In thenot visual arts, the mirror may as- in artists’ self-portraits which has been sume a positive value. It was some- the object of several studies.18 times employed as a metaphor for painting itself, a supposedly trustwor- thy representationdistribute of reality and in the Portraits to an Electronic Renaissance it also assumed the Mirror function of amending reality from its The mirror has played a key role in imperfections (for example as in Al- history in shaping artists’ self-por- berti’s imitatio/electio doctrine once traits: beside the theoretical and so- again).19 cietal reasons that accompanied the As noted by Meskimmon, exam- development of the self-portrait dur- ining the traditional modern art histori- ing the Renaissance, technical pro- cal canon, the mirror was a symbol of gress in mirror-making and the vanity and when included in female availability of mirrors greatly facilitated nude artworks painted by male the practice of self-portraiture. In- authors, suggested a sort of innate deed, Italian Renaissance theorist desire for women to be objectified and Leon Battista Alberti conjoins the in- act as a passive element of male de- vention of painting with the myth of sire. On this topic, the art historian Narcissus (the doctrine of imita- Frances Borzello remarked that the tio/electio). very myth of women artists’ affinity In Western Philosophy, the mirror with self-portraiture – which in reality has been a complex, somewhat am- has no foundation – may likely have bivalent symbol: for platonic philoso- been supported by this negative EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 12

female association with the vice of recording more than once on the vanity with the mirror. same tape was also possible in order In Lacanian psychoanalytical the- to make multiple ephemeral ‘doppel- ory, the ‘mirror-stage’ is a fundamen- gängers’. The viewers could see their tal moment in the formation of the I, own reflection in the mirror glass of the differentiated from the mother, and in monitor on which the work was dis- gaining an individual identity. Feminist played (at the time projections were thinkers and authors have challenged rare). ‘the logic of the mirror’ that diminishes The mirror-metaphor was central and objectifies women. As pointed in Rosalind Krauss’ renowned essay out by Meskimmon, ‘to challenge the about video, The Aesthetics of Narcis- mirror and its associations for women sism from 1976.23 Krauss states that PROOFis again perceived to be an important ‘unlike the visual arts, video is capable stage on the path of female emanci- of recording and transmitting at the pation’.20 Simone De Beauvoir, Lucy same time – producing instant feed- Irigaray and Virginia Woolf all employ back. The body [the human body] is the metaphor of the mirror to explain therefore, as it were, centred between how, in patriarchal society, women two machines that are the opening simply reflected, and possibly magni- and closing of a parenthesis. The first fied the ‘first sex’.21doThe ‘mirror meta- of these is the camera; the second is phor’ with its ‘implications’ is the monitor, which re-projects the per- fundamental to analyse the attempt to former’s image with the immediacy of renegotiate forms of ‘representationnot a mirror.’ Proceeding from an analysis outside the male dominated struc- of Vito Acconci’s Centers, Krauss tures of art, philosophy, history and linked this loop to a narcissistic quality literature’.22 of video, although at the end of her Most significantly, in the 70s thedistributepiece she took a step back from this mirror was used as a powerful meta- assertion. Although her paper pro- phor in video in several early theoreti- vided key elements to analyse video cal essays. In 1970, for example, the at the time and still partially provides Italian art historian and critic Renato avenues for today, we can consider its Barilli defined video as a ‘clear and main point – the narcissistic nature of trustworthy mirror of the action’. In video, to be completely surpassed. In 1977, the German art historian and 2003, Michael Rush challenged this curator Wulf Herzogenrath described interpretation suggesting, very inter- ‘Video as a mirror’, as one of the three estingly, that Acconci was instead ad- artistic ways to use video in his classi- dressing himself to the invisible – to fication. Probably this metaphor was the audience beyond the camera. Fol- inspired by the instant feedback pro- lowing from Krauss’ essay, in Sexy vided by video. Artists could see Lies in Videotapes (2003), Anja themselves on the video monitor Osswald highlighted that the meta- whilst videotaping and the video was phor of video-as-mirror is not com- available immediately after the shoot. pletely accurate. Video doesn’t offer a The monitor could generate an instant reversed image, but a double, so the double of the artist that could play as ‘other’ breaks the narcissistic loop. an interlocutor or an antagonist; and Ultimately, video for Osswald, the 13 Chapter 1 / Self/Portraits | EWVA

‘electronic mirror’ is ‘rather the reflec- representation, as a form of aestheti- tion of the self-reflection’.24 cised beauty and object of desire and From Osswald’s perspective, this investigate, experiment and renegoti- would be supported by the fact that ate alternative forms of visibility and only a few videos include the term exposure. self-portrait in the title. These videos Among the examples of most re- confine the artist to the depersonal- nowned videos that include the word ised role of ‘an empty container’, ex- ‘self-portrait’ in their title, there is A posing the ‘rhetorical artificiality of Phrenological Self-portrait (1977, Fig. self-images’ (including the doubling, 3) by the Swedish video pioneer Mari- splitting that are part of our analysis) anne Heske, produced at M HKA in and what she defines the ‘paradox of Antwerp. This work provides a key “self-lessPROOF self-images”’.25 Nonethe- example of the examination of the very less, it might be worth remarking that notion of identity through video and relevant exceptions exist and that be- the use of both doubling and mirroring sides the title, several early videos – elements. In the work, Heske ad- especially the ones by female artists – dresses herself and writes on a moni- engage the issue of representing the tor that plays a video of herself. This artist’s appearance, body and iden- monitor within the video evokes the tity, challenging stereotypes and nor-dosystem of video feedback that is core mative interpretations imposed by to the mirror-metaphor. The piece society and tradition. Interestingly opens by showing the monitor with a enough, both Osswald and Krauss videonot that displays Heske with her agree on the introspective function of head down. The artist then raises her video.26 This element might suggest head facing the camera directly. Not that the camera beyond its physical only the camera of the video recorded representation, in some way recon- on the monitor,distribute but consequently the nects the electronic mirror to the spiri- second camera, the one to make the tual interpretation of the traditional video a mise en abyme is reinforced mirror. when the work is shown on a monitor. Starting from all these premises, So Heske is addressing us, the I think it is interesting to verify if and viewer, directly, as Rush suggested how the metaphor of video as an for Acconci. Then another Heske en- ‘electronic mirror’ – keeping the nar- ters the scene, placing herself in front cissistic element completely to the of the monitor, facing herself towards margins – and the creation of a double the camera. There is the double, the are fruitful in two lines of enquiry. First, other, the interlocutor of the artist, and to analyse women artists’ video art- a dialogue starts between the two: works that engage with issues of self- referring to what Osswald pointed out: portraiture, self-representation, image the video allows for producing a dop- and identity. Second, to question if pelgänger of the artist. these elements are still relevant to un- Heske in the recorded video on derstand how women artists used the monitor lists with numbers and video to challenge the traditional names the ‘individual organs’ that visual art genres, subvert the compose the brain and where ‘func- stereotypical version of women’s tions’ were localised according to the EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 14

Fig. 3. Marianne Heske, A Phrenological Self-portrait, 1977, still from video. Courtesy of the artist.

PROOF

phrenological theorydo invented by the her recorded self, but this time point- German physician Franz Joseph Gall ing out the parts of the skull on her in 1796. The second Heske – the one head: the artist and her portrait/dou- that performs in the videonot – repeats ble coincide. The writing visible on the what the one in the monitor says and glass creates a halo around her face, draws on the reflecting glass screen, and tautologically accompany this on her own image/portrait, the repetition. In the end, the ‘monitor phrenological chart of the brain, ofdistributeHeske’ says ‘That’s the one’, the ‘live’ which she keeps a model in her hand. Heske replies ‘ok’, echoed by the This repetition creates an echo, a form other. The ‘live’ Heske leaves, and her of reiteration or mirroring: there is no doppelgänger remains alone for a real dialogue between the two, the brief moment. The monitor is turned actions of the second seem to derive off and the writing on the glass stays from the first. And yet, in a couple of to reveal once more the illusion of its passages, the ‘live’ Heske anticipates materiality. the other, reminding us that every- Phrenological thinking became thing has been pre-recorded, it is a extremely popular in the 19th Century, past action, the double provided by later dismissed as a pseudoscience. the electronic-mirror is just an illusion, With this video performance, Heske as video ultimately is. It reminds us ultimately raises issues of how man that the second Heske – the one out- has tried to grasp, describe and ex- side the small monitor is the one in plain human behaviour and attitudes control: as such, a sort of shift in the in a constructed and artificial way; power dynamic occurs. Finally, Heske also of how our beliefs and perception moves in front of the monitor, in front of what is science and what has of her own portrait and facing the changed and transformed. camera, repeats the list, preceded by Heske stated: ‘I am playing by 15 Chapter 1 / Self/Portraits | EWVA categorising my own mind with my several video artworks including Con- alter ego in A Phrenological Self-por- flict, Emotive Progression and iam- trait. Video is particularly suitable to dead, which were featured in The reflect and correspond to the human Video Show, a seminal independent senses’.27 In this statement the artist video festival held at the Serpentine summarises a series of elements that Gallery, London (1 to 25 May, 1975).30 are part of our analysis: the double, Although she participated in this the reflection and the investigation of exhibition, Shemilt was never part of the possibilities of video. Heske the British video ‘community’ (which stated she was not part of any feminist included London Video Arts) and her movement – ‘For me feminism = hu- exchanges with other video artists manism = human rights’.28 From this were almost non-existent. perspective,PROOF video is employed for an Due possibly to this isolation and investigation of identity, of self-portrai- to the fact that she considered video ture as a traditional genre and as a as part of ephemeral installations, in concept, and resonates with video 1984, before moving to Dundee, Scot- works of that time in the way it experi- land, Shemilt destroyed the only exist- ments with the medium. ing copies of her 70s videos. The Heske’s practice is deeply rooted traces – including photographs, draw- in ecology, and she paralleleddo a ings and prints – from those 70s vid- phrenological approach of the human eos remain as the final artworks. Two skull to a geographical exploration of videos from Shemilt’s early produc- the Earth.29 tion,not both made before 1984, are still Examining other early video art- existing: Doppelgänger (1979–1981, works by European female video pio- Fig. 4) and Women Soldiers (1981).31 neers, several European women Doppelgänger is a performance artists also employed physical mirrors to camera thatdistribute was made by Shemilt in their innovative video artworks at the end of a three-year residency at when addressing issues of identity South Hill Park Art Centre, where, and representation, evoking both the thanks to an award from Southern traditional use of this tool in painting Arts, video facilities were available. and the metaphor of video as elec- In the video performance, Shemilt tronic mirror and a tool. A relevant draws with make-up a portrait of her early video artwork that employs the reflected image on a mirror, placed in mirror in and outside the screen is front of her. As the performance pro- Elaine Shemilt’s Doppelgänger.To- ceeds, the portrait slowly shapes up day, Elaine Shemilt is an internation- and the double – the doppelgänger is ally renowned printmaker, but little is formed. The artist continues to mimic known about her early experimenta- with her face the expression as if she tion and work with video. This is in part were applying make-up onto her own due to the almost complete loss of her skin. In the end, the double on the early video pieces. Shemilt started in- mirror is left alone, replacing the artist corporating video in her practice in in front of the viewer. Shemilt’s Dop- 1974 as a student at Winchester pelgänger Redux, a re-enactment of School of Art, with a Sony Rover Por- the video-performance at Nunnery tapak. In the following years she made Gallery, Bow Arts, London in 2016 was EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 16

(the electronic, but also the real one) is a gateway to her. Elizabeth Grosz’s words about Irigarays’ interest to- wards Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass come to mind: ‘She goes through the looking-glass, through, that is, the dichotomous structures of knowledge, the binary polarisations in which only man’s primacy is re- flected’.32 The artist offers her body to the audience, an un-sanitised version of it, in an attempt at de-objectifica- PROOF tion. Keeping in mind Elwes’ point of view, this multi-layered representation Fig. 4. Elaine as an effective practice-based re- of the artist’s own body can also be Shemilt, interpreted as another strategy for re- Doppelgänger, search tool to understand better how 1979–1981, still the video was originally taped. In the mediating and representing the fe- from video. video, the portrait is apparently built male body through a technique similar Courtesy of the artist. merely on the mirror, but as the re-en- to the one that Shemilt was develop- actment reveals, thedo artist used a key ing with her prints. feature of early video: the video feed- Furthermore, it destabilises the back. A monitor that streamed the notion of the ‘self’, creating a repre- feedback was placed perpendicularlynot sentation that is – to use Meskim- to the mirror so that the image was mon’s terminology in the context of a reflected in one of its angles: if one feminist approach to the male-domi- observes Doppelgänger closely, the nated genre of autobiography and its artist is looking at her left. She is look-distributenotion of a ‘stable self’33 – ‘de-cen- ing at the reflection of the feedback on tred’ and questions identity as a tran- the mirror. In this way, Shemilt clearly sient, constantly shifting and stratified engages directly with the point raised element, uncovering its ‘construc- by Osswald: she needs to reverse the tions’. image produced by the feedback in Re-enacting the traditional role of order to portray it correctly on the mir- the painter with the mirror stage, ror. The artist shows in this case a Shemilt directly references the genre deep understanding of the medium of artists’ self-portraiture (and also and how it functions. specifically that of women artists) and Analysing the sequences, photo- therefore engages with the art histori- graphs of Shemilt interrupt the flow of cal canon. The piece stimulates re- the performance. Multi-layered im- flections upon the perception of ages of the artist appear, sometimes women as professional artists, their naked, creating multiple doubles. This status in the canon and within society echoes the sense of multiple person- and more specifically within art alities conveyed by the schizophrenic schools and the art system. Once audio recordings that accompany the again the self-portrait is used to chal- performance. This image acts as a lenge the patriarchal art system and window to her inner-self: the mirror advocate for recognition. 17 Chapter 1 / Self/Portraits | EWVA

For a powerful visual comparison for Shemilt’s Doppelgänger, we can even go back to early Renaissance, to one of the many illuminated repre- sentations of Marcia – one of the char- acters of Boccaccio’s Concerning Famous Women – in which the artist, placed obliquely in relation to the fore- ground in the intimacy of her studio, paints a self-portrait that look like a double, using a mirror.34 A direct reference to the use of the mirror withPROOF its symbolism in paint- ing and notion of self-portrait is to be found in Tamara Krikorian’s Vanitas resonates with the very concept of the Fig. 5. Tamara video itself. Krikorian, (1977, Fig. 5). In the video, the camera Vanitas, 1977, frames the artist and an oval mirror Interestingly, the silent Krikorian still from video. reflecting a still life with vanitas and a in the foreground assumes a very re- Courtesy of Ivor Davies. TV monitor. The TV broadcast is inter- flective pose of melancholic medita- rupted by a video featuring Krikoriandotion on the ephemerality of life. While with an oval mirror reflecting the back in contrast, the Krikorian within the TV of the artist’s head and the monitor in set is looking to the camera, address- which the artist speaks. In these inter- ingnot the audience (although her face ruptions, the artist explains how she cannot be seen clearly due to the low conceived the work and her research quality of the image), replicating the about still life, and specifically the communicative strategy of the TV pre- vanitas and the artist self-portrait. Krik- senter. Her voicedistribute is mediated by the orian’s interruptions, in some sense, loudspeaker, creating a sound evoke the idea of what Stephen Par- equivalent of the mise en abyme.Krik- tridge has defined as an artists’ TV orian remarked that Vanitas is a ‘self- Intervention: an artist’s piece that portrait of the artist and at the same breaks the flux of normal broadcast- time an allegory of the ephemeral na- ing without the broadcaster’s media- ture of television’.35 In this quote, the tion. In her interludes, Krikorian artist underlines how the video ex- explains that she drew inspiration plores two traditional artistic genres – from Nicolas Tournier’s An Allegory of the portrait and the still life with vanitas Justice and Vanity (1623–24, Oxford, – of which the TV has become part, Ashmolean Museum). Her analysis implying its transitory nature. Here, then focuses on some renowned the artist employs some fundamental pieces including David Bailly’s Vanitas topoi of both genres: the portrait and Still-life with a Portrait of a Young self-portrait (the mirror and the mise Painter (1651), where the artist is sur- en abyme) and the still life with vanitas rounded by his works and symbols of (once again the mirror, the candle – vanitas. In this case, as noted by Krik- usually extinguished, the fruit, the orian, the self-portrait becomes the glass and wine as Eucharistic sym- subject of the vanitas. This notion bols). The inclusion of these elements EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 18

Fig. 6. Klára Kuchta, Etre blonde c’est la perfection [Being Blonde is Perfection], 1980, still from video. Courtesy of the artist.

PROOF

and the words spokendo in her interven- voice – which becomes more and tions engage directly with art history, more distorted with time – the artist so that Krikorian positions herself in its rebels against these stereotypes canon, and indirectly – oncenot again – linked to women’s beauty and creates encompasses the concept of the rec- a dramatic climax. ognition of women artists. The themes of hair and stereo- The mirror in relation to portraiture typical female beauty are part of and representation of the female bodydistributeKuchta’s life-long research into the are also themes raised on many occa- capitalist socio-economic system. sions by the Hungarian-Swiss artist These themes have also been ex- Klára Kuchta in early video practice. In plored in her Biondo Veneziano Etre blonde c’est la perfection [Being [Venitian Blonde], a video artwork pro- Blonde is Perfection] (1980, Fig. 6), for duced in July 1978 in Venice by Fer- example, Kuchta combs her hair, one rara’s Centro Videoarte for the of her signature motifs, in front of a exhibition Venerezia Revenice. In the mirror and a female voice continues to video, Kuchta’s hair is dyed in the repeat how being blonde means to be traditional process of Venetian perfect (‘La beauté des cheveux c’est Blonde, a type of light red/blonde col- sa blondeur, être blonde c’est la per- our, which became popular in Venice fection’ / the beauty of hair is its blon- during the Renaissance. For the artist, deness, being blonde is perfection). the hair acts as a ‘social metaphor’, to In this work, the mirror symbolises discuss the origins of the capitalist physical beauty and in order to break system and its degeneration in the this stereotype, the artist physically ‘accelerating global capitalist celeb- breaks the mirror, destroying the in- rity culture’ of the 70s. In the exhibi- tegrity of the image. Also, with the tion, charts and graphs that describe friction between the image and the Kuchta’s research into how women 19 Chapter 1 / Self/Portraits | EWVA manipulated the appearance of their Me, Myself and I: hair (at what age they started going to Ephemeral Doubles, the hairdresser, how many times per Doppelgängers and month, etc.) accompanied the video. Puppets in Front of the Referring to a traditional ‘constructed’ Electronic Mirror standard of ‘angelic beauty’ and sym- A key element that emerges in our bolically captured in Biondo Venez- analysis of early video artworks dedi- iano by this particular hairstyle, the cated to portraiture, is the double. artist questions not only how these Created with a mirror or with other standards have always influenced media, the double appears to engage women’s self-perception in the past, with other forms of re-mediation and but also how they are still influenced re-negotiation of women’s bodily visi- today.36 PROOF bility and provides an essential tool to As explained by Kuchta, who had explore the body. This use of the dou- studied the traditional process of hair ble can be observed in Anna Valeria colouring as reported by Pietro Borsari’s Autoritratto in una stanza, Bembo, this particular way of bleach- documentario [Self-Portrait in a ing the hair characterised the women Room, Documentary] (Fig. 7), and is in Tiziano Vecellio’s paintings – from a fundamental video performance which it took its name. Once again, doproduced by Galleria del Cavallino, reference to the history of art seems Venice in 1977. In this piece, Borsari to play as a tool to challenge the pa- isolated herself in a room of the gal- triarchal, traditional portrayal of lery,not and through a photo and video women’s beauty, and how this em- camera investigated her body and her bodies a mercantile economic and identity introspectively, in relation to social structure as it does for capital- the confined space. The viewer is ism even today. distribute walked through this intimate journey In a letter to Janus, Kuchta also by the artist’s own words. notes: ‘Le mouvement de la camera In the video, the representation était en spirale continuellement, sym- and exploration of the artist’s body is bolisant la continuité et perpetualité indirect: we never see her. At first, the historique et gestuelle‘[Themove- camera shows us the room: we see ment of the camera was continuously through her eyes, we are her. And in a spiral, symbolising the historical then, the camera shows us a female and gestural continuity and perpetu- ity37]. As commented on by the artist, ‘the shooting in the round’ – from the ‘theatre in the round’ – aims to defy Fig. 7. Anna the 180-degree style of filming to Valeria Borsari, show all sides in constant movement. Autoritratto in una stanza, This particular style aimed to increase documentario a sense of ‘intimacy and an immersive [Self-Portrait in a Room, experience’ and reflected the artist’s Documentary], approach to communicate more di- 1977, still from video. rectly and in an enhanced way Courtesy of the through video with the viewer. artist. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 20

version of Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man: form of protest against the objectifica- Borsari’s drawing, which has been tion of women’s bodies and their im- outlined from her own body, challeng- age. Marangoni literally objectifies her ing the male dominated classical body in multiple doubles and materi- model which embodied perfection ally annihilates her doppelgänger to and becomes a tool to represent and visually exemplify how the body is a study the artist’s body. Once again, territory of exploitation in capitalist so- the reference to the traditional art his- ciety. Ultimately she raises her voice torical canon re-emerges: the artist on issues such as human trafficking aims to question its assumptions and the exploitation of sex workers. In based on the patriarchal system and the second part of the video, the dou- propose alternative forms. With the ble is incarnated by transparent plas- PROOFdrawing, the camera gently travels tic masks, moulded on Marangoni’s through the pencil line, visually ca- face, worn by the artist and the group ressing the artist’s body. This light and of people who surround her. Maran- conceptual representation is followed goni commented on this sequence, by a visually contrasting pile of soil, that she is like a priestess after the that materially occupies the space ritual of ‘sacrificial offering’.40 The and replaces the artist’s body, sym- doppelgänger in this case plays an bolising its connectiondo to the earth, ambiguous role: although at first the and its rhythms. mask looks like a layer upon the faces, Another pioneer who employs the still perfectly recognisable, little by lit- use of doubles in her early videonot prac- tle, as the figures’ breath opacifies, tice is the Italian artist Federica Maran- the veneer and the camera goes out goni who started experimenting the of focus, single characters start to dis- medium while collaborating with Cen- appear and the face of the artist mul- tro Videoarte of Palazzo dei Diamanti,distributetiplies. This physical ‘barrier’ in some Ferrara, the only publicly funded Ital- way de-personalises the singular and ian video centre in the 70s and 80s. In builds up a group of equals to repre- 1979, Marangoni made The Box of Life sent the fact that life is ephemeral and (Fig. 8), a performance initially shot on that we are all destined to the same 16 mm and later transferred to end. video.38 In the first segment of the This theme is reinforced by a work, Marangoni melts wax body quote from Marcel Duchamp’s epi- parts, cast from her own body, and taph at the closure of the video: red wax flowers on an electrically D’ailleurs, c’est toujours les autres qui heated table, with a blowtorch. In the meurent [Anyway, it’s always the other action the artist retrieves the body guy who dies].41 casts from a small cupboard – the In 1980, Marangoni once again so-called Box of Life. Since 1975, Ma- employed the use of wax body parts rangoni used to bring a similar cup- on an electric table in the installation board to the city market (Il baule del La vita è tempo e memoria del tempo corpo ricostruito in una piazza al mer- [Life is Time and Memory of Time] for cato [The Reconstructed Bodies the Venice Biennale. In this work, the Trunk in a Market Square]);39 selling double is also embodied by a nega- those casts of female body parts as a tive silhouette on a plexiglass surface: 21 Chapter 1 / Self/Portraits | EWVA it stands among two videos on moni- tors, which represent the transient quality of time embodying once again humanity’s destiny, life and death. Looking to Marangoni’s video art- works and installations, analogies can be drawn to Elaine Shemilt’s early video performances (as iamdead or Conflict) in which the artist employed the use of casts and wire puppets. Interestingly enough, for both Shemilt and Marangoni, these ethe- real, indexicalPROOF and in some ways de- personalised self-portraits play as the performance could see the per- Fig. 8. Federica tools to represent humanitarian or ex- Marangoni, The formance live and the video which Box of Life, istential issues, their bodies become merged the two images on the moni- 1979, 16 mm that of every person in an attempt to tor. Don’t Believe I am an Amazon transferred to video, still from embody these reflections. Reading addresses multiple issues from a dif- video. these elements through Elwes’ point ferent prospective. On one level, Courtesy of the artist. of view, the use of these ephemeraldoRosenbach is directly addressing the doubles could be also seen as strate- traditional, stereotypical and idealised gies to re-mediate and to renegotiate representation of women in the arts. new forms of visibility and repre- Shenot challenges the ‘pure’, ‘ethereal’ sentation of the female body. Ulti- and ‘unattainable’ representation of mately, they also evoke, once again, the woman in art history, which rele- traditional artistic practice: the demi- gated the female to the role of mother, urgic labour of the artist that manipu- saint and virgin,distribute constantly embodied lates matter. by the figure of the Virgin Mary or The reference to the art historical Saints. The idealised portrayal of the canon and the double is key to read- woman – fruit of a cultural, social and ing the renowned live video perform- political construction fixed in centuries ance Don’t Believe I am an Amazon of western art history – is evidently (1975) by Ulrike Rosenbach, in which represented in Rosenbach’s video by the face of the artist is superimposed the presence of Lochner’s painting. onto the head of Stefan Lochner’s Ma- The rose in Lochner’s work, in particu- donna im Rosenhag [Madonna in the lar, is one of the traditional attributions Rose-bower] (Wallraf-Richartz-Mu- of Virgin, rosa mystica, particularly seum & Fondation Corboud, Co- popular in the Medieval Age: ‘Rose logne, 1451). Arrows are shot by the without thorns, you have become a artist and hit the reproduction of the Mother’ were words from a popular painting and at the same time the song.42 This image of pureness of the portrait of the artist superimposed Virgin is contrasted by the violent ac- onto the video. The two faces/portraits tion of the Amazon which could sym- (Robenbach’s and the Madonna) bolise the patriarchal system, with its were shot independently and merged ‘structures of power’ based on ag- together on a monitor: the audience of gression and attack.43 EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 22

In the 70s, the conversation on the representation of identity and im- the methods of representing women age seem to be key to reading post- in western art history was opened up 1968 women’s self-portraits, and and debated by different authors – consequently some fundamental including, for example John Berger in works of women video pioneers. The Ways of Seeing (1972) and an accu- lack of a male dominated tradition rate analysis of motherhood was within video art allowed the liberty to made in 1976 by Marina Warren in explore the tropes of this genre and Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the re-appropriate them. The powerful Cult of the Virgin Mary. Rosenbach’s tool and metaphor provided by the body of video work in those years mirror play a new, renovated role: complements and comments upon matching the mirror-metaphor associ- PROOFthis debate and defies this tradition, ated with the video as medium itself, directly referencing art history. it assumed the function of the intro- On another level, the ghostly por- spective device. In the context of the trait of the artist floats upon the more systems of art and academia, women stable image of the Madonna, and sought recognition and status: in this creates both the effect of a sort of respect, video became a tool to rep- double, but at the same time a new resent the professional artist and to image, that of ado third character in advocate for a new status and a new which the lines of the two faces, as the position for women within the art his- two characters, merge. The Madonna torical canon. and the artist are part ofnot the same Ultimately, with the rise of sec- being. The arrow hits both, and its ond-wave feminism, video became a haunting sound shakes the viewer. In new weapon for women artists to defy this case, agreeing with Osswald and stereotypical representations of the Krauss’ interpretation of video, wedistributebody, to change the perspective from propose its use in connection with model to artist and again newly back self-portraiture and the representation to model, but with a shift from object of identity, used as an introspective to active subject. tool: quoting Annette Jael Leehman ‘the video recording is mental feed- Acknowledgements: This chapter could 44 have not been possible without the support back of the artist’. and help of Giulia Casalini, Cinzia Cre- From this brief analysis emerges mona, Catherine Elwes, Diana Georgiou, Adam Lockhart, Dorcas Müller, Federica an understanding of how the genre of Marangoni, Stephen Partridge, and Elaine portraiture connected with themes of Shemilt. 23 Chapter 1 / Self/Portraits | EWVA

Endnotes

1. Linda Nochlin, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ (1971), in Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1988). 2. Several examples of women artists’ self-portraits are discussed, for example, in Frances Borzello, Seeing Ourselves. Women’s Self-portraits (London: Thames & Hudson, 1998). 3. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (New York: Oxford UP, 1999), pp. 833–844. 4. This includes for example Claude Cahun’s photographs. Laura Iamurri, ‘L’impronta e il corpo – l’ombra e lo specchio’, in Laura Iamurri, Marilù Eustachio (eds.), Autobiografia/Autoritratto: Eustachio, Catania, Montessori, Ricciardi, Monaci, Stucky, Woodman, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Museo Hendrik Christian Andersen, 26 October 2007 – 20 January 2008 (Rome: Palombi Editore, 2007), p. 32. The translation is the author’s. 5. Marsha Meskimmon, The Art of Reflection. Women Artists’ Self-portraiture in the Twentieth Century (London: Scarlet Press, 1996), pp. 27–32. 6. For a generalPROOF overview of female self-portraiture in the 70s, see Frances Borzello, Seeing Ourselves (Thames & Hudson: New York, 1998), pp. 159–190. 7. On the benefits of video, see also Catherine Elwes, Installation and the Moving Image (Columbia University Press and Wallflower Press: New York and London, 2015), pp. 230–231. 8. Although it could be heavy if carried for long periods. On this specific issue see for example ibidem, p. 248 n. 36 and ‘Interview with Catherine Elwes by Laura Leuzzi and Elaine Shemilt’ available at http://www.ewva.ac.uk/catherine-elwes.html (accessed December 2017). 9. Helen Westgeest, Video Art Theory: A Comparative Approach (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), p. 56. 10. This view has been shared by several video pioneers interviewed during EWVA research, including Catherine Elwes, Elaine Shemilt and Anna Valeriado Borsari. Furthermore, this point has been raised by critics and art historians on more than one occasion. Examples include: Yvonne Jansen, ‘The Body and Light. Nan Hoover in the world of video and performance’, in Leen Huet, Wim Neetens (eds.), An unexpected journey, Vrouw en kunst/Women and Art (Antwerp: Gynauka, 1996), p. 150. 11. On the topic, see for example Anne-Marie Duguetnot ‘La video des femmes’, in Video la mémoire au poing (Paris: Hachette, 1981), pp. 89–111; Stéphanie Jeanjean, ‘Disobedient Video in France in the 70s: Video Production by Women Collectives’, Afterall A Journal of Art, Context, Enquiry, n. 27, Summer 2011, pp. 5–16. 12. Catherine Elwes, Video Art: A Guided Tour (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), p. 48. 13. Ibidem, p. 49. distribute 14. Ibidem. 15. Dieter Daniels, ‘How to use a pencil as a video camera’, in Rob Perrée (ed.), Nan Hoover. Movement in Light (Rotterdam: Con Rumore, 1991), p. 72. 16. For a survey of elements used by Hoover in her videos: U. Bischoff, ‘Movement and Stillness – Light and Time – Line and Space’, in Ibidem. 17. Interview to Kraus, unpublished, Venice, 31 August 2015. See for a photo of the shooting, Dino Marangon, Videotapes del Cavallino (Venice: Edizioni del Cavallino, 2004), p. 45. 18. Tommaso Casini, ‘La mano “parlante” dell’artista’, Predella, n. 29, http://www.predella.it/archivio/indexebb4. html?option=com_content&view=article&id=167&catid=65&Itemid=94 (accessed December 2017). 19. For an overview, see for example E. Di Stefano, ‘Leon Battista Alberti e la metafora dello specchio: fonti bibliche e filosofiche per un topos artistico’, in R. Cardini, M. Regoliosi, Alberti e la tradizione per lo ‘smontaggio dei “mosaic’ albertiani, Atti del Convegno del Comitato Nazionale VI centenario della nascita di Leon Battista Alberti, Arezzo, 23–25 September 2004. 20. Meskimmon, The Art of Reflection,p.6. 21. Ibidem, pp. 5–7. 22. Ibidem,p.7. 23. Rosalind Krauss, ‘The Aesthetics of Narcissism’, October, volume 1, Spring, 1976. 24. Westgeest, Video Art Theory, p. 55. 25. Ibidem, p. 56. 26. ‘Interview with Marianne Heske by Laura Leuzzi’, EWVA. Available at http://www.ewva.ac.uk/marianne-heske.html (accessed July 2017). 27. Ibidem. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 24

28. ‘Interview with Marianne Heske by Laura Leuzzi’, available at http://www.ewva.ac.uk/marianne-heske.html (accessed July 2017). 29. See Nicolas Bourriaud, ‘Marianne Heske or the Art of Relocation’, http://www.marianneheske.no/ ?page=texts/art_of_relocation (accessed 17 July 2017). 30. The Video Show included a selection of some of the most relevant international video pioneers of the time as well as British artists among which Ian Breakwell, David Critchley, David Hall, Brian Hoey, Tamara Krikorian, Mike Leggett, Stephen Partridge, Lis Rhodes and Tony Sinden were included. 31. Both were finally recovered and migrated to digital in 2011 by the AHRC funded research project REWIND (2004–ongoing), led by Prof. Stephen Partridge and based at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee. Media Archivist on the project is Adam Lockhart. A still from the recovered version of Doppelgänger was published for the first time in Sean Cubitt, Rewind: British Artists’ Video in the 1970s & 1980s (New Barnet: John Libbey, 2012), p. 88. 32. Elizabeth Grosz, Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989), p. 130–131 quoted in Meskimmon, The Art of Reflection,p.7. 33. Ibidem,PROOF p. 72. 34. See for example, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Ms. Fr. 12420, fol. 101 v. 35. Text by Tamara Krikorian dated 1978, REWIND Archive, DJCAD, University of Dundee. Available on http://www.rewind.ac.uk/documents/Tamara%20Krikorian/TKR053.pdf (accessed December 2017). 36. ‘Interview with Klara Kuchta’ by Laura Leuzzi and Viola Lukac, http://www.ewva.ac.uk/ klara-kuchta.html (accessed 12 July 2018). 37. Lisa Parolo, Biondo Veneziano. Klara Kuchta, in Cosetta G. Saba, Lisa Parolo, Chiara Vorrasi (eds.), Videoarte a Palazzo dei Diamanti. 1973–1979 Reenactment (Ferrara: Fondazione Ferrara Arte, 2015), p. 110. Translation into English by the author. 38. The film was directed by Gianluigi Poli. The Box of Life is available on Marangoni’s website, http://www.federicamarangoni.com/portfolio/1979-the-box-of-life/do (accessed 17 July 2018). See Lorenzo Magri (ed.), Centro Video Arte: 1974–1994 (Ferrara: Gabriele Corbo, 1995), p. 27 and Gabriella Belli (ed.), Federica Marangoni. Il filo conduttore/The Leading Thread (Venice: Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art, 2015). 39. Viana Conti (ed.), Federica Marangoni. I luoghi dell’utopia:not iconografia e temi fondamentali nell’opera di Federica Marangoni (Milan: Mazzotta, 2008), pp. 68–69. 40. Vittorio Fagone (ed.), Camere incantate, espansione dell’immagine, exhibition catalogue Milan, Palazzo reale, 15 May – 15 June 1980 (Milan: Comune, Ripartizione cultura e spettacolo, 1980), p. 146. 41. In Italian, ‘D’altronde sono sempre gli altri che muoiono’. distribute 42. Jean Delumeau, History of Paradise: The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition (1992), (New York: Continuum 1995), p. 125. 43. Annette Jael Leehman, ‘Actions and Interventions of the German Video Ant-Garde’, in Randall Halle, Reinhild Steingröver (eds.), After the Avant-garde: Contemporary German and Austrian Experimental Film (Camden House, 2008), p. 84. 44. Ibidem. Chapter 2

Natural Interruptions

Chapter 2 / Natural Interruptions Adam LockhartPROOF ho breaks a butterfly made the digital piece, Il volo impos- upon a wheel?’ An ex- sibile – Videogame [The Impossible pression first coined by Flight – Videogame] (Fig. 2) made at ‘WAlexander Pope in his Centro Video Arte in Ferrara, assisted Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot by technical engineers Carlo Ansaloni in 1734.1 The allusion being as to why and Giovanni Grandi. It is a pro- something so gentle and insignificant grammed computer animation in the as a butterfly be placed on a horren-dostyle of three different early video or dous torture device such as the wheel. arcade games, from the shooter and This expression has been used many Pac-man genres. However, in this times since to describe excessive case,not the ‘enemies’ are butterflies punishment or criticism for minor mis- rather than ghosts or aliens. As the demeanours. butterflies fly around freely, various As will become clear throughout sounds are heard from popular ar- this chapter, a common theme in cade games,distribute such as Space Invad- many women’s early work was the ers, ‘firing’ at the butterflies, but none association of nature with the urban of them are killed. It’s not until the environment and technology, and Pac-man type game that we see the also, in a number of cases, the vio- butterfly becoming trapped in the lence against nature. maze, and it is killed by a warrior-type In 1982, the Italian artist Federica figure. In the final game, a butterfly Marangoni created a video perform- looks like it is escaping from a cage ance called Il volo impossibile [The and flying off into the distance to free- Impossible Flight] (Fig. 1). This in- dom. It is almost like the butterflies are volved the destruction of various but- trapped inside the monitor and in the terfly effigies by cutting, nailing, end can finally escape. This is similar smashing and burning them. After to Tamara Krikorian’s An Ephemeral each type of destruction was per- Art (Fig. 3) first shown at the Third Eye formed, the resulting recording ap- Centre in Glasgow, in 1979, where real peared on a monitor behind her. This butterflies were displayed inside an continued until all four screens were empty TV monitor and could be filled, turning the destruction or ‘kill- viewed through its glass. ing’ into a spectacle. There is something quite pro- In the previous year, 1981, she phetic about Videogame. Although EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 26

PROOF

do Fig. 1 (above). the violence in video games at the culminating in the more realistic vio- Federica time was unrealistic and cartoon-like, lence of the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) Marangoni, Il volo impossibile it still pointed towards thenot direction series (1997– present) and its clones, (The Impossible that video games subsequently took, which have generated much debate Flight), 1982, still from video. Courtesy of the artist. distribute

Fig. 2 (right). Federica Marangoni, Videogame, 1982. Courtesy of the artist. 27 Chapter 2 / Natural Interruptions | EWVA

and controversyPROOF on their psychologi- cepts. This was first shown at Aorta in Fig. 3. Tamara cal impact on the user, particularly Amsterdam in 1986. In the piece, a Krikorian, An Ephemeral Art, upon young people. It was one of the herd of 47 small toy gnus are arranged Installation, first videogames in the UK to receive on the floor as if they are galloping or 1979, Third Eye 2 Centre, Glasgow. an 18 certificate by the BBFC. Inter- stampeding across a constructed ‘sa- Courtesy of Ivor estingly, Dave Jones, one of the origi- vannah’ made from sand and mini- Davies. nal creators of GTA, stated that Pac ature trees. This savannah was Man was an influence on the game, formed into the shape of an animal where the main character runs overdohide. Behind them, in the middle of the pedestrians and is chased by the po- hide, is a video monitor showing the lice, replacing the dots and the ghosts same herd of fleeing gnus previously in Pac Man.3 recordednot by a video camera moving Something to note that is unusual as though it was a diving and swoop- in this case, for video games of that ing aeroplane above them. This is ac- time, is that the colour of the back- companied by a montage of library ground screen is green, when nor- recordings ofdistribute real aircraft sounds and mally this would have been be black. the thundering sound of hooves. This is interesting, as usually green is Every so often, a gunshot is heard as associated with nature and also with though someone in the aircraft were peace. A common theme in many firing a rifle at the gnus. The piece early women’s video work was this evokes ideas of what is real and what association between nature with the is fake, and succinctly deals with mat- urban environment and technology. In ters of life and death. Of course, noth- 2009, women played a huge part in ing is actually real or alive in this piece, the Iranian Green Movement, seeking even the soundtrack has been cre- change by peaceful means. Perhaps ated as a collage from various most notably, Neda Agha-Soltan, a sources and edited together to give 26-year-old music student, who be- an impression of an actual sound re- came a symbol for the movement, cording of the event. The concept of tragically died from a gunshot wound fake news has come to the fore more after protesting peacefully in Tehran.4 recently, however manipulation of the A butterfly on a wheel indeed. media by various powers has existed Wildebeest [Wild Beast] (Fig. 4), for many years. In this work, the moni- a video installation, by Dutch artist tor shows the fake, manipulated ver- Giny Vos shares some of these con- sion and in the front of this we see the EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 28

Fig. 4. Giny Vos, Wildebeest, 1986, installation with sand, plastic wildebeest, miniature trees, monitor, modelling clay. Courtesy of the artist.

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reveal with the toy animals and trees, acters in the game. Intriguingly he fixed and unmoving. All the manipula- made the deer immortal, this resulted tion being carrieddo out by an unseen in it being run over, shot at, beaten up performer, likely the artist. and blown up by tanks. Like Maran- An interesting theme in both Vos goni’s piece, the deer became inca- and Marangoni’s pieces isnot that the pacitated, but got up again and animals are both simulations and not carried on. San Andreas Deer Cam is real. Also, in each piece, none of the presented by use of a virtual camera animals are ‘killed’, even though the that follows the deer around the city, environment in which they are set indistributesimilar to the camera in Wildebeest warrants this to happen. In Wildebeest following the gnus. we can hear the gunshots, presum- The vulnerability of the animals in ably directed toward the gnus. In these pieces is also echoed in the way Videogame, low-resolution digital fir- in which the three works are pre- ing sounds and explosions are heard served. All three now only exist as and, although the warrior figure in the documentation. Sean Cubitt mentions Pac-man-like section does eventually that in Videogame the fragility of the incapacitate the butterfly, it is resur- butterfly is apparent in the fragility of rected at the start of the loop again. the tape.5 The U-matic tape used to These works point toward a hack/in- record the output from the computer tervention achieved by artist Brent monitor has degraded over time and Watanabe in Grand Theft Auto V called the digitised version of this tape re- San Andreas Deer Cam (2015–16). In tains the drop out and video noise this artwork, Watanabe inserted a vir- from the tape. This recording has now tual deer into the fictitious city of San become the ‘work’. Wildebeest is an Andreas, where all the gaming action installation, so unless the installation takes place, allowing it to wander is recreated, the only thing that exists around of its own accord in amongst is the videotaped documentation. Of the other computer-controlled char- course, the video shown on the moni- 29 Chapter 2 / Natural Interruptions | EWVA

Fig. 5. Marie-Jo Lafontaine, L’Enterrement De Mozart/Combat De Coqs,1986. Courtesy of the artist.

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tor still exits separately, but this aged series (1978–1990). This mono- requires to be shown correctly as part lith takes on a futuristic look, almost of the installation. San Andreas Deer like a bank of CCTV monitors looking Cam used to be available as a livedointo the past. The piece, of course, stream of the deer’s current activity, references someone from the past, but this is also only available now as namely the composer, Ludwig documentation. Amadeusnot Mozart. The Belgian artist Marie-Jo Lafon- In fact, there are many parallels in taine, took the virtual to reality in the his life with this piece. Lafontaine’s piece L’Enterrement De Mozart/Com- 1999 monograph states ‘The Image bat De Coqs (1986, Fig. 5). This trans- itself burstsdistribute with arrogance, com- lates as ‘The Funeral of Mozart/Cock pletely filling the screen. Everything Fight’. Here we are shown a recording about the bird is tense from the crest of a real, live cock fight. Illegal now in to the spur. The wings are spread, the most western countries, the practice body puffed up, while the majestic continues in certain Asian countries crop is swollen with confidence’.6 and in the underground. It still contin- Mozart was known for being a show ues to fascinate, yet at the same time off, with his extravagant dress and his the brutality is indisputable. As an in- self-confidence built upon his preco- stallation, the piece features 6 moni- ciousness that one might regard as tors displayed in 2 rows of 3, with each arrogance. The fight could also be monitor showing the same thing, serv- attributed to Mozart’s supposed ri- ing to increase the intensity of the valry with fellow composer, Antonio event. The squawking and flapping of Salieri. wings creating an eerie tone. The At the beginning of the piece, two bank of monitors is built, like much of cockerels are briefly positioned in a Lafontaine’s work, into a sleek dark stand-off akin to that of gunfighters in monolithic sculpture. This is similar to a western movie, waiting to pounce. the video sculptures by the artist We also hear music similar to that by David Hall, such as his Situation Envis- Ennio Morricone in the Dollars Trilogy EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 30

(1964–66), featuring Clint Eastwood. is today. It is also used in Formula 1 Spurs are normally attached to the racing to describe where the driver ankles of the cockerels to aid their sits. This sense of primarily male fighting, similar to the stereotypical dominated competition fits well with cowboy. The fight is also shown the primitive ‘cock fight’. The UK artist slightly slower than normal which Tina Keane, in her piece, In Our evokes a cinematic drama to pro- Hands, Greenham (1984, Fig. 6) fea- ceedings, much like Mozart’s music. tures a childlike song, amongst oth- Of course, only one of the fighters can ers, called Take the Toys Away from win and due to the title of the piece, the Boys, mocking the escalation of L’Enterrement De Mozart, we have to military hardware, particularly nuclear assume that it is Mozart that is the weapons, during the Cold War. This PROOFlosing cockerel, who of course, died work is about the women-only move- prematurely from an unknown illness. ment who protested at the Greenham Around the time of his death, he was Common Peace camp outside an writing his Requiem in D Minor, which RAF/USAF base housing cruise mis- he did not complete before his death. siles, located in Berkshire, England The Requiem mass, is the religious during the 1980s. In addition to the ceremony held in the Catholic church songs, the piece contains audio testi- for the souls of thedo dead. It could be mony and super 8 footage of women said that Mozart wrote this for himself, in the camp. Chroma-keyed on top of a final act of posturing. However, it these images is a pair of moving wasn’t finished, almost asnot if he were women’s hands along with images of saying that there was more to come, spiders mating which alludes to the and there certainly was. After his Rudyard Kipling poem The Female of death, his music became much more the Species (1911),8 where tradition popular than it was during his lifetimedistributedictates that the female spider is – even to this day. As Lafontaine’s dominant. A subtle, yet elegant obser- piece ends with the loser incapaci- vation of the futility of male posturing. tated, it starts again on a loop reviving A review of the protest in 2007 stated the cock to fight over and over again, ‘The women only nature of the peace much the same as Mozart’s music, camp gave women space to express turning the attention to the mystique their beliefs and assert their politics in of the ‘loser’ rather than the ‘winner’. their own names and traditions with- As in Videogame by Federica Ma- out the customary dominance of rangoni, the life/death loop continues, men’.9 These women could be said to and the action takes place in a small have surrounded this ‘cockpit’ calling arena, the computer screen, in L’En- for the hostilities to end. The base, terrement De Mozart the action is in now obsolete, is closed and is now the confines of the fighting arena being used as a location for films and known as the cockpit and also in the art projects. video monitors exhibited in the gallery. In 1977 the UK artist Rose Gar- Curiously, the word for cockpit in an rard made a video work called Smile aircraft is derived from the cock fight- Please (Fig. 7), which plays on the ing arena.7 Early aviation was heavily rivalry between Winston Churchill and utilised for war and fighting and still it Adolf Hitler during WWII, and their 31 Chapter 2 / Natural Interruptions | EWVA public personas. She takes on the idea of the clown who always smiles and never reveals their true feelings. Her own face is seen in the black and white piece manipulated with luma- key whilst taking off masks and mixing this with images of Charlie Chaplin, Hitler, Churchill and clowns, blurring the boundaries of political leaders and slap-stick comedians. At the end of the piece, she announces: After hePROOF had gone, some people said hero was a hero and villain was a villain. And after he was gone, and talked to affectionately by a Fig. 6. Tina some people said hero was a villain young child. Adult voices are also Keane, In Our Hands, and villain was a hero. But some heard interacting with the child, the Greenham, 1984, people stayed silent and said to mother (the artist) engaging the boy still from video. Courtesy of the themselves. There are heroes and and the caterpillar. The father is heard artist. villains in all of us. They are never complaining that the child isn’t eating conquered, we must keep watch his food. A classic domestic scene do10 behind the smile in the mirror … . that we are privy to as strangers, just As with the cock fight, we also like the caterpillar is. The child is fas- never know which one is the hero and cinatednot by the creature, just as many which is the villain, rather, both of young children are, learning and them are victims. More recently the exploring the world, just as the cater- artist Fiona Banner took these ideas pillar is exploring its surroundings. of conflict and turned them into ele- Both the childdistribute and the caterpillar are Fig. 7. Rose gance. In her piece, Harrier and Jag- at the beginning of their lives, al- Garrard, Smile uar (2010) exhibited at Tate Britain she though interestingly at this moment Please,1977, still from video. ‘tamed’ two decommissioned fighter the child is being told off for not eating, Courtesy of the jets – a Sea Harrier and a Sepecat whereas caterpillars at this stage of artist. Jaguar. The Harrier was held captive, hung by its feet, pointing nose down and the Jaguar was lying on its back on the floor in a submissive orienta- tion. Thus, finally ending the life of conflict for the two animals. The domestication and captivity of animals by humans has always been controversial. Escena dom- éstica con gusano verde [Domestic Scene with a Green Worm] (1983, Fig. 8), by the Spanish artist Marisa Gon- zález features a caterpillar which is seen moving around in different loca- tions in a home and being watched EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 32

sequently caged inside the video monitor. However, the dead zebra on the wall appears to want to be in the cage. There are many interesting as- pects to this work. The black and white stripes of the zebra resonate with the bars of the cage, can also represent life and death and also right and wrong, but as is the world, things are never black and white, but grey. The confused imagery of this piece pro- vokes the viewer to consider these PROOF things. Even the title confuses this, the Fig. 8. Marisa their life are constantly eating. Of literal translation of Nature Morte from Gonzáles, Escena French to English is ‘Dead Nature’, doméstica con course, the next stage for the caterpil- gusano verde lar is metamorphosis when it turns into however the phrase used in English [Domestic Scene a butterfly, linking again to Maran- for the same meaning is ‘Still Life’, with a Green Worm], 1983, goni’s Videogame, where it can es- which references art history and also still from video. cape from its domestic captivity. The confuses the issue of life and death – Courtesy of the artist. scene is again frameddo by the video a common thread for Vos, similar to monitor, with only the caterpillar seen her work Wildebeest mentioned ear- throughout. lier. Another of Giny Vos’ pieces,not deal- There are also a few other less ing with issues of captivity, is the video obvious connections to art history. installation Nature Morte [Still Life] The stripes of the zebra are a form of (1988, Fig. 9). In the gallery there is a camouflage, not used to conceal but cage, the type of which could bedistributeto distract, confuse or dazzle their found in a zoo with sand in the bottom. predators. In WWI, the marine artist Inside the cage there is a video moni- Norman Wilkinson came up with the tor showing the side or flank of a sta- idea of dazzle camouflage for ships, tionary zebra, the slight movement of which were known as ‘Dazzle Ships’ its body pulsating as we hear it using the same concept as the zebra breathe. Every so often, in front, an- camouflage.11 The idea was that the other zebra moves past. The camera enemy submarines would be con- is fixed throughout. Outside of the fused by the course of the ship cage, attached to the wall, is the caused by the optical illusion the stuffed head of a real zebra looking stripes and shapes created through longingly at the monitor inside the the lens of a periscope. Many of these cage. Zebras have never really been designs were influenced by Cubism domesticated the same way as and Vorticism and in a way, became horses and donkeys have, so apart art works in themselves. In 2016, the from seeing them in the wild, one has Scottish based artist Ciara Phillips to go to a zoo or safari park to see a created a new Dazzle Ship which she live one. In Vos’ work, the dead zebra called Every Woman as part of the is on the wall and the living ones are Edinburgh International Festival, a re- caged within bars and then sub- painted ship named the MV Fingal 33 Chapter 2 / Natural Interruptions | EWVA which was temporarily located in Leith Docks. Its purpose was to commemo- rate the work which women undertook in the First World War and particularly the role in the dazzle designs that, the largely female team, played working under Norman Wilkinson, established in the Royal Academy in London and around the UK.12 The close up of the zebras in the Nature Morte video al- most look like they are being viewed through a periscope or the sights of a hunter’s rifle,PROOF the abstraction assures it is not always clear what we are look- ing at. Another aspect of Nature Morte is the moiré pattern that appears in the video when the second zebra walks past quickly. The stripes move and are manipulated by the frame rate anddo interlacing effect of the video camera, creating an image that looks like it has been created using some form of not video synthesis, rather than by the animal itself. The Adjungierte Dislokationen [Adjoined Dislocation] series by Aus- distribute trian artist VALIE EXPORT which she directions – horizontal, vertical and Fig. 9. Giny Vos, started in 1973 and particularly in Ad- diagonal. The fourth wall was left for Nature Morte 1988. jungierte Dislokationen II (1974–78) the audience. Due to the use of live Courtesy of the and III (1978–1997) used the idea of CCTV in the piece, there is an absence artist. stripes and video to create expanded of videotape, however, this absence cinema performance pieces. In Ad- is referenced within the long stripes, jungierte Dislokationen II she had two replacing the recorded medium, the video cameras attached to her, one to stripes can also represent scan lines the front and one to the rear. Each used in video technology at the time. camera’s output was connected to In the middle of the scene was a weav- two sets of four separate monitors, ing Perspex (originally a rope) path stacked in two rows, two levels high. that she would follow through the Each set was positioned at opposite space, and which also became a sides of the performance space. The snaking sculptural object in itself. As front camera was connected to the she followed the path, the moving im- top rows of monitors and rear to the ages from the walls created new opti- bottom. On three walls, there were cal and geometric patterns on the three different images of stripes rep- monitors similar to moving ‘dazzle’ resenting the three different familiar patterns. Of course, as she moved, EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 34

the audience would sometimes ap- artists became concerned with ways pear on the monitors too, breaking the in which art can dialogue with nature, so-called Fourth Wall. In the end, the rather than portray, represent, class- space is converted from a 3D environ- ify, frame, select and categorise’.14 ment to a 2D one on the monitors, Humans have always tried to harness then back to 3D again when both are nature, use it and control it for their combined in the performance. The own means. Stansfield and Hooykaas cameras facing forward and back have always made nature the control- may represent the past and future fol- ling element of their work, allowing it lowing a predetermined path that is to decide how the work progresses, marked out, representing the ‘ideal’ and through their design, providing an life journey for the woman that she is avenue in which we can see this. PROOFnot expected by society to deviate In their installation piece Com- from. The next iteration of this series, pass (1984, Fig. 10), which was a Adjungierte Dislokationen III, did not development of previous similar incar- require to involve an event, but was a nations such as Outside/Inside (1982) live gallery installation. The two cam- and The Force Behind its Movement eras were attached to the roof, again, (1984), they used the concept of a pointing in opposite directions, but wind vane, which has often historically this time rotating viado an electric motor. been portrayed as a cockerel, thus This time there were three banks of making a link to the aforementioned eight monitors against the three walls Lafontaine piece. In Compass, the with horizontal, vertical andnot diagonal wind vane was mounted on the roof of stripes. Again, the output of one cam- the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. era is attached to the top row of moni- Attached to this was a live CCTV video tors and the other to the bottom. The camera which was connected to a Fourth Wall can be truly broken on thisdistributegallery inside the museum below. In occasion whereby the audience also the gallery were four monitors, each becomes the performer. Through the pointing inwards in the directions of sights of the camera, the hunter and the compass – north, south, east and the hunted become one and perhaps west, with a fifth single monitor in the now in this version the woman has middle. Each of the monitors showed broken free from her expected path. different, previously recorded video The use of live CCTV cameras in material, chosen spontaneously a gallery context was also used sev- which were related to each of the four eral times by the long-time collabora- points of the compass. These images tion of Scottish/Dutch artists Elsa displayed elements of nature such as Stansfield13 and Madelon Hooykaas. earth, sky and water. They were also These artists are interested in the cropped to form either horizontal or natural world and its perception, but vertical single lines, echoing the direc- particularly in the unseen. Natural tions seen on a real compass. Mean- phenomena such as radio waves, while, the video images coming from magnetism and wind have been used the roof camera were connected to a throughout their work. In his chapter device which, depending on the direc- for the book Revealing the Invisible,F. tion the camera was pointing, due to David Peat states that ‘Two female the wind, would replace the image on 35 Chapter 2 / Natural Interruptions | EWVA the corresponding monitor in the gal- lery, ‘pushing away’ the images of na- ture with the live urban skyline of Amsterdam. Elsa Stansfield de- scribes this as ‘a natural interrup- tion’.15,16 The wind, in a sense, partially curating the exhibition or per- haps a becoming a co-artist along with Stansfield and Hooykaas. Apart from the intervention from the wind, there is also the concept of magnetism in Compass. The earth’s naturally occurringPROOF polar magnetic field has been used for many years to operate a simple magnetic compass: the dial will always point from north to south working as a navigation aid to the user. But as unpredictable as the natural environment can be, this mag- netic field is constantly moving anddo changing ever so slightly. The phe- nomenon of magnetism has more re- cently been controlled and used in not such things as electric motors, micro- phones, MRI scanners and of course magnetic tape, which became the main recording medium for video and distribute sound for many years. Magnetic tape was quickly harnessed and experi- Solstice (1989, Fig. 11), relates to the Fig. 10. Madelon Hooykaas, Elsa mented with by artists to create new electromagnetic spectrum. Con- Stansfield, pioneering work and establishing new tained within this spectrum is visible Compass,1984. media art forms that were never be- Courtesy of light, radio waves, x-rays, infrared and Madelon fore possible. In Compass, although microwaves. In this piece, the obvious Hooykaas. there is no direct intervention by the connection comes from the title, refer- earth’s magnetic field, it is referenced encing the winter and summer sol- with the magnetic tape and the mag- stices. One where light is almost net coils contained inside the CRT absent and the other where there is monitors. In their performance piece, light for almost a full twenty-four Magnetic North (1982) Stansfield and hours. Scrolling text appears through- Hooykaas used magnets to deliber- out the piece describing the solstice, ately disrupt the colours on the video e.g. ‘The Solstice: the day the sun cameras and CRT monitors, hence appears to stand still: Sol (Sun); creating, an ‘unnatural natural inter- Sticium; Statum (Stand Still)’.17 Aside ruption’. from this, the other thread in this work Another of Stansfield and is the reference to Guglielmo Marconi, Hooykaas’s works, the single screen the wireless telegraphy pioneer who EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 36

then moves into a more melancholic string ensemble that sounds like grinding and scraping metal. This fits with the abstract images of metallic transmission antennae from Marconi Beach in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where the first transmission from the United States to the UK took place. Amongst these images is a photo- graph of The Ring of Brodgar, an an- cient stone circle found on the Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland. Along PROOF with the more renowned Stonehenge, these sites are said to have connec- Fig. 11. Madelon carried out the first transatlantic radio tions to summer and winter solstices Hooykaas, Elsa Stansfield, transmission in 1901. This signal was and also to other astronomical align- Solstice, 1989. sent between Poldhu in Cornwall, ments, functioning, perhaps, like a re- Courtesy of England and Signal Hill in St John’s, ceiving station from the heavens. To Madelon 18 Hooykaas. Newfoundland. The scrolling text in broaden this concept, one of the first the piece tells usdo ‘S… S… S… S… images we see in the piece is that of S… S… was the first letter transmitted an astronomical chart and later on, an by wireless telegraphy across the At- image of a radio telescope. This radio lantic by Marconi innot December telescope was from an earlier, related 1901’.19 ‘S’ was chosen due its sim- piece by the artists called Radiant, A plicity in Morse code, three dots or Personal Observatory (1988), this fea- clicks. The ‘S’ was sent continuously tured a receiving dish with a monitor for a period whilst the receiving stationdistributein the middle playing out sections of listened. There is a correlation be- what would later become Solstice.Not tween ‘S’ and Solstice being inferred long after radio communications had in the piece, the scrolling text lists been firmly established in the years words beginning with ‘S’ that may after Marconi’s experiments, the di- have been represented in the trans- rection of these receivers were point- mission, almost as if a third party is ing up into outer space, gathering listening and trying to make sense of signals that have allowed great ad- it. vances in our knowledge of the uni- The whole piece takes on a verse. Just like the ancients, our dream-like state, a video collage with fascination with celestial phenomena abstract imagery and various unrec- has not diminished. At the end of Sol- ognisable human figures appearing, stice, the cropped square with the all pinned together with a cropped water and sun tilts towards the horizon square in the middle of the screen until it disappears into a line. Thus, the displaying images of the sun reflect- sun, in an electronic sense, ‘sets’, ing on water, representing the Atlan- bringing the piece to a close. tic. It is augmented by the The video installation Television Francis-Marie Utti soundtrack which Circle (1987, Fig. 12) or Electron when begins with radio-like interference and shown as a single screen, by the Lon- 37 Chapter 2 / Natural Interruptions | EWVA

Fig. 12. Judith Goddard, TV Circle/Electron, 1987. Courtesy of the artist.

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don based artist Judith Goddard also commerce. Also seen is the ring of a relates to these themes of mysticism cooker, glowing red and stark. Chris and electromagnetism. This piecedoMeigh-Andrews describes this as a consisted of seven large CRT moni- ‘[…] contemporary mandala of light tors, arranged in a circle with a diame- and power’.20 The feeling of power is ter of around twenty feet, playing back enhancednot through the piece by the the same image from a single source. Keir Fraser soundtrack which features The first time it was exhibited it was a drone mixed with crackles and pul- located outdoors in a wooded area on sating electronic sounds. In and out of Bellever Tor in Dartmoor National Park this comes a choraldistribute version of Jerusa- on the south coast of England. This lem (1916) (by Sir Hubert Parry with location is significant due to the large words by William Blake), which fights amount of Neolithic standing stones with the electrical sounds, like the old and stone circles in the Dartmoor ‘England’s green and pleasant land’ area, creating a modern day elec- is fighting with the modern world. At tronic stone circle, resonating for the end, the soundtrack changes to a modern day visitors now as the old solitary female voice singing the tradi- ones did for the ancients; this again tional folk song The Banks of the Lee, links to the Stansfield/Hooykaas perhaps making us think of the past, piece. On the monitors are images of however at the same time the modern electrical substations, wires and py- domestic cooking ring is seen again lons, shot in the twilight creating an gradually moving away from the otherworldly feel. Interspersed screen into the distance. amongst these are shots of a typical Another important aspect to this family home, the houses of parliament piece is the images of fossils encased and the old Shell-Mex building. Each in amber which appear throughout. of these represent domestic, govern- The word ‘electron’ derives from the ment and commerce respectively, but Ancient Greek word (elek-- in particular, in the latter – energy tron) which was the word used by the EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 38

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Fig. 13. Judith Greeks for the mineral ‘amber’. This ban. Celestial Light and Monstrous Goddard, was perhaps due to the Greeks’ dis- Races (1985, Fig. 13) is a single Celestial Light and Monstrous covery that amberdo was good at natu- screen or a 2 x 4 video wall installation Races,1985 rally storing static electricity. In the of eight monitors. It was simulated in (2012 HD Composite piece, we see various insects and liz- 2012 in conjunction with REWIND at version). ards fossilised in the amber, almost in Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art Courtesy of the not artist. stasis, transcending the ancient and & Design, as an HD composite image. the modern world, with the sound of The piece is prefaced with a quote buzzing electricity surrounding them. from John Milton’s Paradise Lost ref- The cracks in the amber also reflectdistributeerencing the fall of man. This links with the electrical wires and pylons seen Television Circle/Electron, due to her before and after. When the installation fascination with the mystique of Wil- was installed at Dartmoor, all seven of liam Blake who illustrated Paradise the monitors were encased in steel Lost by John Milton and penned the frames with transparent Lexan plastic words of the poem And Did Those (used for police riot shields) to protect Feet in Ancient Time (1808), which the monitors from the weather and became the words to Jerusalem and vandalism. This brought in another was the preface to Blake’s fantasy slant, that the monitors themselves poem Milton: A Poem in Two Books were being encased as fossils, pro- (1804–1810). This piece mixes the tected by their steel and plastic boxes surrealism of Blake with images cre- for generations to come. These were ated using chroma-key to recreate CRT monitors which, in the short modern versions of medieval mon- space of recent modern history, could sters such as the Cyclops and the now be described as ‘fossils’ them- Blemmyae highlighting people’s fear selves. of the ‘other’. Before this, we see a Many of Goddard’s artworks, fit series of images relating to the mod- this cyclic theme of life and death, ern world; high-rise buildings, aircraft past and modernity, nature and ur- and electric lights pointing upwards to 39 Chapter 2 / Natural Interruptions | EWVA blue skies. The sound track that ac- and marriage. Furthermore, the piece companies this section (again by Keir is bookended with an abstract face of Fraser, who also physically features in a man at the beginning and a woman this) is hard and fast, the same way in at the end, mysteriously peering back which the shots are edited, whereas out at us from the screen, like a mirror. the surreal part has more melancholic In all these video works, these tone. After the surreal section, we are women have tried to make us think taken into nature with images of plants about how we see the world and how at ground level, where the soundtrack the world sees us, through nature and takes on a more ambient quality, but technology, past and future. But as we still has a slight melancholic edge and look at the screen, the black mirror, it the images are edited together con- reveals much more than perhaps we templativelyPROOF and slower. At various want. ‘[…] there are heroes and vil- points in the soundtrack we hear lains in all of us. They are never con- church bells, which refer, culturally, to quered, we must keep watch behind the continuous life cycle of birth, death the smile in the mirror […]’.21 Endnotes 1. Alexander Pope, An Epistle from Mr. Pope, to Dr. Arbuthnot (London: printed by J. Wright for Lawton Gilliver, 1734 [1735]) http://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/works/o3674-w0010.shtml (accessed 23 February 2018). 2. British Board of Film Classification. Atdo that time responsible for rating video games. 3. ‘Dave Jones: GTA Same As Pac Man’ Now Gamer, 15 July 2009, available at https://www.nowgamer.com/ dave-jones-gta-same-as-pac-man/ (accessed 17 April 2018). 4. Robert Tait & Matthew Weaver, ‘How Neda Agha-Soltannot became the face of Iran’s struggle’ The Guardian online, 22 June 2009, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/22/neda-soltani-death-iran (accessed 22 June 2017). 5. Sean Cubitt, ‘Glitch Aesthetics and Impossible Flights’, in Laura Leuzzi, Stephen Partridge (eds.), REWINDItalia: Early video art in Italy/I primi anni della videoarte in Italia (Newdistribute Barnet, Herts: John Libbey Publishing, 2015), pp. 203–221. 6. Marie-Jo Lafontaine and Bernd Barde, Marie-Jo Lafontaine (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 1999). 7. ‘Cockpit, n.’ Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford University Press, available at https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cockpit (accessed 22 June 2017). 8. Kipling, Rudyard. Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Inclusive Edition, 1885–1918 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1919). 9. ‘Protest at Greenham (1981 to 1983)’, The Guardian online, 3 May 2007: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/ may/03/greenham.yourgreenham3 (accessed 22 June 2017). 10. Smile Please, dir. Rose Garrard, per. Rose Garrard, 1977, video. 11. Roy R. Behrens, False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage (Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2002). 12. ‘Dazzle Ship 2 June-21 January 2017’ Edinburgh Art Festival, https://edinburghartfestival.com/dazzle (accessed 22 June 2017). 13. Elsa Stansfield died in Amsterdam in 2004. 14. F. David Peat, ‘The Art of Bridging’ in Revealing the Invisible: The Art of Stansfield/Hooykaas from Different Perspectives (Amsterdam: De Buitenkant, 2010). 15. Compass Documentation, directed by Madelon Hooykaas & Elsa Stansfield, performed by Madelon Hooykaas & Elsa Stansfield, 1984,video in Revealing the Invisible. 16. The title of this chapter is taken from this statement by Elsa Stansfield. 17. Solstice, directed by Madelon Hooykaas & Elsa Stansfield, 1989, video. 18. Roger Bridgman, ‘Guglielmo Marconi: Radio star – Feature’, Physics World, v. 14, n. 12, 2001, pp. 29–33. 19. See endnote 12. 20. Chris Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art : The Development of Form and Function (Oxford: Berg, 2006). 21. Smile Please, dir. by Rose Garrard, per. by Rose Garrard, 1977, video. PROOF

do not distribute Chapter 3

Desire for More

Chapter 3 / Desire for More Cinzia Cremona

his chapter cuts across the or desire might be, without asking otherPROOF contributions to this them. It is generally – although, as we book by identifying and ana- will see not always – a very complex T lysing works and practices process for a woman to express her that focus on desire. It is im- desire, because the consequences of possible to overestimate the acts of defiance of others’ expecta- importance of this subject in early tions can be dangerous. A woman women’s moving image practices – expressing desire that is not deemed the complex dynamics that restrict thedosuitable by the society to which she voice of a woman when expressing ‘belongs’ risks exclusion, ostracism her desire reveal psychological and and, in some cases, death. A woman political processes of power, sexual- representednot expressing her desire ity, identity and relationality. After a can be misconstrued by the dominant selective survey of the history of the ideology as pornography, exhibition- concept of desire in this context, I will ism, inappropriate behaviour, ma- examine artists and artworks from the nipulation, alldistribute the way to hysterical 1970s to the early 1990s in this light in pathology. For these reasons and order to build a cartography of early many more, a woman’s externalisa- practices by women who are not tion of her desire is often complex and afraid to show what moves them. That contradictory. being said, I would argue that for The title of this text – Desire for many women, the negotiations they More – is also a working hypothesis: have with the fear attached to making what if, under these pressures, the their desire known, is key to reading woman who finds it particularly hard the works examined here.1 to qualify her desire resorted to per- From Freud allegedly asking form an unspecified desire for more? ‘What does a woman want?’ to the How can we decode these layers of continued enforcement of laws that courage and fear, self-censorship and legislate on the rights of the foetus shamelessness, confession and de- over the rights of the mother, it seems mand? completely acceptable to tell women what they should desire.2 It also seems completely acceptable to A question of desire judge and comment upon women’s Desire is understood here in Lacanian actions based on what their intentions terms as an unconscious desire to EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 42

indicate the relation to a lack that ap- tablished power dynamic, ‘there is no pears to be fulfilled by the other. It is way in which we can produce an alter- worth remembering that Lacan makes native [to the language of patriarchy] a clear distinction between the other out of the blue, but we can begin to with a small o, on which the subject make a break by examining patriarchy tends to project its desire, and the with the tools it provides, of which Other with capital o – the completely psychoanalysis is not the only, but an separate and different Other, relaying important one’.5 the weight of language and social Undoubtedly, the pressure of norms, and which is radically alien. As both of these dynamics of the gaze it informs the unconscious, the Other was perceived – and in many ways still precedes, informs and continues to is – by a large number of artists who PROOFact upon the subject through lan- make desire and its negotiation the guage and in the dynamics of the focus of their practice. Under these gaze. When the gaze is at work, the conditions, desire is censored and radical alterity of the Other is reduced distorted, adapted to fit the limits en- to a function of the subject itself and forced by interlocutors, family, audi- it becomes the other with a small o.3 ences, institutions and generally to sit The subject uses the other to en- within the frame of an internalised im- gage its own desiredo and interprets the age of the expectations of the Other. response in relation to its fundamental Among the biggest dangers in ex- lack of wholeness. From this perspec- pressing desire that is not acceptable tive, the gaze originates in thenot subject to the Other are rejection and abjec- being looked at, and not in the subject tion. looking. This omnipresent disembod- Abject. It is something rejected ied gaze carries the power of the from which one does not part, from Other – laws, rules and prohibitionsdistribute which one does not protect oneself that shape the cultural and social en- as from an object. Imaginary un- vironment in and through language, canniness and real threat, it beck- but it also shapes unconscious desire ons to us and ends up engulfing us. itself. Whereas looking physiologically It is thus not lack of cleanliness or engages images and appearances, health that causes abjection but the gaze activates the complex signifi- what disturbs identity, system, cance of objects and subjects, en- order.6 gaging desire and language. Moving image critical discourse Kristeva describes the complex on representation of women and their swinging back and forth of the subject desire has inherited Laura Mulvey’s between surrender to and distancing reading of the gaze as constructed in from a desire that one has learned not Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cin- to accept. This process is continually ema.4 In Mulvey’s approach, the gaze paralleled by political mechanisms is transitive and mono-directional: it that accept or reject desiring subjects originates in the (male) cinema spec- and their performance of desire – as tator to end with the on-screen repre- Judith Butler continuously reminds us, sentation of the (female) character. being excluded endangers lives that She argues that because of this es- are not intelligible. 43 Chapter 3 / Desire for More | EWVA

Desire to desire and desire for an her physical body performing live and undefined ‘more’ may be useful no- of its image relayed on screen articu- tions to examine how some artists ma- lates the grammar of this mediated terialise, in their moving image relational dynamic. Moreover, by tak- practices, appropriate responses to a ing control of the tools, Rosenbach culture that expects women to fit into can determine her own image and specific parameters of desire. A gross perform a desire for visibility that re- taxonomy of practices demonstrating moves her from objectification as a various degrees of surrender, self- first step towards agency in desire. censorship, fear or distortion of desire She does not deny her own desiring, would be disrespectful towards the but attempts to deflect the male artists and their work. Nevertheless, viewer from the desirability of her body using thisPROOF approach to explore early in order to draw attention to her ‘inner’ women’s moving image work offers a psychological life. Working on the fascinating tool of analysis. same premises as Laura Mulvey’s that ‘there is no way that we can produce an alternative out of the blue’, Rosen- Practices bach sets out in the first instance to The German artist Ulrike Rosenbach disrupt the processes of the gaze so proposes the video screen as a tooldothat visibility can encompass, in this for separation and distanciation of her case, her psychological life.8 sexualised body from the viewer. Her From this perspective, it be- strategy moves women’s repre- comesnot important to examine moving sentation away from the role of object image practices that do not explicitly of desire assigned to them without focus on sexual desire to uncover dif- renouncing visibility. In her first live ferent possible configurations of the videoperformance, Isolation is Trans- desire for more.distribute parent (1974, Figs. 1a-b-c), Rosen- The British artist Judith Goddard bach wraps herself in white ropes produced her first videos while still a behind a pane of glass, in front of a student at the Royal College of Art. video camera that relays the images These early works – particularly Time to a monitor. She describes the work Spent and Under the Rose (1983) and as ‘psychological feedback’, and the Lyrical Doubt (1984) – perform a dia- virtual space inside the video monitor logue between desire and expecta- as her ‘inner space’: tions. In Time Spent, Goddard herself [t]he recipient who watches the is sitting at a domestic table, almost video-feedback gets to know that frozen, while out of shot looped voices the video provides a demarcation (two male and one female) discuss between him and me. The monitor travelling and other activities. She ap- pane mitigates my direct impact on pears to be waiting and somehow un- him, makes it cool and neutral, so able to move. The suggestion of that the view of the psychological repetition, lack of agency, invisibility reflection that I want to convey to and incapacity to act creates an un- him becomes more important and comfortable claustrophobic atmos- 7 primary. phere within which she almost The contemporary presence of dissipates, even when she is doubled EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 44

abundance and scarcity. The abrupt cuts between images give the work a syncopated pace that in itself relays a refusal to conform to expectations. Goddard immerses herself in the screen and into the image – a form of belonging and agency, even if the art- ist herself barely moves – but the price for this immersion is that her repre- sentation is completely determined by what is around and behind her. It is clear that each element of PROOF Goddard’s work has symbolic and metaphorical significance – the flow- ers explicitly hint at genitals, particu- larly vaginas, and are shown as vulnerable or strong, open and bro- ken, in large displays or held by a trembling hand, looked at by a female do subject with full agency or visually swallowing her. The Garden of Earthly Delights (1991) brings this approach not to a zenith and references directly a Boschean triptych. This three-monitor Figs. 1a (above), in the mirror on the other side of the installation performs desire in dia- 1b (below),1c room. Similarly, in Lyrical Doubt,God- logue with social pressures, fear, ex- (facing). distribute Ulrike dard’s face is taken over by the im- pectation, gender and culture at large. Rosenbach, ages of flower shops in West and East In each scene, the same woman takes Isolation is Transparent, Germany with their stark contrast of centre stage; first as a bride who 1974, photograph of the installation and details. Courtesy of the artist. 45 Chapter 3 / Desire for More | EWVA sheds her gown and blonde wig, then as a mother traversing the screen and the city, and lastly as a spinning figure in the sky in the most direct perform- ance of desire for more. Each frame of The Garden of Earthly Delights over- flows with colours, movements, pres- ences and objects in a disturbing carnival that is almost a nightmare, yet the work’s pace, and composition, and the body language of the woman are highly controlled. Like Bosch,PROOF Goddard overlaps symbols in an unmanageable toomuchness. There is no need to for example, she rolls on chalk draw- establish which element is feared or ings allowing the bright pigments to wanted, as desire maintains the para- cover her skin. This unbridled freedom dox of the co-existence of the two. The embodies her desire to celebrate the position of a woman in many societies female body and play ‘with animals still entails irreconcilable demandsdo – and men of cardboard and taking the conditioned to desire one or more of initiative myself in my adventures’.10 these combinations as well as their Schouten’s work maintains the quali- own freedom, self-determination and tiesnot of her live performances in that her agency, many women find them- movements are only generally selves in the impossible situation of planned in their quality and se- living with an overwhelmingly para- quences, as she allows a crescendo doxical desire, further complicated by of intensity to guidedistribute her decisions. The fear of its consequences. Goddard Lone Ranger, Lost in the Jungle of does not resolve these contradictions, Erotic Desire (1981) offers a colourful but exposes them as desire for more. and safe cartoon jungle for the artist Despite the quantity of elements, her to explore and enjoy: ‘I didn’t want to images are carefully composed into be Jane, waiting for the stories of Tar- ordered spaces. To desire more does zan, but making my own adventures’. not mean being a passive victim of And in Romeo is Bleeding (1982), ‘I desire or a hysterical,9 out of control wanted to travel the world flying subject. It may mean acknowledging through the sky, landing one moment a condition of living under pressure in the city, having my affairs with dif- where occasionally anger (You May ferent men (however they were con- Break, 1983), dissociation (Celestial structed of foam or cardboard) and Light & Monstrous Races, 1985) or the next moment landing in the jungle longing (Who Knows the Secret?, and having erotic affairs with ani- 1985) take over. mals’.11 Conversely, the Dutch artist Lydia Schouten’s freely expressed fan- Schouten performs her desire and tasy desire bypasses the problem of freedom with ease in playful, colourful being cornered in the role of the object and inventive fantasy worlds, in which, of desire. She is clearly the desiring EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 46

Fig. 2. Lydia Schouten, Covered with Cold Sweat, 1983, still from video. Courtesy of the artist.

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subject, free fromdo the constraints of which we can produce an alternative cultural expectations and uncen- out of the blue’ is accepted as an sored. The colours, choreography, undisputable fact.12 In Schouten’s rhythms, characters and titlesnot of her practice her body is desirable and works leave no doubt that she feels desiring without separation as there is free to desire and to live her desire, no no problem in becoming the object of matter how unconventional it is or how another’s desire when one is first a easily it can be condemned as abject.distributedesiring subject. Covered with Cold Sweat (1983, Fig. Similarly, the individual and col- 2) continues the theme of the cartoon laborative body of work of the Swiss world and the bi-dimensional men, artist Pipilotti Rist (Elisabeth Charlotte once again emphasising the active Rist) demonstrates a knowingness role of the desiring woman. The joy and comfort with desiring and being that animates Schouten’s videos desired in expanded relational and shows her ease with her own desire representational practices. Between and sexuality and her freedom from 1988 and 1994, Rist was a member of the pressures of a culture that would Les Reines Prochaines, a multimedia like to see woman as the object of performance and music band man’s desire. Schouten freely desires founded by the artists Muda Mathis, and from her perspective the other Teresa Alonso and Regina Florida and object of her desire is naturally Schmid. The group proposes a frag- man. The cardboard and polystyrene mented and contemporary feminist men of her video works are literally aesthetic, which includes cooking objects to caress, kiss, stab and sounds, costume making, political dance with. This can be read as a statements, complex visuals and revolutionary act only if Mulvey’s ‘democratic music’.13 Japsen (Figs. statement that ‘there is no way in 3a-b-c), produced in Basel in 1988 47 Chapter 3 / Desire for More | EWVA with Muda Mathis and with the help of Teresa Alonso, but not attributed to Les Reines Prochaines, carries many of Rist’s signature images. Fast cam- era movements, women moving freely in the city and in natural surroundings, animals and plants, extreme close- ups, unusual viewpoints, intense col- ours, explicit references to sex, the strategy of dividing up the work into distinct sections and a recognisable combination of playfulness and sinis- ter overtones.PROOF Rist had already started working with video in 1986 producing a work that responds directly to the ubiqui- tous male pop artist in the language of the pop promo. In I’m not the Girl Who Misses Much (1986, Figs. 4a-b), she dances in front of the camera withdo the top of her dress pulled (or falling?) down to expose her breasts. The artist repeatedly sings ‘I’m not the girl who not misses much’ in response to The Beatles’ lyric from Happiness is a Warm Gun, written by John Lennon in 1968: ‘She is not the girl who misses distribute much’. In this videoperformance Rist obliterates her face and voice with electronic effects and answers back to pop music with a strategy close to Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen,and to Adrian Piper talking back to her white other. As a woman interpellated by incorporated mass distributed mu- sic, Rist plays with the aesthetic and technical possibilities of postproduc- tion, and allows her own eccentric voice to resonate with all its morbid complexity. In this agitated use of the first person singular redolent of hys- being more – faster, louder, more dis- Figs. 3a-b-c. Pipilotti Rist and teria, she takes control of her desire torted, more exposed and yet dis- Muda Mathis, by allowing it to go overboard and by guised behind the video artefacts. Japsen, 1988, Music, performance and sexuality stills from video. not containing it within her dress. Courtesy of Muda It could be argued that Rist per- have remained a significant intoxicat- Mathis. forms the desire for more simply by ing blend throughout her practice. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 48

Figs. 4a-b. Pipilotti Rist, I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much,1986, stills from video. ©Pipilotti Rist. Courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine.

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Rist proposes a version of visual artist’s signature imagery of close-ups pleasure that integrates narrative and of eyes and body parts complements characterisation, colours, floating the narrative structure in which the forms and strategies that encourage knowing innocence of the female pro- viewers to engage in specific relation- tagonist and her agency drive the plot. ships with the images on screen. The Her works feature mostly women, 49 Chapter 3 / Desire for More | EWVA often naked and behaving in unex- Elaine Shemilt, Elwes articulates pected ways. These female perform- women’s interest in interpersonal rela- ers and characters offer a tionships in the context of the intimacy representation of self-determined and immediacy of video.16 It is under- femininity, freely expressed desire standable that under the pressure of and playful sensuality. Rist’s women being defined by the other as his drive the narrative by acting outside other, a female subject needs to un- the framework determined by patriar- ravel love, desire and intimacy. In With chy.14 Child (1984) in particular, Elwes tack- Whilst Schouten and Rist freely les the persistent sexual desire that perform their desire, other artists besieges her pregnant body, the im- thrive on the endless negotiations with posed order and the threatening the OtherPROOF that result in limitless chaos that surround the body and postponement. ðiñek illustrates this psyche of a woman, the difficult love mechanism when he writes that ‘from for her child, and more generally de- “I can’t love you unless I give you up” sire and its suppression. But first, she to “Don’t give me what I ask for, be- wonders about representation and cause that’s not it” – desire is defined about ‘how to create an image of by this ce n’est pas ça: that is, its most womanhood or femininity that re- elementary and ultimate aim is to sus-doflected what you were rather than what tain itself as desire, in its state of non- you were expected to be’.17 But ex- satisfaction’.15 I would argue that the pectations are contradictory as well, British artist Catherine Elwes engages sonot Elwes performs these contradic- with this set of contradictions more tions viscerally, erotically, formally, directly than many other artists, and visually and aurally. The stop-frame skilfully navigates the complexities of animation of the erotic encounter be- desire and repression connected with tween two stuffeddistribute monkeys collapses sexuality and motherhood. Elwes an artificial technical rhythm with the seems to create situations that act as explicit jerking of sex and the flowing multidirectional mirrors reflecting de- notes of a symphonic soundtrack, af- sire as well as the operations that fecting and creating distanciation in shape it. Her awareness of the pres- equal measure. The sucking of the sures that media representation, thumb caressing her nose, the full class, religion and more generally the breasts hanging as she dresses a Other impose on the female subject doll, and the hands folding white linen becomes a precious tool to unhinge are all gestures that stage and restage and critically engage with this constel- the paradoxes of desire and its formal lation of forces. She performs her de- containment. Elwes also performs the sire, avoiding to offer herself as the darkest side of desire by flashing a object of desire. Her clipped received kitchen knife, adding shooting pronunciation contributes to this dis- sounds to her doll’s movements and tanciation – Elwes demonstrates a clashing toys against each other. deep understanding of the language The popular and social defini- of authority and that she can make it tions of family, intimacy and romantic her own without hesitation. love could be seen as ways to organ- Interviewed by Laura Leuzzi and ise desire into acceptable and man- EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 50

ageable structures. Falling in love it- look for strategies for self-determina- self constitutes a blinding surge of tion. desire driven by an overwhelming The paradox of performing and sense of recognition of something in representing herself as a desiring, de- the other. Many legal systems are only sirable and desired subject multiplies beginning to acknowledge that vio- the diversity of approaches in lence within the privacy of home is women’s moving image work. One socially unacceptable, but it is easy to recurring strategy consists in associ- imagine how this has been the context ating performance with video to dis- to let desire loose safely and in ways rupt and layer the dynamics of the that apparently do not interfere with gaze. Where Rosenbach in Isolation is social relations. Lauren Berlant writes Transparent (1974) adopts the mate- PROOFabout the ‘institutions of intimacy’ and rial differences between the screen of how ‘the inwardness of the intimate and the living body to highlight proc- is met by a corresponding public- esses of looking and distanciation, ness’.18 In this context, intimacy is the other artists use video as a stage to ultimate interface of normativity and perform personas that exaggerate or performativity – subjects perform their defy the constraints placed on own versions of the institutions of mo- women’s desire. Even in their unbri- nogamy, marriagedo and parenthood as dled playfulness, Lydia Schouten’s they confront prescribed versions of humorous exaggerated costumes, their roles within them. Intimacy is an made-up faces, cardboard men and opportunity to test the incompatibili-not animals hint at caricatured shifting of ties within the subjects’ ‘history of roles and power games. identifications’.19 Similarly, in Mama’s Little Pleas- While it would be easy to stop at ure (1984, Figs. 5a-b) the German art- a sexual definition of desire, the con-distributeists Bettina Gruber and Maria Vedder cept harbours so much more. Aggres- (Fig. 6) juxtapose two female charac- sion, power, belonging, motherhood, ters with different costumes, body lan- destruction, union, separation, care, guage and the songs that accompany freedom, possession, submission, their presence. The first character recognition, validation – there are no wears a short white sailor’s uniform limits to what desire desires, making and hat. She fixes her eyes into the it the most dangerous element of sub- camera and consequently the view- jectivity. In this framework, the clashes ers’, eating gooey red food out of a of contradictory desires in the work of calla lily flower and licking it sugges- Elwes walk the difficult line between tively, eating petals and fondling a the desire to be seen and the desire stuffed penguin. Her stylised move- not to be objectified. Similarly, while ments border on the grotesque, but navigating their own desire, women her eyes indicate that she is in control. also negotiate the desire of the other The dissonant and simplified songs and of the Other in order to break that separate the two parts of the work oppressive patriarchal patterns of pre- are reminiscent of the atmospheres of tend reciprocity. Where reciprocity Les Reines Prochaines and Rist’s in- consists of male desire defining the dividual works. The music is the oppo- boundaries of female desire, women site of seductive as it creates a 51 Chapter 3 / Desire for More | EWVA different form of distanciation – pro- vocative words are set to dissonant and strident music. The character plays with the penguin, throws the flowers to the floor and poses with a cardboard dog. Another similarity specifically with Japsen (1988) con- sists of Pipilotti Rist and Muda Mathis delegating some aspects of desire to a dog, an important presence in the second part of the work. As the first song fades out, the image fadesPROOF to black and cuts to pink. Gruber reappears on all fours wearing a red tulle dress that allows her to build visual references to the opening of a red flower, often used as a meta- phor for a vagina welcoming inter- course. As a living dog shakes its tail and weaves its way in and outdo of Gruber’s skirt, she gingerly moves her hips and remains fairly passive. The combination of sounds and Gruber’s not laconic movements in her red dress form an ironic ensemble that could be interpreted as a parody of sexual availability. The words of the song distribute also evoke several sexualised read- ings: ‘So do me wrong, so do me right, plexity that surrounds a woman’s de- Figs. 5a-b. but who cares what the prince looks sire. Desire is inextricably linked with Bettina Gruber and Maria like tonight’. It is tempting to interpret a formal game with established roles Vedder, Mama’s this as a call to debunk the myth of and structures of power. Playfulness Little Pleasure, 1984, still from prince charming as the man who will remains tainted by dark emotional un- video. fulfil a woman and an appeal for free- dertones. Courtesy of Maria Vedder. dom in sexual desire. In fact, I would A similarly dark undercurrent tr- argue that Mama’s Little Pleasure per- averses the videos of the Austra- forms a desire to be outside estab- lian/British artist Deej Fabyc, whose lished roles and conventions. The use work in moving image moved from of the flower by the first character sug- Super 8 to video at the end of the gests the sexual pleasure that a 1980s. Fabyc examines her own de- woman can derive from another siring body complementing slow woman’s vagina, while the second paced, barely moving images with ob- character could be seen to profess jects and relevant texts. After some sexual desire outside romantic love. projects that focused on surveillance Yet, it is more accurate to state that and the awareness of being watched, Gruber and Vedder expose the com- she produced 80 Days (1992, Figs. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 52

Fig. 6. Maria Vedder and Bettina Gruber in the studio, 1982. Courtesy of Maria Vedder.

PROOF 7a-b) while living in Paris. The recur- willingness to make the effort it takes ring image of a room so narrow that to interact when there is no desire that the bed touches the walls shows the moves the subject to act. Repressed artist motionless or stirring, com- desire leaves a mutilated subject pletely covered by a white duvet under fighting against itself. The atmos- the reproduction of a suggestive phere, pace and undercurrent of this painting of a nakeddo woman. At its first work are reminiscent of Chantal Ack- appearance, this scene turns to black erman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Com- and white as words from Fabyc’s diary merce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975) – seamlessly merge with sectionsnot of Fabyc goes about her chores, but her Gertrude Stein’s Melanctha.20 Images thoughts move in different directions. of flowers, of the artist bathing, cro- Moreover, a simmering threat of vio- cheting and eating accompanied by lence is perceivable in the way her upbeat music are tainted by the per-distributevoice hurries during the phone call. ceivable darkness of seeing her com- The work offers fragments of only ing out of bed fully dressed and the three out of the 80 days mentioned on realisation that this is probably a the green Etch A Sketch at the end of symptom of depression. the first ‘day’ and this leaves open the Fabyc negates desire and desire possibility that this turning of desire turns against her – the lack of sexual against the desiring subject might desire is as frustrating as the unful- lead to irreversible consequences. filled longing that finds no response or Although Fabyc’s first significant satisfaction. Desire and the impossi- works in video Look not for Meaning bility of desire, blocked or denied de- (1990) and Putting the Heart in It sire can turn aggressively against the (1991) are from the very beginning of subject and become a form of self- the 1990s, it is important to include harm. The subject of 80 Days is wait- them in this discussion in order to ing and passing the time in a way that remain aware of the difficulties women could be seen as damaging. Even artists continue to face in openly de- when she takes a phone call and ar- siring and performing their desire. ranges a visit, the sigh that immedi- Fabyc operates under the notion that ately follows performs a fatigue all sex is a transaction and the under- towards the outside world and an un- lying anger perceivable in her work 53 Chapter 3 / Desire for More | EWVA

Figs. 7a-b. Deej Fabyc, 80 Days, 1992, stills from video. Courtesy of the artist.

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do not distribute

derives from this awareness. She not rooted in a specific locality. This found support with feminist lesbian nomadism is sometimes the cause of groups, but suffered from the ab- the loss of early works and lack of sence of dialogue with other practitio- local support as artists end up not ners using videos. For this reason, belonging anywhere. she moved between Europe and Aus- The combination of difficult prac- tralia, finding a fertile environment in tical conditions and the general hos- the UK in the early 1990s. This embed- tility towards desire in women artists’ ded internationalism, practiced by a work and life fill women’s videos with number of artists, precedes email and particular intensity and urgency. De- social media – it is not based on the sire ripples through video images like ease fostered by emerging technolo- a pressure bubbling up from under the gies, but ideologically based, a con- surface. Rereading early moving im- text fostering practices and dialogues age practices from this perspective EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 54

offers the opportunity to recognise the context. Nevertheless, this brief sur- importance of these early works as vey shows how many early women performances of feminine voices that artists engaged with desire as desire found little space in a male dominated for more in an understanding that de- environment. I have only scratched sire cannot be contained, rationalised the surface of the works mentioned and qualified even at the moment of here and there are many more that living, performing and representing it. would be important to examine in this

Endnotes 1. This text relies on reflections and information derived directly from my participation in the event Self/Portraits (Visual ResearchPROOF Centre, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, DCA, Dundee, 5 December 2017) curated and presented by Giulia Casalini, Laura Leuzzi and Diana Georgiou, and part of the AHRC funded research project EWVA. Moreover, Judith Goddard, Lydia Schouten and Deej Fabyc have generously shared their time and thoughts with me on their work and ideas. 2. Although this quote is attributed to Freud, it can only be sourced in Ernest Jones, Sigmund Freud, Life and Work. Volume 2, Years of Maturity 1901–1919 (London: Hogarth Press, 1955). 3. Jacques Lacan, Écrits, Bruce Fink (trans.) (New York: Norton, 2006). 4. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975), in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 833–844. 5. Ibidem, p. 834. do 6. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p 4. 7. Liza Béar and Willoughby Sharp, ‘Video Performance’, Avalanche, no. 9, May/June (New York: Center for New Art Activities, 1974), pp. 10–11, emphasis added.not 8. Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, p. 834. 9. I use this term to recall the long history of hostility towards women who take active roles and more generally towards women’s bodies. The accusation of hysteria and ‘wandering uterus’ directed at women who dared express frustration or vitality is today sublimated into less explicit,distribute but similarly damaging comments. These remain a tool of power designed to discourage women from voicing their dissatisfaction or acting on it to improve their status. Hysteria marks the continuity in the history of the prohibition of women to assert their own rights. 10. For the research project EWVA, Laura Leuzzi interviewed Lydia Schouten as well as other key protagonists of the period analysed in this volume. All interviews are available from http://ewva.ac.uk 11. For the quote see ‘Interview with Lydia Schouten by Laura Leuzzi’, 2015, available at http://www. ewva.ac.uk/assets/lschouten_interview.pdf (accessed 18 May 2017). 12. Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. 13. Les Reines Prochaines, http://www.reinesprochaines.ch (accessed 30 May 2017). 14. Pipilotti Rist (London: Phaidon, 2001). 15. Slavoj ðiek , The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London: Verso, 2000). 16. Catherine Elwes (2015) Interviewed by Laura Leuzzi. Online. Available from http://ewva.ac.uk/catherine- elwes.html (accessed 30 April 2017). 17. Ibidem. 18. Lauren Berlant, Intimacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 1. 19. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 331. 20. Gertrude Stein,‘Melanctha’, in Three Lives: Stories of the Good Anna, Melanctha, and the Gentle Lena (New York: The Grafton Press, 1909). Chapter 4

On Women’s Video Art in the context of Yugoslavia, 1969–91PROOF

Chapter 4 / Women ’s Video Art in Yugoslavi a Jon Blackwood

Introduction key role played by women artists and The potential of video as a technol- cultural workers in the emergence of ogy and vehicle for communication video technology from the late 1960s, was recognised, and its socializingdoright through to the post-Yugoslav role determined. The producers – present. the artists – in former Yugoslavia The scope of our discussion, did not control the fate of these however,not falls mainly in the late Yugo- utopian desires, which were dic- slav period (1968–91) and I would like tated rather by ideological and eco- to consider four principal case studies nomic demands […] video artists in the uses of video made by women were essentially isolated in a ghetto in this period.distribute After a structural consid- from which they were unable to eration of the place of women artists have a wider impact on society.1 in late Yugoslav society, and the place of video art and video technologies ritten from our vantage with this specific cultural ecosystem, point, the categories of we will consider the examples of Nuša ‘Yugoslavia’ and ‘video and Sre o Dragan, Marina Abra- art’ are historical. Hav- moviƒ, Sanja Ivekoviƒ, Dunja Blaeviƒ, W ƒ ing grown up in the and Zemira Alajbegovi ; in our con- 1980s with video art as the most con- clusion we will consider the legacy temporary of the new art practices, and reflections made by contempo- and with Yugoslavia seemingly a per- rary artists on these pioneering ca- manent fixture on the map of Europe, reers, in the late Yugoslav period, and it is a strange essay to have to write. hint at possible future research devel- But the awful dissolution of Yugosla- opments in uncovering histories of via in the 1990s, and the swamping of video art made by women in former video by the emergence of digital Yugoslav republics not covered as cultures and their attendant technolo- much in the current historiography: gies, makes this perhaps a timely Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia. moment from which to consider the We should begin with a succinct over- EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 56

view of the development of modern Ljubljana for graphic art. And it was and contemporary art in Yugoslavia, these three cities that were to play a and the position of women as it prominent role in the development of evolved in successive generations of video art in Yugoslavia from the late artists and cultural workers. 1960s onwards. Founded during the German oc- ‘Yugoslav’ art, therefore, was a cupation on November 29, 1943, to portmanteau term for the specific pro- begin with, the future Socialist Federal gress of cultural development within Republic of Yugoslavia was modelled each of the six republics, and two on the Soviet constitution, and in the associate republics, of the federation, first years after the end of the Second which had their own specific cultural World War, seemed set to copy the histories and developmental priori- PROOFSoviet template as faithfully as coun- ties. In the context of the socialist tries in the Warsaw Pact. But the posi- world, and Yugoslavia’s very specific tion of Yugoslavia in the post-war position as a pivot between the two geopolitical order was determined by antagonists in the Cold War, the con- the 1948 Informbiro crisis, in which the text for visual culture was markedly Yugoslav leader, Josip Broz Tito, liberal compared with that experi- broke decisively with Stalin and Soviet enced in Warsaw Pact countries. Bel- Russia, and determineddo a ‘third way’ grade hosted travelling exhibitions of course for the country he ruled abso- contemporary Dutch and French art in lutely; neither part of the Soviet bloc, the early 1950s, and welcomed a nor the emerging Westernnot Powers af- comprehensive show of American ab- filiated to NATO, but as a ‘non- stract expressionism in 1956. aligned’ country seeking friendly In the context of the partisan relations with both sides of the Cold struggle for the liberation of Yugosla- War divide, and using this pivotal po-distributevia from fascist occupation, women sition as a means of jockeying for a enjoyed not only equal status as full leading role amongst the countries of combatants on the front line, but also the developing world, emerging from the promise of full equality and an end the colonial era. to deep-rooted, traditional patriarchy In cultural terms, Tito’s political in peacetime. The research of the handbrake-turn in June 1948, brought feminist collective CRVENA, in par- to an end a very brief period of social- ticular Adela Jušiƒ and Andreja ist realism in the Yugoslav context. It Dugandiƒ, into the anti-fascist is also important to understand that women’s archives in the Historical there was never really such a thing as Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina in ‘Yugoslav’ art. Modern and contem- Sarajevo, has revealed a richly layered porary art in the period of Yugoslavia history of the development of was dominated by the three most women’s ideas and political aspira- powerful republics in the federation – tions ahead of the future peacetime Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia – with art development of Tito’s Yugoslavia.2 schools in the capitals of each of Unfortunately, these aspirations these republics determining the remained largely unrealised in peace- shape of certain practices; Belgrade time. Whilst it is true that women had for painting, Zagreb for sculpture, and much more opportunity for education 57 Chapter 4 / Women’s Video Art in Yugoslavia | EWVA and professional advancement in so- time stories and of the sacrifices cialist Yugoslavia than in previous made by their parents, and looked for state formations, as the 1950s devel- change. Whilst, politically, this was ex- oped, so too did a re-formulation of pressed through the Croatian spring patriarchy. A propaganda film of (1968–71), a loose grouping of intel- 1958, Grad od Deset Ljeta [A City at lectuals who wanted to look again at Ten Years Old], of Novi Travnik, dis- Croatia’s status within federal Yugo- cussing the development of the ‘new slavia, and the ‘Slovenian roads affair’ socialist city’, presents a familiar nar- (1969), the idealist side of the de- rative where men are engaged in con- mands for political change were ar- struction and industrial jobs, with ticulated in the ‘June events’ of 1968 women returning to traditional roles in in Belgrade, Sarajevo and Zagreb, childcare andPROOF domestic labour; the which took the form of student upris- film even jokes about the supposed ings against police brutality, control of haplessness of men in the domestic intellectual discussion, and perceived context.3 Such propaganda narratives failings in the system of Yugoslav self- present Yugoslavia as a young, devel- managed socialism.4 oping country aspiring to grow as Whilst it is difficult to draw a direct quickly as possible, yet is notably si- link between this intellectual and po- lent on gender equality and the rolesdolitical atmosphere and the emergence that women and men have to play in of video art, certainly it formed an im- such a project of modernisation. portant loam from which the early en- But this short, informative, light gagementnot with the new medium grew; hearted film, typical of the kind pro- not to mention a renewed focus on the duced to reinforce the political narra- role of women within Yugoslav socie- tives that the Yugoslav leadership ties. An important outcome from the wanted people to internalise, was very years of protestsdistribute was the estab- much part of the pre-1968 generation, lishment of student and youth cultural of a phase of re-construction and cor- centres in the major cities of the Fed- rection of war damage that lasted well eration, notably in Sarajevo (1969) into the following decade. The first and in Belgrade (1971), as a place for experiments in video art were to come younger people to meet and develop at the end of the 1960s, in part grow- culturally. The SKC in Belgrade was to ing from a rich cross-fertilisation be- become synonymous with the devel- tween political and artistic opment of the ‘New Art practices’ in subcultures, and the heady mix of the 1970s in Yugoslavia, particularly in New Left ideas which informed and performance art, in video and in inter- sustained some aspects of the youth national manifestations such as the rebellion that swept across the Euro- Belgrade October salon, and the Bel- pean continent in the summer of 1968. grade international theatre festival This was a moment of political (BITEF). turbulence and subsequent sober Structurally, the development of self-examination that gripped Yugo- video art in Yugoslavia proceeded slavia. By this stage, Tito was seventy- slowly in its first decade. The reason six; as in other countries, a younger for this was the prohibitive cost of generation had tired of hearing war- camera equipment and the availability EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 58

Fig. 1. Nuša and Sre o Dragan, Belo Mleko Belih Prsih [White Milk White Breasts], 1969, still from video. Courtesy of Sre o Dragan.

PROOF

do of video-tape. Video art, by reason of experiment described above, the necessity, had to be made in partner- creative partnership of Nuša and ship with institutions, in particularnot the Sre o Dragan, which lasted from various television stations of Yugosla- 1967–88, produced the first experi- via; the relationship between video ment with the new medium. Nuša Dra- artists and national broadcasters was gan (1943–2011) had graduated in a close one, throughout the period. Asdistributesociology and psychology in the Barbara Bor iƒ has shown convinc- same year that this video was pro- ingly, this period came to an end – and duced, whilst Sreco (b. 1944) many of the pioneers ceased making emerged from Ljubljana’s faculty of video for a period – because of a fine arts. Sre o Dragan also moved in shortage of video tape and equip- the same social and creative circles ment, and also in frustration at being as the radical avant-garde grouping stuck on the very margins of the differ- OHO, who were amongst the first to ing Yugoslav art worlds, working in a experiment with performance, proc- medium still seen as very new, and ess and post-object art in the Yugo- lacking comprehensive under- slav context.5 standing or following. In the early years of video produc- tion in Yugoslavia, the mood was very much one of tentative experimenta- Beginnings and tion, gradually growing in confidence. Development of Video Art The Dragans’ first video work, Belo by Women in Yugoslavia mleko Belih prsi [White Milk of White The first piece of video art made in Breasts] (Fig. 1), appeared in 1969. In Yugoslavia was made in Ljubljana. In actual fact, this work is a still image of the atmosphere of social and creative a woman’s breast, with a bead of milk 59 Chapter 4 / Women’s Video Art in Yugoslavia | EWVA visible; playing across this image is a sequence of changing, edited graphic signs. This video piece stands at a turn- ing point, between the traditional still image, and the coming new tech- niques of editing, cutting and mixing. These techniques assumed an in- creasing maturity and subtlety in later works produced by the partnership, such as 1974’s Šakti is Coming that speaks directly to emerging postmod- ern concernsPROOF of the image-within-the- image, and of endless repetition. The Dragans’ involvement in the earliest developments of video art quickly al- lowed them to grow an international profile; Nuša worked at the British Film Institute in London for a period in 1972 where her knowledge of video anddo television techniques grew exponen- tially; together with Sreco, she was included in Richard Demarco’s ca- not nonical exhibitions of Yugoslav art in Edinburgh, in 1973 and again in 1975 (Fig. 2).6 in which the artist aggressively combs Fig. 2. ASPECT her hair usingdistribute two large combs, clearly ’75, cover of the Alongside technical experimenta- exhibition tion, the other key early function of in pain at times from the scraping of catalogue, the comb’s bristles on her scalp, Edinburgh, video art was documentation. These Fruitmarket documentary works became artworks whilst repeating the mantra ‘art must Gallery, 1975. be beautiful, the artist must be beau- Courtesy of the in their own right as the event it re- Demarco corded faded in the memories of tiful’. European Art On one level, this is an unalloyed Foundation and those who had seen it live. In the early Demarco Digital 1970s, performance and video were feminist critique of patriarchy and its Archive, intimately linked together in Yugosla- potential to reduce the role of the art University of Dundee. via. A good example of the documen- audience and the female artist to one tary link is Abramoviƒ’s Art Must be of passivity and consent to being ob- Beautiful, the Artist Must be Beautiful served. The performance, therefore, (Fig. 3) first performed in 1975, at the in its strange mixture of vigorous, self- Charlottenburg Art Festival in Copen- harming physical activity and lapsing hagen.7 into trance-like periods of active si- Abramoviƒ’s performance is now lence, fundamentally rejects not only canonical, but at the time, this video the gendering of art practice, but also allowed viewers an insight that would of its reception. have been difficult for the live audi- Yet on another level, the video ence. The piece lasts for fifty minutes, document of the performance gives it EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 60

Fig. 3. Marina Abramoviƒ, Art Must be Beautiful, the Artist Must be Beautiful, 1975, Charlottenburg Art Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark. © Marina Abramoviƒ. Courtesy of the Marina Abramoviƒ Archives. PROOF

a life that it otherwisedo would not have the structural position of women in had. Moreover, the focus of the cam- Yugoslavia, the patriarchal organisa- era on the artist’s head and hands tion of the internal socialist ‘market- allows the viewer of the videonot to have place’, and her wry observations on a psychological insight into the devel- the outworking of male political power opment of the performance and the in this decade, in retrospect, Ivek- physical struggle experienced by the oviƒ’s work offers the most sustained performer; a close up insight that sim-distributeanalysis of these issues; central to her ply would not have been possible for practice, rather than just a part of the spectators of the live event. It is them. Ivekoviƒ stressed in an interview this psychological drama, and the in 2012 that: subsequent critical interpretation and […] I have repeatedly asked my- artistic re-appropriation that have self, what is my position in the so- given this particular work a lively time- cial system, my relationship with line in its reception, and helped to the system of power, domination grow the artist’s profile substantially and exploitation, and how I can re- after her departure from Yugoslavia spond and act meaningfully as an for the Netherlands in 1975. artist […] I want to be deliberately However, it is perhaps the work of active rather than a passive ‘object’ Sanja Ivekoviƒ in video that addresses of the ideological system.8 most directly the position of women in Moreover, as Laura Leuzzi’s de- ‘actually existing socialism’ in 1970s veloping research has shown, Ivek- Yugoslavia. This artist graduated from oviƒ benefitted strongly from Zagreb’s academy of Fine Arts in participation in the Motovun ‘encoun- 1971, and quickly found herself asso- ters’ between Yugoslav and Italian ciated with the ‘New Art practices’ in video artists in the 1970s, and through the Yugoslav context. In her focus on these connections was able to have 61 Chapter 4 / Women’s Video Art in Yugoslavia | EWVA some of her work produced in the Italian context, bypassing the limita- tions of Yugoslav conditions for pro- duction. A good example of Ivekoviƒ’s 1970s work is Make Up Make Down (Figs. 4a-b), a five and a half minute video made first in black and white in 1976, with the involvement of the Gal- leria del Cavallino in Italy, with a new version in colour made in 1978. The subject of the work is the private, inti- mate momentPROOF of applying make up. The artist is not visible in the film, but the focus is rather on the make up products, and how Ivekoviƒ interacts with them during the process. The work speaks to a broader narrative of the commodification of identity and desire, and through a pitiless exami-do nation of those processes, inviting broader analysis of the rituals that women engage in before presenting a not public persona. Parallel analyses of the male domination in the role of defining beauty and then acting on it socially, distribute can be found in Instructions no. 1 of 1976, in which the artist draws a series women in the dissemination and pro- Figs. 4a-b. Sanja ƒ of mock-plastic surgery lines and duction of video. Perhaps the most Ivekovi , Make Up Make Down, marks on her face before obscuring important figure to acknowledge here 1976–78, still them, or the performative action is the curator, writer and producer, from video. Courtesy of the Trokut [Triangle] of 1979, where simu- Dunja Blaeviƒ. Trained as an art his- artist. lated masturbation on a balcony dur- torian, Blaeviƒ was a key figure at the ing a parade by Tito in Zagreb caused Student Cultural Centre Art Gallery in a hurried reaction from state forces, Belgrade, where she served as direc- show a clear and focused develop- tor from 1971–76 and then head of ment of a practice that has institu- programming, until 1980. In 1978, tional critique of political power, and Blaeviƒ was one of the joint organis- the exercising of that power on a gen- ers of an international conference on dered basis, at its core. feminism, entitled Comradess Woman If the artists that we have focused – Women’s Questions: A New Ap- on so far are widely acknowledged as proach at SKC, which featured a rare pioneering profiles in Yugoslav meeting between western feminists women’s video art, then we must also and those active in the context of so- acknowledge the key role played by cialism.9 EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 62

In this early period, she also cu- work for TV Belgrade; she introduced rated exhibitions that openly queried video art on her programme, Other Art, the status of traditional art forms in the in that year, and from 1984 to 1991, Yugoslav context and included radical her series, TV Gallery, was to produce calls for a change in the production over sixty programmes on contempo- and function of art in socialist society. rary art practices, including pro- In her text on an exhibition at SKC grammes on video. We can locate called Okotobar 75 – An Example of Blaeviƒ’s practice as a television pro- Counter-Exhibition: Statements on Ar- ducer as perhaps, in the 1980s, sur- tistic Autonomy, Self-Management passing her undoubted experience and Self-Critique, she stated: and ability as a curator and arts ad- PROOFArt should be changed! As long as ministrator, in influencing the taste for we leave art alone and keep on contemporary art amongst a popular transferring works of art from stu- audience, reaching those who were dios to depots and basements by not immediately involved, at a social means of social regulations and or practical level, in the differing art mechanisms, storing them, like scenes around Yugoslavia. stillborn children, for the benefit of Whilst Blaeviƒ’s pioneering tele- our cultural offspring, or while we vision began to shape new audiences keep on creating,do through the pri- for video art, in the last decade of vate market […] art will remain a Yugoslavia – the 1980s – the practice social appendage, something and aesthetics of video began to di- serving no useful purpose,not but verge. The 1974 re-draft of the Yugo- something it is not decent or cul- slav constitution – the final version – 10 tured to be without. granted full cultural autonomy to each If this was true of painting and of the six republics, allowing local cul- sculpture, then it was truer of video art.distributetures to be funded at the level of the With only a small number of practitio- local party’s cultural apparatus. While ners, difficulty in acquiring equipment in less developed republics, such as and material, and a tiny audience, Bosnia and Macedonia, this finally al- what video art needed more than any- lowed for the exponential growth of thing was an informed public. The local scenes; for republics such as logical step was to try to move exam- Slovenia, this was the germ of an in- ples of video art onto mainstream tele- dependent set of cultural priorities, vision, and this Blaeviƒ was able to that in effect, were foundation blocks achieve after a change of role in the for independence and statehood 1980s. some sixteen years later. 11 As Barbara Bor iƒ has shown, In the 1980s, it was Ljubljana that video art began to move away from was to emerge, perhaps, as the venue the realm of aesthetics and art criti- for the most radical experimental and cism in Yugoslavia at the end of the counter-cultural currents in late Yugo- 1970s, and towards the realm of the slavia. Institutions such as ŠKUC and mass audiences that television could the appearance of Neue Slowenische bring. Blaeviƒ’s move from the world Kunst [New Slovenian Art] from the of curatorship to television production city’s underground have been exten- began in 1981 when she began to sively researched and written about in 63 Chapter 4 / Women’s Video Art in Yugoslavia | EWVA the last twenty years; particularly in the international profile now enjoyed by the artistic collaboration, IRWIN. How- ever perhaps, less work has been done on the nature of video produc- tion in Ljubljana during this period. The work of Zemira Alajbegoviƒ is instructive in this regard. Part of the video artists’ group FV, which was associated with the Disko FV night- club in the city, Alajbegoviƒ’s 1983 work Tereza (Figs. 5a-b) reveals, at once, the confidencePROOF of an artist de- veloping closely in collaboration with a layered and multi-perspectival video art scene, but also, confident enough to make a work openly sceptical of the Slovenian political gerontocracy, and the increasing emptiness of their rituals and messages.12 Over just fourdo minutes, Tereza cuts between excerpts from performances of Slovenian pop songs, interspersed not with footage of Communist politicians receiving applause and parading in public on ceremonial days. On one level, it speaks of a genuine genera- distribute tional conflict; between an older gen- video under the duo’s pseudonym Figs. 5a-b. eration socialised under Tito’s ZANK, and the duo were also involved Zemira Alajbegoviƒ, socialism and content to repeat its later in the multi-media events of the Tereza, 1983, structures and rituals, and a younger Borghesia artists’ group. She was stills from video. Courtesy of the generation for whom the slogans and able to benefit from improvements in artist. practices derived from the partisan the conditions for the production of struggle had little meaning beyond video work, through the Galerija empty repetition and perfunctory ob- ŠKUC video production programme, servation. Tereza, therefore, is a piece and the encouragement and interest which shows the emergence of a con- of producers and managers at temporary televisual culture which Ljubljana television; and in particular, bore little relation to the founding nar- of international exhibitions and dis- ratives of the Yugoslav state, and the cussions on video art in the city, in coming emergence, a few years later, 1982 and again in 1985. of a global youth culture driven by Cultural decisions, taken at re- American brands such as MTV. public level since 1974, ironically had Alajbegoviƒ’s practice, of course, an unintended consequence; they en- did not develop in isolation. Together couraged local cultural scenes to with Neven Korda, she produced think critically and independently, and EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 64

without doubt played a small part in discussed above. In the performance, the eventual coming apart at the Maja re-works the original piece, seams of the Yugoslav federation in copying the physical movements of the period 1989–91. Abramoviƒ in the original and merely The growing acceptance of video replacing the word ‘beautiful’ with ‘na- art in the 1980s and the emergence of tional’. The piece is painful as, in a very a television-savvy generation, saw pungent way, it illustrates the fate of video art begin to appear consistently the Yugoslav idea and the conse- beyond the Belgrade-Zagreb- quences of its dissolution. Any chi- Ljubljana axis in Yugoslavia. The first merical notions of ‘beauty’ have been dedicated showing of video art in Bos- overwritten by a political monomania nia-Herzegovina was at the Olympic on national and ethnic identities, and PROOFgallery in Sarajevo in March 1985, cu- the often-absurd demarcations of rated by Nermina ðildo; this exhibi- common language, and ideological tion featured a range of the most re-writing of history that has taken prominent video practitioners from place since the end of the Yugoslav Yugoslavia alongside colleagues Wars of succession that lasted from from the UK, USA and West Germany. 1991–99. Whilst the performance has Video art also featured in the canoni- been re-enacted elsewhere in terms of cal Jugoslovenskado Dokumenta exhibi- re-engaging with half forgotten mate- tions in Sarajevo’s Skenderija in 1987 rial, or re-interpreting it in a different and 1989, the biggest showings of cultural context, Maja Bajeviƒ’s video contemporary art from Yugoslavianot piece is an acute summary of futility, mounted in the federation during its loss and regret. history. In this essay, we have discussed In Macedonia, social and creative some of the contours of the develop- friendships between TV producersdistributement of contemporary visual culture in and visual artists, according to the the former Yugoslavia, and the key pattern established elsewhere in the roles that women played in its devel- federation, began to produce con- opment. After an early phase of learn- crete results, with Dragan Abjaniƒ,Ka- ing and technical experimentation, tica Trajkovska and Iskra Dimitrova, video art, confined to the margins of producing their first works at the very artistic avant-gardes in the 1970s, de- end of Yugoslav times. The mature veloped by means of documentation, outworking of these early experiments and by focused engagement with so- did not happen until after the dissolu- cietal and gender issues of that time. tion of the Yugoslav federation in In the work of Sanja Ivekoviƒ, video is 1991, and Macedonian inde- used as a very sharp tool of institu- pendence. tional and ideological critique. Video from the beginning in Yu- goslavia had relations with unlikely Conclusion bedfellows; the milieu of experimental The Bosnian artist Maja Bajeviƒ’s performance, music and theatre on video piece Art Must Be National of the one hand and the mass audience 2012, is a painful re-working of Marina of television on the other. Yet it was Abramoviƒ’s, Art Must Be Beautiful this very relationship, thanks to the 65 Chapter 4 / Women’s Video Art in Yugoslavia | EWVA foresight and determination of Dunja independent practitioner, until her Blaeviƒ in Belgrade and others at death in Ljubljana in 2011, leaving be- republican level, that brought video to hind over forty years of video work; a television audience in the 1980s and Dunja Blaeviƒ inspired a whole new grew and shaped a taste for a type of generation of young women artists in art that previously had struggled to her works as director of the Soros gain a profile beyond the milieu of Center/SCCA in Sarajevo from student cultural centres and a small 1996–2016; Sanja Ivekoviƒ has en- minority of active artists. joyed an unprecedented profile in the Although we began the essay by last decade, with a major retrospec- noting the historical nature of the me- tive at MoMA and acquisitions by na- dium of video, the legacy of this time- tional galleries and institutions that line that wePROOF have traced in this essay had long been ignorant of her work. is still felt strongly in the work of young It is in the persistence of these women artists from ex-Yugoslav practices, in the face of the challenges countries in our time; for example mentioned, and a still-present patriar- Adela Jušiƒ’s work on the Bosnian war chal scepticism as to the ability of and its consequences politically and women to handle video equipment personally (The Sniper, 2007), Milijana and its attendant technologies, that Babiƒ’s video essay on the humili-doforms the bedrock of much contem- ations and disappointments of young porary video practice in the territories women seeking employment in of ex-Yugoslavia. It is the richness of chronically precarious post-socialist thenot work of the younger generation of economies (Looking for Work, 2013), video artists who have followed, the or Jasmina Cibic’s video, For Our continued commitment to documen- Economy and Culture that repre- tation, experimentation, institutional sented Slovenia in the 2013 Venice and social critique,distribute and cross-discipli- Biennale. nary collaboration, that is the richest Moreover, the artists mentioned legacy of the early years of women’s’ earlier in the essay are mostly still video art discussed in this essay, and working in video as their primary ac- one that will endure. tivity. Nuša Dragan, continued as an

Endnotes 1. Barbara Bor iƒ, ‘Video Art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism’ in Miško Šuvakoviƒ and Dubravka Djuriƒ (eds.), Impossible Histories: Historic Avant-Gardes, Neo-Avant-Gardes, and Post Avant Gardes in Yugoslavia 1918–91 (Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 2003), pp. 495–496. 2. The archive, in the Bosnian language, can be accessed at: http://www.afzarhiv.org/ (accessed 24 July 2017). 3. Grad odDesetLjeta, Lovèen Film, 1958, can be seen online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIHxgPMxaro (accessed 24 July 2017). For a further discussion of the film in context, see Sarajevo Culture Bureau, ‘On Socialist Utopia and Stojadins’, 27 June 2012. https://sarajlijacult.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/on-socialist-utopia- and-stojadins/ (accessed 24 July 2017). 4. For a full account of the motivation and development of these demonstrations, see Madigan Fichter, ‘Yugoslav Protest: Student Rebellions in Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo, 1968’, Slavic Review, vol. 75, no. 1, March 2016, pp. 99–121. See also Geoffrey Swain, Tito: A Biography (London: IB Tauris, 2010), chap. 6, pp. 139–165. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 66

5. OHO (a neologism combining the Slovene words for eye and ear) existed between 1966–71. For a full history and development, see Miško Šuvakoviƒ, The Clandestine Histories of the OHO Group (Ljubljana: Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E, 2010); and also http://www.artmargins.com/index.php/oho-homepage 6. These exhibitions were Eight Yugoslav Artists in Edinburgh in August 1973, and ASPECT ’75,whichbeganin Edinburgh and toured in Northern Ireland and England during 1975/76. For more information, see my essay ‘Richard Demarco and the Yugoslav art world’ in Euan McArthur & Arthur Watson (eds.), Ten Dialogues: Richard Demarco and the European Avant-Garde (Edinburgh: RSA, 2010). 7. A thirteen-minute excerpt from this film can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUgBAT4nvdM (accessed 22 May 2017). 8. Roxana Marcoci, ‘Sanja Ivekoviƒ’, Flash Art, March/April 2012, accessible online at: http://www.flashartonline. com/sanja-ivekovic/ 9. For further details on this conference, see Hedvig Turai, ‘Bojana Pejiƒ on Gender and Feminism in Eastern European Art’, in Katrin Kivimaa (ed.), Working with Feminism: Curating and Exhibitions in Eastern Europe (Tallinn: Tallinn University Press, 2012), pp. 198–201. 10. For furtherPROOF information on this exhibition visit: http://tranzit.org/exhibitionarchive/tag/dunja-blazevic/ 11. See Borƒiƒ, ‘Video Art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism’, p. 506. 12. The work can be seen at: http://www.e-arhiv.org/diva/index.php?opt=work&id=384 (accessed August 2017).

do not distribute Chapter 5

SlenderMarginsandDelicate Tensions: Projects by EuropeanPROOF Video Pioneers Stansfield/Hooykaas

Chapter 5 / Slender Margins and Delicate Tensions Malcolm Dickson he work of Stansfield/ galleries, festivals, television and the Hooykaas surfaces from the internet); as well as the networks cross currents of a fertile anddowhich strengthen and extend interna- T formative period of artistic tional links. They have moved be- and cultural activity stem- tween,not sometimes uneasily, the ming from the 1960s, when cultural, nuances of moving image culture, the technological and social energies in- art world and television broadcasting. tersected and transformed one Furthermore, the process of archiving another in new and previously unseen serves to illuminatedistribute the practical and ways. They might be called the theoretical issues around medium younger breed of the first generation specificity and the technological shifts of video artists to start exhibiting their that result in certain ‘carriers’ becom- work in the 1970s and whose practice ing obsolete, thereby raising further has had an influential effect in Britain questions about the veracity of par- and in Europe helping to define the ticular works being ‘restaged’ or re- expanded area of video installation purposed, and throwing up options (Fig. 1). After forty-six years, their work for renewed reading and fresh per- remains at the forefront of such devel- spectives. opments in European video practice. This is highlighted in the video Their ‘oeuvre’ is inextricably environment Labyrinth of Lines,re- linked to the ecologies of practice cently seen at the M HKA in Antwerp. which determine how art is mediated This followed the components of the – modes of spectatorship (the various original work from 1978, produced for forms through which work travels, the ICC in Antwerp as a site-specific from galleries, to online); distribution work for the ‘horse stables’ of the Pal- and production (access to facilities, ace on the Meir. Writing about the workshops, funding, educational in- work in October 2017, the Museum stitutions, distributors, collectives, states ‘Historically, this work is of EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 68

Fig. 1. Elsa Stansfield and Madelon Hooykaas, at the World Wide Video Festival, The Hague, 1985. Courtesy of Madelon Hooykaas.

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great importance. Firstly, of course, ate vicinity of where the artists as part of the Stansfield/Hooykaasdo lived.2 oeuvre, but above all because of the The nomadic nature of their prac- use of many different sizes and types tice however has also created obsta- of monitors. When the worknot was first cles in that curators and collectors installed, this variety of technology struggled to define their practice as was unique. Now, thirty-nine years International, European, or British, an later, the reinstalment of the work otherwise perfunctory issue except poses a challenge, since the old videodistributewhen it comes to curatorial legitimisa- technology will be re-used’. It uses tion. They didn’t quite fit within the twelve monitors and a closed-circuit feminist discourse prevalent in the 70s video installation, two video tapes, and 80s, which premised themes of fourteen black-and-white photos sexuality, identify, the body, and so- printed on linen, water barrel, mirror, cial hierarchy and in fact they rejected leaves and lead wire – the sound was invitations to participate in exhibitions based on earlier recordings by ‘sculp- that may have forced that reading on tress of sound’ Delia Derbyshire. It is their more pluralistic practice. Col- a work that is emblematic of the genre laboration was also a rarer mode of and their audio-video-photo installa- working in the early 70s, especially 1 tional approach. those by women. As Hooykaas notes, Catherine Elwes has written that ‘we were never a part of a feminist their work anticipated group and there weren’t any specifi- the internationalism of today’s art cally feminist groups then in the Neth- 3 world, whereas in the 1980s, video erlands working with artists’. practice was often framed around Their first and last ‘video installa- a localism tied to the politics of tions’ were made in Scotland in 1975 identity, and social inequalities af- and 2004 respectively, the latter being fecting communities in the immedi- the latest iteration of a collaborative 69 Chapter 5 / Slender Margins and Delicate Tensions | EWVA

Fig. 2. Elsa Stansfield and Madelon Hooykaas, Day for Night IV, video installation, VRC, DJCAD, Dundee, 2004. Photo: Courtesy of REWIND Archive, DJCAD, Dundee.

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work made when Stansfield was still was offered to record viewers alive, Day for Night IV (Fig. 2) whichdothoughts, and materials for them to concluded a residency at the Visual write their comments, which were in Research Centre, DJCAD, within Dun- turn displayed alongside the photo- dee Contemporary Arts, Scotland in graphicnot panels. The title refers to the 2004.4 Though, it is neither appropri- Glaswegian dialect and mannerism of ate nor indeed accurate to call it ‘final’, rebutting a question with a possible as Hooykaas has continued to pro- hostile response: – ‘How are you to- duce artworks in their name and with day?’, answerdistribute – ‘What’s it to you?’. It all the hallmarks of their approach. is this interactivity and site-specificity What’s It to You? (Fig. 3) was that gives their work, like that of others shown at Glasgow’s Third Eye Centre experimenting with video at the time, in 1975,5 quite possibly the first video a contemporaneous link to new me- experiment in a public gallery space in dia. the city, if not in Scotland, and embod- The tapes were shown again a ied elements that have maintained year later in Glasgow during the con- some continuity through their prac- ference The Future of Video in Scot- tice. It makes reference to the site it is land organised by Tamara Krikorian to located in, combines live and pre-re- coincide with the second exhibition of corded video, includes photography, video in the city Video: Towards Defin- and involves a questioning of the role ing an Aesthetic (again held at the of the viewer. It linked two monitors Third Eye Centre). Included in that playing tapes from The Barras flea show were a group of artists associ- market in the East End of the city with ated with London Video Arts – David the arts centre, situated on one of the Hall, Tony Sinden and Stephen Par- busiest shopping streets of the city, tridge – who were also exploring the Sauchiehall Street. A third monitor characteristics of the medium, namely teased passers-by to stop; a camera instant playback, its looping capacity, EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 70

Figs. 3a-b. Elsa Stansfield and Madelon Hooykaas, What’s It to You?, 1975, video installation, Third Eye Centre, Glasgow. Courtesy of Madelon Hooykaas.

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and closed circuit capabilities. Writing situation in which they are involved, in Studio International at the time, in a and an insight into the medium it- special issue edited by David Hall, self. A possibility of analysing, re- Tamara Krikorian remarked:do assessing and eventually re-directing TV itself.6 There has been a commitment in Scotland which at times has been Their next work in Britain was at lacking elsewhere: [thenot conference the Whitechapel Art Gallery, close to topics] successfully brought the where they had recently moved studio discussion back to the level of what to in Wapping, where they made a video is all about: a tool, which, ifdistributesite-specific three-tape work in 1976 skilfully handled, offers an alterna- entitled Journeys (Figs. 4a-b). It re- tive to the broadcast mode. It al- lated the development of technology lows the users insight into the from agrarian beginnings to urban de- 71 Chapter 5 / Slender Margins and Delicate Tensions | EWVA

Figs. 4a-b. Elsa Stansfield and Madelon Hooykaas, Journeys, 1976, Whitechapel Art Gallery. Collection Tate Britain, London. Courtesy of Madelon Hooykaas.

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ployment through the movement of materials – the menu reads: 1 pre-re- peoples, and being placed in an area corded tape (15 min), 1 playback rich with the different cultures that set- deck, 2 b/w video-monitors, 14 mixed tled in East London; it was a strongly media works: 50 x 60 cm, 1 round site-specific work combining a series mirror, 1 oval mirror, and 2 plants.7 of photographs and video. One year One wonders if this data capture was later Just Like That was exhibited at Air in anticipation of future archiving to Gallery in Shaftsbury Avenue, a work avoid any historical inaccuracies in whose recurring concern was how recollecting the work, or indeed, for- time influences (or distorts) memory getting it completely. explored in an installation introducing Hooykaas has remarked that as a elements of man-made and organic result of showing at Whitechapel they EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 72

were invited to exhibit at De Appel,8 a a time cycle of 24 hours divided into new contemporary art space in Am- 4 units of space from darkness to sterdam, with the piece Memory Win- light. As you move through the dow, in 1977, this time with two piece from one space to another environments focused on video, and you carry with you a memory, an with a series of fourteen photographic image or a sound, this is central to images printed onto linen, and again the experiment of the environment. including plants. The artists’ fascina- This is a play on different percep- tion with the scan lines of the ‘video’ tions of reality from the photo- graphs of stones, the real stones raster was a theme of Horizontal Flow, and the video recording of the shown at Teesside College of Art in stones original setting.10 Middlesbrough and at the L.Y.C. Mu- PROOFseum in Cumbria, also in 1977, which This period represented an ex- had five monitors showing images pansion of the British/European as- from two tapes of a pan of a horizon. pects of their exhibition practice, in tune with the Scottish/Dutch synthesis A flurry of video environments of their collaboration. In mid-1970s driven by the conceptual interest in Britain, the context for the production, lines followed in the next year as the cultivation, promotion and critical ap- reputation of the artists spread along preciation of time-based art was dra- with the increasingdo interest in the art matically shifting with a series of world in video and installation. Exhibi- interconnected individuals, organisa- tions such as See Through Lines at tions and initiatives cropping up – in Agora Studio, Maastricht,notMoving the UK for example with 2B Butlers Lines in Studio Amazone, Amster- Wharf (London, 1975), LVA (London, dam; Continuing Lines at Gamm(a), 1976), and the Ayton Basement (New- Utrecht; Video-Pond,MuseumFodor, distributecastle, 1976). Many of these venues Amsterdam; VideoChanges,Het or projects played important roles as Langhuis, Zwolle; and also, in the being international ports of call and same year of 1978, a return to the points of contact in the developing shores of Britain with a work at Chap- European and international video art ter Arts Centre in Cardiff, Sea of Light scenes. which concerned the cycle of the sea. Stansfield/Hooykaas used the In this work, three monitors were sour- first accessible facility for video, Fan- ced from one tape, but with each tasy Factory, which was set up in monitor tuned differently and each 1974,11 and through that, were intro- situated in three of the four gallery duced to artists and facilities at Lon- spaces used – this work suggests a don Video Arts, which had formed widening of their concerns with the itself on the crest of the critical wave video image and to link it to the body of the exhibition The Video Show at the and the landscape, as Hooykaas re- Serpentine in 1975. While London counts, using ‘the luminance of the 9 Video Arts had a core nucleus of art- video image as if it were breathing’. ists involved,12 who were active in The concept is determined by the 4 building a culture for video art, there units of the gallery and its proximity were a great many others whose as- to the sea. The piece encapsulates sociation with London Video Arts 73 Chapter 5 / Slender Margins and Delicate Tensions | EWVA helped fortify the wider climate for the ticularly Dutch video art’.13 reception of video art, Stans- field/Hooykaas amongst them. This The origins of some of the early was significant in asserting video as a incentives were galvanised by social distinct time-based art form, with its ideals, such as that of Videoheads, own aesthetic features which set it formed by Henry Jack Moore in 1971, apart from the discourse and theory a facility used sporadically by Nan around experimental and structuralist Hoover and Raul Marroquin and also film. This was reinforced in broadcast by Stansfield/Hooykaas.14 Agora Stu- television and in the specialist art dios had a more experimental and press, with the BBC’s arts magazine art-based approach, as did Open Stu- series Arena producing a Video Art dio, which was used by Stans- Special introducedPROOF by David Hall, and field/Hooykaas, and other artists such the pioneering art magazine Studio as Ulay/Abramoviƒ. Some of these or- International publishing a special is- ganisations were short-lived and were sue on video art, again guest-edited eclipsed, according to Perrée, by De by Hall. This wasn’t all confined to the Appel in 1975: ‘Soon after its launch- London orbit of course, and parallel to ing in 1975, De Appel became one of the work which the Ayton Basement the most important art institutions in were doing in Newcastle, Artistsdothe Netherlands, this [….] was the Video: An Alternative Use of the Me- international centre for those forms of dium was organised by video artist art that knocked on the doors of the Brian Hoey and Wendy Brown in Tyne museumsnot in vain: performances, en- and Wear. The second outing of it in vironments and situation art’,15 with 1977, which took place at Biddick notable artists such as Jenny Holzer, Farm Arts Centre, Tyne and Wear, in- Nan Hoover, Laurie Anderson and cluded work by Stansfield/Hooykaas, Charlemagnedistribute Palestine all having per- as well as by other artists such as Mick formed or staged work there. Hartney, David Critchley and Stuart Het Kijkhuis opened in The Marshall. Hague in 1975, and from 1982 on- In the Netherlands, things were wards was to be the regular venue for changing too. The In-Out Center, the Worldwide Video Festival, one of founded in 1972 as the first inde- the more established events in the pendent artist space in Amsterdam, annual video art calendar across offering a platform for new art at the Europe and further afield. In 1978, time. As Rob Perrée has pointed out: Montevideo arose with a specific fo- cus on video art, and in 1982, The They may have only reached a lim- Association of Video Artists was ited audience, but what is more formed (of which Madelon Hooykaas important is that they represented was President for four years), and a growing group of foreign artists through it, Time Based Arts was es- who felt drawn to Amsterdam for its tablished in 1983. In 1993 Montevideo tolerant, artistic and grant-friendly and Time Based Arts merged into the climate, and whose innovative and Netherlands Media Art Institute refreshing presence had a stimulat- (NIMk). ing effect on developments, par- EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 74

The origins of the term ‘time- monitors in the gallery were directly based art’ is largely assigned to co-in- affected by the direction of the wind, stigator of the Artist Placement Group, providing an experience of the rela- John Latham, with whom David Hall tionship between past and present, was associated, with the latter setting with natural forces as an active partici- up a department within the Fine Art pant in the creation of the work.17 School at Maidstone called Time Elsa Stansfield proposed that Based Media, with a focus on video, David Hall write in the exhibition cata- in 1972. In 1979, Elsa Stansfield was logue, to which he contributed the the first recipient of a video bursary essay, Video Art Education: 20 Years from the department, funded by the On.18 Elsa Stansfield also organised a Arts Council of Great Britain, and this two-day symposium on the themes of PROOFwas the first of a number to take place the exhibition at the Jan van Eyck with different artists over the course of Academy, with most of the artists in several years. Elsa Stansfield moved that Stedelijk show travelling to Maas- to Maastricht to set up and head a tricht to participate in the symposium. postgraduate video department at the Stone TV – Broken TV (Figs. 5–6), Jan van Eyck Academie, a research a two-part site-specific sculpture, institute in 1980, taking the term with marked a return to Scotland as part of her, which subsequentlydo became an a group show Holland at the Festival appropriate ‘catch all’ for a variety of in 1989 organised by the Richard De- practices. marco Gallery, in association with the A ‘landmark’ exhibitionnot took place Contemporary Art Foundation, Am- at the Stedelijk Museum in Amster- sterdam. The work combined a stone dam in 1984 called The Luminous Im- TV on Calton Hill, which overlooks Ed- age which profiled the diversity and inburgh, and another in a medieval energy around the areas of video in-distributeAbbey at Inchcolm Island in the Firth stallation, with each work created for of Forth.19 Hooykaas explains: or premiered at the event. It included The stone TV had an antenna and a number of European and interna- phosphorescent paint on it. It was tional artists, in what was probably the like when you switch off a monitor most gender balanced manifestation and you see the phosphorescent in a contemporary art exhibition, in- material. We have used that a lot in cluding women practitioners Dara our work also because phosphor is Birnbaum, Max Almy, Nan Hoover, part of a monitor. So, in the Abbey Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Lydia Schouten, we had another stone TV with an antenna and a phosphorus screen. Shigeko Kubota, and Marina Abra- They were five miles apart but they moviƒ [and Ulay].16 Stansfield/ related to each other. We also had Hooykaas responded to the invitation a speaker cone as a kind of sculp- by installing a camera mounted on a ture with silver leaf on it. In the wind vane on the roof of the museum, room, we opened the window and which, when moved by the course of you heard the sea and the seagulls the wind, would change the images and many people thought that the transmitted to the four monitors which sound came from the speaker. But were arranged on the four cardinal there was no electricity used in points of the compass. The images on Stone TV – Broken TV.20 75 Chapter 5 / Slender Margins and Delicate Tensions | EWVA

The theme of navigation re- emerges in their work Intermittent Sig- nals, shown for the first time in Liverpool as part of Video Positive 91. Inspired by visits to Scotland and its ‘powerful’ landscape, the work is part of a series of installation works entitled From the Personal Observatory –itref- erences the ancient stone circles found in Callanish in Lewis and the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney, as solar or lunar observatories, ‘like giant fossil- ised antenna’PROOF21 which are seen as metaphors to excavate the past. The work also responds to the copper plaque that was sent up with the Voy- ager spacecraft as a symbol of our civilization should any extra-terrestri- als encounter it. The work took up a large space at the Tate Gallery in Liv-do erpool and comprised a number of projections of images deemed by the artists to have similar significance, not contrasting with small liquid crystal display screens as points of the con- stellation. In the middle of the space was a platform, an observatory, from distribute where to view the work. on a beach, sounds of water and the Fig. 5. Elsa Works after 2004 were invariably lapping of waves. A second sculptural Stansfield, Stone TV – Broken TV, dedicated to Stansfield – Daydream- version of this took place in Galerie La 1989, ing (Fig. 7), an audio/video installation Centrale in the same city, and com- site-specific two-part consists of a hammock hanging in the bined other elements like metal, salt sculpture, Calton middle of the room from where the and water. Winter Solstice – another Hill, Edinburgh. Courtesy of viewer could view a projected image site-specific video installation in 2006 Madelon on the sloping ceiling and look out to shows a projected image of a Buddha Hooykaas. sea. After Image/After Language from head, one half in black the other in 2006, a site-specific audio/video in- white. The images are lyrical: a silhou- stallation by Stansfield/Hooykaas and ette of Hooykaas stroking a feather, a Chantal duPont shown in a park in figure walking in a snowdrift, or next to Montreal in 2006 consists of an a stormy sea lashing its spray around erected hexagonal shape erected the walking figure – the elements of within the lake in the park onto which light, time, and wind are again recur- were projected further images of ring. water, with the disk reflected in the Stansfield/Hooykaas’ work dis- lake. Images included a seagull in plays the emblematic characteristics slow motion, Elsa Stansfield walking of video installations as spatial, tem- EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 76

Fig. 6. Elsa Stansfield, Stone TV – Broken TV, 1989, site-specific two-part sculpture, Incholm Island, Scotland. Courtesy of Madelon Hooykaas.

Fig. 7. ElsaPROOF Stansfield, Madelon Hooykaas, Daydreaming, 2006, KeterlFactory, Schiedam, The Netherlands, poral and hybrid forms – intuitively-felt as earth, stones, copper, steel and 2010. explorations which included such me- electronic detritus. Because of the Courtesy of Madelon dia and materials as video, photogra- themes embraced, they invite multiple Hooykaas. phy, audio, and naturaldo materials such readings that are more significant than those confined to art world dis- not course. Given these factors, in addi- tion to the issue of site-specificity, how then might these types of installations be preserved, collected and re-pre- distributesented in the future? It is clear that electronic media must migrate as new carriers become available and older ones obsolete – a time consuming and costly exercise to justify re- sources to. It is also self-evident that the issue of display equipment is sub- ject to similar preservation ap- proaches if recon- structions of the work are to be true to form. Between 2007 and 2009, the in- dexing and cataloguing of the Stans- field/Hooykaas archive took place at Hooykaas’ studio, supervised by the Netherlands Media Art Institute/Mon- tevideo (NIMk). This served to provide some critical elements and evidence for Revealing the Invisible: The Art of Stansfield/Hooykaas from Different - Perspectives in 2010 (Fig. 8), which 77 Chapter 5 / Slender Margins and Delicate Tensions | EWVA

Fig. 8. View of Revealing the Invisible exhibition at Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, 2010. Courtesy of Street Level Photoworks.

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was both a landmark exhibition as well are accurate, and that social and cul- as a punctuation in four decades of tural memory continues in relation to their work, augmented by a well-re-dothe practice. With the Stans- searched, comprehensive and luxuri- field/Hooykaas archive, this extends ously produced tome published by De to such details as the original location, Buitenkant and edited by Madelon thenot technology used, the form of its Hooykaas and Claire van Putten.22 As presentation, the driving concerns of the title suggests, the exhibition em- the artists at the time, and of course braced a selection of works providing any amendments within the course of multiple readings rather than a single that investigation.distribute vision and it was seen at Street Level In 2012, NIMk ceased its activities Photoworks and the CCA in Glas- with some of its personnel, collections gow,23 and at De Ketelfactory project and apparatus transferring in 2013 to space in Schiedam and Museum LIMA, also located in Amsterdam, as Gouda, both in the Netherlands. Their a new platform for media art, thereby work is described as ‘a well-knit or- providing some continuity in the ganic whole’ because the artists ‘con- knowledge, collection, conservation, tinually refer back to previous ideas as well as the access and distribution and motifs and rework passages of for media art practice.25 An informa- old tapes into new ones’.24 In this tive case study written by Gaby Wijers process, the role of the artist in verify- details the twin challenges LIMA faced ing details is critical, given the hybrid in the digitisation of the Stans- nature and site-specific approach of field/Hooykaas work: some of their work and materials, and this serves to illustrate the urgency i. How to make sustainable digital required to preserve the work of the reproductions of the artists’ first generation of media artists who videos while maintaining their can, through the first person narrative, significant properties in the digital ensure conditions (and recollections) form? EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 78

ii. How to make the digital dation Stansfield/Hooykaas to the reproductions accessible online Scottish National Gallery of Modern in order to create an experience Art, the venue where, in 2009, the that can be considered the digital eponymous survey show Running equivalent of the analogue Time: Artists Films in Scotland from 26 experience? 1960 to Now took place. That exhibi- Ambitious projects such as RE- tion aimed to foreground Scotland’s WIND instigated a process within the long and important history in the de- UK of ensuring periods of practice velopment in film and video as distinct and many specific artworks are not practices but also as a medium of lost from the received narrative on choice for many current artists, even British art, as well as providing a re- though there are scant records of this PROOFsource for researchers. EWVA takes in the official chronology.29 It covered two critical steps further into a Euro- the avant garde experiments of Mar- pean context and the contribution garet Tait, to more contemporary made by women in ‘broadening the manifestations of work exploring the potential of the medium beyond its various experimental influences on early techno-prestidigitation and its artists’ video through the work of deconstructive and declamatory func- Rosalind Nashashibi and Katy Dove in tions’27 which hasdo largely been the 1990s.30 eclipsed, neglected, if not at times In 2016, Glasgow Museums ac- ignored, despite the writings of Elwes quired the surviving photo panels and and others. Hooykaas alsonot estab- related documents from their first lished the Foundation Stansfield/ video installation work What’s It to Hooykaas in 2012 for the presentation You?, first seen in the city in 1975, as and preservation of the duo’s works discussed earlier in this chapter. This which includes finding appropriate ar-distributewas presented at the Gallery of Mod- chives in which to place work where it ern Art in Glasgow in 2016 in the exhi- remains active – online, digitised, and bition Please Turn Us On, an exhibition certainly not dormant.28 which also included Arthur Ginsberg This is the challenge that makes with Video Free America, Videofreex, collecting work difficult, as most insti- alongside a new commission by tutions are not permeable to this ex- Heather Phillipson. Although it did not tent and some of the traditional acknowledge previous research and establishments view acquired works writing on this work, the exhibition as monetised assets. Nevertheless, consciously supported what this Hooykaas has orchestrated with con- writer would propose is now more of siderable patience, energy and con- a maxim than a hypothesis that Scot- viction, a determined trajectory which, land was on a par with countercultural in recent years, has seen some of their developments across the globe.31 ambitious works finding appropriate In 2015, the photographic part of domiciles – at times specific to the Labyrinth of Lines (Figs. 9a-b)was do- original works, geographically as well nated to the Museum of Contempo- as in the cultural context. rary Art in Antwerp (M HKA) where it In 2014, the video work Running was restaged in October/November Time (1979) was gifted by the Foun- of 2017, as discussed earlier in this 79 Chapter 5 / Slender Margins and Delicate Tensions | EWVA

Figs. 9a-b. Elsa Stanfield, Madelon Hooykaas, Labyrinth of Lines, 1978, Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, 2017. Courtesy of Madelon Hooykaas. PROOF

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chapter. Alongside this reconstruc- Hooykaas’ practice to that of the indi- tion, a work titled Grid – combining vidual work currently embraced by projected video and drawing – was Hooykaas.32 The direction of travel of executed on the wall of the cafe, hav- Hooykaas’ work is further illustrated in ing previously been seen in Reports Virtual Walls, presented in Venice from the Year of the Monkey in Amster- (September 2017), Amsterdam (De- dam in 2016. This recaptures and ex- cember 2017, Fig. 10), and in Perth, tends the continuities of Stansfield/ Scotland (May 2018) which combined EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 80

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Fig. 10. Madelon video projection, performance and isation and a signal of resurgent na- Hooykaas, Virtual drawing and investigateddo a theme ex- tionalism in global affairs. The saying Walls II, performance at ploring the balance between the ‘to sow the wind and reap the whirl- Oude Kerk, number of tourists in relation to the wind’ has never had such momentous Amsterdam, 21 not December 2017. number of inhabitants in these and catastrophic associations. Courtesy of the cities.33 The pertinent slogan of second artist. In 2017, the Tate in London ap- generation feminists that ‘the per- proved the acquisition of the workdistributesonal is political’ is relevant here with Journeys (1976), first made for the Stansfield/Hooykaas’ work being Whitechapel Art Gallery (and edited at premised on personal growth and in- Fantasy Factory),34 London. Its theme dividual creativity, which when com- of the movement of peoples gives this bined with environmental themes, work a current relevance with London returns us cyclically to its original es- being one of the most culturally di- sence with an increased currency and verse conurbations in the world, in the resonance, contrasting deeply from dramatic regeneration of the East End the conceit of a material and morally as well as the geopolitical implications vacuous culture. of Brexit which sees a crisis of global- 81 Chapter 5 / Slender Margins and Delicate Tensions | EWVA

Endnotes 1. INBOX: Madelon Hooykaas – Labyrinth of Lines (20 October – 12 November 2017). See https://www.muhka.be/programme/detail/1075-inbox-madelon-hooykaas (accessed 13 November 2017). 2. Catherine Elwes, review of ‘Revealing the Invisible: The Art of Stansfield/Hooykaas from Different Perspectives, Madelon Hooykaas and Claire van Putten (eds), (2010)’, The Moving Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ),Volume 2, Number 1, 1 April 2013, pp. 124–130. That piece of writing inspired the title of this chapter. 3. Interview with Madelon Hooykaas by Laura Leuzzi for EWVA, edited by Adam Lockhart. https://vimeo.com/142362044 (accessed 13 November 2017). 4. Day for Night first manifested itself in 2000 for a video wall at the University of Twente in the Netherlands; then in 2001 as a site-specific audio/video installation during the Le Mois de la Photo Festival in Montreal. Its third realisation was in 2003 at the 20th World Wide Video Festival in Vondelpark Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. 5. Stansfield/Hooykaas were invited by its then Director, Tom McGrath, who in turn had been invited to run the Third Eye Centre due to knowledge of his work with the counter-cultural newspaper ‘International Times’. Involved in the ‘International Times’ was a small interconnected group of individuals, one of whom Jim Haynes, founder of the legendaryPROOF Paperback Bookshop, The Traverse and The Howff, all in Edinburgh, established the Arts Lab, the prototype for what would become arts centres throughout the UK and abroad, the Melkweg (Milky Way) being one venue in Amsterdam that Haynes acknowledges drew inspiration from it. Elsa Stansfield, as a young Scot new to London, as well as working as an assistant to John Latham around the period of his Bookworks ‘sculptures’, was one of the projectionists at the Arts Lab cinema. The Third Eye Centre closed in 1991 and reopened as the Centre for Contemporary Art in 1992. 6. ‘Video Events in Glasgow: Report by Tamara Krikorian’, Studio International, May/June 1976, p. 286. 7. Else Madelon Hooykaas, Elsa Stansfield: ‘Labyrinth’ video-environment, exhibition catalogue, editors and curators of the exhibition, Florent Bex, Jean-Pierre Daems, Glenn Van Looy, 14 October – 12 November, 1978 (Antwerp: ICC, 1978). 8. Noted in Hooykaas’ interview for REWIND.do See www.rewind.ac.uk (accessed 13 November 2017). 9. Ibidem. 10. Ibidem. 11. Fantasy Factory also distributed the Stansfield/Hooykaas’not publications. It was set up by John Hopkins and Sue Hall as an affordable community access facility which was the first in the UK at a time when getting equipment was difficult and editing controlled by broadcasting. A talk by Hopkins and Hall was organised by Street Level at the CCA in Glasgow on 24 October 2009 as part of the 7th Document: Human Rights Film Festival: Hoppy and Sue Hall used video, mostly black and white, in a variety ofdistribute situations – on the street, as art and as television, at a time when non-broadcast video was a new, undeveloped creative medium. This informative talk showed excerpts of their early work demonstrating the social uses of video for community action and development. 12. David Critchley, Stuart Marshall, Stephen Partridge, David Hall, Roger Barnard and Tamara Krikorian amongst them. 13. Rob Perrée, ‘From Agora to Montevideo: of Video Institutes the Things that Pass’, in Jeroen Boomgaard and BartRutten(eds.),The Magnetic Era: Video Art in the Netherlands 1970 – 1985 (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2003). 14. Moore had previously been involved in the nucleus around the British counter-cultural newspaper ‘International Times’, with John Hopkins and others. Videoheads were originally based in the Melkweg (Milky Way). 15. Ibidem. 16. The male artists in the show included Vito Acconci, Michel Cardena, Brian Eno, Kees de Groot, Michael Klier, Thierry Kuntzel, Marcel Odenbach, Tony Oursler, Nam June Paik, Al Robbins, Francesc Torres, Bill Viola, and Robert Wilson. 17. Chris Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art: the Development of Form and Function (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2006). Video documentation of this exhibition is held at the Video Data Bank in Chicago. This listing in their online library includes an excerpt with Elsa Stansfield talking about their work in the exhibition: http://www.vdb.org/titles/luminous-image (accessed 13 November 2017). 18. A version of the article also appeared in Video Positive ‘89, exhibition catalogue (Liverpool: Tate Gallery, Merseyside Moviola, 1989). 19. An inscription is set in the Abbey which reads: ‘Stet domus haec donec fluctus formica marinos ebibat, et totum testudo permabulet orbem’ [May this house stand until an ant drains the flowing sea, and a tortoise walks around the whole world]. 20. Interview to Madelon Hooykaas by Stephen Partridge and Emile Shemilt, 10 May 2007, transcript, p. 13 http://www.rewind.ac.uk/documents/Stansfield%20Hooykaas/ESMH510.pdf (accessed 13 November 2017). EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 82

21. Video Positive 91, exhibition catalogue (Liverpool: Moviola, 1991), pp. 19–20. 22. Madelon Hooykaas, Claire van Putten (eds.), Revealing the Invisible – The Art of Stansfield/Hooykaas from Different Perspectives (Amsterdam: de Buitenkant Publishers, 2010). The book contains international contributions by David F. Peat, Malcolm Dickson, Dorothea Franck, Nicole Gingras, Heiner Holtappels, Janneke Wesseling, Kitty Zijlmans and others. The publication also has an accompanying DVD. 23. See review at the time: ‘Visual art review: ‘Revealing the Invisible: The Art of Stansfield/Hooykaas from Different Perspectives’, The Scotsman, 10 December 2010, online version http://www.scotsman.com/ lifestyle/visual-art-review-revealing-the-invisible-the-art-of-stansfield-hooykaas-from-different-perspectives-1- 1521380 (accessed 13 November 2017). 24. As discussed in Panayota K. Kampoli, Remembering the Future: The Inventory of the Hooykaas/Stansfield Archive, Thesis (MA), Presentation and Preservation of the Moving Image, University of Amsterdam, 2010. 25. Gaby Wijers, formerly head of conservation and collection at the NIMk, is the director of this new initiative, http://www.li-ma.nl/site/about (accessed 13 November 2017). 26. The digitisation of media artworks by Elsa Stansfield and Madelon Hooykaas which appears in the online platform https://www.scart.be/ under the section Case Studies and also the website of Documenting ContemporaryPROOF Art, a digitisation project for art made after 1945 with a focus on cultural heritage. See ‘Documentation’ section in http://www.dca-project.eu/ (accessed 13 November 2017). 27. Elwes, review of ‘Revealing the Invisible’. 28. A chronology of projects and link to the Foundation is available at www.stansfield-hooykaas.net 29. Running Time – Artist Films in Scotland: 1960 to Now, The Dean Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 17 October – 22 November 2009. 30. Also included was Split Seconds and both these works were included in the Revealing the Invisible exhibition at Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow in 2010. 31. Please Turn Us On, 28 July 2016 – 22 January 2017. 32. Reports from the Year of the Monkey –do Emily Bates, Madelon Hooykaas & Saskia Janssen in the project space PuntWG Amsterdam, 30 April – 8 May 2016, curated by Emily Bates. 33. Virtual Walls I on 28 September 2017 at Archivio Emily Harvey, Venice: Virtual Walls II on 21 December 2017 at Oude Kerk (Old Church), Amsterdam; Virtual Walls/Realnot Walls , 14 May – 26 July 2018 at Threshold Arts Space at Perth Concert Hall, curated by Laura Leuzzi and Iliyana Nedkova. See Read More, issue 14 with articles by the curators on the work: https://www.horsecross.co.uk/media/2044/read-more-laura-leuzzi-and-iliyana- nedkova-on-madelon-hooykaas-issue-14-low-res.pdf 34. See endnote 11. distribute Chapter 6

Elaine Shemilt in-conversation with Sean Cubitt Chapter 6 / Elaine Shemilt in-conversation PROOF

his is a conversation who were using video for their work at which took place over a the same time, I wonder if that low few cups of coffee, be- quality was useful? I would be inter- T tween Elaine Shemilt and ested to hear what you think about Sean Cubitt, one sunny that? afternoon in London, on 21 MarchdoSean Cubitt: I frequently refer to a 2017. William Wegman piece – the one where he’s got the talking torso Elaine Shemilt: I have an impression (sometimesnot referred to as Untitled or that a lot of women artists in the sev- Stomach Song, 1970/1971) – to teach enties had had a sort of ‘run-in’ before students that they don’t need the top they used video, working with installa- of the range camera; that they can tion and performance prior – indeed make stuff withdistribute whatever they’ve got some women incorporated the video in their pockets. It’s a bit of a con, into the performance itself, which is because it’s also about trying to per- more or less how I used it. However, suade students that they don’t need something occurred to me – it may to use a RED Digital camera, but it’s just have been because it was the way also the case that that piece is not that video was at that time – it was very do-able if you’ve got high resolution, low resolution – sort of grey-on-grey. because the gag doesn’t work. His At the time I started using video, I was nipples don’t look like eyes and the also printmaking and was very par- stomach doesn’t look like a mouth, so ticular about achieving a high-resolu- it only works if it’s – as the French say tion photographic image. If I was – flou: it’s sort of soft and mushy. I was working with photo-etching or photo thinking when I was reading those litho in the printmaking studio, I was at notes of yours about Tamara Krik- pains to retain as much detail as pos- orian’s Vanitas piece – because she’s sible to achieve a really crisp image, less recognisable in the low resolution and yet when I used the video to per- and although there is quite a lot of form in front of, it suited me to have detail in the mise-en-scène, it’s also this rather low-resolution quality. kind of murky, not to be too senten- When we look at other women artists tious about it, in a slightly ‘old mastery’ EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 84

kind of way – that allows the allegori- because they were film and they were cal figure to function in a way that, if it much sharper resolution. I guess she had been in a more high-res, I don’t used 16mm and there was something think would have been possible, cer- much more shocking. tainly not in the same way. When we ES: I recall that I had access to 16mm first showed work from the Rewind and I used 16mm for my Undergradu- Archive in public exhibitions, we got ate Degree show, but reverted back to lots of students trying to emulate the video later. reel-to-reel aesthetic because it has a SC: There are a number of things that charm, but it’s partly for them and I found really wonderful about video. even for us – or maybe even more for One was the tactility – even when look- us – a kind of period charm. ing at DVD transfers from early TV. I’ve PROOFES: With respect to that grey-on-grey just been looking at the 1954 version low resolution, I’m interested now to of 1984 adapted by Nigel Kneale and look back at the political situation as it produced by Rudolph Cartier – it’s a was then. When we were living and classic dramatisation of the Orwell working during that period, it was sim- work, but one of the things that’s really ply a matter of getting by – doing our startling about it is how furry it is – I best to get the work shown and hop- mean it has that kind of tactile quality. ing for an equal positiondo on a platform The other work that is relatively easy with our male counterparts, despite to get a hold of is Quatermass from knowing that equality probably wasn’t about 1954. Some of it was in 16mm going to happen. Nevertheless,not we and some was recorded live to tape in did our best. There remained a situ- the studio and it would have been ation where if you produced images 2-inch Ampex – higher resolution – but that were too shocking, you could lose the version that we’ve got is telecine’d your job, or not get a job, or not getdistributedown for export, so it’s lost a lot of the the exhibition, or not be included in relatively high-res. and then it’s this group or not get the funding. I gained a whole load of artefacts from suppose that worked both ways, but being transferred to DVD – but it still it seemed particularly so for women. has that sense that the blacks aren’t I’m wondering – and I realise that this terribly black, the highlights are often might sound far-fetched – but if you really highly lit because they pumped were going to stand up and film a in enormous amounts of lighting to naked image of yourself, it could be get sufficient contrast to transmit. The helpful for it not to be too clear. There poor actors were sweltering doing was modesty involved, even though these dramas live to camera. How- the reason I felt I needed to do that ever, when you shot with available was to show vulnerability and to show light which was typical of most video that I would not deny that I was a art – or at the very least, a couple of woman – a ‘take me as you see me’ redheads or something, the quality of attitude. Does that make any sense? the image is far more grey-on-grey. SC: Yes, it does make sense. I re- The contrasts are much finer or rather, member being quite shocked a few they are more fluid – they really are years later in the mid-80s, seeing Jane grey-on-grey. It has a couple of effects Parker’s early pieces and it was partly – one that Tony Sinden talked about – 85 Chapter 6 / Elaine Shemilt in-conversation | EWVA

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you recall when he did the reconstruc- remake in December 2016, was the Fig. 1. Tony 1 do 2 Sinden, Behold tion of the diagonal piece – he was colour. Vertical Devices, sure that the blacks had been blacker ES: It was shocking and also horrible 1974, DCA, 2006. (Fig. 1). to do because of the contemporary Courtesy of not Danny Hill. ES: I have that impression as well. I clarity of image. Looking at a 62 year- suspect we will never know. old face, as opposed to the face I had SC: I think there are two possibilities. in my early twenties, that was tough. One is that he was using the original But of course,distribute that was not what it was monitors so possibly the monitors had about. Remaking Doppelgänger cre- begun to lose some of their quality, ated a bookend to the original. This and another possibility is that the tape version was really more of a perform- signals don’t read in quite the same ance. The quality of the original video way over their kind of their archival life. could not be a part of that. What do But the third is that we read grey as you think about the current discussion black. about the (Sony) Video Portapak? The ES: I suspect the latter is true. way we used video and the linking of SC: We knew it was meant to be black it to the feminist movement? Is that and therefore it was black in percep- something that is also far-fetched or tual terms – so we made it be black. do you think there is any validity in that ES: Even stranger – I didn’t see Dop- argument? pelgänger for many years and for SC: There were so many forms – there some reason I remembered it in col- were things like Tina Keane’s In Our our. Perhaps because in the interven- Hands, Greenham (1984, Fig. 3), ing years, I became so used to seeing which were obviously campaigning – colour television. poetic, but campaigning pieces. Things SC: I think what shocked me about like Catherine Elwes’ Kensington Gore Doppelgänger Redux (Fig. 2) – the (1982) and the piece with the mon- EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 86

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Fig. 2. Elaine keys, the pregnancy piece (With Child, structing as it is about constructing, Shemilt, 1984) – which are undoubtedly about and I think that element is missing Doppelgänger not Redux, 2016, feminist issues and they make clear from Krauss’ otherwise pioneering es- Nunnery Gallery, addresses to that. It’s almost inciden- say. Bow Arts, London. tal that Elwes appears in that video – But also, the fact that the videoed Photo Courtesy there is autobiography only in thedistributewoman’s body is a body that is actu- of Orlando Myyxx. sense that it gives it authenticity, but ally uncertain was one of the beauties it’s not an autobiographical piece – it of video; whilst it captured actuality, is far more about reproductive poli- and you had the instant replay and tics, but I think it’s equally unfair to performance potential of that, it also reduce it to autobiography as made clear the constructed-ness that Rosalind Krauss did in her ‘narcissism you talk about. In that construction of essay’.3 As far as I remember, Krauss ‘beauty’ and ‘sexuality’ and ‘sexuali- is mainly talking about male video au- sation’ of the body, there are terms teurs, but if you were to apply that to that are instantly applicable specifi- women around the early to mid-sev- cally to the female body in the way that enties, I think it would be a serious Vito Acconci’s body, for example, isn’t blind spot on her part that the reaf- sexualised – it’s gendered, but not firmation of a male ego is very different sexualised. So, there is something to the attempt to establish a female rather different that occurs in women’s ego in a world where it basically work that is really quite distinct, and wasn’t a concept or a social practice. relates to the tactility of the image. Also the production – in the ways that ES: I think there is another element as you were writing about with Laura well: the artists that we are talking Leuzzi4 – is as much about decon- about were all very young women. At 87 Chapter 6 / Elaine Shemilt in-conversation | EWVA the age of about twenty or perhaps twenty-one it required quite a lot of determination to demand an equal platform. Most of my contemporaries at art college, in sculpture and print- making, were men. What the video camera offered – because it was new – was to be able to start on an equal footing with this technology. It also allowed for a certain degree of privacy and to produce images quickly; I could be much braver than if I were doing a seriesPROOF of photographs with a tripod. The initial videos led towards making installations that included a an under-privileged, marginalised Fig. 3. Tina performative element, that took the medium and still remains so to this Keane, In Our Hands, form of photographs and video. I think day? Whereas, the more ‘hairy-arsed’ Greenham, 1984, it was the same for other women. I machismo of oils was the thing to still from video. Courtesy of the think it empowered us. I’m not sure if aspire to. Artists like Cassatt and artist. you would agree with that? doMorisot were rightly lauded of course SC: Yes, I think you can see that in for getting into that world, but I wonder Cate’s (Elwes) work, Tamara’s (Krik- if there isn’t an analogy there to be orian) work, and Tina’s (Keane) early madenot with film? It still is to a large work. degree, but certainly it was then, a ES: Yes, and in Sanja Ivekoviƒ’s work. pretty hairy-arsed, male-dominated, It was also the case that you just had craft-based artisan medium where this little tape, which was convenient. people knew howdistribute to use heavy indus- I don’t know how far to take that, but I trialised equipment and stuff of that do think that the medium empowered sort, whereas video was almost like women. Of course, it wasn’t just cre- the water-colour. ating an image, we were using sound ES: I would agree with that for several as well and not least – movement. It reasons. Even the advertisement for was freedom that we were afforded. the Sony Rover Portapak shows a Every artist that used video had that, woman wearing a mini-skirt and white but I would argue that the ownership boots carrying this camera like a sort of creating moving imagery where a of handbag (Fig. 4), which is a pretty film crew was not required was par- off-putting image now, but the idea ticularly liberating for women. was that it was lightweight.5 It was SC: One possible analogy might be relatively easy to use and added to with all the archaeological work that that there was the element of privacy. feminist critics have done on Nine- You didn’t need a film crew. You didn’t teenth Century women’s oil painting. need men to help you with this thing. The vast majority of art being made by I had personally fought against that women in that period was water-col- issue of ‘you will do this type of work our. Is it because it was a women’s because you are a woman and less medium that water-colour was always able’. I learned to weld etc., but it was EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 88

was reading6 was that this had been hotly fought for – even by about 1977/78 certainly into the eighties un- der Thatcher, in particular the BFI weren’t interested and a number of other key agencies like the Arts Coun- cil in particular, were not interested in Community Video. The Arts Council struggled with some attempts to fund video art, but it was a long struggle and nobody wanted to archive it – as we know from the REWIND project. PROOF ES: And do you think that was a good thing in the long run? SC: I think we benefited from it in the sense that (the argument I made way Fig. 4. Sony always a case of having to prove my- back when we were putting in the ap- Corporation, PR Material for USA self, whereas working with video was plication for REWIND) it had allowed and Europe different. I could concentrate on mak- video to be genuinely avant-garde, market circa ing the image, the artwork. The craft because it wasn’t institu- tionalised. 1969. do issue was a big issue. ES: I agree with that. In the early sev- SC: It’s partly also that there was more enties I was working in Winchester, gate-keeping available for oilnot painting not London. It was not where all the in the 19th century and film in the 20th supportive groups and movements century – or even industrially pro- were taking place and yet my work duced television. There is a huge was accepted for The Video Show in amount of gate-keeping that you candistribute1975 and the Acme Gallery in 1976 only get past if you have got a particu- (Fig. 5). There did not seem to be a lar degree of experience and you are particular stigma attached to my be- not going to get that institutional expe- ing a woman working with video. I rience if the institution is entirely think because video was not main- loaded against women; getting that stream, it was not institutionalised. It ‘handicapped’ foot in the door – if they was disposable and had an avant- are going to get in, they are only going garde feel about it … to get into certain grades, for example SC: One of interesting things about you can be a producer, but you can’t the Serpentine Show was the inclu- direct. You can edit, but you can’t sion of Darcy Lange, which I hadn’t operate a camera – that kind of thing. realised until we got the floor plans, I was re-looking through some very because although he was an auteur, early 80’s stuff on community video there was also the sense that he was and my memory of it was that commu- making Community Video. It would be nity video had some kind of funding quite recognisable to West London base. It was through library services, Media or Blackfriars Photography or local government, educational out- any of those other groups in that reach departments and things like world, as it did in the Fine Art world that, but actually the account that I and of course it was the era of the 89 Chapter 6 / Elaine Shemilt in-conversation | EWVA

Artists Placement Group, so that video was able to move across a whole bundle of let’s say, Post-Fluxus practices; and in many senses, prac- tices that went the other side of art and became community activism, could quite happily be in dialogue with art. It was very unusual – it’s hard to imagine anything, except possibly printmak- ing, having that kind of generic flexi- bility. ES: Yes, it’s true, but printmaking also tended to bePROOF considered as the poor relation to painting and sculpture. Looking back however, I think that the Printmaking department was quite a healthy environment in which to work – in those workshops we worked alongside other printmakers. I person- ally found it a natural progressiondo to go between printmaking and video. That ability to work in black and white translated well. Are we coming full cir- not cle? I still think that if you are crossing these imagined borders, you are in the less favoured area – the ‘no-man’s’ ‘new’ in art, I think maybe that genera- Fig. 5. Elaine world. tion – Pop, post-Popdistribute – are almost the Shemilt, Constraint, detail SC: The ‘no woman’s’ world. last, and after that, there are no doubt of installation, ES: Yes, the ‘no woman’s’ world – if individually great and fascinating Acme Gallery, Covent Garden, you are working with a new medium, painters, but as a form, it begins to London, 1976. it’s a new way of working. It may not lose its pre-eminence and that mantle Courtesy of the artist. necessarily be recognised by the passes more to sculpture. But sculp- Royal Academy or The Royal Scottish ture at the same time, after the mo- Academy, but that innovation also ment of minimalism, as it begins to provides a certain sort of liberation. move more towards conceptual, in- SC: And I also think it’s interesting, stallation-based, performance-ori- that by the late 60s/early 70s, there ented forms, also opens itself up to was that last wave of new painters the kind of performative work that you coming up from the Royal College – were doing. And that is also where Hockney and Kitaj. And then, frankly, part of the interest lies – this shifting of I would think painting gradually slips balance between the different art into a sort of moribund state. forms. In a sense video was able to ES: I think so – although it still held on operate as a sort of hinterland. to its status. ES: I agree. I was aware of the Fluxus SC: Absolutely, but, painting, as a movement, the Happenings, also of place where you would go to find the Arte Povera and the desire to get away EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 90

from the sort of heavy monolithic-type denly there was the possibility of put- sculptures that can be imposed. I ting light sensitive material onto the wanted to be fleet-of-foot and to cre- screens and printing fine detail. With ate things that could be dismantled that came the ability to get a better and used again; which of course you and better resolution and registration. could do with video. You could record It happened quite fast in the early 70s over your last video artwork and use it and then the detail improved rapidly again – which unfortunately, a lot of us as we adopted the polymers. We women did, so now we don’t have moved away from the difficulty of many of our early works. There was matching the photographic stencils that kind of spirit. The value was in the and the problems of the moiré effect. idea and the passion that went into the Of course, once we were able to dig- PROOFartwork. It would be on show for a few itise things, all those registration prob- weeks and then you collapsed every- lems were a thing of the past, but in thing down and used what you could the 70s it was a challenge and we had recycle to create another artwork. It to find ways around it. I would agree wasn’t theatre, but it had aspects of with you that the barrier between Fine theatre to it and there was a distinct Art and Design once were immense, lack of preciousness – it was all part but Printmaking developments of this new way ofdo working. I certainly helped to break that barrier down. did not feel as though video was a ES: ...You couldn’t edit (early video) – medium that was supposed to stand well, not very easily. the test of time. It was designednot to be SC: Or if you did you couldn’t guaran- short-term and usually part of an in- tee a clean edit. You would just end stallation. It would be in a gallery for a up with travelling glitches and so on. few weeks and then that it was it. I ES: Yes, and making copies was made a new body of work it was alldistributepretty difficult as well. transitory, short-lived. It’s odd now to SC: So then there was this lovely thing look back at the remaining videos with about the ephemerality. On the one a precious attitude. hand the difficulty of making multiples SC: Yes, but I think there were a hampered distribution; the screen- number of other things going on. ings tended to be event based rather Thinking about Printmaking – one of than distribution based, but that also the exciting things about Print was Tim bounces back to that issue of the Mara. His work so clearly comes out ephemeral nature of the tape. Very of Pop and the Underground, and that early on, I think 1982 or so, the London sort of poster imagery, album covers Video Arts office were talking about – so there was a sort of pop culture how the tapes were degenerating and then there was the Design world, even at that point. They were really and then there’s this ‘art practice’. worried about where their ring mains They were actually surprisingly close were because they knew that their big to each other. U-matic boxes were going to get ES: They began to collide perhaps scarred and that the oxides were be- because of that ability to use photo ginning to fall off. There was not only reproduction. It was always a bit an archival issue (by the time that LVA clunky and difficult, and then sud- had something like distribution), but 91 Chapter 6 / Elaine Shemilt in-conversation | EWVA there was also the liberating sense really intriguing, again at South Hill that this is for now. Park, that first year when we got Barco ES: Yes, but was that typical of the (video) projectors and it was odd – time anyway? I mean in the sense that some things worked very well, not we were breaking away and wanting necessarily because they were cine- to smash down constraints and the matic, because somehow the content preciousness of art? carried the work, but sometimes you SC: Yes – or at least its claim that it felt the actual loss of that bit of domes- was to be universal and forever. That tic furniture. It was partly the television. Romantic or certainly Modernist idea I should mention that video was an that this was a permanent object was alternative to broadcasting. It was at its height with the minimalists, for very much the way community video example withPROOF LeWitt, who I think is worked for example – having ‘our’ probably the finest of the group and voice instead of ‘their’ voice – so there the least egotistical and yet the in- was also a lot of explicit critique of structions said (implicitly) that the real television, for example, with David work – the concept – remains as per- Hall’s work and interestingly with Mike manent and universal because, even Stubbs’ or Dave Critchley’s solo more than Judd’s physical boxes, the pieces the framing is very like televi- concept is always there and has thisdosion. absolute, classical permanence, ES: Also, Kevin Atherton’s work. whereas everything else will eventu- SC: Often the framing is very close, ally rot and yet we fight to preserve the withnot the head and shoulders the crop ‘two gross of broken statues’.7 is right at the top of the frame, where ES: Well of course, in the late sixties now you would put the face in the Lucy Lippard had written the ‘Decon- centre of a 3x3 grid, so the frame has struction of the Art object’. What we shifted, but thendistribute it was using a tele- haven’t talked about yet is the similar- visual vocabulary. The other thing was ity of showing these works on a moni- that television was very much a do- tor to television. You could imitate a mestic medium, so, by and large, in kind of television situation rather than the seventies and into the early eight- seeing film on a big screen. This TV ies the TV became commonplace and effect was new and could be used as ubiquitous. It would be in the living a device. We were used to watching room and it was a communal family newsreels about war, so artist created object. It created a gathering together works influenced by newsreel docu- and they were ritual objects. There mentations and then put them into were fewer channels, therefore televi- galleries. People would walk towards sion tended to produce family events. the monitor, thinking they would have Little, small, regular ones like ‘Grand- a typical television experience, but in stand’ or ‘Steptoe and Son’, and also fact what they would see was art. That more significant ones, like the possibility has changed now, be- Queen’s Christmas broadcast or the cause television is very different from Cup Final. It had a domestic family what it was in the late seventies and scale and was in itself interesting, be- early eighties. cause then the interventions were in- SC: I can remember something that’s triguing at the level of ‘politics in the EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 92

living room’, where for example, if you and sofas.8 There’s a direct appeal to were watching ‘Top of the Pops’, you that domestic element and in her case would be careful about what you said something of an explosion in the re- about the performers, because it was ception of her work, but also a feminist going to tell your parents about your explosion in the living room, which I sexuality. So, there was a caring and think is really intriguing. carefulness about it. The other thing ES: Certainly. I think that’s why I used was that television was the one place the monitor in Women Soldiers in that where men could wear make-up and way. I could easily have used a film the whole genre, partly because of that was projected, but it needed to very little lighting in the studios and have that particular feel to it – that this stuff and I presume, male vanity just might have been something that PROOFrequired a lot more make-up and it would have come up on your televi- was entirely forgivable and condon- sion screen in your sitting room and able, and even in certain cases, came ‘how do you feel about that? Well – not the great drag acts of the time such a very comfortable for various reasons’. Dick Emery and Danny la Rue. SC: There were a number of interven- ES: And with the medium of televi- tions of that sort. ‘Twentieth Century sion, there was a kind of opening up, Vixen’ had their film about Bomber wasn’t there? – a sortdo of gradual edu- Harris banned. It was one of several cation that was going on. films and programmes about Bomber SC: Well certainly about gay male Harris which were banned. The sub- sexuality and the drag scenenot opening ject matter was clearly too sensitive – up. the fire-bombing of Dresden was just too terrible. They were a feminist ES: So that was running alongside the group making that piece, which was, increased platform for women do you distributein itself, intriguing. That is also part of agree? what made television, television. It SC: I think so, but it is also that ‘the was in 1976 that John McGrath was domestic’ was also feminised: espe- delivering the keynote address at the cially then, it was a strongly feminised Edinburgh TV festival during which he domain. The public space was ‘male’ began to decry the lack of, or the loss and the domestic space was ‘mater- of, the television ‘event’.9 So already nal’. So, there was also a kind of strug- by then it was diminishing – with the gle with that, so some of the anti-TV development of four channels I sup- video as a critique of TV was about pose. de-domesticating and making pub- ES: The television ‘event’ was very lic… important – but it didn’t last very long, ES: I agree. I think that’s why putting did it? You mention work being a TV screen (basically a monitor) into banned. Images showing pubic an installation, into a gallery that was hair/nudity and the use of war imagery generally used for another type of in the same context was not accept- work was quite avant-garde. able in many galleries in the UK. Put- SC: I was thinking of Susan Hiller’s ting these images onto a television explosion – the one in which she has was doubly shocking in some re- the domestic furniture, the armchairs spects, but occasionally possible if 93 Chapter 6 / Elaine Shemilt in-conversation | EWVA the video was within an installation in partly just because of technical con- a gallery. straints; because the French had SE- SC: It was an era of defence or cen- CAM, we had PAL, the Americans had sorship. It was an era when you either NTSC colour standards (often made defended free speech or supported fun of as ‘never twice the same col- censorship, with no complexity’. our’). ES: It seems extraordinary to think ES: So, the technology was not ge- about now. neric in that sense? SC: Yes, the past is another country. SC: But even so, it was always possi- So, there was one other thing that I ble to get them transferred. It was wanted to talk about. You were men- always possible to make things avail- tioning that shared iconography be- able; to get players into galleries that tween womenPROOF was appearing in very would play multi-formats, but what discreet areas around Europe and for was odd – for whatever the reason – that matter, in the United States. Inter- was that there was so little (interna- estingly, although avant-garde film tional) distribution of video. Yet had its own difficulties in getting dis- against that background, it’s intrigu- tributed, there were avenues, so peo- ing that some of the iconography that ple like Malcolm le Grice for example, you used, would then reappear in were able to travel with films from thedoFederica Marangoni’s films and vid- London Co-op to places like Colo- eos in Italy and, as you were pre- rado, to show the work and then bring viously saying in the work of artists in rolls back to show in Camden Town. Croatianot and so on. I wonder why? And there was also the link with the ES: I don’t know, but I think – and I’m Viennese filmmaker Kurt Kren and just speculating here – we were all with German artists, and so forth. Yet dealing with similar issues. We were oddly, film started as a display me- of that generationdistribute where our parents dium rather than a distribution me- – our mothers – expected that we dium, and video in a certain sense would raise a family and be supported begins as a distribution medium – par- by a man and yet that model had kind ticularly when Bing Crosby began in- of broken down. Women were receiv- vesting in Ampex. So, Bing puts his ing an education and they wanted to money into it because he doesn’t want have their status recognised. I was to have to travel to every one-horse determined to function as a woman town in the States in order to do a live and as an artist. I had children and I show on their TV’s, he wants a record- never stopped working as an artist. I ing that he can send them to be think there were many women of my broadcast and invests in Ampex as a age who were determined if neces- result. It’s kind of tied into transmis- sary to go it alone i.e. without a man sion, broadcast and distribution and to provide the finances. If you think yet oddly, it was far more difficult to about it, we were very concerned with move video around than it was to maternity and our role as artists within move film.10 society. How could you combine the ES: Was that because of the equip- natural function of being a mother and ment? at the same time, work as an artist? SC: Partly because of equipment, but You start by being brave enough to EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 94

agery. It’s not surprising that if we were abstracting, we were abstracting to images that said the same sort of thing – like for example, two hands together, or say a distortion of the face, for example Annegret Soltau’s work, or Sanja Ivekoviƒ’s, Instrukcije br. 1 [Instructions No.1] (1976, Figs. 6a-b) and Make Up Make Down (1976–78). SC: On that thought – who were you imagining was your audience? PROOF ES: Of course, I wanted my work to be seen, but I also recognised that what use these images that may not go I was making was not a saleable com- down very well, but we were deter- modity. It was a lonely road and I think mined. For example, I am going to that was the same for many, many paint the linea nigra on my pregnant women artists of my generation. Un- belly and I am going to photograph it. fortunately, some artists fell by the I’m going to talk aboutdo what it feels like wayside – they just couldn’t keep go- Figs. 6a-b. Sanja to be pregnant. These are subjects ing for whatever reason. It is very hard Ivekoviƒ, to raise children, make artwork and Instrukcije br. 1 and topics that were not discussed at [Instructions that time, but were and arenot universal. struggle to hold down your job in a No.1], 1976, hostile environment; but, that’s the stills from video. It was still a new thing for a man to Courtesy of the come into the maternity ward and to same of any group of people that are artist. see a child being born in the 1970s.distributeattempting to break through preju- To talk about these things required a dice. So many marginalised groups of level of bravery, but women were people really need to be treated with emerging all over the place in Europe dignity and respect in order to flourish. as individuals and so it’s not surpris- It’s tough. ing that we were using similar im- SC: I guess I was thinking historically whether there was any kind of feminist or women’s solidarity that was part of the exploration for the work? ES: Well, I was inspired by Cal Arts and what was going on with the Woman’s Movement in California: Judy Chicago and Helen Shapiro. I wasn’t part of the London scene. I mean I exhibited in the ACME Gallery and I went into London to exhibit, but I sort of ducked in and out and didn’t join those collectives or groups. Per- haps that was just a personal choice? SC: A number of the artists were very clearly part of a group. 95 Chapter 6 / Elaine Shemilt in-conversation | EWVA

ES: Yes, artists such as Catherine dents. I was showing them Au Hasard Elwes and Tina Keane, they were part Balthazar, the 1966 film directed by of a thriving group. When I talked to Robert Bresson, which is, as you them, they describe a different expe- know, about a donkey – a lovely film, rience. I think they felt empowered by but terribly sad. The students were that support. I didn’t. asking about whether the film-maker’s SC: I think that would be true of many intention is really central, and how women across Europe; there would much respect they have to pay to that be quite different experiences. Some in their writing. So, I said that Au would feel that they are with a group Hasard almost certainly wasn’t think- of artists regardless of gender, and ing that in order to shoot his film, he some that there are collectives of had to use gelatin and that gelatin is women thatPROOF give them support who made from boiled donkey. But, none- are not all by any means working with theless, that’s a tool for interpretation video or indeed are even artists. and you need to think that through. Those different constellations are re- The other film we were looking at that ally intriguing. That root of taking ma- day, just at random, was the anima- ternity, domesticity as not only life, but tion called Rango, in which there is a also material for art, is another route story about water and the equivalent and as you say, a particularly difficultdoelement to Au Hasard‘s film is that it one – and one that many young takes twenty thousand litres of water women artists were never able to con- to make a batch of chips to make a tinue. What might also be worth con- rendernot farm in order to make a film like sidering are questions about a certain Rango, a film which is itself about the kind of loneliness? That is also part of loss of water in the landscape. There the construction of femininity as are ways in which films – well almost sexualised other, the marginalised, certainly Goredistribute Verbinski who directed professionally marginalised, and so it was not thinking about –thatand forth; in the 70s and into the 80s, and yet, it is a possible interpretation. its relation to real or imagined solidari- ES: Do you think that’s why people ties. When I look closely at a work I now have an interest in video from the always find it networks outwards into 70s and the 80s? I mean to say, it things that we have talked about, like really was of its time. It would be com- technologies and social movements pletely inappropriate to make such a and psychology and personal stories. video now, wouldn’t it? ES: Perhaps that’s why it’s so very SC: Yes, certainly, it isn’t the same – difficult to write and talk about work because you make a video now and from this era. I thought I knew what a the next thing you do is press upload piece of work was about at the time, to Vimeo. So now video is – even more but with the passage of time I look than it ever was – a product for a back and see that it was also dealing distribution medium and it’s not actu- with this, this, this and this. Some of it ally a production medium as such. is no longer relevant today, but some That’s even more the case now than it of it is still very pertinent. was in the seventies and or early eight- SC: I had a really interesting conver- ies, because now we have, as it were, sation the other day with some stu- conquered distribution; except that so EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 96

has everyone else and there are a video in 1984, I was experimenting bazillion hours of uploading done with the sound element. I hoped that every five minutes, or whatever the the sound would give the feeling of statistic is. Now the problem is how to movement to a series of still images, curate it and how to find the stuff; so and I think that the reason I did that it operates very, very differently. Con- was because I was a printmaker. temporary art’s use of video is a very SC: I think it’s a natural thing for some- different beast to video art from the one who is a printmaker using video, seventies. but there is something in there which ES: We are very used to moving im- is nagging at me. I haven’t got any- age now. We take photographs and thing to say about it, but it’s not so film on our mobile phones. In those much about why, it’s more to do with PROOFdays, we couldn’t. the result. SC: I think the equivalent would be to reconsider the domestic TV. A signifi- ES: I don’t know – I had all that video cant proportion of, certainly younger footage of the soldiers, so why did I people’s viewing, is done on hand- not use it; why did I keep it as a series held devices and therefore, the rela- of still images? It was part of an instal- tionship is more individual, because lation, so I built a huge gun, like a first the distance is muchdo closer. Physi- World War gun, half stuck in the mud cally, there is more intervention; I and there was a life-sized photograph mean the touch-screens. So the pos- of myself in black, with my eyes blind- sibilities for making work likenot that are folded and my hands and ankles tied, very different. It’s hand-held – it’s that leaning against a stained wall; in a personal relationship to the screen. similar the way that people were inter- ES: Also the ability to go back and rogated in the H Block in Belfast. That check something if you missed it –distributewas very reminiscent of growing up in now you can just flick back. And to N. Ireland and the Civil War, euphem- scrutinise something – you can hone istically called The Troubles. This in and enlarge a part of the image. video was haunted by that experience SC: Well, actually that is something and a real antipathy and genuine fear that could possibly be explored a bit. and hatred of civil war. The sound in So, you were moving in from photog- the background running through the raphy and printmaking into video and whole video was a recording from the were using both static shots and pho- gunfire and bombs in Beirut. A friend tographs. There is something interest- of mine had got caught up in the con- ing there, on a formal level, between flict. She escaped with her life by hid- motion and fixed image, because a ing in a cellar for several days before fixed image is different in a moving being evacuated out. She recorded image environment, where it has a this sound in Beirut. It sounded so like fixed duration; whereas if there is a my memories of Northern Ireland. It photo on the wall, you can look at it for didn’t really matter that is was not as long as you like, but you are told recorded in Northern Ireland, because how long you are able to look at a still the sound was generic. It was for real, in a video. it was horrible – it was the sound of ES: When I made the Women Soldiers war. At first you wonder and then you 97 Chapter 6 / Elaine Shemilt in-conversation | EWVA get it: that was the sound of bullets; movements on a variety of accounts – that it was an explosion. Over these peace movements and Trade Union- sounds there was a recording of an ism etc. advertisement for women to join the ES: Yes, and I think women were get- army. I filmed much of the footage in ting together in a much more produc- a women’s army training camp. It was tive way. The early women’s quite light touch. It amused me that movements had, to a certain extent, a even in the circumstances of joining rather strong anti-male agenda, which the army, a woman was expected to I didn’t identify with at all. By 1984 I conform to the expectation of the male had two children and I felt that there gaze and the male idea of how a was a deeper issue. I think the move- woman should function; even if when ment transformed itself through a col- required, thePROOF women had to put on a lective approach. What can we do Nuke Suit or go into situations where collectively as women? Perhaps we she might be blown to bits. Hair must can do something such as fight for be tied back, skirts were encouraged, peace? Perhaps we can fight for smart trousers, never jeans, this was equality and decency where there is a training for war, what nonsense! The particular need? early eighties was a time when women SC: That is really interesting, because were being allowed to be soldiersdo on what you are describing is a shift from the battlefield, but although they were a resistance and critique, towards a being accepted into conflict zones to positive project, whatever the intellec- fight, women were still expected to be tualnot trajectories of the arguments, feminine. The Women Soldiers video which were often richer and more was designed to be a pacifist state- complex, and were not just anti-patri- ment; but as with any feminist state- archal, but they were significantly anti ment it should also be seen in the as opposed prodistribute. It does suggest that broadest of contexts as a cry for fair- it is essentially about women’s video ness – for equality – decency. rather than about necessarily femi- SC: And of course, 1981 was the time nism. In certain respects, it would re- of Greenham Common Peace Camp; late as feminist, but it’s something and the Women’s Peace Movement; else as well. There are parts of Dop- then the Northern Ireland Peace pelgänger where I feel that I am watch- Women coming forward around then; ing aspects of the video as feminist – and the miner’s wives and so on. for example that painting of the mouth ES: Absolutely – there was a lot of fear is so alien to men. The painted around. We were frightened. We were pout/bud is so much a part of the nervous of Nuclear War. But there was construction that it almost automat- also a feeling amongst women, which ically reads now as an expression of grew stronger and stronger – give us the feminist refusal. There is a very a chance and we could throw a pro- potent, very moving scene in Amy – tective blanket over things. ‘Take the the film by Laura Mulvey and Peter Toys from the Boys’. Wollen – where she’s making herself SC: At that point, the Second Wave of up in the mirror and it’s a very similar feminism of the 70s had begun to shot, but differently placed inside the attach itself to a whole bunch of social narrative. I find the film heart-break- EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 98

ing, which is rather different to your ES: Yes, putting on a mask. take in Doppelgänger where it’s a SC: Exactly, but it does make the rest more meticulous, more structural of the ‘repressions, oppressions, etc.’ work. manageable, because there is a mask ES: Doppelgänger started out as a behind which there is or isn’t some- series of prints. I put a mirror behind a thing else and then the multiplications large sheet of paper with a hole cut out which – well they’re kind of sugges- so that I could photograph myself at tions – are schizophrenic, both in the such an angle that the reflection did clinical sense, but also in a post-mod- not reveal the camera. The idea for the ernist sense. video grew around the theme – a ES: The double image. woman feels the need to put on make- SC: Yes, but the other thought that I PROOFup to give herself courage to make was having is that on the one hand, herself more attractive, but of course this is a public statement and on the if the woman has low self-esteem or other hand, it is a personal and inti- has a mental illness she might paint mate statement. There is a wonderful herself into a much poorer version of thought in Adorno’s11 aesthetic theory herself. You can really distort your which I go back to quite a lot where he face – you can really mess yourself up says that philosophers, like scientists, with makeup. Whendo I made the film, it have a kind of repertoire of tools that became about people who are strug- they can use in order to be objective gling. It became about those people about things, and we don’t expect that who are bottom of the heapnot and their from artists. So, one of the things that need to be recognised, and to be the philosophers, sociologists, etc. treated with dignity and respect. can tell you is that individuality is a Throughout the film there is a record- social construct – it’s fabricated in ing of a psychiatrist who is disturb-distributeparticular ways by history and culture ingly dogmatic and intolerant about and whatever. Nonetheless, it is a re- the behaviour of a disturbed teenager ality. It may be completely con- who will not conform. Of course, it was structed, but it’s a reality, and what we also about my own feelings of inade- want from an artist is that they don’t quacy and vulnerability. About my fear do what a philosopher does, which is of standing out there as an artist and to just eradicate their individuality and not conforming, trying to make a then use their objective tools of the statement; an honest interpretation of trade, what you want the artist to do is my inner world, which is why you oc- to work precisely with their individual- casionally get the images of the naked ity as a kind of lens through which to body. Just raw imagery, naked and bring everything else into focus. exposed. ES: But of course, that means digging SC: Two thoughts – one is about the deep into our inner worlds. necessity of a performance, but in particular of being a woman, that it is required and is common to both of the tapes that we have been discussing to ‘put your face on’. End of conversation. 99 Chapter 6 / Elaine Shemilt in-conversation | EWVA

Endnotes 1. Tony Sinden, Behold Vertical Devices, 1974, 9-monitor installation with chair and step ladder. 2. Elaine Shemilt, Doppelgänger Redux, performed at Visions in the Nunnery, Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts, London, October 2016. Curated by Laura Leuzzi and Adam Lockhart. 3. Rosalind Krauss, ‘Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism’,October, Vol. 1, Spring, 1976, pp. 50–64. 4. Laura Leuzzi, Elaine Shemilt and Stephen Partridge, ‘Body, Sign and Double: A Parallel Analysis of Elaine Shemilt’s Doppelgänger, Federica Marangoni’s The Box of Life and Sanja Ivekoviƒ’s Instructions N°1 and Make up – Make down’, in Valentino Catricalá (ed.), Media Art: Towards a new definition of arts (Pistoia: Gli Ori, 2015), pp. 97–103. 5. Sony AV-3400 Video Rover, 1969 (USA version), 1970 UK version. 6. Heinz Nigg and Graham Wade, Community Media – Community Communication in the UK: Video, Local TV, Film and Photography (Zurich: Regenbogen Verlag, 1980). 7. Ezra Pound,PROOFHugh Selwyn Mauberley , Section V, 1920. 8. Susan Hiller, Belshazzar’s Feast, the Writing on Your Wall, 1983–84, installed in the Tate Gallery, 1985. 9. Edinburgh International Television Festival 1976, James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture,John McGrath, Dramatist and director, founder of the 7:84 Theatre Company. 10. The Ampex Corporation (USA), developed the first commercial Video Tape Recorder for broadcast quality with its VR-100 -0 a 2-inch Quadruplex videotape recorder in 1956. In March 1957, Ampex won an Emmy award for the invention of the Video Tape Recorder (VTR). 11. Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, edited by Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlonedo Press, 1997). not distribute PROOF

do not distribute Chapter 7

Concretising the illogical: Immaterial Identities in Early Women’sPROOF Video Art

Chapter 7 / Concretising the illogical Emile Josef Shemilt I think a lot of what we call logic and rationality is a male-focused, male-in- vented code. So-called logic is often insanely illogical, but it’s still called logic because it works within its own system. Like Formalist or Minimalist art is popularly supposed to be logical because it looks like it should be, while work with a more obvious psychologicaldo basis is called illogical.1 Lucy Lippard not riting for Studio Interna- works within the critical discussions of tional in 1974, the the time, Lippard attempted to expose American critic, Lucy this as a latentdistribute form of misogyny; stat- W Lippard, called for a re- ing that ‘before the [women’s] appropriation of the movement, women were denying their way artworks were exhibited and con- identity, trying to be neutral, and inten- textualised. Like many foundational tionally making art that couldn’t be arguments in 1970s’ second-wave called “feminine”’.2 feminist visual theory, Lippard’s writ- Writing later in 1980 for Art Jour- ing echoed a concern that women’s nal, Lippard adopted a more artworks and their insights were often unsubdued position. In describing inadequately defined. Having already modernist tendencies as becoming begun to express her theories with her ‘increasingly mechanical’ in their pur- curated exhibition Eccentric Abstrac- suit of ‘art about art’, Lippard pro- tion in 1966, (which included the work posed that the resulting greater of women artists Eva Hesse and visibility of more emotionally-based Louise Bourgeois), Lippard’s writing work at the turn of the 1980s, was in the early 1970s spoke against a evidence of the significant impact that perceived gender bias in art criticism feminism had been making on art over where women’s artwork would often the previous decade. Although ac- be dismissed as ‘illogical’ and/or ‘psy- knowledging that many male artists chological’. Pointing to the exclusion would also claim to have created per- of women’s more overtly personal sonal work during that period, Lippard EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 102

defended her position by stating that ple, are equally significant when ad- the feminist intervention was far ‘too dressing women’s societal suppres- complex, subversive and fundamen- sions, as are the more prominent tally political’ to be described as sim- arguments relating to unequal pay ply adding more emotional or and abortion. When Lippard refers to autobiographical content to otherwise the complexity of domestic imagery in material-focused artworks.3 When cit- women’s art, she describes it in terms ing the use of domestic imagery in art of their attempts to claim ownership in the 1950s and 1960s, Lippard had and ‘concretise the fantasies and sup- argued that women ‘work[ed] from pressions’ that they would regularly such imagery because it [was] there, experience day to day.6 Conducting a because it is what they [knew] best, separate conversation with the art his- PROOFbecause they [couldn’t] escape it’ torian Linda Nochlin (first published in and that ‘probably more than most 1975), Lippard posed the question, artists, women make art to escape, to ‘what is female imagery?’ to which overwhelm, to transform daily reali- Nochlin expressed her frustration at ties’.4 When male artists later adopted what she felt was a constrictive term: household imagery and developed I’m human, undefined by precon- Pop Art, Lippard described it as men ceptions, an androgynous being ‘moving into woman’sdo domain and pil- that isn’t slated to give birth to any 5 lag[ing] without impunity’. The result- particular imagery. But my second ing critical celebration of Pop Art (and reaction is to try and think it its mostly male artists) as beingnot revo- through. I do live in a society, and lutionary, was, for Lippard, simply an- who I am is determined by the other example of the underlying structure of experience a woman is misogyny within art criticism, which supposed to have. My experience continued to neglect the complexity ofdistributeis filtered through a complex inter- what women artists had been dealing action between me and the expec- 7 with in their work, especially when ex- tations that the world has of me. ploring their own domestic environs. The female, more autobiographi- For many second-wave femi- cal work that Lippard describes as nists, the argument that ‘the personal being ‘illogical’ or ‘psychological’, in is political’ had become fundamental this sense can be understood to re- in articulating the complex ideas with flect the creative tension that exists in which women artists were dealing. the artist’s attempt to ‘escape/over- Often attributed to Carol Hanisch after whelm/transform her daily realities’.8 her 1969 essay by the same name, the This attempt is set in tension because phrase was used as a reactionary ar- there is also a disheartening sensa- gument for exposing oppressive so- tion that (as yet) women have never cial structures that women regularly fully managed to escape these reali- face in their everyday lives. Taking the ties. The artistic process of attempting term ‘political’ in terms of power rela- to concretise (and deal with) one’s tionships, the argument is (still) used suppression, on an emotional and in- to highlight how women’s personal tellectual level, reflects a poignancy issues such as sex, appearance, that this process may be a constant, housework and childcare, for exam- lifelong struggle. 103 Chapter 7 / Concretising the illogical | EWVA

When revisiting the emergence of duced by mis- aligning vertical and video technology in the 1960s and its horizontal frame locks; random vis- fruition as a critical art form in the ual noise; camera ‘beam’, ‘target’ 9 1970s and 1980s, it is possible to focus; vidicon tube; and so on. perceive similar patterns in how Video To this end, Lippard’s observa- Art was originally discussed, particu- tion that modernist art was becoming larly in terms of it being a ‘logical’ ‘increasingly mechanical’ seems al- art-from. Likewise, there is capacity to most literally justified in its criticism. argue that women’s Video Art – espe- For Hall, however, refining the con- cially when displaying the levels of cept of Video Art was the culmination complexity that Lippard was describ- of a steady progression in a branch of ing – was also generally overlooked modernism that had already engaged (or at leastPROOF misunderstood) at the with an ‘essential dematerialisation’ of time. For example, from a European the object and had also developed perspective, especially amid the early significantly beyond the concerns of British canon, a modernist ideology of Greenbergian art and theory. Al- medium specificity had been promi- though Hall often promoted women’s nent in the pursuits of electronic me- video art, (particularly the work of dia throughout the early years. David Tamara Krikorian, for example), such Hall – a leading proponent of video art doartworks, nevertheless, fell predomi- in Britain during the 1970s – sought to nantly within his specified area of fo- define it as an autonomous practice, cus. Netherlands-based artists by distinguishing what he felt could be Madelonnot Hooykaas and Elsa Stans- determined as ‘Video Art’ from what field, for example, could be said to he believed were ‘artists using video’. have adopted similar theories to Hall Hall stated that: ‘Video Art is video as when creating artworks like Horizontal the art work’, meaning that the spe- distribute Flow (1977). cific characteristics of video technol- ogy should form the criterion for the Using the specific character of basis of the work. This would be dis- the horizontal scan lines, which tinct, as Hall argued, from artwork us- formed the video image on the cath- ing video for ‘an already defined ode ray tube monitors of the time, content’ – something that could oth- Horizontal Flow is an artwork that erwise be realised through a different makes reference to both how the im- medium. For Hall, video’s technologi- age is technologically created and cal characteristics formed an exten- also how it is visually experienced. sive list, ‘including those peculiar to Inspired in part by minimalism, con- the functions (and malfunctions) of ceptualism and the optical line paint- the constituent hardware-camera, re- ings of artists such as Bridget Riley, corder and monitor’ as well as: the artwork uses these scan-lines to play with illusions of movement. Ex- […] the manipulation of record and hibited as an installation for five iden- playback ‘loop’ configurations; im- mediate visual and audio regenera- tical monitors, the work is presented tion; the relative lack of image with the monitors aligned side-by-side resolution; signal distortion; frame- in a semi-circle. On each screen is a instability – often purposefully in- different view of the same horizon line EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 104

(taken from a 360-degree pan of neers of early European video art to South Gare breakwater, Teeside, in be women, Hooykaas and Stansfield the North-East of England). When the did not consider their work (at that screens are viewed collectively within time), to be feminist. As Hooykaas the installation, the horizon line ap- explained, being part of a feminist ar- pears continuous, and connected gument was a separate concern: across all five screens. Having origi- We weren’t part of any specific nally shot the 360-degree pan on two feminist group, and there weren’t videotapes, Hooykaas and Stansfield specific feminist groups in the reworked the tapes, duplicating them Netherlands that were working with and slowing down the image until they artists. There were, of course, femi- PROOFcreated five pans, each lasting fifteen nist groups working against politi- minutes. Each time the image was cal attempts to stop abortion and slowed down and re-recorded, the things like that […] but we didn’t horizontal scan lines that structure the have any contact with Feminist video image became more and more groups at all in those days. We visibly discernible. At which point, weren’t aware of that and we these technological specificities be- weren’t part of that… [Our work] gan to mirror the original, recorded was far more to do with the me- horizon line. Displayeddo on the five dium, which we wanted to get ac- monitors, the panning horizon gradu- cepted, than what were in those ally flows through each screen at an days, feminists issues. The advan- extremely slow rate. Meanwhile,not the tage of video was that there hadn’t visible scan lines remind the viewer of been a history yet. So we were start- the mechanisms behind the image, as ing to work with a new medium. the electron beam rapidly moves from Unlike the heavy things like paint- left to right across the sensor, gener-distributeing or sculpture, in that way it was ating fifty horizontal lines, twenty-five very new. I wasn’t comparing if it times per second. was a male person or a female person making the work. It was Building upon the fundamental more the content of the work and concerns of minimalism, where an art- how it was shown, so [feminism] work occupies the same space as its wasn’t particularly the issue.10 viewer, Horizontal Flow adds to this space a sense of movement. The ar- While second-wave feminism tifice of cinema (in this case video and the concerns of early video art technology) and the illusion of con- were concurrent issues, there was ar- nected movement in the spaces be- guably some justification for maintain- tween each monitor, are set in tension ing a distinction. Whether it was a with the physical reality of the aligned deliberate resistance or whether it was monitors and the body of the viewer. – as Lippard implied – another form For Hooykaas and Stansfield, this unconscious misogyny, one may still meant that their work chimed closely argue the necessity for early video with the concerns in defining Video Art artists to define the art-form’s aes- as a new art-form, as expressed in the thetic and conceptual basis out-with writings of David Hall. Despite, being political and societal concerns. Nev- among the few acknowledged pio- ertheless, a shift away from these me- 105 Chapter 7 / Concretising the illogical | EWVA dium specific pursuits did occur, and Hall however, occurred when the first it became more apparent in the histories of video art also began to 1980s. From a British point of view, appear during that period, and he ar- David Hall retrospectively put this gued that ‘many showed signs of de- down to the rise of Thatcherite policies vising alternative readings of that in the UK. ‘Independent Commercial past’ and/or attempted to ‘set original Enterprise’ opportunities, for exam- intentions against later theoretical de- ple, were established by British com- bate, probably in an effort to accom- mercial television companies as a modate current concerns’.13 David means of supporting creative prac- Hall expressed his frustration at how tice. According to Hall, commission- theorists would also ‘oversimplify, dis- ers required their applicants to ‘justify tort and ultimately misrepresent’14 the political andPROOF institutional viability’, concerns of early video art practice: which encouraged a shift in creative Primarily then, my contention is 11 focus. Recognising that there was a with the use of Video Art as a gen- concurrent and significant evolution in eralised label for a great deal of ‘semiotic, psychoanalytic and gender artwork involving video technology 12 theory’, Hall wrote of how such theo- to whatever ends […] Too often, ries were adopted with great enthusi- enthusiastic writers have mistak- asm by artists seeking funding fromdo enly constructed notions of a re- commissioning bodies, which in his lated endeavour on the opinion paved a path for the postmod- presumption that simply the use of ern period in moving image art. notthe technology presents a common The generally accepted rationale factor of some ideological, concep- 15 for the rejection of the medium spe- tual or aesthetic significance. cific practice was that for the next However, despite Hall’s concern wave of artists, the practice had be- for an accuratedistribute analysis of medium come too narrowly focused. As had specific Video Art, it is nonetheless happened with the emergence of Pop worth questioning his point of view Art in the 1960s, artists had turned to that the very use of the technology popular culture. By the 1980s, the was, by comparison, ideologically in- technology had significantly devel- significant. In sympathy with Lippard’s oped, and colour video cameras were reasoning that women’s artworks fea- commercially available, as had early turing household objects were over- motion graphics systems such as shadowed by the impact of Pop Art, Quantel’s Paintbox. Coupled with the Hall’s assertion appears to demon- emergence of cheap electronic music strate a similar oversight in recognis- synthesisers, artists had a near-revo- ing women’s use of video in a climate lutionary sense of access to pre- of otherwise male-dominated art viously, exclusive production facilities. forms. While arguing that the personal In a post-punk era, artists’ references is political, second-wave feminism were no longer towards a modernist had focused debate around women’s idealism, and their inspiration came in experience in the face of established, the forms of independent television suppressive social structures. The productions, music videos and com- fact that video was a new medium, puter games. The problem for David without a designated (male-domi- EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 106

nated) history, meant that video could womanhood have been (mis)repre- be an art-form that was, at least, gen- sented. Amid the general canon of der-neutral. As to emotional or auto- feminist visual theory, John Berger’s biographical works emerging despite Ways of Seeing (1972), articulates the modernisms of medium specific- conventional ideas that have caused ity, a more subtle point can be drawn tensions in a woman’s social condi- out from the differentiation between tion as both the surveyed (by men) Lippard’s description of ‘logical’ and and also the surveyor of her own ‘illogical’ artworks. Where Lippard ar- physical state. Writing that ‘Men look gues in her text, that ‘a lot of what we at women. Women watch themselves call logic and rationality is a male fo- being looked at’, Berger points to the cused, male invented code’, she conventional, determining relations PROOFmakes the point that the term ‘illogical’ between a woman and herself: ‘The is prejudicial, and as a result, she surveyor of woman in herself is male: observes that it is often necessary to the surveyed female. Thus she turns justify its use: herself into an object – and most par- 17 When I write that something is illogi- ticularly an object of vision: a sight’. cal in art, and I like it, I have to add Describing how this idea became ex- “marvellously illogical” or it will be ploited, Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleas- seen as a put-down.do Not so with ure and Narrative Cinema (1975) logic, which I often think is “merely exposed the systematic misogyny in logical”.16 the conventions of narrative (Holly- If one finds oneself in agreementnot wood) cinema. Observing how with Lippard’s perception that ‘For- women are often depicted as to sat- malist or Minimalist art is popularly isfy man’s fantasies, Mulvey states supposed to be logical because it that, ‘unchallenged, mainstream film looks like it should be’, then perhapsdistributecoded the erotic into the language of the same can be said of medium spe- the dominant patriarchal order’.18 cific Video Art as defined by David Stating her intent to attack ‘the satis- Hall. Whether or not Hall’s theories, faction and reinforcement of the which appeared to reject more per- [male] ego that represent the high sonal themes, were born from a gen- point of film history’, Mulvey aimed to eral culture of latent misogyny is challenge these conventional cine- unclear. Certainly from Hall’s personal matic languages by exposing the sub- perspective however, this would be a liminal, misogynist prejudice, which misreading of his intentions. Never- are among the many external influ- theless, the circumstances were con- ences that shape a person’s psycho- current with a feminist reaction in a logical conditioning. The more manner that sought to shed light on complex aspect of Mulvey’s text, the notion of ‘illogical, psychological’ which discusses Freud’s theory of artworks. castration anxiety, (the subconscious As is conventional in academic fear that men supposedly develop discourse, by relating psychoanalytic during infancy when visually con- stages of identification to feminist vis- fronted with anatomical sexual differ- ual theory, it is plausible to perceive ence, leading them to a lifelong state patterns in how ideas of woman and of anxiety, which is typically elevated 107 Chapter 7 / Concretising the illogical | EWVA by suppressing women), argues how is democracy, with which ðiek ar- typical-Hollywood narrative cinema gues that individuals collectively ad- had become a manifestation of this here to democratic rules, even though anxiety, (i.e. depicting women to be individually perhaps, one may not al- conquered by the male ego). There- ways believe it to be a successful sys- fore, the visual pleasure a man takes tem. Nevertheless, individual people from cinema, is when he observes follow democratic rules because they these acts of suppression being rein- buy into a belief that society as a forced. whole has collective faith in its suc- As a way of discussing how these cess. For ðiek, this symbolic reality canonical ideas have been explored also has to remain virtual, otherwise by women artists, some insight may an actuality of no-one behaving by the be expoundedPROOF from Slavoj ðiek’s The rules, would destroy the structures Reality of the Virtual (2004).19 Revers- that we depend upon. With the third ing the phrasing of ‘virtual reality’ – topic, ‘the real’, ðiek turns these sys- something that is more commonly as- tems of virtuality onto the self. We all sociated with a computer-generated, carry our own forms of prejudice and artificial experience – ðiek describes, insecurity which pervert or regulate philosophically, how people regularly our personal perceptions of reality. create and experience ‘real virtualities’doUnderstanding ‘the real’ is about rec- as a method of structuring their daily ognising these unconscious influ- lives. Rooting his framework within the ences. For ðiek, these ‘virtualities’ Lacanian psychoanalytic theories of arenot an essential part of our existence, the ‘imaginary’, the ‘symbolic’ and the and so are a part of our reality. If one ‘real’, ðiek describes these ‘real vir- loses the virtualities that structure our tualities’ through example scenarios experience, we would essentially lose of day-to-day existence. our comprehensiondistribute of reality. With the ‘imaginary’, for example, Relating these ideas to artistic ðiek describes how people regularly practice can go some way to explor- create ‘virtual images’ of each other ing the idea of what Lippard was de- when choosing to selectively exclude bating with regard to a female image. particular details, such as bodily func- For second-wave feminists, challeng- tions, from an imaginary, ‘virtual’ im- ing the stifling conventions, (such as age of another person. As ðiek those articulated by Berger and Mul- explains, one knows that another per- vey among others), was fundamental. son defecates and sweats, but in For some women artists these chal- choosing to ignore those aspects, the lenges were fought head-on, by re- mental image that a person con- claiming the conventional image of structs of another person is not real. It women as traditionally portrayed in is instead a ‘virtual’ image. Similarly, the visual arts. In canonical art criti- with the ‘symbolic’, ðiek points to cism, artists such as Judy Chicago, authority figures and symbols, and and her work The Dinner Party (1979, sets out a context whereby systems Fig. 1), are among the more typically function because of a perception of referenced when discussing the rei- power that is not enacted upon, but magining of female depiction. In these remains virtual. One of his examples cases, the works embellish vaginal EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 108

imagery and make decorative refer- form shapes, which often appear ence to menstruation as aspects of as images. In this case, the image womanhood, which they argue of a woman. But it is not a 20 should no longer be something hid- woman. den and excluded from the ‘surveyed’ The video image then cuts to female. In this regard, artworks like black, before the image of the woman these are subversive of the estab- reappears and repeats the same lished male gaze, and are repre- monologue. This time however, both sentative of how ðiek’s ‘imaginary the video image and the emitting virtual’ is revealed. Yet because of sound have notably deteriorated. The this, they also represent a ‘psycho- cycle repeats several times and each logical’ form of tension. Attempting to time, the image and sound appear PROOFclaim ownership over the way a significantly less stable, until finally woman is viewed is, of course, impos- only a monotone cloud and warped sible – much in the same way that a sound are produced. In Pipilotti Rist’s politicised attempt to control another I’m Not the Girl who Misses Much, the person’s perspective, can only ever work is similarly composed of a (col- be limited to an endeavour to influ- our) video image of a woman, al- ence. though she only sparingly addresses Connecting these notions to do the camera. Shot in a mid-frame, the women’s video art, some insight can woman, appearing in a dark dress be revealed by comparing two works with her breasts exposed, performs a that are similar in appearance. The not kind of frenetic dance while repeat- first is David Hall’s This is a Video edly chanting/singing the opening line Monitor (1973) and the second is Pipi- to The Beatles song, Happiness is a lotti Rist’s I’m Not the Girl who Misses Warm Gun (1968). The line, ‘She’s Not Much (1986). With Hall’s This is adistribute the Girl Who Misses Much’, is Video Monitor, the work is presented changed to ‘I’m not the girl Who as a monitor displaying a video image Misses Much’. As with Hall’s This is of a woman’s face looking directly into not a Video Monitor, the image in Rist’s camera, so as to appear to be ad- work cuts, and then repeats, each dressing the viewer directly. The time deteriorating. Yet in Rist’s work, woman delivers a monologue, which the image is also sped up and slowed appears to describe the conditions of down, alternating the rhythm of her video image’s presentation: singing, and adding to the frenetic This is a video monitor, which is a nature of the performance. box. The shell is of wood, metal or plastic. On one side, most likely the The creative tension in both art- one you are looking at, there is a works deals with the way in which we large rectangular opening. This experience reality. However, they ad- opening is filled with a curved glass dress this tension from different per- surface, which is emitting light. The spectives. It is by contrasting these light, passing through the glass approaches, that one may explain the surface, fades in intensity over that difference between Lippard’s ‘logical’ surface from dark to light and in a versus ‘illogical’ observation. Hall’s variety of shades of grey. These approach is to tackle the tension be- 109 Chapter 7 / Concretising the illogical | EWVA

PROOF

do not distribute tween reality and the virtual, by spe- woman. It is a pattern of human be- Fig. 1. Judy Chicago, The cifically addressing the way video haviour that we are constantly dealing Dinner Party, technology, electronically artifices a with, between our intellectual ambi- 1979, mixed media, 36 in. x virtual image. On face value, this im- tions and our often uncontrollable 576 in. x 576 in., personal, pared-down, minimalist art- emotional, reactions. © Judy Chicago. work seems ‘logical’ – which Lippard I’m ARS, NY and With regard to Pipilotti Rist’s DACS/Artimage, may critique as ‘merely logical’ – be- Not the Girl Who Misses Much, the London 2018. cause it tells us something that we same message is at play, except from Photo: © Donald Woodman. already know: that the image ‘is not a a more personal point of view. In this woman’. However, from a deeper per- work, the woman’s face is obscured, spective, we understand that the work and it is unclear as to whether Rist is much more complex than this. Its perceives the performer as herself or essential basis is to express the ongo- as a proxy. Yet, we are viewing her and ing tensions between our material ex- the work suggests that she is aware of istence and our imaginary existence, being viewed. Rist’s exposed breasts which regulate our every day lives. We imply her sexualisation through the know it is not a woman, but we none- male-gaze, yet perhaps her post-pro- theless continue to, and indeed find it duction obscuring and deterioration hard not to, identify the image as a of the image, embody her personal EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 110

tension in being perceived this way. themself that they are in control of their The attempt to materially interfere with own existence. Yet, controlling our and deteriorate the virtual dancing im- psychological selves and controlling age of the self represents the attempt our material selves are unrealistic am- to concretise and deal with this exter- bitions. So, the limitations in Rist’s nal, virtual social structure that women desire to ‘escape’, ‘transform’ or deal with in their everyday lives. This ‘overwhelm’ her daily realities are ex- is extended further when considering posed. In this sense, the aspiration of the title of, and repeated chant within, the artwork, and its title, can be the work. ‘I’m not the girl who misses judged in Lippardian terms as ‘mar- much’ can be interpreted as a per- velously illogical’. PROOFson’s internal attempt to convince Endnotes 1. Lucy Lippard, ‘Six’ (1974), in From the Centre: Feminists Essays on Women’s Art (New York: E.P. Dutton Publications, 1976), p. 93. 2. Ibidem, p. 89. 3. Lucy Lippard, ‘Sweeping Exchanges: The Contribution of Feminism to the Art of the 1970s’ in Art Journal, Fall/Winter 1980, pp. 362–365, p. 362 for the quote, the italics is the original. 4. Lucy Lippard, ‘Household Images indo Art’ (1973), in Id., From the Centre,p.56. 5. Ibidem. 6. Lippard, ‘Household Images in Art’, p. 57. 7. Linda Nochlin in Lucy Lippard, ‘What is Femalenot Imagery?’ (1975), in From the Centre: Feminists Essays on Women’s Art (New York: E.P. Dutton Publications, 1976), p.80. 8. Lucy Lippard, ‘Household Images in Art’ (1973), in Id., From the Centre,p.56. 9. David Hall, ‘Using Video and Video Art: Some Notes’, Aspects Magazine, Winter 1978, http://www.rewind.ac.uk/documents/David%20Hall/DH103.pdfdistribute 10. ‘Interview with Madelon Hooykaas by Laura Leuzzi’ 2016, EWVA European Women’s Video Art. 11. David Hall, ‘Early Video Art: A Look at a Controversial History’ (1991) in J. Knight (ed.), Diverse Practices: A Critical Reader on British Video Art (New Barnet: Arts Council of England and John Libbey, 1996), pp. 71–80, p. 73 for the quote. 12. Ibidem, p. 73. 13. Ibidem. 14. Ibidem. 15. Hall, ‘Using Video and Video Art: Some Notes’. 16. Lucy Lippard, ‘Six’ (1974), in Id., From the Centre, p. 93. 17. John Berger ‘Ways of Seeing’ (1972) extract in Amelia Jones (ed.), The Feminism and Cultural Reader (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 49–52, p. 38. 18. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975) extract in Jones, The Feminism and Cultural Reader, p. 63. 19. Slavoj ðiek ‘The Reality of the Virtual’, DVD directed by Ben Wright (Olive Films, 2004). 20. David Hall, This is a Video Monitor (1973). Chapter 8

Without a trace … ?

Chapter 8 / Without a trace ? Stephen Partridge

n our research for three consecu- the works are lost – ‘without a tive projectsPROOF – REWIND, REWIND trace’.1 Italia, and EWVA – the work pro- A prime motivation for undertak- I duced by women artists has ing the EWVA research was recogni- offered the greatest challenge in tion of this issue, and a gradual terms of both discovery and recovery. understanding that traces often did in In the first REWIND book I wrote: fact exist. The challenge then be- Because of the performative ap- came, how to best represent these proach taken by the artists withdoworks in any meaningful way through much of the early work it means that documentation, recovery or re-enact- many have been ‘lost’. The works ment.2 were ephemeral, un-recordable as notIn one of Marina Abramoviƒ’s first discrete material artworks, and performances at the Edinburgh Festi- often not intended to even be re- val in 1973,3 Abramoviƒ performed peated. The REWIND collection kneeling on whitedistribute paper on the floor of can only represent these early ap- the space (Fig. 1), with 20 assorted proaches by proxy (and then only knives, jabbing between the fingers of within the collected ephemera on her outstretched palm. Her stabbing the database). This has also led to rhythm was recorded on a tape re- an unintended consequence within corder and used as a cue for a second the project as a whole, with men repeat action: disproportionately represented in the collection. This can be ex- Rhythm 10, in which the sound of plained by the possibility that al- the initial performance with knife though both men and women blades stabbing sequentially in the artists of the period shared an an- spaces between fingers and thumb tipathy towards the art market and is recorded, and serves as a tem- the commoditisation of art objects, plate of a repeat performance, the men were much more cautious which seeks to replicate the first at discarding elements or frag- performance endemically, includ- ments of their works. Even if the ing the mistakes and woundings, videotape was lost, some other and all of my early performance piece of ephemera remains to sup- pieces were called rhythms and the port their position in the ‘canon’. existence of sound or the presence Many of the women artists stayed of silence was extremely impor- rigidly true to their principles and tant.4 EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 112

Figs. 1a-b. Marina Abramoviƒ, first performance of Rhythm 10, Eight Yugoslav ArtistsPROOF, Edinburgh Festival, Stewart’s Melville College, Edinburgh, 19 August 1973. Courtesy of the Demarco European Art Foundation and Demarco Digital do Archive, University of Dundee. not distribute

The video documentation is now ice as long as she can, before the cold lost, but photographs taken at the forces her to withdraw with an excla- time by the gallerist Richard Demarco mation of pain. She repeats this action allow us a reasonable sense of the during this durational performance. work.5 A video fragment of a later work As an artist duo, Marina Abra- Hot/Cold (1975, Figs. 2a-b), also per- moviƒ and Ulay (active together until formed in Edinburgh6 was recovered 1988) also deserve mention despite by the REWIND Lab in 2015.7 In this the gender mix they represent. Al- work, Abramoviƒ sits at a trestle table though best known as performance upon which is a large block of ice artists, they produced a large number (approx. 1m x 2m x 0.2m). Suspended of video works, sometimes more as above her is a large electric heater. registrations or documentation of their Abramoviƒ presses her hand onto the performances, but often specifically 113 Chapter 8 / Without a trace … ? | EWVA made for the camera, many of them serving to develop their interest in en- durance and duration such as Light/Dark (1977), Breathing In, Breathing Out (1977), Relation in Time (1977), AAA-AAA (1978) and one of their most iconic works, Rest/Energy (1980), where they balanced each other, inclining backwards on oppo- site sides of a drawn bow and arrow, with the arrow pointed at Abramoviƒ‘s heart. Some of these works still exists as fragmentsPROOF in video form and pho- tographic form.8 I was not in charge. In Rest Energy we actually held an arrow on the weight of our bodies, and the arrow is pointed right into my heart. We had two small microphones near our hearts, so we could hear ourdo heartbeats. As our performance was progressing, heartbeats were becoming more and more intense, not and though it lasted just four min- utes and ten seconds, I’m telling you, for me it was forever. It was a performance about the complete distribute and total trust.9

Ephemeral The use of video, either as ‘live’ (closed circuit TV or video) or a re- corded videotape playback within a performance or multimedia event, These variously termed works derived Figs. 2a-b. was an approach that was very preva- Marina not from the theatre, but from sculp- Abramoviƒ, lent in the early years of video art, ture and painting and therefore fre- Hot/Cold, particularly for women, many of whom quently referenced traditional art Aspects ’75, The Fruitmarket did not consider these works to be forms and media. Many artists saw Gallery, video art per se. It should be under- video as a useful extension of their Edinburgh, 1975. Courtesy of the stood that the term ‘installation’ was existing practice and media. By the Demarco not in use until the early 1970s – artists mid 1970s, artists, critics and audi- European Art Foundation and used terms such as mixed media, ences alike, often confused perform- Demarco Digital multimedia, performance or simply ance art with video art. Whatever label Archive, University of event, (although rarely the Allan was employed by the artist, they often Dundee. Kaprow inspired ‘Happening’10). involved a number of elements, some EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 114

of which were ephemeral and tempo- Many women artists were at- rary, and not likely to be retained. If the tracted to the instant playback prop- video element was a closed circuit erty of this new medium, allowing video system, this means that it was experimentation in real-time as op- unlikely that a videotape recording posed to film, which had to be ex- was made of the live feed and there- posed, sent off for processing and fore only drawings/sketches for the then projected within any work envis- work or photographs and registra- aged. As a medium, film was also tions (video recordings) of the pre- technically more challenging and sented work would be left – as traces. often required at least a basic crew Sometimes there are no traces left at and separate sound recording and all: an early performance which in- subsequent re-synching. The intrinsic PROOFvolved video was Susan Hiller’s Pray property of video of instant playback (Prayer), a three-hour long work for ten or live relay, was referred to again and participants exhibited at the Serpen- again as process rather than material, tine in 1969. Hiller’s exhibition/retro- and was exploited by many women spective, An Entertainment at Tate in artists. For example, VALIE EXPORT 2011 contained only a passing refer- produced a number of works includ- ence to the work in the catalogue; no ing Seeing Space and Hearing Space documentation ordo image is in the pub- (1973/74)12 and Inversion-circle-line lic domain. (1975); the latter, interestingly de- The ambivalence towards defin- scribed as a both a video mobile and ing the art form as one thingnot or another a sculpture, used a live camera feed is described succinctly by Rose Gar- of a black ball which was rotated by a rard: machine a horizontal orbit. This image went to each of the four monitors suc- […] having originally been seendistributecessively, producing in effect, a linear myself or regarded myself as a movement across the screens. This painter, and then being made to do work played with both the sculptural sculpture at college, and then go- concerns of space and the intrinsic ing into what I saw as four dimen- properties of the (new) medium.13 A sions by using time-based media – later work by Giny Vos, Giovanni Arnol- my work then moved through each fini and his Young Wife (1984) em- of the what I would call core disci- ployed a reproduction of the famous plines of each of those things very painting by Jan Van Eyck: instead of deliberately, and then out beyond the image of the painter in the mirror into performance. So you might get in the back of the painting, the audi- one work that was three dimen- ence saw themselves through a CCTV sional or a sculpture, definable as 14 that, that led to a video or a painting monitor cut into the mirror. or an object that was hardly defin- able as sculpture, and then eventu- Recurring Motifs ally that would lead me into some sort of linkage where they would Recurring motifs occurred repeatedly become an installation, and then I with personal and original variation would perform within the installa- across Europe and North America tion.11 stemming, naturally, from the 115 Chapter 8 / Without a trace … ? | EWVA woman’s perspective: such as using same time an allegory of the a glass mirror contrasted with the ephemeral nature of television.17 video monitor as a mirror; a mise-en- In this work Krikorian combines scène of the artist applying make-up the image of a well-known BBC news to her face; the use of the artists’ body, reader reflected in a mirror with that of and mother and child vignettes. Tina her head and shoulders. A memento Keane’s work in the 1970s exemplifies mori tableau of personal objects com- both the ephemeral approach to me- pletes the scene perhaps referring to dia – combining slide, audio, perform- the transience of earthy goods and ance and (later) film and video – and the ephemeral nature of the medium. the themes and motifs explored by Elaine Shemilt combined the use of women artists. Her Clapping Songs the mirror with the application of (1979) wasPROOF a projection of slides with make-up in Doppelgänger (1979–81), sound.15 Keane later developed this made in the same year as Marion sound-work into a video/perform- Urch’s The Fascinating Art of the Ritual ance, Clapping Songs (1981). The Feast (1979, Fig. 3). Both feature the work was part of a series of works (The image of a young woman applying Swing, 1978; and Playpen, 1979) make-up with a voice over. In Doppel- which used children’s songs and gänger a male voice is double tracked games, and was described by Guy dospeaking about psychoanalysis, and Brett as: in Urch’s work the voice-over de- A struggle from the start to make scribes a series of facts about cos- visible and surpass restrictive clas- meticsnot and cooking recipes. Shemilt sifications, beginning with those applies the make-up to her alter-im- imposed on women. Her work is age in the mirror – eventually produc- really a long series of metaphors for ing the doppelgängerdistribute on the mirror’s the existence of constraints and the surface, while Urch makes up her own 16 possibilities of freedom. face as the screen is overlaid with The work shows the actions of magazine images of idealised femi- two girls made while singing tradi- nine beauty as jig-saw fragments. tional playground clapping songs. Both works offer reflection and com- The songs are amusing, but can be mentary (beyond the obvious sound- perceived as an ironic observation of tracks), on the female condition and a woman’s life from the cradle to the the gaze of the camera-as-mirror. grave as they reflect the morbidity and Many British video artists were black humour of the nursery rhyme. influenced by avant-garde film theory, Tamara Krikorian’s Vanitas (1977) particularly Laura Mulvey’s writing and is a fine example of the use of video films. By taking up the video camera and the mirror. She said: they found themselves in a double struggle. Another UK artist, Catherine Vanitas came after seeing a French Elwes in conversation with Chris painting attributed to Nicolas Meigh-Andrews said: Tournier at the Ashmolean Mu- seum, Oxford, An Allegory of Jus- […] having abandoned the history tice and Vanity. Vanitas is a of art, you took on the history of film. self-portrait of the artist and at the You were suddenly doing battle EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 116

treated slow, rhythmic breathing. Her catalogue notes state, ‘I tie us to- gether with transparent gauze ban- dages. We are in any case inseparably joined’.20 Rosenbach started making performances in the late 1960s and soon adopted video as a recording and documentation de- vice (Five Point Star, 1974) and works specifically made for the medium (Be- gegnungen mit Ewa und Adam [En- counters with Eve and Adam], 1984). PROOF She proclaimed her work as a feminist perspective and experimented with using her body as a medium of ex- pression. Tanz um einen Baum [Dance Around a Tree] (1979) per- formed outside at the Sydney Biennial falls into the registration mode of do video (termed dokumentation einer videoaktion in the tiles) and docu- ments a ritualistic set of movements, not influenced by her stay in Australia and the Aboriginal culture.

distributeThe Body Figs. 3a-b. with the history of film and televi- Perhaps understated in art theory and Marion Urch, The Fascinating Art of sion. It’s a different set of problems, art history literature, is the extraordi- the Ritual Feast, but just as difficult a set of prob- nary bravery of women artists using 1979, still from lems. The things that Laura Mulvey their own bodies in their artworks. The video. Courtesy of the talked about – and the gaze of the female body, so often the subject of artist. camera,18 whether it was possible the male gaze, was now used expres- to appropriate the gaze, and what sively by the artist – and on her own you needed to do. How you con- terms. This often provoked hostility vinced your audience that it was a and derision when nakedness or female sensibility that was being erotic reference were deployed, as the 19 expressed. imagery did not accord with the con- A further recurring motif was the ventions of the female form, naked, artist and child. Ulrike Rosenbach’s clad or semi-clad. Yoko Ono stunned Einwicklung mit Julia [Introducing audiences with her Cut Piece in 1964 Julia] (1973, Fig. 4) shows a naked (performed and videotaped on July child seated on the artist’s lap, who is 20, 1964 at Yamaichi Concert Hall, slowly wrapping a long bandage Kyoto), where she sat on a stage and around both her and the child’s upper allowed people to cut clothing from torso. The soundtrack is of heavily her. In an interview with the BBC in 117 Chapter 8 / Without a trace … ? | EWVA

Fig. 4. Ulrike Rosenbach, Einwicklung mit Julia [Introducing Julia], 1973, still from video. Courtesy of the artist.

PROOF

do 2012 when she showed the original (1979/81) is even more disturbing in work opposite a 2003 re-enactment its depiction of a cleaver on the stom- on the other-side of the Serpentine achnot of a naked and pregnant woman, Gallery walls she said, ‘I was express- (that of the artist), with the soundtrack ing about how women are treated, as featuring a baby’s rapid heartbeat. well as how we can survive it by allow- Soltau stated that: ‘In this video, I ing people to do what they want to do, show the psychicdistribute condition of a there was [sic] many levels of mes- woman during pregnancy. My own sage in that […]’.21 body is seen as conditioned by time, In Art & Feminism (2001), Helena i.e. vivid and variable, but also vulner- Reckitt wrote: able and volatile.23 There was a de- Ono presented a situation in which gree of hostility aimed at the artist at the viewer was implicated in the the time it was broadcast by TV (Hes- potentially aggressive act of unveil- sischer Rundfunk) in February 1980: ing the female body, which served The viewers responded with letters historically as one such ‘neutral’ or phone calls, some reactions and anonymous subject for art. were approving, mostly, however, I Emphasising the reciprocal way in was blamed for the ‘negative’ pres- which viewers and subjects be- entation [...] The pregnant body in come objects of each other, Cut arts was considered too intimate Piece also demonstrates how view- and embarrassing, especially if it ing without responsibility has the was used by a woman artist as an potential to harm or even destroy embodiment of herself. Critics of the object of perception.22 well-known periodicals refused to Annegret Soltau’s work, write reviews or rather they wrote Schwanger-sein [Being Pregnant] scathing reports.24 EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 118

their bodies within their works, which was prevalent during the period. They both used extensions and bindings to their faces and bodies in mixed-media works that have striking similarities, although neither knew each other’s work at the time of making. Shemilt produced a series of works where her body was bound by various materials within a performance featuring mixed media installation and performance at the Acme Gallery, Covent Garden, PROOF London (Constraint, 1976). Soltau made a series of performative works which now exist only as photomon- tages entitled Selbst [Self] (1975–76, Fig. 5), in which she overstitched grey silk thread over an image of her face which had been previously bound by do the thread. Similarly, Rebecca Horn produced a whole series of body ex- tensions/modifications to her head, not fingers and arms in her series Exer- cises in Nine Parts (1974–75) which Fig. 5. Annegret A more general statement from were recorded on film, and her most Soltau, Selbst her underlines the mood of many beautiful work Einhorn [Unicorn] [Self], 1975–76. distribute26 Courtesy of the women at the time and points out the (1972, Fig. 6), which involved her artist. hostility towards this approach: walking through a wheat field wearing a body-suit with a very large horn pro- […] in 1975 I decided to work with performance (actions), photo and jecting vertically from the headpiece, video. Since then I worked by my- bound to her head and torso with self and with my changing body, so straps, reminiscent of Frida Kahlo’s I became more vulnerable; I ex- painting, The Broken Column (1944). posed myself, and this resulted in A leading European exponent of fierce criticism of my work and thus an uncompromising use of her own I became marginalised. That hap- body was Waltraud Lehner, who pened to women artists opposing changed her name to VALIE EXPORT the norm, women who no longer after a brand of well-known Austrian wanted to work traditionally and cigarettes. In a 1972 manifesto she looked for other forms of expres- wrote: sion and techniques. The slogan So far art has been largely pro- ‘The personal is political’ became duced by men, and it has usually an important concern of women in been men who dealt with the sub- 25 arts and literature. jects of life, the problems of emo- Shemilt and Soltau illustrate well tional life, and contributed only their the common motifs and ways of using statements, their answers, their so- 119 Chapter 8 / Without a trace … ? | EWVA

lutions. Now we must articulate our statements and create new con- cepts that correspond to our sensi- tivity and our wishes [...] The question of what women can give to art and what art can give to women can be answered like this: transferring the specific situation of woman into the artistic context es- tablishes signs and signals that are new artistic forms of expression that serve to change the historical understandingPROOF of women as well. 27 An early video work was Sehtext: Fingergedicht [Visual text: Fingered] (1968–71), which is described in the titles as Körperaktionen [Body Action], where she performs to the camera in a mid-shot of head and shoulders gesturing a series of finger actions.do Her most successful and provocative works were performance-based, in- cluding Action Pants: Genital Panic not (1969) where she walked through a cinema with the material cut out from ing in the expected reality of the situ- Fig. 6. Rebecca around her crotch and from this she Horn, Einhorn ation. Also in 1970, her work Touch- [Unicorn], produced a series of photographs ing, Body Poemdistributeinvolved four video 1970–72 and prints/posters featuring her monitors arranged two on top of two © Rebecca Horn / DACS. seated in the eponymous pants/ to create a 2 x 2 grid. Images of the Courtesy of the jeans. Touch Cinema (1968), is a bottoms of feet walking appear on the artist and Sean Kelly, New York. documentation of VALIE EXPORT’s screens, ‘touching’ the virtual surface famous street performance, in which of the glass. the public was invited to touch her Later in the 1980s, the Dutch art- breasts housed inside a curtained box ist Lydia Schouten also used herself attached to the artist’s upper torso.28 as the subject, actor and provocateur The work is a witty and confrontational in a series of video performance works comment on the objectification of where she playfully and visually com- women’s bodies. In 1970 she pro- mented on women’s expected roles duced a video-work Split Reality, and the portrayal of women as sex where her image appeared on a moni- objects. In Romeo is Bleeding (1982, tor on a stand above a gramophone Fig. 7), she combines short per- record player. The spectator is invited formed vignettes with highly colourful to play the record on the turntable, but graphic background sets, reminiscent the sound is disabled and instead the of comic books. Schouten takes on sound heard is that of EXPORT sing- the mantle of the man’s role, wrapped ing a cappella and therefore interven- in fur skin she has a spear fight with a EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 120

Fig. 7. Lydia Schouten, Romeo is Bleeding,1982, still from video. Courtesy of the artist.

PROOF

do not

similarly dressed man, and dressed tended to be performative and single- as a Hollywood gangster she pulls thedistributechannel works. An exception was trigger of her gun. In the unusual tour- Friederike Pezold’s four-monitor de-force video work, there is a repeat- video skulptur30 Die neue leibhaftige ing image of a map of the world Zeichensprache nach den Gesetzen appearing between scenes, setting von Anatomie, Geometrie und Kinetik, up the sequences, and indicating in- [The New Bodily Sign Language Fol- ternational travel. According to a text lowing the Laws of Anatomy, Geome- written at the time, the artist/performer try and Kinetics] (1973–1976). The [...] four monitors are arranged in a tower fulfills a variety of roles in a setting and from the top show successive reflecting both comic-strip decors images of eyes then mouth then and primitive surroundings. Links breasts, and at the bottom, the crotch are made with cultures of Africa, of a woman (the artist herself). Each South America and Australia and of the female zones are presented as the production makes clear, using dark graphic shapes against her both parody and seriousness that white-painted skin and creates what adventure and power are not male she termed as ‘[….] a kind of Japa- privileges.29 nese aesthetic. The female body lan- 31 The majority of early women’s guage becomes a sign language’. video works involving the body The images are not still, there is slow 121 Chapter 8 / Without a trace … ? | EWVA movement in each, and there is no cording and playing back, I could sound, encouraging the viewer to also be in the present, past, and concentrate on the slight changes of future at the same time. I gained a posture. ‘Even the tiniest movement of new sense of time. Instead of look- my navel is more exciting than any ing through the lens of a camera, crime story’.32 now I looked at the large surface of Pezold confirms her approach to the TV monitor’s screen. All at once, video – that was also voiced by many I saw everything as if through a others – was an attraction to the de- magnifying glass [...] That was how I rediscovered the body and all its gree of control she could exercise: regions – and invented a new body I was pleased to realise […] that I language.33 could standPROOF in front of AND behind the camera at the same time Researching the work of these (something I could never do with early pioneers has revealed a rich re- film). That freed me once and for all source of remarkable insights and ex- of the old dilemma: she = nude pression. This chapter has only model, and he = painter, or she as discussed a small sample. the merchandise of the production [...] Through the simultaneousdo re- Endnotes 1. Stephen Partridge, ‘Artists’ Television: Interruptions-Interventions’,not in Stephen Partridge and Sean Cubitt (eds.), REWIND | British Artists’ Video in the 1970s & 1980s (New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2012), p. 87. 2. A number of the artists interviewed for the REWIND and EWVA research projects confirmed that their early work was lost or not migrated to current formats: Anna Valeria Borsari, Marisa González, Antonie Frank Grahamsdaughter, Marikki Hakola, Madelon Hooykaas, Susandistribute Hiller, Lis Rhodes and Elaine Shemilt. 3. Eight Yugoslav Artists, Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh, 1973. 4. Marina Abramoviƒ, Kevin Henderson and Alan Woods, ‘Marina Abramoviƒ, Objects Performance Video Sound’, Transcript, v. 1, n. 3 (Dundee: DJCAD/University of Dundee, 1994). 5. Demarco Digital Archive – http://www.demarco-archive.ac.uk/collections/356-rhythm_10 (accessed 18 November 2017). 6. Aspects ’75, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 29 September – 25 October 1975. Organised by the Richard Demarco Gallery, in association with the City Art Galleries, Zagreb. See http://www.demarco- archive.ac.uk/collections/397-hotcold (accessed 18 November 2017). 7. Later acquired by the Scottish Museum of Modern Art, Edinburgh, as part of the Demarco Archive. 8. Relation in Time, video published 26 November 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sRSoGAc3H0 (accessed 18 November 2017); Marina Abramovicƒ & Ulay – The Other: Rest Energy, 11 January 2014, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcaaVZrUC44 (accessed 13 October 2017). 9. Catalogue for the Abramoviƒ Retrospective, Marina Abramoviƒc:: The Artist is Present, at Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, Moscow (Moscow: Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, 2011). 10. A notable exception being Marta Minujín, the Argentinian artist who created a number of Happenings throughout the 1960s, including a television event Cabalgata [Cavalcade] which was transmitted live from the television studios of Channel 7 in Buenos Aires: several horses ‘painted’ mattresses with buckets of paint tied to their tails, while a group of athletes popped balloons and two rock musicians were wrapped up in adhesive tape. 11. ‘Interview with Rose Garrard by Maggie Warwick, 29 April 2008’, Rewind | Artists’ Video in the 70s & 80s Archive. http://uodwebservices.co.uk/documents/Rose%20Garrard/RG510.pdf p.1. 12. Also exhibited as a videotape with a slightly different title Space Hearing and Space Seeing in The Video Show, Serpentine Gallery, London, 1975. 13. Re-enacted in the exhibition VALIE EXPORT: Time and Countertime (17 October 2010 – 30 January 2011), LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz, Austria. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 122

14. Re-installed in the exhibition The Time is Right for ..., Summerhall, Edinburgh, 3 August – 24 September 2017, curated by Laura Leuzzi and Adam Lockhart. 15. Presented at Audio Arts, Riverside Studios, London, 1979. 16. Guy Brett, Carnival of Perception: Selected Writings on Art (London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 2004), p. 221. 17. https://lux.org.uk/work/vanitas (accessed 1 August 2017). 18. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, 16:3, 1 October 1975, pp. 6–18, available online at https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6 (accessed 18 November 2017). 19. Chris Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art, The Development of Form and Function (Oxford/New York: Berg, 2006), pp. 85–86. 20. http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/einwicklung-mit-julia/ (accessed 13 October 2017). 21. BBC Media Show, 3 August 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-radio-and-tv-18959341 (accessed 22 April 2017). 22. Helena ReckittPROOF (ed.), Art and Feminism (London: Phaidon Press, 2001), p. 60. 23. The video is available at https://vimeo.com/44659203 (accessed 5 October 2017). 24. ‘Interview with Annegret Soltau by Laura Leuzzi’, available at http://www.ewva.ac.uk/assets/asoltau_interview_ eng.pdf (accessed 18 November 2017). 25. Ibidem. 26. First exhibited at documenta 5, Kassel, Germany, 1972. 27. VALIE EXPORT, ‘Women, Art: A Manifesto’,1972, reproduced in Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz (eds.), Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art (California: University of California Press, 1996), 2nd revised and expanded edition (7 September 2012). 28. Re-enacted (without acknowledgment) by Swiss performance artist Milo Moiré as Mirror Box – with performances in Dusseldorf, London, and Amsterdamdo – the London manifestation resulted in her arrest in 2016. 29. The video is available at http://www.lydiaschouten.com/txt/vi82_E_romeo_intro.html (accessed 5 October 2017). 30. A term coined by the German scholar and curator Wulf Herzogenrath, for his book, Video Skulptur in Deutschalnd Seit 1963 (Bonn: IFA, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen,not 1994), and employed for his major exhibition in Köln in 1989, Video – Skulptur retrospektiv und aktuell: 1963–1989. 31. Friederike Pezold, ‘Amokläufen mit dem wadelbeisser’, in Videokunst in Deutschland 1963–1982,inWulf Herzogenrath (ed.), Video Skulptur in Deutschalnd Seit 1963. 32. Ibidem. distribute 33. ‘Pezold, F., and Stoscheck, J. 1973–77 | Die Neu Leibhaftige Zeichensprache’, in Rudolph Freiling, Wulf Herzogenrath (eds.), 40YEARSOFVIDEOART.DE, Digital Heritage: Video Art in Germany from 1963 to the Present (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006), p. 138. Chapter 9

With Child: Motherhood and women’s video in the 1980s

Chapter 9 / With Child CatherinePROOF Elwes

The endless, unrecognised work of motherhood.1

n his book, Enemies of Promise In spite of the dire predictions of (1948), the literary critic Cyril Connolly and the more recent disaffir- Connolly enumerated all the im- mation of motherhood voiced by I pediments in life that threatendo to Abramovi ƒ and Carnevale, women prevent the aspiring writer from artists have always borne, and con- realising his full potential. While the tinue to bear children and, quite fre- lures of journalism, hedonism and quentlynot explore their relationships with politics were to be avoided all costs, their children in their work. This began no life choice was so destructive to a in the nineteenth and early twentieth man’s ambitions as parenthood. As centuries when artists such as Mary Connolly famously declared, ‘there is Cassatt, Henriettadistribute Ward and Berthe no more sombre enemy of good art Morisot, and the pioneering photogra- than the pram in the hall’.2 If becoming pher Julia Margaret Cameron, turned a father put the brakes on a man’s to their children as models and muses career, how much more devastating for creative inspiration. While these to a woman artist’s productivity was women were breaking into a predomi- motherhood given that she was likely nantly male world of art, they, none- to take on the lion’s share of the child- theless, conformed to what was care? Unsurprisingly, Connolly did not considered appropriate subject mat- address this issue, but today his sen- ter for ‘lady painters’ – domestic timents are echoed in the words of scenes populated by children, flow- Fulvia Carnevale of the artist collective ers, animals and servants, and as Claire Fontaine who denounces the Linda Nochlin pointed out, women sexual division of labour in parenting were frequently encouraged to dabble and describes the maternal woman as in ‘the “minor” and less highly re- ‘an enamoured slave’.3 Marina Abra- garded fields of portraiture, genre, moviƒ concurs, recently confiding to landscape, or still life’.5 Once the first the German newspaper Tagesspiegel manifestations of modern feminism that children would have been ‘a dis- had taken hold in the 1960s, the un- aster for my work’.4 discovered territory of female experi- EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 124

ence was liberated from its muted, generation addressed the profound marginal position and instated as a changes that were unleashed as they politically and aesthetically legitimate created new life and, in the context of theme of art. The film theorist and an emergent feminist art movement, filmmaker Laura Mulvey remembers how the work they produced funda- the early days of the women’s move- mentally challenged the category of ment when ‘there was an urgent need the maternal and the dominant modes to focus on the question of the mother of femininity it embodied. ‘Women’, because of the impossibility of extri- asserted the painter Jacqueline Mor- cating the social, economic and the reau, instigated a ‘revolutionary everyday from the mythic […] and change in thinking about who could representational conceptualisations speak and who could be heard’.8 PROOFof the maternal’. 6 A woman’s role in procreation, both the negative and the positive, came under scrutiny. The es- sentialist configuration of a woman’s Post-card (1986) by biological function that under Patriar- Catherine Elwes; the social chy destined mothers for segregation reality in the private sphere was systemati- I will begin by sketching in some bio- cally analysed anddo exposed. At the graphical details. By 1983, when I shot same time, the profound physical and the footage for what became Post- emotional experience of motherhood, card (Fig.1), I had retreated from Lon- its richness and complexitynot was ex- don where my life had been plored, celebrated and endowed with dominated by my involvement in the new cultural value. In the United King- women artists’ movement. In the capi- dom, the early work in film, perform- tal, I had belonged to two separate ance and photography of artists suchdistributeartists’ collectives and for about three as Susan Hiller, Shirley Cameron and years I was immersed in the develop- Mary Kelly made the first strides in this ment of Women’s Images of Men and radical redefinition of femininity, un- About Time, two shows of women’s art settling the mutually exclusive terms that I co-curated at the Institute of of ‘mother’ and ‘artist’. As Mulvey ob- Contemporary Art (ICA) in London.9 served, Kelly, famous for exhibiting Between 1978 and 1980, this involved her son’s soiled nappies, brought a campaign to flush out those women ‘motherhood, with all the deeply trau- whose work remained unseen and un- matic emotion and unrecognised dervalued, and to convince a major elements involved, into the kind of ex- gallery to stage the exhibitions that amination it desperately need[ed]’.17 would showcase the hidden talent we By the 1970s the (pro)creative proc- had discovered. The shows had enor- ess of bringing a child into the world mous impact with the public, had become enmeshed with the busi- Women’s Images of Men breaking all ness of making art. attendance records at ICA. I then rode In this short essay, I will discuss the waves of our success in London the impact of motherhood on my own taking a selection of the work from life and work in the early 1980s and both exhibitions on tour. When it came explore how other videomakers of my to the live work and the installations 125 Chapter 9 / With Child | EWVA that we presented in About Time,we realised that if we failed to write these events into history they would disap- pear from view. So, I launched a new career as an art writer and critic. Into the 1980s I relocated to Oxford and continued to write, but when my son, Bruno was born, my world was turned upside down. Instead of compiling funding applications, calling meetings and making art, I found my energies and emotions were almost entirely fo- cused onPROOF a small human creature whose continued survival was entirely my responsibility (or so I believed). While I was swept away in a wave of unrestrained, irrational love for a needs of my son, writing, and my own Fig. 1. Catherine Elwes, Post-card, squalling infant who seemed to have practice, which continued to evolve 1986, still from been conjured out of the air, my hus- thanks in part to the support of video. band went out to work and supported Bruno’s father, John and a grant from Courtesy of the do artist. us financially, for a while at least. I the Arts Council that enabled me to know that not all women collapse un- purchase the Holy Grail: a series 5 der the weight of motherhood, and U-maticnot edit suite and camera. I also indeed I was lucky to have childcare secured a substantial (that is, sub- in place in the first three years and that stantial in those days) Channel 4 com- allowed me to continue with my work mission that kept my work afloat for – up to a point. However, for me, the about four years.distribute Paradoxically, this sleeplessness, the incessant de- period of domestic constraint proved mands on my attention and the physi- surprisingly productive in terms of my cal work that was involved in looking video output and it was during this after a small baby meant that I found time that I developed a working it increasingly difficult to maintain method that cohered the many formal, many of the commitments that political and conceptual problems marked out my previous life in Lon- with which I had been battling during don. I resigned from a seven-year my years in London. membership of the steering group at All this biographical detail is de- London Video Arts, an artist-run or- signed to sketch in the background to ganisation that distributed my work Post-card, which was commissioned and I also relinquished my position on by London Video Arts and exhibited at the film and video panel at the Arts the AIR gallery as part of a show on Council, after a four-year term. In- the theme of video post-cards. My stead, I began to teach, no more than own video rehearsed an aspect of one or two days a week, teaching motherhood around which I experi- posts being hard to find then, as now. enced feelings of failure and shame. The rest of the time, I attempted Rosemary Betterton has confided the to trace a viable path between the embarrassment that overcame her EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 126

when admitting to a colleague that his head and his flailing limbs. This she was writing a book about mater- was not to spare the audience, but to nity and the maternal body. Her dis- counter an accusation that was once comfiture, she said, related to ‘the levelled at me at a screening of my un-representable in our attachments work at the Royal College of Art, to the maternal body’.10 In my case, namely that I had shifted from exploit- shame arose from my inability to cope ing my own body to exploiting that of with the part of me that had split off my son. I wanted to emphasise that post-partum into the pre-lingual in- the tape was about me, not about the fant, screaming its nameless distress. boy, who clearly could not speak for The image of the crying child in Post- himself. By means of this anonymised card represented an impassioned framing, and a concentration on my PROOFplea to my mother, who lived too far hands and arms engaged in the activ- away to help, and who would not have ity of trying to dress the baby, I hoped helped in any case, her own interest to create not only a self-portrait of the in her grandchildren beginning only artist as a new mother, but also a when they reached the age of civilised generic image of motherhood at a conversation. Having little hope of a particular moment of crisis when the response, my post-card was a con- reality, as opposed to the fantasy of fession of my ineptnessdo as a mother; motherhood strikes home. This was it was a gesture of despair. I isolated the moment of realisation expressed one particularly baffling phenomenon by the character Clare Wald in Patrick to illustrate the whole cataloguenot of Flanery’s novel Absolution when she mysteries that bewilder the novice comes to the conclusion that ‘invest- carer of a newborn. I could not under- ing oneself in the institution of family stand what drove an apparently loved is always about the partial annihilation and well-nurtured infant to cry inces-distributeof the self …’.11 It is the moment when santly. There is a myth that says, by the scales fall from a new mother’s some natural wisdom ingested with eyes and ‘maternal ambiguity’ sets in. their own mother’s milk, new mothers This tangled emotion is characterised can distinguish between an infant’s by Rozsika Parker as ‘a dynamic ex- cries for food, for comfort and for the perience of conflict between love and relief of pain. To me, all Bruno’s crying hate’.12 sounded the same and my failure to Intimations of that ambivalence decipher the code of his anguished were threaded through With Child vocalisations left me utterly dis- (1983, Figs. 2a-b-c), an earlier video traught. It happened every day when based on the anxieties that I had I changed his clothes, and so could about impending motherhood during be predicted to occur with bleak regu- my pregnancy. Andy Lipman wrote larity. I decided to make his piteous that the work explored ‘the boredom weeping the focus of the work. I posi- and murderousness, which occupy tioned the camera at infant level, fore- [the expectant mother’s] mind […] shortened his body in sharp framed by the rhythm and longueur of perspective like Mantegna’s Dead anticipation’.13 Once all the waiting Christ (c. 1490) so that Bruno’s face was over and my romanticised pre- would not be in shot, only the top of conceptions of what it might be like to 127 Chapter 9 / With Child | EWVA have a child were drowned in sore be almost inevitable given the tradi- nipples, butchered genitals and the tional divisions of parental labour and mental collapse that comes from the low (unpaid) status of motherhood sleep deprivation, my measured post- in western society. Anxiety and diffi- card to my mother was something of culties with concentration and making an understatement. Looking back on decisions should alert the young it now, I might be tempted to explain mother to her PND, the NHS website my distress with a retrospective diag- helpfully continues, but how can you nosis of post-natal depression (PND) concentrate when exhausted from – I certainly experienced many of its lack of sleep and your thoughts symptoms. However, I would argue scrambled by constant interruptions, that those symptoms, as they are cur- and how can you confidently make rently enumeratedPROOF on the NHS decisions when you have no previous website, constitute entirely rational re- experience of caring for an infant – sponses to the birth of a child and and when the child manuals (in my should not be attributed to individual day) tell you that a mother will always pathology.14 For example, the NHS know when her baby is hungry or in lists tiredness and the inability to sleep pain or in need of comfort? The final as sure signs of PND, but in my view, symptom that is flagged up on the being kept awake all night for monthsdoNHS website is what they call ‘obses- on end is more or less guaranteed to sional ruminations’, that is, the result in what they euphemistically de- thoughts women might harbour of scribe as ‘fatigue’. harmingnot their baby. In his article, Guilt is another symptom, they ‘Moms Who Kill’, Mark Levy points to say, which is hardly surprising given the lack of social support for a new the way the media in general and ad- mother and the impact of her loss of vertising in particular portray mother- independencedistribute ‘along with her role as hood. Young mothers are painted as an attention-drawing pregnant miraculous beings who effortlessly woman or as a career woman’.16 The raise perfect children while still man- Royal College of Psychiatrists esti- aging to be goddesses in the bed- mates that between fifteen and thirty room and Mary Berry in the kitchen. per cent of new mothers suffer from Not surprisingly, most ordinary mor- PND, which is generally treated with tals aspiring to these idealised images anti-depressants or where a post-par- of motherhood are condemned to ab- tum drop in hormones is diagnosed, ject failure and guilt. As Annabel with hormone replacement. Four per Crabb wrote in The Wife Drought cent of women who experience severe (2014), ‘the obligation that evolves for post-partum psychosis go on to kill working mothers, in particular, is a their children. I am surprised that the very precise one; the feeling that one figures are not higher. ought to work as if one did not have These were the material and so- children, while raising one’s children cial conditions that any woman con- as if one did not have a job. To do any templating motherhood had to less feels like failing at both’.15 Low contend with in the 1980s. There were self esteem is another sure sign of also cultural and psychological fac- PND, we are told, but surely this would tors that meant a descent into the EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 128

morass of parental servitude also in- Schwanger sein II [Being volved what Mary Kelly called ‘the Pregnant II] (1979–80) by Figs. 2a-b-c. Catherine Elwes, complex psychology of the mother- Annegret Soltau; the With Child, 1983, child relationship’, some of which I will ‘monstrous feminine’ stills from video. Courtesy of the now explore through the work of four 17 artist. women video-makers. In Post-Partum Document, her 1976 magnum opus referenced above, Mary Kelly rejected the saccharine im- age of the Madonna and child dyad symbiotically entwined in a celestial harmony. She was determined to ‘avoid the literal figuration of mother PROOF and child’, that is, ‘any means of rep- resentation which risked recuperation as “a slice of life”’.18 Instead, she ex- hibited a series of crypto-visual dis- plays that included soiled nappies, a child’s vests, infant hand imprints and early drawings. Kelly anchored these do images and artefacts in textual analy- ses of motherhood informed by psy- choanalytic theory.19 However, in an not earlier work, the black-and-white film (transferred to video) Antepartum (1973), the problematic body of the expectant mother was admitted to distributeview. Kelly turned the camera on to her own belly, swollen to full term, offering ‘the body as a site’ in extreme close-up.20 There, the movements of the child confined in the smooth mound of her abdomen (itself con- tained in the ‘box’ of the monitor) cre- ated fluttering undulations as the artist attempted to make ‘pre-linguistic’ contact with her baby through gentle stroking motions. The pregnant body-as-land- scape analogy was also present in Susan Hiller’s photographic series 10 Months (1980) in which her belly was distilled to an arc of flesh progres- sively rising through a grid of frames, presenting a kind of story-boarded pregnancy, both a miracle of parturi- tion and a topographical study of a 129 Chapter 9 / With Child | EWVA primordial moon rising over the hori- zon.21 These works evoke Kristeva’s notion of the abject maternal body, interpreted by Joanna Frueh as the spectacle of the expectant mother who ‘enlarges, looks swollen, pro- duces afterbirth, lactates and shrinks’. She embodies, says Frueh, ‘break- down, dissolution and magnificent grossness’.22 While these images might mobilise the transgressive power of aPROOF female grotesque, artists have to navigate the danger identified Katharine Meynell calls the ‘mon- Fig. 3. by Imogen Tyler of such works ‘repro- Annegret Soltau, strous feminine’ in relation to her own Schwanger sein ducing histories of violent disgust to- work.26 However, the scythe, an ar- II [Being wards maternal bodies’.23 In order to Pregnant II] chetypal symbol of death remains an (1979–80), still avoid reiterating the ‘cultural produc- ambiguous image in Schwanger sein. from video. 24 tion of women as abject’, both Hiller Perhaps it implies that the threat to the Courtesy of the artist. and Kelly used tactics of abstraction child comes from the mother herself and distanciation – the reductiondo of as a Freudian agent of castration or it flesh tones to a muted grey, the avoid- may evoke mythological figures such ance of visceral images of blood and as Medea who is portrayed as having afterbirth and the imposition of a geo- thenot power both to give and to take life. metric framing: the tight embrasure of It may also represent more tangible the monitor in Kelly’s case and the external threats, beginning with the formal restraint of a grid in Hiller’s. In obstetric interferences of modern her video Schwanger sein II [Being medicine intodistribute the natural processes of Pregnant II] (Fig. 3), Annegret Soltau childbirth. Beyond that, Soltau may be also displays what Betterton de- expressing fears that, in future, her scribes as the ‘classifying tenden- child might be swept up in the horrors 25 cies’ of feminist art, abstracting the of war, and the artist might find her- ripening body of the mother into a self, like Käthe Kollwitz in 1916, railing monochrome body-scape. In the third against ‘this frightful insanity – the phase of the video, she adopts a fore- youth of Europe hurling themselves at shortened view comparable to the one another’.27 Whatever source of one I used for the crying baby in Post- danger we apply as the explanation card, although, of course, the child in for the presence of the malignantly Soltau’s case is in utero. The artist glinting scythe, Schwanger sein creates an atmosphere of menace as evokes the physical vulnerability of the a large scythe approaches the pregnant woman and the helpless- mother’s body from the left and hangs ness of the child she carries. Further, ominously over her bump while a it hints at the raft of difficulties that rapid heartbeat testifies to the precari- await the new mother as she is en- ous life gestating within. As in With trusted with the life of a newborn who Child, we are confronted with an im- will remain utterly dependent on her age of murderousness, what for several years to come. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 130

Escena doméstica con women artists make art in and around gusano verde [Domestic the demands of their domestic envi- Scene With Green Worm] ronment with whatever materials (1983) by Marisa González; come to hand. González trains her rebellion, an ‘act of hatred’ video camera on a small green cater- pillar, recently plucked from one of her The level of personal sacrifice de- potted plants. The tiny creature makes manded for the proper care of one let its way across a table in dogged loop- alone several children is well nigh im- ing steps, while a child’s voice-over possible for an average individual to speculates as to the nature of the make. Within women’s repre- beast, ‘it is a worm not a thing’, he sentations of motherhood in early chirps and then wonders aloud where video, there are often instances in PROOF it might be heading. The ‘Third Term’ which mothers withdraw their ‘endless in the form of ‘Papa’ arrives home and and unrecognised’ labour and enact the mother responds absently to his what Fulvia Carnevale refers to as ‘hu- greetings. She is busy recording the man strike’. Carnevale (and her art caterpillar. The ‘worm’ meanwhile is collective, Claire Fontaine) draw on negotiating a dried leaf, looking for the writings of the feminist Carla Lonzi some means of quitting the barren who, in the 1960s, advocated the ab- tabletop, trying perhaps to find its way dication of any designateddo social role back to the plant from which it was so that circumscribes and hierarchises rudely torn. The child draws his father human activity. This moment of rebel- in to admire the worm. The father asks lion from societal expectationsnot sur- where the other two children are and rounding the maternal role, says the artist-mother, preoccupied with Carnevale, will always be interpreted her recording, replies, ‘no idea’. The as ‘an act of hatred’, a betrayal of the distributeoff-screen domestic space, beyond Fig. 4. Marisa maternal instinct.28 Gonzalez, Escena the close-up of the table, is created One such withdrawal of maternal doméstica con entirely in the mind’s eye by sound as gusano verde labour was recorded in Marisa Gon- the audio track fills in the details of [Domestic Scene zález’s Escena doméstica con with Green kitchen and hallway with the percus- Worm], 1983, gusano verde [Domestic Scene with sion of childish footsteps and voices still from video. Green Worm] (Fig. 4), a video that Courtesy of the ricocheting from wall to wall. The dis- artist. also provides an example of how cussions and clatter of a meal being prepared firmly excludes the mother, who occasionally grunts from behind her camera while she focuses on the worm, now clinging precariously to the edge of a man’s shoe. An explo- sion of excited voices heralds the ar- rival of more children on the scene and the artist brings the tape to a close with a relieved ‘bueno!’ She has got the shots she wanted and family life survived without her for a couple of hours.29 131 Chapter 9 / With Child | EWVA

González has offered an image of ways to productively combine their Carnevale’s ‘act of hatred’ in her tem- work and their mothering and resist porary withdrawal of maternal labour. the societal dictate that a woman must The artist, firmly embedded behind choose between art and children – the camera, denies the authority of the between the masculine (enterprising, father by ignoring his return to hearth uncompromising) and feminine (reli- and home. However, there is gentle able, nurturing) positions. There are humour in the work that helps it es- also artists who consider the privi- cape any simple rehearsal of the mon- leged access to young minds a great strous feminine. González shifts the source of both emotional and creative emphasis from the recalcitrant mother enrichment. According to the film- to the image of the diminutive caterpil- maker Biban Kidron,‘perspective, lit- lar, lost inPROOF the desert of the tabletop. eralism, surrealism, unfettered We may read the creature’s plight as imagination [and] the incredible crea- analogous to the feelings of betrayal tive abandon of a child’s mind are all and abandonment that the infant feels there to borrow and steal from’.31 The when its mother is temporarily out of artist Tina Keane was quick to recog- sight or its needs are not immediately nise the value of her own child’s crea- met. For me, the work evokes the loss tive play. In Clapping Songs (Fig. 5), of the mother herself, not in thedothe artist recorded her daughter, Emily Kristevian sense of a violent psychic as she and her best friend ran through rejection of the maternal in the proc- their repertoire of playground songs, ess of individuation, but in the passing performednot face-to-face while clap- of a mother in death when the one ping each other’s hands to provide person in the world for whom our own the rhythm. One such clapping song daily survival was of paramount im- featured the memorabledistribute ditty: portance is no longer there to witness When Suzie was a teenager, the unfolding narratives of our lives. A teenager, Suzie was; she went Ooh, Aah, I lost my bra In my boyfriend’s car Clapping Songs (1981), And I don’t know where my knickers Tina Keane; creative are. (Anon) enrichment The licentiousness of the lyrics There are artist-mothers who deliber- might not have been fully apparent to ately preserve a separate time and the girls, but Laura Leuzzi has argued space in which to create their work, that the rhymes and songs of child- and like Kollwitz and González, tem- hood help to induct children into the porarily ‘slacken’ their family ties in ways of the world marking out their order to do so. There are those designated places in society organ- women who choose not to have any ised along the lines of race, class and children, and they may well agree with gender. However, Leuzzi also sug- Kollwitz that only work is ‘always gests that songs such as those per- stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and formed by Emily, nevertheless contain satisfying’.30 However, in the case of within them a subtle critique of female González, Kelly, Soltau and indeed socialisation. In the example above, Kollwitz herself, many others find the song rebels against the Puritanism EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 132

of western society that condemns her’.33 We witness the artist’s pro- ‘Suzie’ for her unfettered sexuality.32 longed watching of her daughter, en- This combustible thread of rebellion is capsulating the extended temporality embodied in the social fabric of the of motherhood, a time that never ends voice, and was passed down through but only shifts its focus as the child the generations, linking mothers and grows to maturity. Julia Kristeva has daughters in a chain of subversion identified ‘women’s time’ as synony- that would lead to suffragism in the mous with ‘repetition and eternity’, nineteenth century and the women’s with ‘cycles, gestation, [and] the eter- movement in the twentieth. nal recurrence of a biological rhythm’.34 In this respect, the longue durée of motherhood, found in video PROOFHannah’s Song (1987), technology an appropriate travelling Katharine Meynell; the companion. Where Super 8 film only divided self allowed three minutes of recording Where Keane tuned into the trans- time, analogue U-matic videotapes gressive undertones of matrilinear came in durations of twenty, thirty and oral traditions embedded in her sixty minutes. The hours of a mother’s daughter’s games, Katharine Meynell watchfulness thus could be rendered found equivalentdo riches in watching virtually in real time. her own daughter progress through In the course of one recording the developmental stages of her so- session, Meynell captures a critical cial and psychic formation.notHannah’s developmental event when the infant Song (Fig. 6) was made when Hannah first discovers her image in a Meynell’s daughter Hannah was still mirror. It is not clear whether she rec- pre-lingual, but beginning to find her ognises herself in her reflection, but voice in song. The artist asked thedistributethe sequence gestures towards a musician Jocelyn Pook to transcribe milestone that would mark her transi- Fig. 5. Tina Keane, Clapping Hannah’s vocalisations and used the tion into what the psychoanalyst Jac- Songs, 1981, still musical notation to frame informal ques Lacan designated the ‘mirror from video. 35 Courtesy of the footage of the child singing and ‘the phase’. Here the child conceives a artist. objects and colours that fascinated self that is image, she becomes a performer of femininity who must as- pire to fulfil the expectations of the society into which she is born, and, according to Lacan, she undergoes a splitting off of her internal, subjective experiences and desires from the so- cial entity that is rendered in-repre- sentation. According to Peggy Phelan, as a girl undergoes the proc- esses of gendered individuation, her identity is performed through her be- haviours, her styled appearance and her rehearsed utterances.36 The rele- vance of Lacan’s theory to what is 133 Chapter 9 / With Child | EWVA implied in Hannah’s Song lies in the theorists have challenged the identity feminist mother’s ambivalence to- politics of the 1980s that were wards her child’s first steps to inde- founded on the objective of securing pendence. She wants the child to cultural visibility for ‘minority’ groups. succeed in her social integration, but Laura Guy has argued for the sub- is afraid of passing on, along with her ject’s ‘right to opacity’ and she advo- love, the repressive formations that a cates the promotion of a ‘fugitive patriarchal society bequeathed to her identity’, one that can be found in art through her own mother’s tutelage. through images that represent ‘the There is, within these chains of moth- point at which identity collapses’.39 ering, these entangled attachments, Guy cites the work of Boudry and Lo- what Meynell calls ‘a slippage of renz who layer and fracture the identi- roles’,37 aPROOF fusing of identities, and a ties of those whom they portray in their concatenation of past, present and work. However, I would suggest that future femininities. If the mirror phase while society decrees that a woman produces a psychic split, then moth- has fulfilled her destiny when her body erhood leads to further dispersal of is replete with meaning in pregnancy the self, projecting forwards in time as and parturition, these are also the life the fruit of the mother’s womb is split events that will render her identity off from her and moves away, at firstdofluid, that will most profoundly disrupt from the breast in weaning and then her sense of self. As a strategy for from her whole body as the child takes challenging proscribed roles for its first faltering steps towards auton- womennot in society, dispersal of the omy. The new mother may also find subject in-representation may simply her sense of self dissolving into the replicate and intensify the lived condi- past as a remembered symbiosis with tion of motherhood, which brings with her own mother returns to haunt her. it extreme physicaldistribute changes and a (There is nothing more disconcerting blurring of boundaries between self Fig. 6. Katharine Meynell, than opening one’s mouth to call a and other, between past and present. Hannah’s Song, child and hearing one’s mother’s This violation of the integrity of the 1987, still from video. voice rise up from the dead.) These post-partum subject is compounded Courtesy of the memories may stir up the introjected by the frequent disapprobation of artist. aspirations and desires that an inse- cure parent may have harboured for the child who is now herself a mother. The new mother may once again be- come aware of what the paediatrician Donald Winnicott described as the ‘false self’, the persona she adopted in childhood in order to fulfil the expec- tations of her parents and thus guar- antee their love and protection.38 In recent years, the dispersal of self, or the decentralisation of the uni- fied subject has become a fashion- able concept in art and queer EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 134

society that, asserts Tyler, means ‘liv- whether society and the institutions of ing as a body that is identified as art have changed substantially since maternal and abject’.40 The objective the 1980s and whether women are still now should be to develop creative struggling to reconcile the costs and strategies that help to reunite the di- benefits of motherhood, weighing vided selves of the maternal subject, their desire for a child against their rethread and strengthen the intergen- ambitions as artists. erational connections that bind us to Taking a sounding from a recent our mothers and daughters and online article by Marina Cashdan, we counter the negative impact of a psy- can listen in to the conversations of a chic Othering of mothering at a per- number of successful contemporary sonal familial level, as well as at a artists including Tara Donovan and PROOFcultural, legislative and social level. Kara Walker, women who see no rea- The feminist aim, then, is to improve son to sacrifice their hopes for moth- the status and living conditions of erhood to the demands of their mothers and children across the careers.41 Walker denies that ‘one whole of society. takes energy from the other’ and many of the artists point to women from earlier generations who act as By way of a conclusion; do positive role models. Women such as the social conditions, Susan Hiller, Mary Kelly and Tina updated Keane all had a child and continued Motherhood can be experiencednot as a to thrive as artists. They have given catastrophic infringement of hard- younger women the confidence to won personal liberty and autonomy or embrace motherhood themselves it can be revealed as a wondrous mo- without any sense that, in conse- ment of creative efflorescence. Mostdistributequence, they would be diminished as women find it is a little of both; how- practitioners. There are those, like the ever, a positive experience of mother- earlier feminists I have cited here, who hood is substantially contingent on find ingenious ways to combine moth- the financial circumstances of an indi- erhood and art: Laura Godfrey-Isaacs vidual and whether or not the support knitted her art when her children were of family and friends is in place during small and later opened her home as a and after pregnancy. It also depends gallery, a strategy also adopted by on the expectations a woman enter- Fran Cottell whose House Projects tained before the birth, her physical (since 2001) involve installing raised and mental strength, her previous ex- walkways that run through her house perience and natural abilities. Mother- along which visitors can progress hood – the trials and the joys – is while her family members continue to further modified by the prevailing so- pursue their everyday activities on cial conditions into which a woman either side of the ramp.42 gives birth. The majority of the practi- Not all artists appear to cope so tioners I have discussed in this article well with the conflicting demands of had their children in the 1980s when children’s needs and their own prac- they were still fighting discrimination tice. In the same article, Cashdan in the art world. One might wonder quotes the artist Lenka Clayton who, 135 Chapter 9 / With Child | EWVA like many mothers, is confronted with between. Meanwhile in austerity Brit- the problems of isolation and ‘being ain, family services have been cut, exhausted, having no time, no space children’s centres have closed, bene- …’, and many point to the discrimina- fits are now capped and the costs of tion women with children still experi- childcare have risen exponentially, ence among art dealers and year on year. museums. Diana Al-Hadid registers There is another, cultural differ- the patriarchal imbalance whereby, ence that I believe negatively impacts unlike women, few male artists con- the young mothers of today. In spite sider foregoing parenthood for the of having lived through the social sake of their art, and they are unlikely revolution of 1960s, and experienced to be asked by interviewers whether the radical break from the values of my fathering aPROOF child has changed their Edwardian-raised parents, I was suc- practice. cessfully conditioned to accept that From reading between the lines my role as a woman would involve of the Cashdan interviews and bear- self-sacrifice and include a substan- ing in mind what I know of how certain tial element of nurturing. I could ex- women have dealt with motherhood, pect to care for siblings, students and it is clear that having one child is less colleagues (should I secure a job) and disruptive than begetting two or moredofinally fulfil my destiny as a woman by – as Alice Walker wrote ‘with one you attending to the needs of a husband can move […], with more than one and a child. That was the message of you are a sitting duck’.43 Clearly, fi- mynot middle-class, Catholic upbringing, nancial stability and the support of a one that no amount of feminist re-edu- partner and extended family make all cation could dislodge from my well- the difference. However, I would like schooled ‘feminine’ soul. It is possible to end by suggesting that, in general, that today, withdistribute a looser sense of so- circumstances are more critical for cial responsibility, and in a culture of young mothers today than they were consumption and unfettered individu- for me and my colleagues in the alism, young people are led to believe 1980s. Property prices are now astro- that they have a divine right to pursue nomical, out of reach of most first time exclusively the satisfaction of their buyers on average wages; social every desire. Motherhood deprives housing has been decimated and young women of this right, at a stroke, since 2012 the laws on squatting have when their bodies are taken over by a been considerably tightened in the rapacious alien being, when, post- UK. Putting a roof over the heads of partum, their personal space is in- inner-city children is a major problem vaded, their freedom of movement for anyone who does not expect to curtailed, when their right to sleep and inherit the property or savings of their shit and make love in peace is with- own parents, that is, those properties held. First-time mothers may lose and savings that are not eaten up by contact with their peers and they may parental care in old age. Making a find themselves cut off from their ex- living out of art is still a pipedream for tended families, facing partner vio- most graduates and employment op- lence alone. The cost of providing for portunities in teaching are few and far a child means that their buying power EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 136

may be reduced to the basics and a hand out instead of the practical help deep disillusionment can quickly set they really need. Until the functional in. Post-natal depression is a sign that problems of childcare, housing, em- the besieged organism is in distress. ployment and status are resolved, It is a form of protest, but then as now, motherhood will continue to be the there is no socially sanctioned outlet fifty per cent bliss and fifty per cent for its expression, and, as so often purgatory that I struggled to project in happens, women turn their pain in on the videos I made with just one child themselves. Hiding their shame, they in the early 1980s. take the drugs their overworked GPs

EndnotesPROOF

1. Fulvia Carnevale speaking at the seminar ‘Feminist Duration in Art and Curation’, Goldsmiths College London, 16 March 2015. 2. Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1938] 2008), p. 116. 3. Fulvia Carnevale speaking at the seminar ‘Feminist Duration in Art and Curation’, Goldsmiths College London, 16 March 2015. 4. Quoted in Nicole Puglise, ‘Marina Abramoviƒ says having children would have been “a disaster for my work”’, The Guardian online, 26 July 2016, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/26/ marina-abramovic-abortions-children-disaster-workdo (accessed 13 October 2016). 5. Linda Nochlin, ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ in Thomas B. Hess and Elizabeth C. Baker (eds.), Art and Sexual Politics, ([1973] 1975), pp. 1–44; p. 25. 6. Laura Mulvey, a comment made in an early draft of ‘Afterword: some reflections on the engagement of feminism with film from the 1970s to the present day’, MIRAJnot, v. 7, n. 1, 2018, pp. 82–90. 7. Laura Mulvey,‘ “Post Partum Document” by Mary Kelly’, Spare Rib, n. 53, 1976, p. 40. 8. Jacqueline Morreau, ‘The Divided Self’ in Penny Sumner (ed.), The Fruits of Labour; Creativity, Self-Expression and Motherhood (London: The Women’s Press, 2001), p. 157.distribute 9. For a discussion of the ICA women’s shows, see Amy Tobin,‘Moving Pictures: Intersections between art, film and feminism in the 1970s’, MIRAJ, v.4, n. 1/2, 2016, pp. 118–134; and in the same issue, Amy Tobin and Catherine Elwes ‘“Women’s Images of Men” Seminar ICA: 14 October 1980’, pp. 294–311. See also Catherine Elwes,‘A Parallel Universe: The UK/Canadian Film & Video Exchange 1998–2004 and the ICA shows of Women’s Art in 1980’, in Judith Rugg (ed.), Issues in Curating, Contemporary Art and Performance (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2007), pp. 101–111. 10. Rosemary Betterton,‘Maternal Embarrassment: Feminist Art and Maternal Affects’, Studies in the Maternal,v.2, n.1, 2010, p. 1. 11. Patrick Flanery, Absolution (London: Atlantic Books, 2013), p. 281. 12. Rozsika Parker, Torn in Two: The Experience of Maternal Ambivalence (London: Virago Press, 2005), p. 7. 13. Andy Lipman, ‘Video – State of the Art’ (Channel 4 publication, 1985), n.p. 14. See the NHS post on Postnatal Depression – Symptoms: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Postnataldepression/ Pages/Symptoms.aspx. (accessed 13 December 2015). 15. Annabel Crabb, The Wife Drought (Sydney: Ebury Press, 2014). Kindle Edition. 16. Mark Levy, ‘Moms Who Kill’, Psychology Today, 1 November 2002. Available online: https://www. psychologytoday.com/articles/200212/moms-who-kill (accessed 13 November 2015). The ambivalence that a mother feels towards her unborn child or infant was encapsulated in the image of a woman simultaneously stabbing at and rescuing a doll in my video With Child (1983). 17. Mary Kelly speaking to Lilian Simonsson on TateShots, 2015. Online: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=OaKXUVDSZdQ (accessed 28 August 2016). 18. Mary Kelly quoted in Rosemary Betterton, ‘Maternal Embarrassment: Feminist Art and Maternal Affects’, Studies in the Maternal, v. 2, n. 1, 2010, p. 11. 19. Kelly’s use of dense Lacanian theory drew criticism from some feminists who found it obscure and elitist. See Margot Waddell and Michelene Wandor, ‘Mystifying Theory’, Spare Rib, no. 55, 1977, p. 4. 137 Chapter 9 / With Child | EWVA

20. Mary Kelly speaking about Antepartum to the Whitney Museum, undated. Online: http://whitney.org/WatchAndListen/AudioGuides?play_id=1471 (accessed 13 October 2016). 21. In her display of these photographs, Hiller included extracts from her diaries kept during her pregnancy, many of which referenced the bifurcation of her role into a ‘neutral (neuter) observer’, that is, an artist, and mother who is licensed to speak ‘only about women’s things’. Quoted in the catalogue About Time (London: ICA, 1980), n.p. 22. Joanna Frueh, Monster/Beauty: Building the Body of Love (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), p. 133. 23, Imogen Tyler, ‘Against Abjection’, Feminist Theory, v. 10, n. 1, 2009, pp. 77–98; p. 77. 24. Ibidem, p. 84. 25. Rosemary Betterton, ‘Maternal Embarrassment: Feminist Art and Maternal Affects’, Studies in the Maternal,v. 2, n. 1, 2010, p. 10. 26. Katharine Meynell quoted by Chris Darke, ‘Katharine Meynell’ in David Curtis (ed.), A Directory of British Film and Video Artists (Luton: Arts Council/Luton Press, 1996), p. 126. 27. Käthe Kollwitz,‘FromPROOF The Dairy and Letters of Käthe Kollwitz’ in Penny Sumner (ed.), The Fruits of Labour; Creativity, Self-Expression and Motherhood (London: The Women’s Press, 1916 [2001]), p. 111. 28. Fulvia Carnevale speaking at ‘Now You Can Go: On Feminist Generations, Affective Withdrawal, and Social Reproduction’, Showroom Gallery, 11 December 2015. For an account of the life and work of Carla Lonzi, see Lea Melandri ‘Autonomy and the Need for Love: Carla Lonzi, Vai pure’ in Lea Melandri (ed.), Una visceralità indicibile (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000), pp. 43–50. 29. González was using one of the first Sony portable video recorders to become available to artists in Spain in 1983. 30. Kollwitz, ‘From The Diary and Letters of Käthe Kollwitz’, p. 105. 31. Beeban Kidron, ‘What About Me?’ in Penny Sumner (ed.), The Fruits of Labour; Creativity, Self-Expression and Motherhood (London: The Women’s Press,do 2001), p. 103. 32. Laura Leuzzi in conversation at Autoritratti, part of the ‘Now You Can Go’ programme, Showroom Gallery, London, 11 December 2015. Accurate to my notes. 33. See Katharine Meynell’s website: http://www.katharinemeynell.co.uk/videography/index.htmlnot (accessed 13 October 2016). 34. Julia Kristeva, ‘Women’s Time’, Alice Jardine and Harry Blake (trans.), Signs, v.7, n.1, Autumn 1981, pp. 13–35; p. 16. 35. See Jacques Lacan, ‘The Mirror Stage as formative of the functiondistribute of the I’ in Ecrits: A Selection, Alan Sheridan (trans.), (London: Tavistock, [1936] 1977), pp. 1–7. 36. This notion was developed by Peggy Phelan in her theories of performativity. See Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993). 37. Katherine Meynell quoted in Catherine Elwes, Video Art, a guided tour (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), p. 45. 38. The ‘false self’ is discussed by Alice Miller in The Drama of Being a Child (London: Virago, [1979] 1987). See pp. 27–29. 39. See Laura Guy, ‘Hiding in plain sight: Recognition and resistance in recent queer artists’ moving image’, MIRAJ, v. 5, n. 1/2, 2016, pp. 158–169. 40. Imogen Tyler, ‘Against Abjection’, Feminist Theory, v.10, n.1, 2009, pp. 77–98; p. 77. 41. Marina Cashdan, ‘You Can Be a Mother and Still Be a Successful Artist’, 24 August 2016, Artsy, online: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-why-motherhood-won-t-hinder-your-career-as-an-artist (accessed 20 July 2018). 42. See Fran Cottell’s website: http://www.francottell.com/ (accessed 13 October 2016). 43. Alice Walker, ‘One Child of One’s Own; A Meaningful Digression with the Work(s)’ in Penny Sumner (ed.), The Fruits of Labour; Creativity, Self-Expression and Motherhood (London: The Women’s Press, 2001), p. 165. PROOF

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Feminism, Ireland and Women’sVideoArtinthe 1980sPROOF

Chapter 10 / Feminism, Ireland and Women ’s Art Maeve Connolly

Introduction In a catalogue essay accompany- ing the 1990 exhibition A New Tradi- he history of Irish women’s tion: Irish Art of the Eighties,an video art is both complicated exhibition curated by Medb Ruane at and enriched by the fact that,do the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, during the 1970s and 1980s, T Joan Fowler highlights the growing many women artists engaged significance of gender and sexuality with Ireland and Irish society from a not for both male and female Irish artists distance, either out of choice or ne- in the 1980s.1 While male artists cessity. Based in (or sometimes tended to engage with these issues moving between) a variety of locations through expressionistdistribute and figurative in Ireland, Scotland, England and the painting, their female counterparts – US, these women developed feminist including Pauline Cummins, Mary critiques of power that directly ad- Duffy and Alanna O’Kelly – were dressed both the social construction drawn toward new media such as of gender and the specific values at- video, performance or slide/tape. tributed to femininity and motherhood Fowler emphasises that these women within nationalist and colonial dis- were working in a context shaped courses. Some of the artists, activists both by the expansion of marriage and filmmakers discussed below had and workplace rights, in the 1970s, strong connections with international and by a ‘co-ordinated reaction’2 to feminist networks for the production these changes. This reaction was and distribution of film and video, but made manifest in two particularly divi- they were also interested in more local sive referenda campaigns concerning feminist initiatives, particularly in rela- abortion and divorce, which severely tion to campaigns for reproductive undermined women’s rights in the rights. All were actively working to- mid-1980s. In a more recent account ward political and social change, of Irish feminist performance art, Kate through their practices as artists and Antonik-Parsons also highlights the their parallel roles as educators. reactionary social climate of the EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 140

1980s, suggesting that it helps to ex- 16mm film, 35mm slide, audio tape or plain why women in Ireland were par- photography. In many of the works ticularly drawn to the body as a ‘lens discussed, video allowed these artists through which the intersection of per- to present recordings of site-specific sonal, political, theoretical and practi- gestures or trajectories within the gal- cal concerns could be focused’.3 The lery. These recordings could be dis- female body certainly figures very played alongside objects, images or prominently in many of the new media live actions, playing an integral role in works discussed by Fowler. But it is the articulation and exploration of spa- important to remember that this mobi- tio-temporal dislocations resulting lisation of body as ‘lens’ also fre- from migration, legacies of colonisa- quently involved the use of new tion, and ongoing cultural and legal PROOFmedia, including film, photography restrictions to women’s rights. But it is and, eventually, video. Antonik-Par- important to acknowledge that only a sons’ text appears in an edited collec- relatively small number of video works tion of writings on performance art in by Irish women artists were actually Ireland, which also includes some dis- made during the 1980s, mainly be- cussion of artists working with video. cause infrastructural supports for the As of yet, however, there are no schol- production and distribution (or archiv- arly monographsdo or archives 4 dedi- ing) of experimental film and video cated specifically to Irish video art or production simply did not exist in Ire- experimental film, despite the fact that land during the 1970s and 1980s.7 moving image installationnot has occu- Artists who completed their un- pied a prominent place within Irish dergraduate studies in Belfast or Dub- contemporary art for several dec- lin in the 1970s often gravitated ades,5 with the result that the history toward masters programmes in Lon- of Irish video art remains somewhatdistributedon,8 in search of video and film pro- scattered.6 In addition, a small duction facilities. But Belfast-based number of works discussed in this artists did have at least some access chapter (specified in the notes) are to new media production resources, difficult to view in full, generally due to following the establishment of the Art partial degradation of the original & Research Exchange (A.R.E.), an art- master tapes. ist-run space with a darkroom and In this chapter, I have chosen to studios in 1978.9 Although it did not focus primarily on the practices of include video production or distribu- Frances Hegarty, Alanna O’Kelly and tion facilities, A.R.E. became an im- Anne Tallentire, specifically because portant resource for artists working all three artists realised works on with performance, eventually hosting video for gallery exhibition (as distinct live art events. The A.R.E. building from broadcast) during the 1980s, also housed the Artists Collective of while the other Irish women artists Northern Ireland, which began pub- mentioned in this text only began ex- lishing the bi-monthly art magazine hibiting video work after 1990. Circa in 1981, with a stated focus on Hegarty, O’Kelly and Tallentire tended the socio-political context on art pro- to use video alongside other non-tra- duction. The magazine’s early edito- ditional media, including Super 8 or rial staff included the artist Anne 141 Chapter 10 / Feminism, Ireland and Women’s Art | EWVA

Carlisle,10 known for her work with O’Kelly and Tallentire all contributed time-based media, and many of its to these campaigns, but their work regular contributors (including Jean was also focused on issues of repre- Fisher, Joan Fowler and Belinda sentation that affected women out- Loftus) were particularly attentive to side of the art field, both north and feminism and women’s art practice. south of the border. Many of the same issues were also being addressed by Irish women through the production of film, activist Feminist Art, Film and video or broadcast media, as evi- Activism North and South denced by the work of Vivienne Dick of the Border and Pat Murphy and also Anne Crilly Like theirPROOF international counterparts and Margo Harkin of Derry Film and during the 1970s and 1980s, many Video, a feminist film and video pro- Irish women artists wanted to secure duction group established in the mid- greater professional recognition, at 1980s. Studying first at Hornsey home and abroad, often forming or College of Art and then at the Royal joining advocacy associations and College of Art, the Dublin-born, Bel- women-only networks to achieve this fast-educated filmmaker Pat Murphy goal. Although not restricted to artistsdodirected two critically acclaimed femi- working with new media, many such nist feature films in the early 1980s. initiatives involving Irish women artists Her films – Maeve (1981, co-directed led to exhibitions, seminars and con- withnot John Davies), a semi-autobio- ferences involving time-based or pho- graphical portrait of a young Belfast tographic media.11 In 1987, for woman struggling to reconcile nation- example, a group of Irish-based art- alism with feminism, and Anne Devlin ists that included Pauline Cummins (1984), a feministdistribute retelling of a key set up the Women Artists’ Action event in Irish republican history – were Group (WAAG), organising an exhibi- widely shown in festivals, film clubs tion at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, and arthouse cinemas outside Ire- which consisted of a slide show of land. Murphy’s work also figures works by women. Based on this exhi- prominently in theorisations of femi- bition, WAAG subsequently estab- nist and post-colonial film by Claire lished a slide library, which was Johnston and Paul Willemen.13 Maeve maintained by the group. Cummins’ had been funded partly by the Experi- own work from this period included mental Film Fund of the British Film the slide/tape installation Inis Institute and Anne Devlin was sup- T’Oirr/Aran Dance (1985), first shown ported by the newly-established Irish at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Film Board but, by 1988, these fund- Dublin, in 1985.12 Irish women artists ing avenues had closed and Murphy who were living or studying in London was unable to complete her next fea- (or elsewhere in England) during this ture film (a biography of Nora Barna- period also established repre- cle, the wife of James Joyce) until sentative groups, organising a 2000. number of conferences and exhibi- Like Pat Murphy, Vivienne Dick tions discussed below. Hegarty, first began working with film while EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 142

based outside Ireland, receiving criti- accompanied Off the Map, an impor- cal attention for her early Super 8 tant group exhibition at the Chisen- works featuring prominent women hale Gallery, featuring works by performers from the New York under- Hegarty, O’Kelly and Tallentire, (dis- ground scene (including Adele Bertei, cussed below in more detail). Dick Lydia Lunch and Pat Place). Dick’s also chronicled many aspects of the early works were shot on Super 8, but London art scene at a key moment for she was drawn to the immediacy of Irish women artists. Her 16mm film video and her film She Had Her Gun London Suite (1989, Fig. 1), funded All Ready (1978), features a sequence and broadcast through Channel 4’s in which a performer (Lydia Lunch) ‘Experimenta’ season, captures both studies her own image on a video the appeal and the difficulty of London PROOFmonitor. In the early 1980s, Dick made city life for women through semi- several return visits to Ireland and one scripted interactions between a large of her most ambitious works from this cast of predominantly female per- period, Visibility Moderate (1981) ex- formers. plored the vantage point of the Irish- Dick was not the only Irish femi- American. Much of the film follows the nist filmmaker to be supported by journey of a glamorous young female Channel 4 during the 1980s. As part protagonist, whodo visits scenic Irish of its public service mandate, the new landmarks and poses for the camera channel (launched in 1982) recog- at heritage sites. But she also tours nised a regional network of non-profit around decrepit inner city Dublinnot and making, often community-based, pro- attends a protest in support of Repub- duction groups or ‘workshops’.14 This lican hunger strikers in the north with initiative was intended to demonstrate the film culminating in a statement to the broadcaster’s commitment to un- camera by a former political prisoner,distributeder-represented constituencies, and condemning the mistreatment of programming was either commis- women. sioned or purchased from the fran- Although Dick wanted to estab- chised production groups, typically lish herself as a filmmaker in Ireland, for broadcast in the channel’s Elev- she ultimately chose to live in London, enth Hour or People to People slots. primarily so that she could access The workshop groups included Derry financial and social support for her Film and Video (DFV), established by practice as a filmmaker. In London, Anne Crilly and Margo Harkin in 1984. Dick became an active member of the During this period, Crilly and Harkin London Filmmaker’s Co-op and se- produced several documentaries, in- cured funding from the British Arts cluding Strip-searching – Security or Council to make the 16mm film Subjugation (1984), on the conditions Rothach (1985), a poetic exploration endured by political prisoners, and of place and temporality, filmed in Ire- Planning (1985), on urban redevelop- land. Living in London also allowed ment in nationalist areas of Derry, and Dick to expand her connections within Mother Ireland (1988), exploring the the Irish art community. In 1987, her representation of motherhood within films Rothach and Trailer were shown nationalist discourse.15 Despite their as part of a screening programme that inclusion in the workshop pro- 143 Chapter 10 / Feminism, Ireland and Women’s Art | EWVA gramme, very few of DFV’s produc- tions were actually broadcast, partly because Crilly and Harkin would not make the adjustments required by broadcasting legislation (introduced in 1988) to censor the voices of those associated with proscribed organisa- tions such as the Irish Republican Army. Although DFV documentaries cir- culated among feminist networks, via independent distributors such as The Other Cinema and Cinema of Women,16 PROOFtheir best known work is undoubtedly Hush-A-Bye-Baby (1989). Site, Voice and Early Video Fig. 1. Vivienne The narrative of this feature-length Dick, London drama is structured around the preg- Works: Alanna O’Kelly Suite, 16mm film, 1989. nancy of a young unmarried Catholic As these examples suggest, Irish Courtesy of the girl in Derry, with a cast that includes women were actively using film and artist. Sinead O’Connor. Significantly, the documentary video to effect political central characters cross the border,doand social change in the early 1980s. staying with a host family in an Irish- While the north of Ireland functioned speaking part of Donegal to improve as a particularly important focus (and their language skills, allowing the film- site)not of feminist critiques, Irish women makers to explore how women are artists were also animated by other positioned in relation to Irish as well as political causes, including the cam- British nationalism. In a particularly as- paign for nuclear disarmament. tute analysis of DFV’s work, Jessica Alanna O’Kellydistribute is a key figure in the Scarlata emphasises that Hush-A- early history of Irish women’s video art Bye-Baby is set in 1984, ‘roughly a and was actively involved in women’s year after the abortion referendum (re- networks, both in Ireland and else- stricting women’s reproductive rights) where during the 1980s. Born in 1955, passed by a narrow margin in the Irish O’Kelly completed a BA in Fine Art at Republic’.17 Although Britain’s 1967 the National College of Art and Design Abortion Act had decriminalised abor- (NCAD), Dublin in the late 1970s, tion under specific circumstances, studying with tutors such as Nigel Scarlata points out that it did not apply Rolfe, a Dublin-based British artist within the north of Ireland.18 Crilly and working with performance, photogra- Harkin’s film seems to have been con- phy and time-based media. While sciously set within the context of the NCAD lacked video production facili- mid-1980s conservative backlash ties at that time, O’Kelly knew that its since, as Scarlata notes, the lead graduates included Joe Comerford, character is shown watching the end one of several Irish filmmakers sup- credits of Mother Ireland on television, ported by the BFI’s Experimental Film in a deliberately anachronistic ges- Fund.19 Towards the end of her stud- ture, since this documentary was not ies, in 1978, O’Kelly produced sculp- made until 1988. tural works near her home in Wexford EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 144

engage with the politics of site and in 1982, she devised a site-specific work, titled City Images, consisting of photographs projected onto the river Liffey over two nights. This project was a response to the cultural and social setting of O’Connell Bridge, an iconic and heavily-trafficked intersection in the centre of Dublin. By the mid- 1980s, however, she was developing a more explicitly political engagement with the body and site, through per- PROOF formance and installation. O’Kelly’s next work, Chant Down Greenham (1984–1988, Fig. 2), first presented at the SFX Theatre in Dublin, marked her first use of keening, a type of wordless lament traditionally performed by women at Irish funerals. Her keening do accompanied projected images of a human chain of protesters attempting to prevent the expansion of the cruise not missile base at Greenham Common in Berkshire, England.21 O’Kelly continued to work with Fig. 2. Alanna and these were documented on video keening and her audiotape O’Kelly, Chant distributeCaoineadh Na Mairbh [Lamenting the Down Greenham, by Nigel Rolfe for assessment, mark- performance at ing her first close contact with this Dead] (1985), was included in Divi- Franklin Furnace medium. sions, Crossroads, Turns of Mind – 1987. Photograph: O’Kelly continued to develop Some New Irish Art (1985–1987), an Raissa Page. sculptural responses to site and con- exhibition curated by Lucy Lippard Courtesy of the 22 artist. text and in 1980 her work was shown that toured to several US cities. in Without the Walls, curated by promi- Around this time, she completed her nent Irish art critic Dorothy Walker at MFA at the Slade School of Art, work- the Institute of Contemporary Arts in ing with tutors such as Stuart Brisley London as part of a festival of Irish art and Susan Hiller, and also produced and culture staged at over forty Lon- her first video. Still Beyond the Pale, don venues. O’Kelly was the only was devised in 1986 for an exhibition woman artist in this exhibition, which at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in also included works by James Cole- Dublin (now the location of the Irish man, Nigel Rolfe and Noel Sheridan, Museum of Modern Art), and it in- and she recalls being questioned by cluded a video component, consist- other women artists about this gender ing solely of a close-up image of imbalance at the opening.20 Over the O’Kelly’s eyes staring at the camera, next few years, O’Kelly began to use accompanied by a voiceover.23 photography, voice and sound to O’Kelly’s next work, Lament, 1987 was 145 Chapter 10 / Feminism, Ireland and Women’s Art | EWVA made for exhibition at the Chisenhale included, with a reworked audio track, Gallery in London as part of the exhi- in the 1988 exhibition Selected Im- bition Off The Map. It featured a video, ages at the ICA in London. Developed subsequently exhibited and titled by artist James Coleman in collabora- separately as Dancing With My tion with curator Declan McGonagle, Shadow (Fig. 3), shot in the west coast this was the only visual arts compo- of Ireland after the death of O’Kelly’s nent of the second (and much mother. Struggling to cope with this smaller) iteration of the festival A loss, O’Kelly wrote a letter to her late Sense of Ireland, which focused on mother on several sheets of almost the intersection between image and translucent airmail paper and, in a narrative in Irish culture and also in- spontaneous ritual action, sub- cluded film works by Vivienne Dick. merged thePROOF paper in a rock pool. Find- Dancing With My Shadow also fea- ing that the saltwater fixed rather than tured in the influential 1990 exhibition dissolved the ink, she then recorded A New Tradition - Irish Art of the Eight- the floating paper with a VHS camera, ies, cited at the outset of this chapter. accompanying the image with her O’Kelly continued to work with video own voice. in No Colouring Can Deepen the Dark- Reviewing Lament as part of the ness of Truth (1990, Fig. 4). This three- exhibition Off the Map, Sarah Kent de-domonitor piece again incorporated scribes how the abstract sounds of sounds of keening, along with images voice on the audio track transform into of milk flowing from a breast, informed a recognisable song, with the words bynot O’Kelly’s research on The Great ‘dancing with my shadow feeling kind Famine (1845–48). It was sub- of blue’ gradually becoming audible. sequently reconfigured within a larger Kent observes that while this piece project, entitled The Country Blooms, might ‘sound sentimental’, it is char- a Garden anddistribute a Grave (1992–25), acterised by a ‘spare economy’ that is which revisits the history of the famine ‘extremely powerful’.24 Dancing With and articulates a critique of present My Shadow was subsequently day inequalities.25

Fig. 3. Alanna O’Kelly, Dancing With My Shadow, 1987. Courtesy of the artist. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 146

ance at A.R.E., Fowler describes a small room filled with a ‘maze’ of pa- per screens, onto which three words – ‘innocence’, ‘morality’ and ‘disillu- sion’ – had been written in clear adhe- sive. Moving through this space, Hegarty revealed these words by cov- ering the screens with powdered col- our pigment, before she cut through them in an action that ‘represented her journey back to the land of her childhood’.27 Following these actions, PROOF the film was projected, depicting Fig. 4. Alanna Expanded Film and Video: O’Kelly, No Hegarty in various locations, cos- Colouring Can Frances Hegarty tumed to suggest two different modes Deepen the Darkness of Like Alanna O’Kelly and Anne Tallen- of contemporary, fashionable feminin- Truth, 1990. tire, Frances Hegarty (b. 1946), grew ity. She appears in jeans, holding a Courtesy of Alanna O’Kelly. up partly in the Irish countryside. But 16mm film camera, moving first while Hegarty was still in her teens, through fields and then the interior of she and her familydo left their home an ecclesiastical ruin, turning to face Teelin, County Donegal – a northern, a man who seems to pursue her, hold- rural and (then) Gaelic-speaking area ing a smaller film camera in front of his of the Republic – for Glasgow,not where face. Hegarty’s stance, as she con- she completed her secondary school fronts this approaching figure, is wide- education. Following a BA in Fine Art legged and notably assertive. These at Leeds Polytechnic (1969) and an scenes are intercut with other se- MFA at Manchester Polytechnicdistributequences in which Hegarty, her long (1970), Hegarty began teaching and hair hanging loose, wears a skirt and over the next decade, she gravitated moves through a field laying a trail of toward performance, experimenting soil and red pigment, in which seed- with film as a means of augmenting like objects are ritualistically planted. her live presence. In November 1983, Many of these actions were reiter- her expanded film performance Abla- ated in the live performance, which tive, Genitive, Dative was presented in included a male photographer who Belfast as part of Three Days Of Per- followed and recorded Hegarty, until formance Art, at the Art & Research (at the close of the live event) she took Exchange (17–19 November 1983). his camera and turned it on him. My discussion of it is based on a Hegarty’s own notes on the perform- detailed account of the performance ance also describe a final gesture in provided by Joan Fowler in a review which a satchel of feathers are dis- for Circa magazine,26 and documen- gorged and this echoes a particularly tation provided by Hegarty, including striking film sequence – a close up of a telecined video of the film, which a woman’s hands tearing the crotch includes recorded sound of the art- of her jeans apart, before pulling out ist’s mother speaking and singing. a mass of tiny feathers. Hegarty’s per- In her review of the live perform- formance is, according to Fowler, 147 Chapter 10 / Feminism, Ireland and Women’s Art | EWVA clearly ‘sited within post-Lacanian the hands might be reaching up from theory; it suggested that our individual the soil, or even from within a grave. consciousness as formed by our cul- The only audio is an occasional jolt of ture intervenes in the return to nature abstract noise (possibly electronically which ritual celebrates’.28 Reflecting generated or altered) synchronised on Ablative, Genitive, Dative in an in- with flashes of colour that appear on terview conducted for this article, screen, blocking or disrupting the im- Hegarty noted her interest in mas- ages of the hands. querade, a hugely important concept Hegarty continued to use video for many women artists and filmmak- alongside other media and her 1989 ers seeking to reclaim narrative from installation Marital Orders was exhib- a feminist perspective,29 while also ited as part of The Wedding, a group alluding toPROOF the history of video tech- show at Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield. nology and its associations with sur- The installation consisted of ten black veillance and military-industrial and white photographs on aluminium research. and a 9 minute video work with A concern with technology is audio.32 Sounds of birdsong and a even more pronounced in Hegarty’s woman’s voice, first humming and 1987 video installation Groundswell then singing the words of the song (Fig. 5). Informed by feminist critiquesdoShe Moved through the Fair, accom- of power, colonisation and militarisa- pany images of a light-filled room, in tion (in relation to Greenham and which a wedding dress and veil are other contested sites), this work ex- laidnot out upon a chair. In subsequent plored parallels between the human shots, a woman (Hegarty) appears body in crisis, as a consequence of wearing these garments, sitting on the disease and invasive medical treat- chair and scattering fragments from a ment, and the contaminated or irradi- dark mass ofdistribute soil gathered in her lap. ated earth.30 Devised for the This action is interspersed with eye exhibition Off the Map at the Chisen- line-matched close-up shots of hale Gallery, this work consisted of a Hegarty in two guises – as a bride large, earth-covered mound, marked wearing a white veil and a soldier with powdered pigment, with a red wearing a dark combat helmet. Her glow emanating from a shallow cen- mouth is not visible in these images tral pit. The mound was surrounded and they were reproduced from the by twenty domestic colour televisions, screen in ten photographs displayed entirely wrapped in transparent plas- either side of the video monitor in the tic, displaying a 45 minute video. The installation at Mappin Gallery. These video featured unedited action, pri- photographs deliberately emphasise marily close-ups of a woman’s hands, the grid-like texture of the screen from recorded using live studio effects.31 which the images were made, sug- The palms are pressed forcefully gesting an analogy between material against glass, or formed into fists that technologies of video screen and fab- knock or push on this surface, initially ric veil. clean but then covered in soil, wrung Marital Orders (Fig. 6) was, ac- together as though in anxiety or de- cording to Hegarty, directly informed spair. At times, it appears as though by Laura Mulvey’s analysis of scopo- EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 148

Fig. 5. Frances Hegarty, Groundswell, 1987, installation view. Photo: Andrew Stones; copyright. © Frances Hegarty 1987.

PROOF

philia, exhibitionism, voyeurism in her ess used in the realisation of the pho- widely-cited essay on ‘Visual Pleasure tographic images, derived from close- and Narrative Cinema’.33 It is possible up images of Hegarty in costume, as to identify continuities in the use of bride and as soldier, was an attempt clothing and ritualiseddo action, with her to create a distance between action earlier explorations of masquerade and image, retaining if not attenuating and (less directly) her exploration of the evidence of mediation. militarism. But rather thannot engaging In 1990, Hegarty completed the 7 with military technologies of surveil- minute single channel video Turas lance, or the environmental destruc- [Journey] which revisited some of the tion wrought by the military-industrial thematics, of migration and language complex, Marital Orders deals primar-distributeloss, explored in Ablative, Genitive, ily with myths of heroism, strength and Dative. If the title of this earlier work sacrifice. Hegarty was prompted to suggests an academic relationship to make this work following her own ex- language, then Turas (Fig. 7) directly perience (as media consumer) of a addresses Hegarty’s distance from specific incident of sectarian violence, her mother tongue. Turas is com- in which ‘two young British soldiers posed from Super 8 footage shot in who got caught up in a republican 1987 and includes sequences in funeral at Milltown cemetery in Belfast which Hegarty traces the route of the were pulled from the car and mur- River Foyle from its estuary to its dered’.34 In an insightful interview, source in Lough Finn, Co. Donegal, conducted by Shirley MacWilliam, gathering water from the mouth and Hegarty frames Marital Orders both as transporting it to the source. Shots of an exploration of romantic idealism (in the river are interspersed with interior relation to war and love) and as a scenes in which Hegarty and her response to the representation of vio- mother sit facing each other and per- lence in the news media, citing her form a series of actions and interac- shock of ‘actually seeing, on the tions, including an exchange in Gaelic news, the soldiers being dragged (which is not translated). The camera from the car’.35 The production proc- dwells on details of bodies and ges- 149 Chapter 10 / Feminism, Ireland and Women’s Art | EWVA

tures and at one moment, the younger Independent Film, an important pro- Fig. 6. Frances woman’sPROOF fingers lightly touch her duction resource for Hegarty and Hegarty, Marital Orders, 1988, mother’s throat as though trying to many other women artists and film- composite learn speech through touch. In a rap- makers based in the north of England installation view. 36 Photos and idly edited sequence, images of ears, during this period. As with several of photomontage: hands, throats, are intercut and over- Hegarty’s early works, Turas was ex- Andrew Stones; copyright © laid with close-ups of the Foyle river. hibited in several iterations, including Frances Hegarty By comparison with Hegarty’s a screening in LUX cinema in the early 1988, 2018. previous works, Turas makes its sub-do1990s and two different installation ject matter notably explicit, even for versions, one of which combined those without access to the Irish video projection with transparencies (Gaelic) language. These concerns in light-boxesnot arrayed on the floor. are particularly evident in a series of Some of these installation versions textual inserts, (including phrases included only the language learning such as ‘re learn language / re gain and exchange scenes, omitting the mothertongue / re possess speech / actions performeddistribute along the route of re cover culture / re claim history’), the river Foyle. which appear on screen at various intervals. In terms of both layout and Actions, Words and Video content, these textual inserts are sug- Fig. 7. Frances gestive of grammar exercises and this Images: Anne Tallentire Hegarty, Turas, 1990, still clinical and detached display of text A focus on language, particularly in its images from clearly differs from the ritualised reve- written form, is also apparent in the single-screen video film and lation of words in Ablative, Genitive, work of Anne Tallentire, which encom- installation Dative, suggesting a more self-con- passes performance, photography, projection. Photo: copyright sciously analytical approach to lan- video and sculptural installation. Born © Frances guage. Turas was edited at Sheffield (in 1949) and raised in Co. Armagh, in Hegarty 1990. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 150

the north of Ireland (as distinct from pated in Off The Map, an exhibition at the Republic of Ireland), Tallentire the Chisenhale Gallery (5 August – 22 moved to London in the mid 1980s, August 1987) featuring mixed media completing her postgraduate studies work by six artists. The press release at the Slade in 1988.37 During her time describes the concerns of the group at the Slade, Tallentire became very as ‘an examination of the contradic- actively involved with the extended tory experience of being located be- community of Irish women artists in tween cultures and of not only being England and Ireland. In 1987, she col- Irish but female in Britain in 1987’ not- laborated with Alanna O’Kelly (also ing a ‘desire to lay tracks and estab- studying at the Slade) on the video lish territories [...] as metaphor of performance Forbidden Heroines, choosing and reconstructing identity PROOFwhich was devised for Live London within an adopted culture’.39 Off The Film Makers Co-op (Channel 6),an Map included works by Frances event curated by the artist Tina Keane. Hegarty, Carole Key, Rose Ann Shortly after the Co-op event, the per- McGreevy, Rosemarie McGoldrick, formance was restaged to camera Alanna O’Kelly and Anne Tallentire and Forbidden Heroines now exists as and it was accompanied by a screen- a stand-alone videotape by Tallentire ing of experimental films (Super 8 and (17 mins, silent, BW,do 1987). The tape 16mm) by Vivienne Dick, Annie opens with a close-up of Tallentire’s Fahnan, Oonagh Hyland and Moira hands mixing a white substance in a Sweeney, most of whom were then bowl, manipulating it withnot her hands living and working in London. and then, as the camera pulls back, Altered Tracks (1987, Fig. 8), Tal- spreading it over her face and neck. lentire’s contribution to Off The Map, The substance, which might be flour was an installation and performance or plaster, gradually hardens anddistributework, including recorded audio. Pho- cracks as Tallentire contorts her face tographs of stones on a map of Tal- with eyes closed, grimacing in dis- lentire’s Armagh homeland were comfort. installed on the walls of the gallery and During 1986, Tallentire and these functioned as the backdrop to a O’Kelly were also instrumental in the live performance in the gallery. In this formation of the Irish Women Artists’ performance, Tallentire walked Group, which hosted a conference on through the space barefoot, drawing Irish women’s art at the Women Art- lines in charcoal on the concrete floor, ists’ Slide Library in London. The con- using the palm of her own hand as a ference included papers and guide. She then placed stones at vari- presentations from women artists ous points on the floor markings. working in range of media, such as These actions were performed in con- Anne Carlisle, Liadin Cooke, Pauline junction with an audio recording of Cummins and Aileen MacKeogh, and ‘palmistry interpretations’, read by it was accompanied by an open sub- ‘one voice in an English intonation and mission exhibition of work by women one Irish accented’.40 The material artists, entitled Eye to Eye.38 Tallentire leftovers of the performance remained and several members of the Irish in the gallery for the duration of the Women Artists’ Group also partici- exhibition – a practice that Tallentire 151 Chapter 10 / Feminism, Ireland and Women’s Art | EWVA generally continues in her perform- ance work. Altered Tracks was inter- preted very directly by Sarah Kent, in her review of Off The Map,asacom- ment on the future of the north of Ireland, and the possibility of redraw- ing or rethinking the border.41 Tallentire’s Slade Postgraduate Fine Art Media final show in 1988 in- cluded a work with a video compo- nent, called Bound Words, Stolen Honey (Fig. 9), which consists of an installationPROOF of hand-made wallpaper, depicting a pattern based upon an image of the spines of books in Sen- ate House Library, London; a wooden box and a sheet of glass placed over a sanded and scrubbed floor; and a hand-bound book containing photo- copied transcripts of ‘bee-judge-do ments’, written in Ancient Irish, Modern Irish and English. These ‘judgements’ concern the keeping not and management of bees and they form part of the Brehon Laws, statutes that governed everyday life in early Medieval Ireland. A 7 minute video, distribute displayed on a monitor as part of the installation, shows a hand turning the in Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Fig. 8. Anne pages of a sun-dappled book, repeat- Everyday Life (1984) and his ideas Tallentire, Altered Tracks, 1987, edly encountering the same text, with continued to shape aspects of her performance (20 the distant sounds of what might be approach to action and site. The Gap minutes) and installation; passing traffic. This text, excerpted of Two Birds (1988, Fig. 10), which photographs from The Life of the Bee (1901) by the was first presented in an exhibition 100x100m, sound, charcoal. Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck, curated by David Thorp at The Show- Off The Map, refers to an ‘observational’ beehive room in London, also communicates Chisenhale Gallery, London. made of glass, which allows the an ongoing concern with the perfor- Courtesy of the author to study the behaviour of city- mativity and inadequacy of written artist. dwelling bees. language. The gallery installation in- Altered Tracks and Bound Words, cluded a single channel 7 minute BW Stolen Honey both employ simple ac- video, consisting of footage shot on tions and gestures to explore prac- Super 8, in a rural part of Ireland. As tices and systems used to organise with many of Tallentire’s moving im- and transmit knowledge concerning age works, it depicts relatively simple habitats. During this period, Tallentire actions, incorporating details of was becoming particularly interested hands, but is much more overtly cine- EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 152

film was displayed as a loop on a monitor in the gallery along with sev- eral glass panels, which were in- scribed with the words ‘NORTH and ‘SOUTH’. During a five hour perform- ance, she made rubbings in charcoal from the glass panels onto sheets of white paper. The rubbings were then offered by Tallentire to audience members, who were then invited to explain their choice of either ‘NORTH’ or ‘SOUTH’, a process that seems PROOF intended to complicate (through ab- straction as well as interaction) any easy opposition suggested by these designations. Although she has rarely engaged in such direct interaction with her audiences, Tallentire has con- tinued to investigate the relationship do between performed action, site and communication, sometimes combin- ing video with newer technologies. not Her 1994 work Inscribe I, for example, used ISDN to establish a connection between two urban spaces that were Fig. 9. Anne matic in its structure than (for exam- usually closed to the public, by trans- Tallentire, Bound ple) the earlier performance video For-distributemitting documentation of actions per- Words, Stolen Honey, bidden Heroines.InThe Gap of Two formed to camera in a British Telecom installation; Birds, the camera is often directed building (in London) to a viewing audi- wallpaper, glass, video 7 minutes, downwards at Tallentire’s feet as she ence located in a telecommunications book, box, traces a route through barren, rocky exchange in Dublin. beeswax. 1988 Fine Art Media terrain. According to Jean Fisher, Tal- postgraduate lentire consciously did not look exhibition, The Conclusion: Collaboration Slade School of through the viewfinder of her hand- Fine Art, London. held camera as she walked and filmed and Continuity Courtesy of the 42 artist. her route, treating the camera rather As already noted, only a relatively as an extension of her entire body. Yet small number of Irish women artists even if not conventionally composed actually worked directly with video in by eye, the filmic image is highly leg- the 1980s. Nonetheless, it was a vitally ible and the camera often seems to important medium for women artists dwell upon signs of habitation and and activists seeking to analyse and infrastructure in this bleak landscape, challenge structures of representation such as pathways, roads and water from both feminist and post-colonial pipes, undercutting the initial impres- perspectives. Sharing a common in- sion of wilderness. terest in language, migration, and Transferred to video, Tallentire’s place, Hegarty, O’Kelly and Tallentire 153 Chapter 10 / Feminism, Ireland and Women’s Art | EWVA all integrated video with other non-tra- ditional media, including (for exam- ple) live performance, audio, installation, text and photography. They repeatedly used video, or film transferred to video for exhibition, as a way to document their own bodies engaged in semi-choreographed movements or tasks, ranging from quasi-ritualistic gestures to more mundane actions. These actions, gestures, and rituals were performed to cameraPROOF in relatively neutral studio- like or white cube environments, as in the case of Tallentire’s Forbidden Heroines, or they were devised in re- use of song, speech, and other forms Fig. 10. Anne Tallentire, The lation to specific sites or situations, at of sound. O’Kelly, for example, used Gap of Two some remove from the gallery. In the traditional Irish lament form of Birds,1988, performance (5 some of the works discussed, such as keening to suggest continuities be- hours) and Dancing with My Shadow by O’Kellydo or tween cultural and personal loss, installation; while also recasting this folk practice video, wooden The Gap of Two Birds by Tallentire, screen 244 x video seems to have functioned partly as a contemporary tool of political 244cm, glass, as a pragmatic mechanism for inte- protest, which could be deployed in text on acetate, not paper, charcoal, grating recorded site-responsive per- many contexts (against militarism, or photographs. The formance into the space of the gallery, cultural amnesia). As Katy Deepwell Showroom, London. Courtesy for presentation alongside objects or has noted, many Irish women artists of the artist. live actions. But other works, particu- were interesteddistribute in language and larly by Hegarty, exploit the aesthetic motherhood,43 and these concerns properties of video or its cultural asso- are especially evident in video works ciations with television and news me- by both O’Kelly and Hegarty. O’Kelly dia. Marital Orders for example, was often favoured wordless verbal com- conceived as a response to the expe- munication, but her video Dancing rience of viewing TV news, drawing with My Shadow was specifically attention to the screen as boundary. prompted by the writing of a letter, to Hegarty also embraced the technical her deceased mother. Hegarty’s vid- capacities of live video image proc- eos tend, on the whole, to place equal essing in Groundswell, and sub- emphasis on verbal and written com- sequently used video to integrate text munication, as evidenced by ex- with choreographed action in Turas. panded the film performance Ablative, All three artists were (and still are) Genitive, Dative, which involved the highly attentive to the ways in which performative revelation of hidden written or spoken language can shape words on pigmented paper screens, and sometimes constrain the articula- accompanied by sounds of her tion of personal and historical experi- mother speaking and singing. In ences, with O’Kelly and Hegarty both Turas, the Irish language is described drawing on Irish folk traditions in their quite literally as a ‘mother tongue’, EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 154

and the video seems to suggest drawn toward collaborative modes of parallels between Hegarty’s mother’s production in recent decades, estab- body and the river Foyle, as sources. lishing shared practices with male But even through she refers to the peers. In 1993, for example, Anne Tal- recovery of lost history and identity, lentire formed ‘work-seth/tallentire’, a Hegarty does not entirely naturalise collaborative practice with the British the acquisition of the Irish language. artist John Seth, while also continuing Instead, she stages an almost clinical to produce and exhibit work under her scenario of choreographed ‘learning’; own name. Since 1997, Fran Hegarty she itemises her own aspirations (to has produced much of her work with ‘re cover’ language) on screen and Andrew Stones, co-authoring numer- engages in a quasi-scientific transpo- ous video, installation and public art PROOFsition of water from the river’s mouth works under the name Hegarty and to its source. Stones, in addition to solo projects.44 If Hegarty’s work often hints at Alanna O’Kelly has also collaborated gaps in meaning, whether through with the artists Brian Hand and Orla choreography and typography, then Ryan, realising a public art commis- Tallentire is even more attuned to cul- sion in 2016 as the group Stormy Pet- tural and social processes that com- rel/Guairdeall. These collaborations plicate or disrupt communicationdo and are worthy of attention in their own knowledge production. Tallentire is right, and it would be interesting to particularly sensitive to acts of naming know if similar trajectories might be and to the institutional structuresnot that traced in the practices of women art- intersect with everyday behaviours, ists based elsewhere in Europe. habits and practices. These concerns Equally, the interconnections during are apparent both in Bound Words, the 1970s and 1980s between Stolen Honey, with its evocations ofdistributewomen’s video art and other forms of hives and libraries, and in The Gap of critical media practice (ranging from Two Birds, which performatively ex- experimental film to activist documen- plores divisions of space, and place, tary and feature drama) may merit fur- through the interplay of live and re- ther consideration, both within and corded actions. The filmic component beyond the Irish context. These are of The Gap of Two Birds potentially just some of the many questions that invites comparison with both Turas might be explored, and answered, and Dancing with My Shadow, since through shared histories of European all three works incorporate performa- women’s video art. tive responses to places that are pre- dominantly rural and also watery. Yet whereas Hegarty and O’Kelly are at- tracted toward ostensibly natural flows of water, such as rivers and the Acknowledgements: Sincere thanks are sea, Tallentire is more attentive to the due to Valerie Connor, Anne Crilly, Vivienne Dick, Sara Greavu, Margo Harkin, Frances human made structures that deter- Hegarty, Emma-Lucy O’Brien, Sunniva mine these flows. O’Flynn, Alanna O’Kelly, Orla Ryan, Andrew Stones and Anne Tallentire for their invalu- Perhaps coincidentally, Hegarty, able assistance during the research O’Kelly and Tallentire have all been process. 155 Chapter 10 / Feminism, Ireland and Women’s Art | EWVA

Endnotes 1. Joan Fowler, ‘Speaking of Gender ... Expressionism, Feminism and Sexuality’, in A New Tradition: Irish Art of the Eighties (Dublin: Douglas Hyde Gallery, 1990), p. 56. 2. Ibidem. 3. Kate Antonik-Parsons, ‘The Development of Performance Art in the 1980s and the Early 1990s’ in Áine Phillips (ed.), Performance Art in Ireland: A History (London and Bristol: Live Art Development Agency and Intellect, 2015), p.177. 4. While there are no archives or study collections focused on Irish artists’ moving image, MExIndex, a modestly resourced, but nonetheless important database of Irish artists’ moving image was established in 2015. It provides information on the work of several women artists active in the 1980s, including Anne Tallentire and Vivienne Dick. See http://www.mexindex.ie/artists/ (accessed 4 April 2017). I discuss the absence of archives and study resources dedicated to Irish artists’ moving image in ‘Archiving Irish and British Artists’ Video: A Conversation between Maeve Connolly and REWIND researchers Stephen Partridge and Adam Lockhart’, MIRAJ,v.5,n.1&2, 2016, pp. 204–215. 5. Irish artistsPROOF working with the moving image have represented Ireland at many major international exhibitions, including the São Paulo Biennial (Alanna O’Kelly in 1996, Clare Langan in 2002, and Desperate Otimists in 2004) and the Venice Biennale (Jaki Irvine in 1997, Anne Tallentire in 1999, Grace Weir and Siobhan Hapaska in 2001, Gerard Byrne in 2007, Kennedy Browne in 2009, Richard Mosse in 2013, Sean Lynch in 2015 and Jesse Jones in 2017). 6. I have cited many of the key sources on Irish women’s video art in this chapter, including catalogue essays, published interviews and exhibition reviews. Other sources include Shirley MacWilliam, ‘Screen and Screen Again’, Circa, n. 100, Summer 2002, pp. 42–49, and various contributions to the multi-volume anthology Art and Architecture of Ireland (New Haven: Royal Irish Academy and Yale University Press, 2014). My research also draws upon email correspondence and personal interviews with Frances Hegarty, Alanna O’Kelly and Anne Tallentire, conducted in late 2016 and early 2017. 7. There was a short-lived attempt to establishdo a cooperative-type initiative at Project Arts Centre in Dublin around 1976. See Maeve Connolly, ‘Sighting an Irish Avant-garde in the Intersection of Local and International Film Cultures’, Boundary 2: International Journal of Literature and Culture, v. 31, n. 1, Spring 2004, pp. 244–265. 8. For a discussion of this context see Peter Murray,not ‘Introduction’, in Peter Murray (ed.), 0044 – Irish Artists in Britain (Cork: Crawford Municipal Gallery, 1999), pp. 9–14. 9. For a history of this organisation, see Chris Coppock, ‘A.R.E. – Acronyms, Community Arts and Stiff Little Fingers’, TheVacuum, n. 11, 2003. http://www.thevacuum.org.uk/issues/issues0120/issue11/is11artartres.html(accessed 4 April 2017]) distribute 10. Born in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, in 1956, Carlisle was editor of Circa from 1983 to 1989. See Jane Spender’s profile, ‘Anne Carlisle’, in the exhibition catalogue (edited by Peter Murray) 0044 – Irish Artists in Britain, pp. 24–31. See also my discussion of Carlisle’s media artwork Another Standard (1988) in ‘Artangel and the Changing Mediascape of Public Art’, Journal of Curatorial Studies, v. 2, n. 2, 2013, pp. 204–205. 11. For discussion of some key exhibitions and initiatives see Katy Deepwell, Dialogues: Women Artists from Ireland (London and New York: I.B.Tauris, 2005), p. 4. 12. This work involved images of traditional knitted textile patterns projected onto male bodies. It was subsequently transferred to video and included in the exhibition A New Tradition: Irish Art of the ’80s, at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin. In 1992, Cummins and Louise Walsh realised Sounding the Depths: A Collaborative Installation at IMMA, consisting of a back-projected video, and a series of images on light boxes, accompanied by a soundtrack, exploring attitudes toward the representation of the female body. 13. Claire Johnston, ‘Maeve’, Screen, v. 22, n. 4, Winter 1982, pp. 54–71; and Paul Willemen, ‘An Avant Garde for the Eighties’, Framework, 24,1984, pp. 53–73. 14. For analysis and documentation relating to the ‘workshop’ programme, see Margaret Dickinson, Rogue Reels: Oppositional Film in Britain, 1945–90 (London: BFI Publishing, 1999). 15. Belinda Loftus, ‘Review of Mother Ireland’, Circa, n. 44 (March/April 1989), pp. 33–34 and p. 99. 16. See Johnny Gogan, ‘Derry Film and Video Collective’, Film Base News, n. 3 (September/October 1987), pp. 10–11. 17. Jessica Scarlata, Rethinking Occupied Ireland: Gender and Incarceration in Contemporary Irish Film,(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2014), p. 67. 18. Ibidem, p. 67. 19. See Connolly, ‘Sighting an Irish Avant-garde in the Intersection of Local and International Film Cultures’, pp. 253–254. 20. Alanna O’Kelly provided details of this and other early works in a personal interview, 16 January 2017. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 156

21. O’Kelly was one of many artists inspired by, or engaged in, the protests at Greenham Common in the early 1980s. Jean Fisher discusses both Chant Down Greenham and a video by Tina Keane (a British artist of Irish descent), entitled In Our Hands, Greenham (1984), in ‘Reflections on Echo: Notes Towards a Dialogue on Sound by Women Artists’, in Vampire in the Text: Narratives of Contemporary Art (London: Iniva, 2003), pp. 165–166. 22. This exhibition also included work by Anne Carlisle. 23. The video component of Still Beyond the Pale is not available to view, as it seems to have been lost (the circumstances are unclear). The work was described to me by Alanna O’Kelly (interviewed by phone on 16 January 2017). 24. Sarah Kent, ‘Preview’, Time Out, 13 August 1987. Kent’s text is one of several documents included in the Chisenhale Gallery’s online archive of materials relating to Off the Map. http://chisenhale.org.uk/archive/ exhibitions/index.php?id=158 (accessed 4 April 2017). 25. This work won a major prize when first exhibited and continues to be recognised as one of the most important responses to the legacy of famine by an Irish artist. See Catherine Marshall, ‘Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: 1994 – The Country Blooms, A Garden and a Grave by Alanna O’Kelly’, The Irish Times, 21 May 2016. http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/modern-ireland-in-100-artworks-1994-the-country-blooms-a-garden-and-a -grave-by-alanna-o-kelly-1.2655006PROOF (accessed 4 April 2017). 26. Joan Fowler, ‘Three Days of Live Art, 22 Lombard Street, Belfast. 17–19 November, 1983’, Circa, No. 14, January–February, 1984, pp. 38–40. Hegarty is credited as Frances Saunders in this review. 27. Ibidem, p. 39. 28. Ibidem. 29. As a lecturer at Psalter Lane Art School (subsequently absorbed into Sheffield Hallam University) in the 1970s and 1980s, Hegarty led the establishment of a department of performance art and hosted talks by numerous visiting women artists including Alanna O’Kelly as well as Helen Chadwick, Mona Hatoum, Suzanne Lacey and Carolee Schneeman. 30. In documentation accompanying thisdo work, Hegarty specifically cites the actions and statements of the Greenham Common women activists, in addition to the writings of theorists such as Julia Kristeva, Lucy Irigaray, Elaine Showalter and Susan Sontag. 31. Only some of the original Groundswell master tape is currently playable – these sections were digitised and restored by Frances Hegarty and Andrew Stonesnot and made available for me to view (online) as part of the research process for this chapter. 32. Elements of this work have also been exhibited separately, and the videotape was broadcast on Yorkshire TV. The original Marital Orders master tape is currently only partially playable and the clearest sections were digitised and restored by Frances Hegarty and Andrew Stones and madedistribute available for me to view (online) as part of this research process. 33. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, v. 16, n. 3, Autumn 1975, pp. 6–18. 34. Hegarty, ‘Frances Hegarty: Multiple and Transparent Images – interview by Shirley MacWilliam’, in Peter Murray (ed.), 0044 – Irish Artists in Britain (Cork: Crawford Municipal Gallery, 1999), p. 81. 35. Ibidem. 36. Sheffield Independent Film was founded in 1976–77 by some of the same women filmmakers responsible for establishing Sheffield Film Co-op (in 1973). See the ‘Sheffield Film Co-op’ interview and chronology in Dickinson, Rogue Reels, pp. 289–303. 37. Tallentire noted her interest in working with Lis Rhodes, Stuart Brisley, Susan Hiller, all of whom were then teaching at the Slade. Personal interview with Anne Tallentire, Dublin, 12 December 2016. 38. This exhibition is cited by Deepwell, Dialogues, and Fowler, ‘Speaking of Gender...Expressionism, Feminism and Sexuality’. 39. The press release is included in Chisenhale Gallery’s online archive of materials relating to Off the Map. http://chisenhale.org.uk/archive/exhibitions/index.php?id=158 (accessed 4 April 2017). 40. A description of this work, provided by Tallentire can be found in the biographies section of Áine Phillips (ed.), Performance Art in Ireland: A History (London and Bristol: Live Art Development Agency and Intellect, 2015), p. 300. 41. Sarah Kent, ‘Preview’, Time Out, 13 August 1987. 42. Jean Fisher, ‘Dancing on a Tightrope (For Anne Tallentire)’, in Valerie Connor (ed.), Anne Tallentire (Dublin: Project Press, 1999). This publication also included essays on Tallentire’s work by John Seth and Sabina Sharkey. 43. Deepwell, Dialogues,p.5. 44. Hegarty had a solo retrospective titled Self-Portrait at The Model and Niland Gallery in Sligo, Ireland in 2003. Chapter 11

Highly Limited Access: Women and Early Video Art in PolandPROOF

Chapter 11 / Highly Limited Access Marika Kuzmicz´

Beginnings. A Man’s World ation of video art, it came into being as a medium that stood in opposition he analysis of women’s video to the institution of television. Its crea- art created in the Polish Peo-dotors originated from the field of art and ple’s Republic in the 1970s adopted a critical stance towards the T opens up the possibility of a dominant role of the media in the so- broader discussion of the ciety.not They usually had no direct affili- situation of Polish women artists. This ation with the television industry or arises because the medium in ques- cinematography. The emergence of tion highlighted the problems that portable cameras offered them a concerned the women artists in that chance to breakdistribute the hegemony of tele- period. The goal of my essay is there- vision, since it provided creators with fore not only to discuss the individual new tools, hitherto elitist and available art works, but also to review the social only to representatives of the televi- and sociological situation of their sion industry. In Poland, portable makers. I believe it is the only way to video cameras were unavailable dur- search for real answers to important ing that period, akin to many other questions: why did women artists cre- goods and services (often including ate so few works in the pioneering even telephones in private apart- period of video art? And, were there ments). In Poland under Communism, really as few of them as it can be the early days of the new medium are concluded, for instance, on the basis related to the milieu of professional of public contemporary art collections producers acquainted with the princi- in Poland? ples of television production. Video art For that matter, the genesis of originated from the circle of the group Polish video art is already significant Workshop of the Film Form (WFF), and symptomatic – a phenomenon which was established in 1970 by stu- that began in 1973. As John Han- dents and graduates of the Film hard,1 among other authors, wrote School in ºódï. Manifesting their in- with reference to the international situ- terest in new media, the WFF artists EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 158

initially worked mainly with photogra- largely monopolised the field of video phy and film. They most often hailed art in Poland for an obvious reason: from the Direction of Photography De- they enjoyed the possibility of using partment and possessed specialised the equipment that was indispensable skills in the field of film and television for such productions and unavailable production. To a certain degree, the to anyone else. I am making a brief WFF members operated independ- mention of the history of the WFF and ently of the Film School. They empha- its influence on video art in Poland, not sised their affiliation with the art field, only because the group’s activity in they questioned official commercial the field had a pioneering character cinematography, opposing that sys- and marked a breakthrough moment, tem by means of their subversive ac- but also because throughout the PROOFtions, but at the same time they entire period of the WFF’s work (1970– tapped into the Film School’s infra- 77/78) its activity engaged forty male structure as well as knowledge and artists, and not a single woman artist. experience acquired there. In the in- When asked about that situation, the itial period of their activity, that situ- WFF members replied that few ation resulted mainly in the production women studied at the Film School in of films on 35mm film stock by means the 1960s and 1970s2 (apart from in of professional filmdo cameras. In the the acting department), and therefore, course of time, the WFF members be- the lack of female participants of the gan to tap into a new tool that became group came as a natural conse- available to them as studentsnot of the quence. If we accept this explanation, Film School – video. In the winter of without making detailed enquiries into 1973, they used the school’s broad- the Film School’s policy with regard to casting truck in order to create the first potential female candidates to cine- video work in Poland: Transmisja tele-distributematographic studies, we still need to wizyjna [Television Transmission]. remark that, as a consequence, That project was pursued within the women artists in Poland were denied group’s collaboration with the even the same limited technological Muzeum Sztuki [Museum of Art] in potential that was available to the nar- ºódï. For nearly three weeks, the WFF row circle of male artists. They were members carried out various interven- deprived of it for reasons that can be tions in the Museum space, including described as an institutionally sanc- the above mentioned work, which tioned exclusion. Often repeated in consisted of transmitting images from the source literature, the statement a private apartment in ºódï,acob- that video art was a democratic me- bler’s workshop and a street corner dium, developed in opposition to the near the Museum building into the elitist medium of film and, above all, Museum interior. to the phenomenon of television In 1973 and during the years fol- (which is watched by masses but lowing, the WFF created artworks with shaped by a handful of people) does video using the broadcasting truck, not find confirmation in the Polish con- the television studio and later CCTV text – in the 1970s, video was an elitist cameras to which the Film School stu- medium in Poland, and the above de- dents had access. The WFF members scribed circumstances indicate that it 159 Chapter 11 / Highly Limited Access | EWVA was particularly unavailable to women tory, autobiography […]. Women artists. That new field of art did also used the new medium to cre- emerge in Poland, but it automatically ate social and political analyses of became a domain of a narrow circle the myths and facts of patriarchal of male artists. culture, revealing the socioeco- nomic realities and political ideolo- Summarising her research for the gies that dominated everyday life.3 exhibition The First Generation. Women and Video 1970–75, JoAnn As we already know, the situation Hanley wrote: of women artists in Poland looked en- tirely different and reflected the diffi- However, compared to the small cult situation of women in the Polish number of women artists tradition- People’s Republic, where the Com- ally included in exhibitions of sculp- PROOF munist Party authorities – against their ture or painting, video programs initial official declarations and postu- and exhibition catalogues of the 1970s (including special exhibi- lations concerning the equality of the tions such as the 1973 and 1975 sexes – limited women’s access to Whitney Biennials, the 1976 Paris some professions since the end of the Biennial, and documenta 6 in 1977) 1940s, did away with women’s organ- list of (a) surprising number of isations in order to eventually practi- women. […] It offers an early his- cally withdraw from the postulations of do 4 tory of the development of video as the ‘equality of the sexes’. The social a medium as well as evidence of system was founded on the vision, the significant role women played sanctionednot top-down and unreal, of in the creation and definition of a alleged equal rights of the sexes, new way of making art. It was, per- whose consequences can be felt to haps, the first time that men and the present day. women artists worked in a new me- Polish womendistribute artists began to dium on equal footing. Mary Jane claim their place in art history only in Jacobs has suggested that women the 1970s owing to, among other rea- were especially drawn to video be- sons, the influence of the international cause ‘access to video (as to per- Feminist movement. Yet – as we shall formance, photography and see – it is difficult to say that they installation art also emerging in the adopted Feminist strategies. It seems 1970s) allowed women and others that adopting such strategies would – until then marginalized by the inevitably bring about their marginali- mainstream – to have an equal sation in the realm of the Polish art voice. Through these new genres world as well as repression beyond they could proclaim a place for that field by male artists. That is why themselves in the art world that could not be achieved by the West- women artists made use of the wide- ern, male dominated field of paint- spread Post-Conceptual artistic lan- ing. Without the burdens of guage and usually avoided direct tradition linked with other media, references to the questions of gender women video artists were free to identity and the social situation of concentrate on process, often us- women – if such content did appear, ing video to explore the body and it was usually hidden under the veil of the self through the genres of his- ‘cold’ analytical works. An exception EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 160

Figs. 1a-b (facing pages). Ewa Partum, TV-Drawings, 1976. Courtesy of the artist.

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in the field of new media is repre- (b. 1950) and Jadwiga Singer sented by the oeuvre of two women (1955–2012). artists of key importancedo for Polish art: Apart from the two above-men- Natalia LL and Ewa Partum. Still, we tioned artists, Izabella Gustowska need to note also that their approach also began to use video towards the in the 1970s is usually definednot by re- end of the 1970s. The artist had searchers as ‘Feminist intervention’5 worked with film, among other media, or ‘intuition’,6 rather than strategy. since the beginning of that decade. In To return to the question of video the case of Marcolla and Singer, all we – the emergence of the new mediumdistributehave at our disposal is the photo- in Poland did not bring about a graphic documentation of works (in- change in the situation of women art- stallations) and preparatory drawings. ists: the kind of liberation or freedom Symptomatically, these two artists, of formulating an artistic statement as whose oeuvre is an important contri- described by Hanley. On the contrary, bution to this aspect of Polish video they suffered yet another exclusion. It art in its early days, disappeared with is perhaps not far-fetched to say that time, not only from the video circuit, they resorted to what I call a ‘formal but also essentially from Polish art mimicry’, which they had also used in history. The practice of Marcolla and the fields of film and photography. Singer has been almost entirely for- Later, such an approach also ap- gotten about and never explored in a peared in the field of video, which they more profound way, probably also be- additionally found so difficult to enter. cause video art in Poland, created by For all of these reasons, few women’s both men and women, took a long works in this medium were created in time to attract a broader interest of Poland in the 1970s; what is more, the researchers, few of whom noticed the majority of them have not been pre- separate nature of the medium and served. The works in question were the necessity of developing an ade- made above all by Jolanta Marcolla quate language to discuss it (a mono- 161 Chapter 11 / Highly Limited Access | EWVA

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graphic study of the history of Polish towska’s work, because her 16mm video art still remains to be written). film Wzgledne¸ cechy podobienstwa´ There are specific reasons why I [Relative Similarities] (1979) clearly in- have decided to include several filmdodicates the direction of her further ex- works within the scope of this text. plorations in the sphere of video. These are two projects by Natalia LL and Ewa Partum’s work, TV-Drawings not (1976, Figs. 1a-b). However, what I do Ewa Partum not discuss here are the remaining Ewa Partum (b. 1945) initially studied works by these artists, which are im- at the State Higher School of Visual portant for the art of the 1970s in gen- Arts (PWSSP)distribute in ºódï and later at the eral and for Feminist art in particular Academy of Fine Arts (ASP) in War- (Partum’s Poem by Ewa, Self-Identifi- saw. Partum became an artist of key cation and My Problem Is a Problem of importance for Polish art. She initially aWoman; and Natalia LL’s Consumer carried out performances in the public Art, Post-Consumer Art), because in space, which originated from her in- these works the artists made use of a terest in concrete poetry (scattering film, and not a video camera, a fact cut-out paper letters in various loca- without particular relevance in these tions), and in the mid-1970s went on cases. For the same reasons, I do not to focus above all and nearly exclu- discuss some other projects: works sively on Feminist art and avant-garde by Anna Kutera and Teresa Murak film. from the 1970s, as well as Teresa The aforementioned work, TV- Tyszkiewicz’s films from the 1980s Drawings, sits within a broader global with a heavy Feminist underpinning, current of projects pursued by artists because in these instances the choice with the use of television transmission. of medium does not influence the The artist operated on a TV screen form – the camera is reduced exclu- which displayed a news broadcast sively to the role of a recording device. filled with propaganda delivered by In turn, I do focus on Izabella Gus- the country’s Communist Party lead- EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 162

ers. Using a felt-tip pen, Partum drew window. The manner of using the geometric figures on the screen. Her camera (let us remember that a New simple gesture betrayed a strong po- York City street seen from a car also litical edge, which was not a frequent provides the motif of Nam June Paik’s phenomenon in the Polish art of the work recognised by many as the first 1970s, and something almost absent video art project) clearly suggests an from women’s art. Tapping into the interest in the process of recording, limited possibilities existing under the which is parallel to action and could totalitarian reality, Partum used the easily become a transmission. What private space of her apartment and mattered for Natalia LL was a record laid bare the propaganda message of that was simultaneous to action as the media and their ideologisation. well as everything that the recorded PROOF reality could reveal, owing to such a manner of recording. This way of Natalia LL thinking is close to experiments pur- Two works created by Natalia LL in the sued by many artists who worked with 1970s manifest a common charac- video and provides a reason to as- teristic, which is important for our re- sume that Natalia LL would have used flection – the use of a film camera in a a video camera in Permanent Record way in which a videodo camera could if only, to put it plainly, it had been have been used instead. Natalia LL (b. available to her – such a tool would 1937) graduated from the State have been more adequate in that situ- Higher School of Visual Artsnot (PWSSP) ation than the film camera. in Wroc»aw in 1963. In 1970, alongside Insofar as Permanent Record is a Andrzej Lachowicz and others, she project that sits comfortably in the established the PERMAFO group. Un- main current of Post-Conceptual art in der the same banner, the artists alsodistributePoland during that period, in the ran a magazine and a gallery, which course of time, the artist began to soon became a landmark on the map transpose her experiences onto the of avant-garde art in Poland. The Feminist territory. Natalia LL’s pres- members of PERMAFO wrote in the ence in the field of Feminist art be- group’s manifesto: ‘The photographic trayed a non-linear character. After or film camera lens and photosensi- her return from a scholarship in the tive materials may witness phenom- USA, she attempted to spread Femi- ena that escape us from one second nist ideas in Poland by organising the to the next. [...] we are interested in first exhibition devoted to such issues reality only’.7 In line with that declara- in the country,8 among her other initia- tion, in the early period of her practice, tives. Yet, given the lack of under- Natalia LL concentrated primarily on standing for her activities, she recording the everyday. distanced herself from the problem- The first of the discussed works atic of Feminism in the later period.9 by Natalia LL is Rejestracja perma- Nevertheless, her works, which under- nentna co 1km autostrady E22 [Per- mined the language of Conceptual manent Record of Every 1 km of the analysis that dominated in Poland, E22 Motorway] (1970), which records were and still are read as manifestos the image of a road as seen from a car of Feminist views. I evoke here the 163 Chapter 11 / Highly Limited Access | EWVA

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do not work Impresje [Impressions] (Figs. ent appeal, can nevertheless be com- Figs. 2a-b. Natalia LL, 2a-b) from 1973, which, although re- pared with other video self-portraits, Impresje corded on 16mm film stock, repre- such as, fordistribute instance, the canonical [Impressions], sents the broad tendency of work by the Canadian artist Lisa 1973, 16mm film. Courtesy of ‘autobiographic’ video. Using port- Steele, Birthday Suit with Scars and Natalia LL and able video cameras, women artists Defects (1974). lokal_30 gallery Warsaw. portrayed themselves, often in the in- teriors of their own homes, and made use of their own image to convey meaning. Impressions is Natalia LL’s Jolanta Marcolla self-portrait created probably in her The first woman in Poland to create own apartment. Her face is invisible, four video artworks in 1975 was the but we can see her young, vital body, aforementioned artist Jolanta Mar- which becomes a source of joy, fun, colla, who began her studies at the and pleasure – the body can be State Higher School of Visual Arts touched and squeezed. Impressions (PWSSP) in Wroc»aw in 1970. Along- provides an image of conscious cor- side Zdzis»aw Sosnowski, she estab- poreality – an image that was rare in lished the artistic group Gallery of the art of Poland under Communism. Current Art (Galeria Sztuki Aktualnej). The work is a joyful, spontaneous At the Studio of Visual Activities and story about female subjectivity, a film Structures, run at the Wroc»aw school self-portrait, which, despite its differ- by Professor Leszek Kaƒma, Marcolla EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 164

wrote her dissertation Badania akty- perception, from photography, to film, wnosci´ struktury wizualnej przekazu to television: telew izyjnego dla potrzeb reklamy i [...] The invention of film made it propagandy [Study of the Activity of possible to further broaden the field the Visual Structure of Television of possibilities of reproduction, Transmission for the Needs of Adver- since it was able to represent reality tising and Propaganda] which is in time. That fact further enhanced particularly valuable for our present the belief in the real presence of the reflection. The text was penned on the basis and material of reproduction, basis of the artist’s earlier internship at which is reality. In turn, television a television studio, which allowed her introduced another important char- to discover the principles of the organ- acteristic, namely the temporal si- PROOFisation of work and general methods multaneity of representation and of television production. In the first reality. [...] What is more, television part of her text, Marcolla addressed achieved something hitherto im- the situation at the television centre in possible: it transmits images of re- a critical way. Broadcasts were cre- ality to any place at the same time, 11 ated according to a scheme estab- as if it defeated space. lished many years before, directors Since the beginning of her stud- and scriptwriters diddo not introduce any ies, Marcolla was searching for her new ideas, and set design was char- individual manner of formulating artis- acterised by naive literality – ‘[...] film tic statements; she abandoned paint- editing: consists exclusivelynot in clean- ing and turned to photography and ing the material [...] the editing table film: offers an immense potential of I was exploring the arcane details manipulating reality. Completely un- of the painting workshop, study draw- tapped apart from removing “dirt” anddistributeing, principles of composition and se- “hiss” [...]; the television camera is lection of colours, and it slowly began essentially treated as a static tool of to occur to me that I was stuck in a passive reproduction [...] camera op- closed and ossified world of values, erators are paid for keeping the image because when you stand in front of a in focus’.10 canvas with a paintbrush in your hand, In the second section of her dis- you can only copy someone else’s sertation, where she analysed televi- achievements and make use of some- 12 sion as a mechanical reproduction one else’s experiences. device, Marcolla addressed the ques- These words bring to mind the tions that interested her and used that statement of another woman artist, experience to draw conclusions, who also abandoned painting for film, which were later reflected in her artis- and later for video. Catherine Elwes tic practice. The artist analysed the (b. 1952) reminisced in one of her trust placed by the viewers in interviews about the breakthrough television transmission and the con- moment of her practice: sequences of that situation. She re- I think initially it was an impatience lated it to the broadly described with painting. I needed a more di- question of the credibility of mechani- rect and immediate way of commu- cally generated images for human nicating the stories that were in my 165 Chapter 11 / Highly Limited Access | EWVA

Fig. 3. Jolanta Marcolla, Dimensions, 1975, photo of the backstage. Courtesy of the artist.

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head and that I was trying to get copy of the material, which she never out. For me the difference between received back. What remained is a set film and video was like the differ-doof photographs, which has not only a ence between painting and draw- purely documentary value, but also ing. I also didn’t like the waiting. demonstrates something more than Video was a bit like having a pencil thenot works themselves – it is a record with a rubber. I could put some- of an activity of a woman artist working thing down, and if I didn’t like it I in the 1970s in Poland. The preserved could just rub it out. I started work- photographs show her focussed, ing with performance first, and then looking into thedistribute camera lens to check incorporated video into the per- if everything works or taking part in her formance, then abandoned per- own projects as a participant-per- formance and worked exclusively former. The works were created in a on tape. The only difficulty was how television studio, but they never aired you convinced your audience that it was a female sensibility that was – it wasn’t her intention. In her situation being expressed.13 it was impossible – a person not affili- ated with television society and envi- Marcolla’s reflection bore the fruit ronment, had no opportunity to of four video works created in the stu- broadcast her own tv-show. Mar- dio of Polish Television in 1975: Di- colla’s Dimensions are video-installa- mension 1, 2, 3 and 4 (Fig. 3; Figs. tions on the basis of which we can 4a-b). The videos lasted between 5 analyse the phenomenon of transmis- and 15 minutes, but, unfortunately, sion; their function was rather that of they are known today only from pho- ‘mock-ups’ that illustrated the operat- tographic documentation. Invited to ing principle of television transmis- participate in the IV International Open sion. Encounter on Video at the Centro de Dimension 1 (Fig. 5) featured two Arte y Communication in Buenos Ai- people: the artist and a studio em- res, the artist sent the only existing ployee, sitting on two sides of a wall. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 166

Figs. 4a-b. Jolanta Marcolla, Dimensions, 1975, photo of the backstage. Courtesy of the artist.

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do not distribute

On each side there was a camera and secondary situation to the monitor. a monitor; the camera transmitted the Three elements: video monitor image from behind the wall onto the which transmits the situation, TV monitor. The participants could talk to set which shows a specific pro- each other, but only in a mediated gramme, and a general view of the way. As Marcolla wrote in the script of studio are recorded on video. A the work: situation is created in which two people contact one another only by The video camera transmits that means of cameras and monitors. 167 Chapter 11 / Highly Limited Access | EWVA

Fig. 5. Jolanta Marcolla, Dimension 1, 1975. Courtesy of the artist.

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do not distribute

Camera A, which records the face rates them. The entire setup is re- of one person, transmits it to moni- corded with a video camera.14 tor A1 – available only to the other The other three works were also person. In an analogous manner, based on the phenomenon of trans- camera B transmits the image of mission. In Dimension 2, the artist was the other person to monitor B2. sitting between two monitors which Each of the people has one cam- displayed the transmitted the image era/recording and one moni- of her face; in the following work, a tor/transmitting the image of the monitor displayed the transmitted im- partner’s face/within their field of age of the artist taking photographs of vision. A partition is installed be- the studio, whereas the last work from tween the two people, which sepa- the cycle consisted in a transmission EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 168

to the monitor of the image of the artist film works has been preserved, and, subsequently, all studio employ- Koniec, koniec [The End, the End] ees in her company. (16mm, 1979), and few photographic Several months later, in Novem- works. As Zgraja recalls, the estab- ber 1975, the works were shown at the lishment of the group was a sponta- CAYC. Marcolla was the only Polish neous gesture of several dozen woman artist who participated in that students from the first year of studies presentation.15 The only existing cop- at the ASP in Katowice who felt frus- ies of the tape were never returned to trated by the level of education at the her. Academy and the approach of the teachers to the interest in new media manifested by students. PROOFJadwiga Singer Neither at that time, nor later, did Few materials have been preserved the group write a manifesto. A gesture that document the activity of the Labo- that inaugurated its activity came in ratory of Presentation Techniques the form of an extraordinary exhibition (Laboratorium Technik Prezentacy- held on the staircase of the Acad- jnych, LTP) – a group founded in 1975 emy’s building. Everyone willing to by students of the Academy of Fine take part was welcome to do so, and Arts (ASP) in Katowice.do Film tapes and the make-up of the LTP crystallised photographic documentation have from amongst the participants. The probably survived until today only in leitmotif of the show was portrait, and the archive of one of thenot founding its premise was very open – everyone members of the collective, Grzegorz was supposed to create their own Zgraja (b. 1952). Since the 1980s, work devoted to the topic. The stu- Zgraja has lived in Germany, where he dents created an environment of lectures at the Academy of Fine Artsdistributesorts, annexing for their needs the en- in Braunschweig. The artist was one tire space of the monumental stair- of the four members of the group who case of the school building. formed its core. Besides him, the Characterising the field of inter- Laboratory of Presentation Tech- ests of the LTP, Jadwiga Singer wrote: niques (as Zgraja recalls, the name of The perennial human need to leave the group posed certain difficulties, traces of their activity, the signs of and therefore slightly later the mem- their existence, is a stimulator of bers began to use an abbreviated broadly understood transmission. form: Laboratory TP) comprised Jad- The diversity and the broad spread- wiga Singer, Jacek Singer and Marek ing of the means of mass visual » Ko aczkowski, who were engaged to transmission in the recent decades a varied degree in pursuing activities of our century – these are the fac- with video. According to source mate- tors that have significantly influ- rials – catalogues of the group’s sev- enced the extraordinary eral exhibitions – Jadwiga Singer broadening of the iconosphere. All created a group of video works and artistic disciplines currently borrow penned the majority of texts that de- from that iconosphere, and thus re- scribed the group’s activity. Unfortu- search conducted in the fields of nately, probably only one of Singer’s particular domains of artistic prac- 169 Chapter 11 / Highly Limited Access | EWVA

tice is becoming more or less the There is an interesting story re- same. As a result, also graphic art, lated to the way the group obtained treated as one of the forms of visual access to video equipment. As op- transmission, shares many com- posed to the Film School in ºódï, the mon features with painting, litera- ASP in Katowice did not have broad- ture, photography, printing, film, casting trucks at its disposal. Never- television, video, science and tech- theless, the artists found a possibility nology. to work with video technology. At the These means of formulating artis- beginning of the 1970s, the Silesian tic statements become united particu- University of Technology founded a larly in the field of art, in which we studio equipped with modern de- encounter the use of graphic art, film, vices, such as video cameras with tape recordersPROOF and other means of 2-inch tape. The new entity was sup- conveying information in order to in- posed to modernise the pedagogical vestigate the nature of these means or methods used at the university, yet it the essence of art itself. We made did not fulfil its task in practice – stu- observations concerning the mutual dents and lecturers made little use of influences within different means of the available equipment. The discov- visual transmission (both in the ery of that studio and its resources by sphere of aesthetics and reflectiondo on the members of the LTP unleashed an the language of statements) during immense potential for them. The first the work in the field of graphic art and video works by the group were cre- they compelled us to take an interest atednot at that very studio – as Grzegorz in photography, film and video, which Zgraja recalls, prior to entering the we treat not as a source of inspiration room it was necessary to put on white in graphic work, but as manners, antistatic uniforms in order not to dis- autonomous and equal to graphic art, turb the recordingdistribute process. Such of formulating statements, which offer working conditions did not seem to the possibility to pursue equally effec- generate a situation marked by the tive investigations into the problems characteristics that we consider as the that we want to share with the essence of video (mobility, availabil- 16 viewer. ity, etc.), yet it was in such a realm that Published in the catalogue of the the first (unpreserved) works by Jad- 7th International Graphic Art Biennial wiga Singer came into being – some in Cracow, Singer’s text is one of the of them in collaboration with Jacek few that outline the premises of the Singer. Their works, which we know 17 group’s activity, providing a syn- merely from documentation, are thetic description of the path that led rather typical examples of the interest the LTP members towards new me- of young artists in the phenomenon of dia. Interestingly, it is this catalogue, transmission, especially concerning devoted by principle to a different me- the transmission of the relation be- dium, that today functions as one of tween time and space, as well as the literally a handful of sources on the relative nature of the media-transmit- basis of which we may attempt to ted image. Serving as example are reconstruct Singer’s works created two works by Jadwiga and Jacek using video technology. Singer, both from 1978: Projekt EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 170

instalacji [Project of the Installation] considerable awareness of the new and Dwie relacje [Two Relations]. medium.19 In turn, two known works created exclusively by Jadwiga Singer also in- dicate a different field of her interest. Barbara Kozlowska» They address the problem of the influ- An interesting example of a video work ence of the media on human behav- whose potential Feminist dimension iour. As the artist stated, Rozmowa I can be noticed only now, nearly four and Rozmowa II [Conversation I and decades after its making, is a project II] (1978) were a series of experiments by Barbara Koz»owska (1942–2009). with a record of short arranged situ- Since the 1960s, Koz»owska was a ations that accompany an ordinary PROOF member of the avant-garde art envi- conversation. ‘The presence of the ronment in Wroc»aw. She was a medium – Singer wrote – has an es- painter, performer, organiser and par- sential impact on the way people be- ticipant of many events of significance have and reveals the pressure exerted for the Polish art scene of the period, by the ideology of this means of me- such as the Symposium Wroclaw 70 chanical recording of reality. An ana- [Sypozjum Wroc»aw 70] in 1970. Be- lytical perspective on the means of tween 1972 and 1981, Koz»owska also transmission anddo attempts at reveal- ran the independent art gallery Babel, ing the important characteristics of its in her studio, which functioned as a impact lead to the diminishing and meeting spot for the Wroc»aw avant- neutralising of its ideologicalnot influ- garde. She created many works of ence. It is an operation which results ephemeral character, whose crucial in a perspective on transmission in a component essentially consisted in given medium without stereotypical distributethe artist’s sheer presence, marked and thoughtless reactions – a fact that solely by minute elements (sand therefore liberates imagination’.18 cones on many beaches worldwide, Unfortunately, several years prior formed by the artist and painted with to her death, Jadwiga Singer dis- basic colours within her long-lasting carded her archive. Towards the end project Line, pursued since 1971). of her life, the artist struggled with Akin to the already discussed art- financial and health problems; her ists Marcolla and Singer, Barbara work did not attract interest among Koz»owska experienced a gradual researchers during her lifetime. To- marginalisation. Few of her works be- day, an attempt at exploring her artis- long to public collections, and her ar- tic practice is akin to a peculiar kind of chive is stored almost in its entirety by ‘archaeology’, which essentially con- her husband, the artist and peda- sists in analysing scarce reproduc- gogue Zbigniew Makarewicz. I was tions preserved in a handful of working in Koz»owska’s archive in catalogues. Yet, it does not change 2016, which was when I came across the fact that Singer was one of a few a probably unpublished documenta- Polish women artists working with tion of the artist’s video work. In a video in the 1970s. What is more, her conversation devoted to his wife’s theoretical texts bear testimony to her oeuvre, Zbigniew Makarewicz under- 171 Chapter 11 / Highly Limited Access | EWVA lines that in the 1970s and 1980s they herself as a Feminist artist. In her texts, had no access to video cameras, but Koz»owska usually connected her if the situation had been different, they works with various aspects of grand would have gladly tapped into that narratives in art, eagerly referring to medium. Unfortunately, the availabil- the theory and practice of male artists ity of the equipment was merely inci- as well as scientists (frequently includ- dental. Koz»owska seized such an ing Isaac Newton). Therefore, the per- opportunity in 1978. In May, she pre- sonal aspect of her works was often sented her works at the X Gallery in losing prominence. Nevertheless, her Wroc»aw, which was in possession of seemingly cool analytical Conceptual a video camera. It was then that her works lend themselves very well to work Punkt widzenia [Point of View] interpretation through the prism of came into being.PROOF The artist situated a personal experience and woman- large piece of fabric with a drawing of hood. Point of View, was a work a blue circle in a room. The camera founded on a powerful gesture of ‘ap- transmitted that image to another propriating’ the space around her, de- room, where Koz»owska was carrying fining that space by ‘drawing’ a circle, out a performance. Lying on the floor, and brings to mind the border that the she was moving her arms and legs, artist delineated to separate her pri- creating an invisible circle around her,dovacy and inviolability, by tearing her while her activity was recorded by an- autonomy out of common space. other camera and transmitted to the Koz»owska’s gesture becomes par- room with the drawing of a circle, ticularlynot powerful exactly in the context whose size corresponded to that of her mimicry, which I understand as ‘drawn’ by Koz»owska. the use of the analytical Post-Concep- The work was accompanied by a tual language, de rigeur in Poland at commentary in Koz»owska’s charac- the time. distribute teristic style, which situated the pro- ject within the grand narrative of art history. Among other references, the artist addressed the aesthetic princi- Izabella Gustowska ples of Leonardo da Vinci (study of It seems that amongst Polish women human proportions), evoking in the artists who began to work with video exhibition leaflet the statement that in the 1970s it is Izabella Gustowska the movement of our body expresses (b. 1948) who established the strong- the element of life and a reference to est relationship with the new medium the higher levels of the ‘self’ until the also in the later period of her practice point of one’s own expansion in a and continues to explore it to the pre- vertical and multi-faceted manner in sent day. pursuit of the absolute and its visions Gustowska’s dream was to study (sphere, cube).20 at the Film School in ºódï, yet her Koz»owska renounced Femi- personal situation compelled her to nism,21 yet I would venture a claim that stay in her hometown of Poznañ and she did so in order to protect herself accept an assistant position at the from potential exclusion from the field Faculty of Graphic Art of the State of art, which she risked by defining Higher School of Visual Arts (PWSSP). EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 172

In order to be able to work with new gradually occurred in the young media, she found employment for a women, capturing the differences and year (1972–73) at a state construction similarities between the siblings. Let company, where she made use of the us add that the record of one of the company camera (16mm) to create couple of protagonists came to an her first film. As the artist recalls, at end in dramatic circumstances, when that time she was aware of the me- one of the sisters developed cancer. dium of video and had a theoretical In a nearly prophetic gesture, several knowledge of its potential, but such days before the medical diagnosis, equipment remained unavailable to the artist filmed one of the women as her for the next several years. absent – her silhouette was merely Although, as Gustowska empha- marked on the floor with an outline, PROOFsises, she has a ‘Conceptual back- whereas the other sister, lying on the ground’ and is no stranger to floor next to the outline, was covered constructing works also from the point with pieces of white plaster resem- of view of their form on the basis of bling bandages. analytical premises, the artist devel- A twin sister herself, Gustowska oped her own separate language both incessantly analysed the phenome- in terms of form and content. From the non of twins, choosing for that pur- very beginning, herdo work has revolved pose the adequate medium of video. around the woman’s figure, both in It is noteworthy that due to its specific the general and the individual sense. character, video offers the possibility Her art is saturated withnot autobio- of simultaneous being and seeing graphical motifs, interwoven with uni- oneself, thus building a situation of a versal stories and parables, which split, which may betray a schizo- with hindsight, form an epic narrative, phrenic aspect or, from a different per- where video plays a very importantdistributespective, generate a situation in which role as a medium that is capable of we are encountering our twin image. portraying the delicate matter of Relative Similarities is a work that dreams and memories – the crucial marks the starting point of the artist’s content of Gustowska’s work. long-term and profound reflection. The work Wzgledne¸ cechy podo- Later, in the 1980s and 1990s, bienstwa´ [Relative Similarities] (1979, when Gustowska already enjoyed the Figs. 6a-b-c), which has a particular possibility of using video equipment, relevance for our reflection, is a film her own physicality, doubled and mul- record, yet the choice of the motif tiplied by means of cameras and recorded by the artist turns it into a monitors which displayed transmitted somewhat prophetic project which images, became – as M. Jankowska anticipates the attention that Gus- remarked – the basic aspect of the towska devoted in the following dec- artist’s works, for instance in the com- ades to explorations of the nature of plex project …99…7 dni tygodnia video. The protagonists are three fe- […99…7 Days of the Week] (1987). It male twin siblings whom Gustowska comprised 99 photographic prints recorded in different situations and in showing fragments of Gustowska’s the course of the passing of time. The body, which were transmitted in a se- camera registered the changes that quence to two monitors, interwoven 173 Chapter 11 / Highly Limited Access | EWVA with the documentation of the artist’s everyday life during the eponymous seven days. Gustowska was simulta- neously carrying out a performance in which she used a photographic tray to develop prints that showed her face, presented to the viewers in a dark- ened room (with the monitors and a fluorescent tube hung above the tray as the source of light). Apart from confronting her own image, the artist also used the me- dium of videoPROOF to confront her memo- ries and dreams. In her installations, she usually resigned from the ready forms of monitors and encased them in various ways, thus creating peculiar kinds of objects in which the screen remained the only trace of their origi- nal shape and function. do In the course of time, Gus- towska’s installations adopted monu- mental forms, such as the work Life Is not a Story (2007), built of many primarily tondo-shaped screens, which filled the entire large gallery space with an intense green light. Gustowska wrote distribute about the motifs visible on the screens: It is a collection of many signals resulting from many life situations, from everyday behaviour, to pas- sions, to abstract gestures. These states are punctuated by the pres- ence of an object, installation, inter- vention in space, and above all by the virtual presence of video-pro- jection. It is them that establish the main link between different threads, both those from the past Figs. 6a-b-c. and the present situations. They Conclusion Izabella are an order and an escaping en- Gustowska, ergy of unexpected behaviour. As it In the general awareness and source Wzglêdne cechy literature, the history of early video art podobieñstwa is in life, they take a multi-threaded, [Relative but also episodic course with a var- created by women artists in Poland is Similarities], ied amplitude of clashes and ener- a forgotten and repressed phenome- 1979, 16 mm 22 film. Courtesy of gies. non; if it is ever analysed, it happens the artist. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 174

on the occasion of researching other could be only accessed with extraor- topics. It is a history of disappearing dinary determination. What is more, works and approaches, a history of staying in the field required adopting broken narratives, a history of inter- the ‘camouflage’ of the universal lan- rupted thoughts, a history of access guage of Polish analytical Conceptu- to the camera gained with difficulty, alism, although it is true that some of and finally, a history of forgetting the women artists who worked with women makers of video works. It is cameras in the 1970s (Natalia LL, Ewa impossible to place the blame only on Partum, and Izabella Gustowska) technology, although technology did continued to pursue their practice and not prove helpful. determined their unique language The current research on women’s and approach during that period while PROOFvideo art of the 1970s is akin to ar- tapping into the potential of video and chaeology, consisting almost exclu- film. sively in reconstructing works on the Despite these difficulties and the basis of descriptions and drawings scarcity of sources, the entirety of preserved in catalogues. It is difficult works gathered appear as a slowly to state if the list of works gathered in revealing blank spot. Further analysis this text is completely exhaustive, of the available material and the hope since we cannotdo definitively exclude for finding other works or their traces that other projects were created. Fur- will perhaps offer the possibility to dis- thermore, we are aware of missing cern a connection between the gen- works (Marcolla) or dramaticnot situ- eration of women pioneers of the ations, such as Jadwiga Singer de- medium of video and the subsequent stroying her own archive due to years generation of Polish artists, including of lack of researchers’ interest in her the representatives of critical art work. distribute(Katarzyna Kozyra, Monika Zieli½ska- Internationally, video art was the Mamzeta, and Alicja òebrowska from field where, for the first time in art the 1990s). Unfortunately, their exam- history, female and male artists met ples will likely provide yet another op- on an equal basis (according to portunity to analyse the mechanism of JoAnn Hanley, among others23), si- disappearance of works and artists multaneously pioneering works. In from artistic circulation and aware- turn, in Poland it was a restricted field ness. for women artists and a space which

Endnotes 1. Chris Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art: The Development of Form and Function, (Oxford: Berg, 2006), p. 8. 2. Interviews with the members of the Workshop of the Film Form by Marika Kuïmicz, July 2014 – November 2016. 3. JoAnn Hanley, ‘The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75’, in The First Generation. Women and Video Art 1970–75 (New York: Independent Curators Incorporated, 1993), pp. 9–10. 4. Ewa Toniak, ‘Artystki a PRL’, in Agata Jakubowska (ed.), Artystki polskie (Warsaw: PWN, 2011), p. 96. 5. Ewa Tatar, ‘Feministyczna wystawa,czyli o tym co niemo¿liwe’ (paper delivered at the Women in Polish Transformation 1989–2009 conference, organised by the Adam Mickiewicz University and the Poznañ Branch of the Polish Sociological Association on 28–29 May 2009), from: Ewa Toniak, ‘Konsumpcjonizm wczesnych lat 70. a “Sztuka konsumpcyjna” ’, in Jakubowska, Artystki polskie, p. 105. 175 Chapter 11 / Highly Limited Access | EWVA

6. Ibidem. 7. Jakubowska, in Artystki polskie, p. 330. 8. Ibidem, p. 331. 9. Ibidem. 10. Jolanda Marcolla, Badanie aktywnoœci struktury wizualnej przekazu telewizyjnego dla potrzeb reklamy I propagandy, 1975 (MA dissertation under the supervision of L. Kaƒma, Visual Knowledge Department, Studio of Visual Activities and Structures, PWSSP, Wroc»aw, typescript, Archive of Jolanda Marcolla). 11. Ibidem. 12. Ibidem. 13. Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art, p. 102. 14. Jolanda Marcolla, Scenariusz artystycznych realizacji w zapisie video (I, II), 2 July 1975, Warsaw (typescript, Archive of Jolanda Marcolla). 15. Plastyka, n. 49, 7 December 1975. 16. JadwigaPROOF Singer, ‘Przekaz – sztuka – grafika – KONSTRUKCJA OTWARTA’, in 7. Biennale Grafiki w Krakowie (Cracow, 1978). 17. Ibidem. 18. M»odych Sitkowska, Sztuka m»odych 1975–1980 (Warsaw: MAW, 1986), p. 218. Translated by the author. 19. Singer, ‘Przekaz – sztuka – grafika – KONSTRUKCJA OTWARTA’. 20. Barbara Koz»owska, Punkt widzenia (leaflet), Galeria X, Wroc»aw, May 1978, http://repozytorium.fundacjaarton.pl/ index.php?action=view/object&objid=3662&colid=84&catid=26&lang=pl (accessed 20 February 2017). 21. As Zbigniew Makarewicz recalls, she refused to participate in a show in Sweden because the invitation concerned a Feminist art exhibition. Interview with Zbigniew Makarewicz by Marika Kuïmicz, May 2016. 22. Izabella Gustowska’s website: www.gustowska.comdo (accessed March 2017). 23. Hanley, ‘The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75’, p. 10. not distribute PROOF

do not distribute Chapter 12

Creating Crossroads: European Women’s Closed-CircuitPROOF Video

Chapter 12 / Creating Crossroads Slavko Kacunko

he traditional art historical have been related. My hope is that this tendency to relate women pri- approach will at least avoid some marily to women1 has been a theoretical and ideological pitfalls and T favourite topic of critiquedoconclusions which often emerge from within the field of visual cul- the retro-analytic theorising of (video-) ture studies over the past few art history and (audio-) visual culture. decades. As such, the topic itself has not become a tradition and a point of de- parture for building new theoretical French-speaking Realm and historiographical canons related The first manifestations of CC-video in to deconstruction, post-structuralism, Europe can bedistribute found in France in the and the post-feminist approach linked field of experimental theatre (Jacques to the theorists’ positions being (alleg- Polieri, 1964), which were followed by edly) as complementary to those of Martial Raysse and the neo-avant- Judith Butler and Susan Bordo. An garde-art context in 1967, and then by obvious way to scrutinise both the in- Fred Forest and the nexus of art soci- terdependently grown art history and ologique and video in 1969.3 In fact, the visual culture traditions, with their the beginnings of the artistic engage- respective views to sex and gender, is ment with the medium of video in to set focus on their ex negativo com- France can unequivocally be thought munality – their distance to video art. of as being linked to their quite exten- The latter statement is not entirely sive exploration of video as a socio- true, but a discussion of the related logical phenomenon. This context theoretical positions sits far beyond was already institutionalised through the scope of this paper.2 Therefore, in the founding of Collectif d’art Sociolo- what follows, the focus will be on gique (1974) by Forest and Hervé Fis- closed-circuit video works in Europe, cher and described in Fischer’s conceived of and made by women, Théorie de l’art Sociologique (1977).4 but without disputing the theories to Comparable with the situation in most which the named protagonists (could) of the countries in Western Europe EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 178

and North America, in France in the with the pioneering filmmaker Chris late 60s, video collectives were mostly Marker, taking part in the activist me- short-lived and had political, often dia collective SLON/Vidéo/ISKRA, feminist, agendas and objectives, and created by Inger Servolin and Marker were essentially characteristic of the himself. Hélène Chatelain (playing a first phase of video work in France; a role in Marker’s famous La Jetée, period which Jean Paul Fargier re- 1962) belonged to the wider circle of ferred to as the ‘major epoch of the early vidéastes, which includes the militant video (1969–1978)’.5 Along- work of the Lefebvre, Paule and Gary side video-pioneers like Jean-Christo- Belkin and Patricia Moraz. The French phe Averty, Jean-Luc Godard, Pierre term vidéastes, coined from vidéo and Schaeffer and Alain Jacquier, who cinéaste, reflects particularly well the PROOFworked across the lines of experimen- traditionally close relationship be- tal film, television and music, a tween the two media in France. number of female activists, actors, Significant in this context is a film authors and script writers as well number of male-female couples as performers played significant roles among the artists, a feature of the from the very beginning. early female-made video work ob- Carole Roussopoulos (1945– served in other national contexts as 2009) was well-knowndo for pioneering well.6 To this sub-category to which early documentaries covering the female video artists belong, among women’s liberation movement in others, included couples such as France from 1969. Fromnot 1970, she Schum-Wevers, EXPORT-Weibel, used a Sony Portapak camera and Rosenbach-vom Bruch, Ivekoviƒ-Mar- created a collective called Video Out tinis, Abramoviƒ-Ulay, Minkoff-Ole- together with her husband Paul. She sen, J. & O. D. Benet, Kubisch- Plessi, documented both the work of homo-distributeBeban-Horvatic, Ana Nusa & Sreco sexual authors, like her friend Jean Dragan, and Woody & Steina Vasulka. Genet, and the first public gay rights It is important to remember though, parades in Paris in 1971 (Front Ho- that often this same relationship was mosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire); more or less explicitly regarded as these were followed by a further 150 something of a (later theoretically documentaries. In 1976, together with heavily contested) gender ‘dichot- Delphine Seyrig, Roussopoulos di- omy’. rected the SCUM Manifesto, a docu- The French artist of Italian origins mentary on women’s rights written by Gina Pane (1939–1990) was the best Valerie Solana, and in 1982 she known representative of another im- founded the Simone de Beauvoir portant context of female video usage Audiovisual Centre. Anne Papillault of the time, the French Art corporel, had also been an activist video maker which has found diverse parallels in since the 1960s, becoming well- video art and video activism through- known through her innovative scien- out Europe. tific documentaries and her One of the most significant cul- short-story narrative technique, real- tural events of the ensuing decade in ised mostly with her partner Jean- France was the opening of the Centre Francois Dars. They worked closely Georges Pompidou in Paris. The oc- 179 Chapter 12 / Creating Crossroads | EWVA casion gave the French artist Cather- tion’ and the third ‘the room of decom- ine Ikam (b. 1942) the opportunity to position’. Such (de)fragmentation of make a CC-video installation, which the live image within a CC-video in- was, in several respects unique, stallation is without doubt one of the namely Dispositif pour un parcours most memorable of its kind; it also video [Device for a Video Route] belongs to the art historical genealogy (1980), divided into three individual of the ‘virtual’, ‘augmented’ and parts: Identité I, Identité II and Identité ‘mixed reality’ avant la lettre.Itiscom- III. The third part of the work formed parable both to the (partly less well- the centrepiece of the installation. It known) CC-video installations by presented itself to the visitor as an Peter Weibel, Richard Kriesche, Fried- interior room opening up from the left- erike Pezold, Shirley and Wendy hand side intoPROOF the exhibition room and Clarke, Susan Milano, David Cort, the ending in a corridor. A series of eight so-called Electron Movers from the surveillance cameras grouped to- 1970s, and to those created in the gether and eleven large black and early 1980s by Fabrizio Plessi, Gary white monitors of various sizes (47 Hill, Bernd Kracke, Franziska Megert, cm, 36 cm, 23 cm) awaited the visitor. Daniel Poensgen or also Michel Jaf- In front of this arrangement, a chair frenou, to name but a few. was positioned at a specific spotdo in In Belgium, artists got the oppor- the room on which the visitor could sit. tunity to realise their first video pro- All of the cameras were set up in such jects around 1970. Artists interested in a manner so that they could focus on videonot gathered in the Walloon city of one part of the visitor’s face, but from Liège, which had a favourable geo- different angles. Thus, the visitor graphical location, with important could see the various sections of her connections to both Paris and nearby face scattered around on the different Dusseldorf, wheredistribute the first world-wide monitor screens. video-gallery had been established by In the first two stations of the in- Gerry Schum in April 1969. From 10 to stallation, the expressly stated subject 14 November 1971, the first real mani- of identity in the title was presented festation of ‘video art’ in Belgium and ‘physically askew’ with the visitor be- this part of Europe took place: Guy ing deprived of her expected self- Jungblut, the founder of the gallery view, while in the last room, she was known today as Yellow Now in Liege, overwhelmed with details, but such organised an international exhibition details as allowed her only a fragmen- with the significant title: Propositions tary view of herself. The first descrip- d’artistes pour circuit fermé de télévi- tion of Ikam’s installation comes from sion [Artists’ Propositions for CCTV]. Nam June Paik: In the exhibition cata- A 15-square-metre gallery space, logue, he praised her highly and de- which was to remain inaccessible to scribed the third room as ‘a historic the public, served as a framework/ex- breakthrough’ and ‘the first combina- hibition set-up. A closed-circuit video tion of video art and the art of cryptog- camera was made available, suppos- raphy’.7 Paik called the first room – the edly to transfer footage of the respec- entrance – ‘the room of disinforma- tive installation or performance tion’, the second ‘the room of decep- ensemble directly to a connected tele- EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 180

vision monitor outside the gallery. The mouse’ of the material, and ‘video-re- total list of over sixty participants tes- ality’, as demonstrated in Du bon us- tifies to the decidedly international age de la technologie dans les character of the exhibition, with a con- rapports de force [On the Good Use siderable number of major European of Technology in Power Relation- and American artists; however, fe- ships] (February 1977/1980) in a very male artists like Gina Pane were still humorous manner. The CC-video in- the exception rather than the rule at stallation Cythère (1981) shows the that point. simple functional-technical principle Muriel Olesen (b. 1948) and upon which the swing application Gérald Minkoff (1937–2009) belong to mentioned above is based: A black the first generation of artists experi- and white wall-drawing of a swing (a PROOFmenting with video as a medium in the female face and the outline of an ear) French-speaking part of Switzerland was recorded by a CC-video camera and in Europe in general. They had attached to a real swing. There was a already started collaborating artisti- screen on a pedestal under the cam- cally in 1967. From 1970 onwards, era, on which the video footage was they realised CC-video installations, transmitted, changing as it did ac- which seemed to be the most suitable cording to the movement of the swing. for the disclosuredo of the ‘tautological’ This, together with some other works nature of the medium.8 Playing with by Olesen dealing in a formal-func- video palindromes and anagrams re- tional manner with the balance of im- mained one of their preferrednot formal- ages and their relation to the semiotic means, implemented by correspondingly changing content, Minkoff. At the same time, certain emphatically transported ‘subjectivity’ characteristic elements emerged in – highlighted by the repeated ‘je’ in the the individual work of Muriel Olesen asdistributetitles – i.e. the comparatively unstable well. One of the most prominent was relation between the subjective and the swing motif, since the Rococo pe- the objective in the artistic fantasy riod a popular motif in paintings, congruent with the comparatively un- which was linked with eroticising sub- stable video constructions and their ject matter. However, in Olesen’s in- media correlatives.9 Apart from the terpretation, the swing was connected stated implications of the swing, refer- to (maintaining one’s) balance in a ence to fertility rituals was also evident wider sense as well, so offering a par- here as a completion of a complex allel to the medium-specific applica- network of equalisations and confron- tion of the extremely ‘unstable’ tations between the artist, her self- (‘female’) medium of video. The motif portraits, the medium, the changing of Kythera, the ‘island of lovers’, which images and the spectator.10 had also become very popular in French Rococo paintings since Wat- teau, was also implemented by Ole- English-speaking Realm sen on several occasions in their Under the title Sky TV, one of the first CC-video arrangements. Further- verifiable concepts for a CC-video in- more, their works were also charac- stallation in Europe originated in 1966, terised by the ‘game of cat and although it was not simultaneously 181 Chapter 12 / Creating Crossroads | EWVA performed, and was first published in casino including such formalities as the exhibition catalogue: Yoko at In- checking guests’ attire (jeans were dica – Unfinished Paintings and Ob- not allowed) and the procedure of sell- jects by Yoko Ono, Indica Gallery in ing chips for the game. A TV monitor London in November 1966. The fol- was positioned centrally so that the lowing designation can be found players, the audience and the organ- there: ‘020: Sky TV,1966(Furniture isers could all watch live footage of the Piece) A closed-circuit TV set up in the two CC-video cameras recording the gallery for looking at the sky’. This players of the ‘Power Game’ on the installation is part of a series of Ono’s table. Lijn described it in the following (b. 1933) works that deal with the sky; manner: ‘We used the CC-video to considering its form and technology, allow people who were not permitted it must bePROOF clearly ascribed to the art- into the room to view the Game, much ist’s conceptualism, within which the in the same way that TV allows us to ‘work’s’ realisation plays a secondary see the workings of parliament, but we role.11 cannot actually participate as play- The rapidly growing video pro- ers.13 The role of the Drag Queens duction by female artists in the follow- that acted as waitresses and croupi- ing period actually generated ers was based on the idea that ‘those proportionately fewer CC-video instal-dowho serve power are never who they lations, but among them was the CC- seem.’14 video installation/event Pray/Prayer by In the UK, the participants of the Susan Hiller, which had already been 1975notSerpentine Show, organised on realised in 1969. As she described it: the initiative of David Hall,15 set an ‘The intention of this work was to cre- important precedent, which was fol- ate a situation where the use of video lowed up the next year by the founding would modify participants’ social be- of London Videodistribute Arts (LVA: from 1988 haviour; this was done by “rewarding” to 1994; London Video Access; since people for actively participating in the 1994: London Electronic Arts, and group (e.g. talking to others) or alter- later LUX). Video tapes, video per- natively rewarding them for passive formances and video installations behaviour (listening to others) or by formed part of the artistic practices randomly distributing the attention of that were specified in the first cata- the camera. I assumed that a positive logue from 1978.16 In 1977, two video value would be given to being “on tapes made by Hall were presented at camera” and a negative value to being documenta 6 in Kassel, and video in- “ignored” by the camera.’12 stallations by Tamara Krikorian, Stuart Power Game was the title of a Marshall and Stephen Partridge were CC-video installation and perform- shown in the Musée d’Art Moderne in ance that the New York-born Liliane Paris in September of the same year. Lijn designed together with Alistair The international exhibition Video Art Mackintosh and was shown as part of ’78 organised by Stephen Partridge in the Arts Festival for Democracy in the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum Chile, organised by the Royal College in Coventry in May 1978 marks an- of Art, on 24 October 1974. The entire other important date in the UK’s exhi- event simulated the atmosphere of a bition history. This exhibition included EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 182

video installations, tapes and per- came about after the 1978 Coventry formances by numerous British and exhibition20 supported this tendency, international artists.17 The exhibition in the light of the frequent application About Time: Video, Performance and of video quotes and ‘split information’; Installation by Women Artists, initiated on the other hand, it paved the way for by a group of feminist artists and or- the artistic exploration of the ‘pres- ganised by Catherine Elwes, Rose ence’, often immanent in CC-video Garrard and Sandy Nairne from Octo- installations. In this context, A. L. Rees ber to December 1980 at the Institute cites the influence of Mary Kelly and for Contemporary Art in London and Susan Hiller, and almost certainly La- in the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol, was can’s ‘mirror phase’ too, on artists like the first event of its kind in the UK to Tamara Krikorian, Judith Goddard, PROOFfollow up directly on its forerunners in Katharine Meynell, Mona Hatoum, the USA. The exhibition presented the Jeremy Welsh, Catherine Elwes or works of Susan Hiller, Catherine El- Breda Beban and Hrvoje Horvatic as wes, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Rose Garrard, well as Tina Keane.21 Roberta Graham, Tina Keane, Alex The CC-video work of the trained Meigh, Marceline Mori and Jane artist and painter Tina Keane (b. 1946) Rigby. A visit to the UK by Dara Birn- has an important role at this point and baum in 1982 anddo the presentation of will be presented here. Keane already her new video tapes with the applica- began to work as a multimedia artist tion of the ‘staccato’ cut technology in the late 1960s, at first with light had substantial influence onnot a whole shows and light organs in the context generation of British video authors, of and influenced by Arts Lab in Lon- representatives of the so-called don. In the early 1970s, she became ‘Scratch Video’.18 At the same time, a member of the artistic community. this heralded a decline in CC-videodistributeThe Women’s Workshop expanded installations, which would also be felt the spectrum of her interests so that across the European continent during she became politically engaged, tak- the 1980s. ing part in collective artistic projects, In a later retrospective, both Sean programmatically and chronologically Cubitt and Julia Knight noted a de- parallel to the corresponding develop- valuation of the media-specific poten- ments in the USA.22 Keane had al- tials of the medium of video whilst ready begun to work with video and reporting an increase in the develop- other electronic media by 1975, inte- ment of more narrative tendencies. grating her young daughter Emily into This tendency ran counter to the phi- her feminist works from the very be- losophy and strategy of the first gen- ginning. This not only formed a ‘con- eration of British video artists. Based tent-related component’ that offered a on the ‘superficial resemblance to a background for the frequent engage- number of other media’,19 it did not ment with childhood, identity and seem to be particularly beneficial to play;23 but also, the (CC-video) per- further research into the interactive formance became, in this context, one possibilities of CC-video installations. of the artist’s preferred means of ex- The (somewhat delayed) recognition pression, not least because ‘ “of the of multi-monitor arrangements that moment quality”, feedback properties 183 Chapter 12 / Creating Crossroads | EWVA and the fact that performance “pro- German spoken realm vided women with a significant tool for Austrian female artists played a pio- discovering the meanings of being a 24 neering role in the artistic exploration woman”’. Keane exhibited her first of CC-video as well. The inter-media CC-video installation in the Serpen- artistic practices, including the so- tine Gallery in London in 1978: called expanded cinema, proved to Swing/Alice through Reflection con- be fertile ground for later develop- sisted of an iron construction with ments. On 10 and 11 April 1969, a three swings, a hidden CC-video group exhibition entitled Multi Media 1 camera in front of the swing in the was held in the gallery Junge Genera- middle and three monitors. The par- tion in Blutgasse in Vienna, where Pe- ticipant stood in the middle and could ter Weibel realised his first control thePROOF running live image on all 25 closed-circuit video installation and monitors. performance, as well as his first vide- The parental experience, espe- otape, entitled Audience as Exhibition, cially the childhood memories that the or Audience Exhibited, which was artist repeatedly re-experienced as a screened over two connected gallery mother, also shaped the CC-video in- spaces. In the first room, the artist stallation and performance Playpen interviewed visitors in front of a run- from 1979, in which Keane showeddoning video camera operated by his video footage of girls and women then-partner VALIE EXPORT (b. aged between 6 months and 80 years 1940). The video footage was broad- giving their own performance in a castnot simultaneously to a monitor in the playpen; visitors got involved using second space, making the visitors mirror camera manipulations. In the themselves the ‘exhibits’ of the exhibi- early 1980s, Keane began to work for tion. In her evaluationdistribute of the situation the British Council alongside her per- in the 1960s, the artist VALIE EXPORT formances and other artistic projects covers the causal gamut from ex- at St. Martin’s College of Art. Over the panded cinema to ‘virtual reality’.27 years, the artist modified her views on She describes the CC-video installa- the range of feminism, not least due tions, demonstrations and perform- to its assimilation into the existing so- ances as decisive, ‘almost cial structures, and continued her paradigmatic constellation[s]’ be- work with an enthusiastic exploration cause the of ‘Cyberspace’, more or less parallel to the theoretical paradigm shift that simple setup aptly demonstrated Donna Haraway made with her Cy- the splitting of reality through me- borg Manifesto. Keane’s later MA the- dia images […] This triangle of sis about the concept of the camera, visitor and monitor post-human dealt, among other (closed-circuit) is an almost para- things, with the French artist Orlan. digmatic constellation of the early The technological development as a video projects, which create a me- potentially liberating force also re- dia-generated perceptive space, a mained at a meta-level in Tina media space that can be seen as a Keane’s art in the late 1980s (Escala- wiring of spaces of perception, tor [1988]) and 1990s.26 meaning and imagination and EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 184

which introduce a mode of repre- From 1971, she recorded her actions sentation in which the picture is not with the video camera, examining par- primarily the place of a repre- ticularly feminine body language as a sentation, but rather a place where system of almost abstract signs, the media system (in this case, which allows and demands concen- video) gets entangled with real trated and intensive consideration of space and real time, involving the the traits and changes of the corre- 28 viewer in this feedback effect. sponding (video) forms.29 Apart from Since her public action Tapp – the video installations, where she und Tastkino [Tapp and Touch Cin- used previously recorded video tapes ema] (1968, realised together with Pe- (from 1975), Pezold took it upon her- ter Weibel), one of the outstanding self to change the media-political PROOFexamples of expanded cinema, VALIE structures of television.30 EXPORT has developed a form of Germany’s outstanding role and feminist actionism through her artistic significance in our context becomes and theoretical work. Besides her increasingly evident from the mid- (CC-video) performances, VALIE EX- 1970s onwards. One of the first Ger- PORT realised several CC-video in- man artists to consistently work with stallations between 1973 and 1978 the medium of video was Ulrike with a mutual ‘demonstrationdo charac- Rosenbach (b. 1943). Although she ter’, notwithstanding their different did not realise any CC-video installa- forms. This applies similarly to the CC- tions per se, her most famous works video installations Triangelnot(1974), could neither have been planned nor Inversion (Kreis-Linie) (1976), Negativ- realised without this technology; as PositivTransfinit (Ineinander Ab- such they serve as prime examples of bildung) (1977, with Peter Weibel) and the efficiency of its implementation. to the group of four CC-video installa-distributeAs a student in Joseph Beuys’ master tions entitled Interrupted Movement – class at the Düsseldorf Academy, she Zeitlücken – Raumspalten [Gaps in was encouraged to start working on Time – Cracks in Space] (1973): Tri- her own with video after seeing the angel demonstrated a perspective exhibition Project ’71 in the Kunsthalle synthesis in the ‘video room’ as it oc- Düsseldorf in 1971 which included curred, for example, in Peter Weibel’s several American video works. Her Epistemische Videologie (I) (1974) at first videos were created in 1972. They the same time, with additional ma- were usually shorter pieces dealing nipulation (the mirror-inverted monitor intensively with her own role as a image), which had unexpected con- woman in society and should be un- sequences for the visitors who wanted derstood as (partly ironic-sarcastic) to ‘have their images displayed’. The self-portraits.31 During this brief but tension field between the formal rigour important autobiographic phrase, and the engaged, ‘existential’ and al- Rosenbach developed a critical and legedly ‘essentialist’ contents was historic awareness, soon to be re- thus analysed in a versatile manner. flected in her video actions. It was Vienna-born Friederike Pezold (b. above all the CC-video performances 1943) made the female body her main Glauben Sie nicht, dass ich eine Ama- subject, starting in the late 1960s. zone bin [Don’t Think That I’m an 185 Chapter 12 / Creating Crossroads | EWVA

Amazon] (1975, 15 min.) and Reflex- ionen über die Geburt der Venus [Re- flections on the Birth of Venus] (1976/78, 15 min.), both later re-de- signed for video tape,32 which brought her international acclaim. In the former work, Rosenbach is seen shooting fifteen arrows at a reproduc- tion of Madonna im Rosenhang by Stefan Lochner. The artist’s face is also recorded with a second camera and is crossfaded so that the arrows also simultaneouslyPROOF ‘hit’ her on the video tape.33 The latter Venus video used a life-sized projection of Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus as a background in front of which the artist turns around on her own axis in a black and white leotard, at times merging visually with the artwork. Thedo formal solution of the interlocking and crossfading of one’s own body with specifications and examples from art not history is one of the means of film and video language that is continuously used by artists. The specific context of installations the possibilities of medi- Fig. 1. Hanna feminist art and the inherent work with distribute Frenzel, Under ated fragmentation of the body and Pressure, 1983, the distribution of gender roles is also materiality. The topic of voyeurism oc- photo of the found at the same time in the works cupied the artist in several works as performance. Courtesy of the of, for example, VALIE EXPORT or the well, like for instance, in the CC-video artist. American Hermine Freed (b. 1940) installation and performance Dirty (Art Herstory, 1974). Eyes (1980). This consisted of a textile The self-portrait, as probably the object with a monitor, which was ex- ‘most intensive image of society, in hibited on the first floor of the Kun- which it was produced’,34 became for stverein Munich. On the monitor, the Ulrike Rosenbach a radical concept of audience could watch the live footage dealing critically with both history and of what was happening on the second the present. The consciously detailed floor, where there was a CC-video and slow recording processes in her camera positioned in a corner of the videos was also a reaction to the usual room, with a glass plate, flour and a custom associated with the medium light as well as the inscription ‘dirty of television of rapid ‘information’ ex- eyes’ on the wall. In the CC-video change and the accompanying del- installation Walking on Yourself (1984) uge of images. Hammann staged a situation in which During the 1980s, Barbara Ham- the observer had to step on her own mann (b. 1945) explored in her video live video image. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 186

Hanna Frenzel (b. 1957) realised on a long wooden table facing each several impressive and psychologi- other with a monitor in front on each cally effective CC-video perform- side. Both artists’ actions, which fo- ances in Munich in the early 1980s by cused on the challenge of mediated using semi-transparent elastic rubber communication means, were trans- membranes. The video performance mitted directly onto the monitor, so Von Innen nach Außen [From the In- that the audience could see and com- side to the Outside] was about a tan- pare both artists and the video part- gible demonstration of inner ners on their ‘duel table’. The conditions and conflicts related to the audience had to keep turning their immediate environment. Frenzel com- heads from side to side, like in a ping- mented on it as follows: ‘I show in my pong game. The video installation, the PROOFown inner space, my images of con- performance and the concert Tam- strictions, resistances and fears and I Tam represented the characteristic try to overcome them. I express my mode of operation of the artistic duo, sensation in this space, at this mo- out of which emerges a clearly defined ment, literally with my hands and conception of the potential of video as feet’.35 In the CC-video performance a live transmission medium. Kubisch Under Pressure (1983, Fig. 1), again wrote: the artist used ado transparent rubber The video camera is an autono- membrane, this time as a trampoline mous element for us and not a and filmed using a CC-video camera technical means serving only as a and a projector. not means of reproduction. We try to Christina Kubisch (b. 1948) stud- use the camera as if it were a third ied music and composition before person acting as a filter to the audi- giving up a career as a flautist and ence and maintaining the tension interpreter in 1974 and turning to artis-distributebetween us. And so, the video be- tic work with other media. Kubisch comes an integrated and indispen- realised a series of works in collabo- sable part of our performance. It’s ration with the Venice-based artist important to say here, by the way, Fabrizio Plessi. Born in 1940 in Italy, that you can document a live event, 36 Plessi had been working almost exclu- but never repeat it. sively with water since the early 1970s, achieving worldwide success with his elaborate video installations. The CC- South-East European realm video installation and performance One of the most conspicuous peculi- entitled Tam-Tam, designed collabo- arities of the earliest inter-media and ratively by Kubisch and Plessi and video scene in Italy was without a performed several times, was a com- doubt its decentralised video produc- mission from the Folkwang Museum tion and documentation sites. The Essen, and can be considered a Galleria d’Arte del Cavallino in Venice real/medially presented dialogue be- was an important production site tween the two artists. It was enacted where projects were already using using two CC-video cameras and video equipment in the late 1960s. monitors and an elongated building The release of the Sony Portapak on construction. Kubisch and Plessi sat the Italian market in 1972 led to wide- 187 Chapter 12 / Creating Crossroads | EWVA

Figs. 2a-b. Sanja Ivekoviƒ, Monument, 1976, stills from video. Courtesy of the artist.

PROOF

do not distribute

spread activity that was not just re- between Italian and Yugoslav artists stricted to Italy, but also contributed to entitled Identitet = Identità [Identity] the realisation of early and important took place in 1976, organised by the video projects in, among other galleries of the City of Zagreb, the places, neighbouring Yugoslavia. Ethnographic Museum of Istria from In Motovun, a historic town in Pazin and the Gallery del Cavallino of Croatian Istria, an important meeting Venice. The director of the Gallery del EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 188

Cavallino, Paolo Cardazzo, brought a ued her systematic exploration of the Portapak camera, a monitor and impact of modern (mass) media on video tapes, and these were used by the ‘official’ image of women and their local artists to create their first video day-to-day life. The continually cre- works, along with those of the visiting ated stereotypes emerging between Italian artists;37 in all, a total of twenty the ‘private’ (the artist herself as the video works were produced. The local reference person) and public images critics at that time, such as Vera Hor- (advertisements etc.) became for vat-Pintariƒ, Ješa Denegri, and Mari- Ivekoviƒ, a projection screen for the jan Susovski, saw the significant engaged artistic elaboration of ‘socio- potential of the video medium being ideological implications of the mass its suitability to mediate an ‘unmedi- media’, on the one hand, and ‘perfor- PROOFated reality analysis’ and to provide a mative structures and social codes of ‘check’ of reality. This conviction was cultural activities’, on the other.38 due mainly to the related technology These became manifest in the mid- of direct audio-visual ‘Closed-Circuit’ 1970s in a number of photo series transmissions. The early video works (e.g. Double Life, 1975), before the of Sanja Ivekoviƒ and Dalibor Martinis artist moved into the medium of video, mainly involved the registering of their making an important statement with a own actions, whichdo were specially de- successful site-specific confrontation signed for video-recording. The lack of the private and the public in her of any editing equipment or sophisti- CC-video performance Inter Nos cated graphics or other specialnot effects (1977): the overall environment con- by no means proved to be a disadvan- sisted of two connected rooms with a tage – it became one of the features CC-video camera and a monitor (with- of the strong and widely acknow- out sound), and an entrance area in ledged conceptualism in that part ofdistributewhich the direct video transmission Europe. for the audience took place. The artist In the CC-video performance was in one (inaccessible) room for Monument (realised in Motovun, Figs. about an hour, while the second room 2a-b) Ivekoviƒ (b. 1949) reversed the remained open to individual visitors. traditional ‘male’ gazing at a woman The artist (inter)acted with these visi- and the woman being conceived as tors one-by-one, by, for example, an ‘observed object’ in a symbolic kissing or stroking her/his live image and formal-technical manner by on the screen, thereby putting into video-technically ‘scanning’ and re- effect a range of non-verbal commu- cording her male partner (Martinis) nicative possibilities. While both par- from his toes to the top of his head in ticipants in the interaction only saw the one slow CC-tracking shot. This live other person, the audience on the out- action was documented as a video side could only see the video image tape, as were other actions of both of the individual visitor together with artists. his/her (re)actions. After studying at the Academy of Sanja Ivekoviƒ also designed nu- Visual Arts in Zagreb from 1968 to merous CC-video, CC-installation, 1971 and making her first videos in the CC-performance and CC-tape-con- first half of the 1970s, Ivekoviƒ contin- cepts that remained unrealised. From 189 Chapter 12 / Creating Crossroads | EWVA a formal-technical perspective, they the Netherlands since 1976 and who, are sometimes reminiscent of con- in her early career, gave a series of temporary works by Michel Jaffrenou art-historically significant (video) per- or earlier ones by Ernst Caramelle and formances together with Frank Uwe Jacques Lizène, demonstrating Ivek- Laysiepen, also known as Ulay (b. oviƒ’s interest in the medium-specific 1943). Abramoviƒ became a crucial investigation of communicative and figure of the second half of the 1970s, gender-specific, as well as social, paving the way for an ’ “intermittent” structures. history of video installations’42 in Ser- Apart from the international ex- bia with her CC-video performances. change,39 it was the generation of In a similar way to how Trbuljak used conceptual artists in Yugoslavia in the Willoughby Sharp’s video equipment 1970s whomPROOF especially favoured the in Zagreb,43 in Belgrade, Marina Abra- introduction of new media technolo- moviƒ used the Dutch group Video gies into the art context of the time and Heads’44 equipment during the who determinedly promoted them. group’s visit there in 1975, in order to Their rebuttal of the modernist realise and present her first video in- ‘puri(tani)sm’40 and their correspond- stallation Freeing the Voice, in which ing openness to hitherto untested ar- the artist acted in front of a CC-video tistic means of expression of a ratherdocamera in one room, while her live ‘immaterial’ and ‘unstable’ character image could be followed by the audi- can be compared to similar tenden- ence in another room. cies in the UK, Poland, Italy, Spain, notIn Slovenia, the first genuine Austria and other European countries. signs of artistic work with video may The art institutions in Eastern Europe be found in the context of the concep- gradually started to make up both the tualist group OHO (1966–1971) and in acute and chronic lack of available the period afterdistribute 1970 within the so- video technology from the second half called ‘transcendental conceptual- of the 1970s onwards. In the former ism’. The Slovene video pioneers like Yugoslavia of the seventies, there Ana Nuša Dragan (1943–2011) and were very few (female) ‘Video Artists’ Sre o Dragan (b. 1944) realised occa- with their own video equipment. Even sional CC-video installations, mostly the major institutions like Studentski after 1976. Ten years after completing Kulturni Centar in Belgrade and Stu- their first video tape (1969), they real- dentski Centar in Zagreb did not re- ised their first CC-video performance ceive their first video cameras and and installation entitled Masculin- recorders until 1973 or later.41 At the Feminin for the exhibition Trigon in same time, due to the relatively open Graz. It was an installation which borders, on-going dialogue with art- emerged out of an action consisting ists and institutions from abroad led to of the application of different pig- a relatively early development of video ments to their bodies. At the end, the concepts, including CC-video ar- pigments’ materiality was converted rangements. In Serbia, the concep- almost seamlessly into its media tual art scene of the 1970s included equivalent. The CC-video installation the internationally acclaimed Marina We’re Going into this Time, which the Abramoviƒ (b. 1946), who has lived in couple performed three years later, EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 190

used a similar ensemble, but consist- and the analogous electronic possi- ing this time of graphics and photo- bilities of image manipulation for the graphs, a CC-video camera, and a New York (State) video art scene, monitor as well as a slogan written which was soon flourishing nicely. To- over the door – a ‘tautologic’ juxtapo- gether with Andres Mannik, Vasulkas sition of real and media object levels opened The Electronic Kitchen in demonstrating a media-critical ap- 1971 at the Broadway Central Hotel in proach.45 New York, later The Kitchen Center for At this point, it is worth mention- Video, Music And Dance. This initially ing that the first artistic experiments formed part of the so-called Mercer Art with electronic cameras in an installa- Center, before the gallery moved to tion and performance context were Broome Street and finally to Chelsea PROOFbeing conducted in America in similar in West 19th Street. The Vasulkas’ numbers and varieties and at around move to Buffalo in 1976 brought a the same time as in Europe. The fol- similarly fruitful and creative period for lowing digression will look at a few of the two artists, who, in collaboration the important and concrete links be- with Don MacArthur and later with Jef- tween women´s closed-circuit video frey Schier, developed the Digital Im- art in Europe and the USA. age Articulator, which allowed the do digital generation and manipulation of video footage in real-time. Steina’s Euro-American realm multiple CC-video installation, entitled The Knokke Film Festivalnot (Knokkele- Machine Vision (1976), a complex in- Zoute) in Belgium provided an impor- stallation formation consisting of four tant node for the early development of individual installations with and with- experimental film and video art in out CC-video components, originates Europe in general, and in particular,distributefrom this time. One particular installa- the exhibition The experimental video tion, Allvision, represented the central 5 exhibit (26 December 1973 – 5 May element: with the help of a mirror ball 1974). It was the first group exhibition and the two CC-video cameras aimed of Canadian and American video art- at each side, Allvision was able to ists in Europe and was organised by maintain a permanent live video sur- Gerald O’Grady and hosted by Jac- veillance of the surrounding space. ques Ledoux, the director of the Royal This ‘machine vision’ represented by Belgian film archive. Participants in- the live video camera footage could cluded Nam June Paik, Shirley and be simultaneously watched by visitors Wendy Clarke, Stan Vanderbeek, Ed via two connected monitors. Steina Emshwiller, Peter Campus and Vasulka explained her own vision of Woody and Steina Vasulka. the piece: At quite an early stage, Steina Allvision signifies the awareness of Vasulka (b. 1940) and Woody Vasulka an intelligent, yet not human vision. (b. 1937) introduced their Northern The act of seeing, the image and Eastern European contexts and source, and the kinetic resources competences to New York (State), to come from the installation itself, further develop both the infrastruc- choreographed and programmed tures for the then young video art form by the cyclical nature of its me- 191 Chapter 12 / Creating Crossroads | EWVA

chanical performance [...] I wanted the eastern and western blocks re- to create a vision that can see the mained a decisive political and eco- whole space all the time [...] You nomic factor in political as well as are not in charge of the space; it is technological and infrastructural not your choice – it is somebody terms. Throughout the 1970s and else’s. It was a challenge for me to 1980s, European women’s closed-cir- create a space that would not deal cuit video experiments created impor- with the idiosyncracies of human tant crossroads for the future. 46 vision. Retrospectively can be safely con- Apart from her artistic work, Ste- cluded that they helped to increase ina also participated in the inaugura- and enrich the understanding of tion of other early video-production, video’s potential for boosting an im- -distributionPROOF and -reception contexts mense variety of its societal applica- in New York, which were relevant for tions and open up new routes to future her fellow women artists throughout solutions for its sovereign and innova- the early 70s and for the further devel- tive usage in creative and everyday opment of the women’s video net- media praxis. works in the United States. At the same time, the division of Europe intodo Endnotes 1. Gisela Breitling, Die Spuren des Schiffs in den Wellen – eine autobiographische Suche nach den Frauen in der Kunstgesichte (Berlin: Oberbaum, 1980). not 2. In Spring 2018, an extensive anthology of the women video art theorists in the German-spoken realm was issued, edited by the author of this chapter. – Vol. 1.: Slavko Kacunko (ed.), Theorien der Videokunst. Theoretikerinnen 1988–2003 (Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2018), with 22 contributions from Edith Decker-Phillips, Inga Lemke, Karin Bruns, Claudia Richarz, Gerda Lampalzer, Christiane Fricke, Nicolettadistribute Torcelli, Söke Dinkla, Annette Hünnekens, Claudia Rosiny, Ursula Frohne, Verena Kuni, Katharina Gsöllpointner, Yvonne Volkart, Barbara Engelbach, Barbara Büscher, Katja Albers, Lydia Haustein, Sabine Flach, Sabine Himmelsbach, Anja Osswald and Martina Dobbe. – Vol. 2.: Slavko Kacunko (ed.), Theorien der Videokunst. Theoretikerinnen 2004–2018 (Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2018), with 19 contributions from Irene Schubiger, Änne Söll, Inke Arns, Katharina Gsöllpointner, Yvonne Spielmann, Katharina Ammann, Christiane Fricke, Sylvia Martin, Martina Dobbe, Sigrid Adorf, Stephanie Sarah Lauke, Kathrin Becker, Sabine Maria Schmidt, Katja Kwastek, Marion Thielebein, Anke Hervol, Tabea Lurk, Franziska Stöhr and Eva Wattolik. 3. Art sociologique. Video, Coll. 10/18, UGE Paris 1977. 4. Full text PDF in French is available online: http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/fischer_herve/theorie_art_ sociologique/theorie_art_sociologique.pdf (accessed 18 February 2017). 5. Jean-Paul Fargier, ‘Geschichte der Videokunst in Frankreich’, in Videofest 93 (Berlin: Medienoperative, 1993), p. 96. 6. Cf. Kunstforum International, v. 107, April–May 1990. 7. Nam June Paik, ‘Vidéocryptography’ in Pierre Restany (ed.), Catherine Ikam (Nimes: Chapelle des Jésuites, 1991). 8. See: Wulf Herzogenrath and Edith Decker (eds.), Video-Skulptur retrospektiv und aktuell 1963–1989 (Cologne: DuMont, 1989), p. 207; Jacques Monnier-Raball, ‘Video in Switzerland. Seeing to See’, in René Payant (ed.), Vidéo, International Video Conference (Montreal: Artextes, 1986), p. 107. 9. The subject of embarkment on Kythera was taken on again symbolically with grouped parts of trees in A Cythère [Pour Cythère], je l’aime, il m’en balance (1983), while La vidéo, je m’en balance (1984) represents a sort of ‘synthesis’ and culmination of this group of works by Muriel Olesen using eight swings, two slide projectors, four CC-video cameras and four monitors. 10. Cf. Herzogenrath and Decker, Video-Skulptur retrospektiv und aktuell 1963–1989, p. 226. 11. It is Ono’s only video installation that was – as far as is verifiable – set up in the Museet for Samtidskunst in EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 192

Roskilde in Denmark for the first time in 1992, catalogued as ‘Nr. 50: SKY TV, 1966’ (Yoko Ono: Color, Fly, Sky, Museet for Samtidskunst, Palaet Roskilde, 1992). A CC-video camera that was attached on a wall not far from a window of the gallery recorded the sky through the open window; the live image of the sky over Roskilde was transmitted on a monitor that was placed on a tripod in a corner of the exhibition room. C.f. statement by Ono: ‘I would like to see the sky machine on every corner of the street instead of the coke machine. We need more skies than coke’ (23 January 1966, Courtesy Archive Jon Hendricks, New York). Also included in her Grapefruit-art book (editions: 1964, 1970; 2013) is a Sky Event for John Lennon (Spring 1968), as well as other Sky Events; Sky TV is however not included. Apart from the aforementioned catalogue and Ono´s Notes for Indica Show, 1966 (Courtesy Archive Jon Hendricks, New York), the piece was not mentioned at the time; neither in the personal notebook of the artist for the Indica-Show nor in the newspaper-reviews then. This is why the following statement by Chrissie Iles may need revaluation: ‘In 1966, Yoko Ono exhibited Sky TV at the Indica Gallery in London. A video camera was placed outside the building, relaying a continuous live image of the sky onto a television set inside the gallery. The work also existed as a written instruction, or score.’ C.f. Chrissie Iles, ‘Between the Still and Moving Image’, in Into the Light (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art/Harry N. Abrams, 2001), p. 59. 12. Susan Hiller, e-mail to the author, 2002. 13. Liliane Lijn,PROOF e-mail to the author, 2002. 14. Ibidem. 15. Board included Roger Barnard, David Critchley, Brian Hoey, Tamara Krikorian, Pete Livingstone, Stuart Marshall, Stephen Partridge and Jonnie Turpie. 16. Julia Knight, ‘In Search of an Identity: Distribution, Exhibition and the “Process” of British Video Art’ in Julia Knight (ed.), Diverse Practices. A Critical Reader on British Video art (Luton: University of Luton Press, 1996), p. 219. 17. British artists included Kevin Atherton, Roger Barnard, Lindsay Bryton, David Critchley, Keith Frake, David Hall, Brian Hoey, Tamara Krikorian, Stuart Marshall, Alex Meigh, Marceline Mori and Stephen Partridge; international artists included Marina Abramoviƒ, Nan Hoover, Friederike Pezold, Ulrike Rosenbach, Bill Viola and Peter Weibel. do 18. C.f. Knight, ‘In Search of an Identity’, p. 361. 19. ‘Indeed, video has frequently been viewed as a poor relation of film’, in Ibidem, p. 221, footnote 13, p. 236. 20. Tamara Krikorian, ‘Video Installations in Britain’not in Tamara Krikorian, exhibition catalogue (London: London Video Arts, 1984). 21. A. L. Rees, A History of Experimental Film and Video: From Canonical Avantgarde to Contemporary British Practice (London: BFI Publishing, 1999), p. 109. In the Tate Gallery in London, the travelling exhibition The Arts for Television and Revision took place in 1989 at the initiativedistribute of Dorine Mignot and Kathy Rae Huffman. They concentrated, above all, on the presence of video in television and of television in video art. In 1989, The Biennale of Video and Electronic Media Art was organised for the first time in Liverpool. 22. C.f. Michael O’Pray, ‘Tina Keane’, Performance, March 1988. 23. Since 1976; c.f. also similar inclusions in the work of Ulrike Rosenbach, Susan Hiller, Mary Kelly. 24. C.f. O’Pray, ‘Tina Keane’, p. 10. 25. The installation had a clear counterpart in Susan Milano’s CC-video installation of the same name, which manifested a clear parallel to the context of Women’s Interart Center as well as to the Women’s Video Festival organised in New York in 1974. A drawing was published in Studio International in 1976. 26. Lynn MacRitchie, ‘On Tina Keane. Transposition’, Mute. Digital Art Critique, Issue 4. Winter/Spring 1996. 27. ‘In Expanded Cinema, the system of cinema was dissected, deconstructed, destructed, and then reassembled in a different order, that is, with a shift in sign meaning. Expanded Cinema is the forerunner of electronic cinema, of virtual reality’. VALIE EXPORT, ‘Mediale Anagramme. Ein Gedanken. Und Bildervortrag. Frühe Arbeiten’, in Sabine Breitwieser (ed.), White Cube/Black Box (Vienna 1996), pp. 99–127, p. 119. Quoted here from Reinhard Braun, ‘Video. TV. Telecommunication – The Early Projects’, in Sabine Breitwieser (ed.), RE-PLAY, Anfänge internationaler Medienkunst in Österreich (Vienna: Generali Foundation; Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 1999), pp. 401–438, 407. 28. Braun, ‘Video. TV. Telecommunication – The Early Projects’, p. 408. 29. Under the title Die neue leibhaftige Zeichensprache nach den Gesetzen von Anatomie, Geometrie und Kinetik (1973–76) originated a cycle of video tapes, in which Pezold performed herself. She painted individual body parts in b/w, took respective detailed footage and documented the changes through the positions and movements. 30. Petzold’s video piece Madame Cucumatz from 1975 (not a CC-video installation) could be regarded as one of the early predecessors of the videographic fragmentations of the human figure, as known among others through Catherine Ikam. 193 Chapter 12 / Creating Crossroads | EWVA

31. C.f. video tapes Bindenmaske (1972, 12 min.), Der Muff und das Mädchen (1973, 12 min.), Zeichenhaube (1973, 5 min.), Mon Petit Chou (1973, 5 min.) as well as the pieces with the artist’s daughter (Einwicklung mit Julia,6 min., Brennesseltape, 5 min., both 1972). 32. C.f. Gisela Jo Eckhardt in Video-Forum, Künstler-Tapes und Filme (Berlin: NBK – Neuer Berliner Kunstverein e. V., 1985), p. 114. 33. This action took place during the Biennale des Jeunes, 1975 in Paris. 34. Ruth Diehl in the leaflet to the exhibition Body and Soul in the Kunstmuseum in Bonn 1997. 35. Hanna Frenzel, e-mail to the author, 2002. 36. Kubisch in Kubisch & Plessi, exhibition catalogue (Aachen: Neue Galerie Sammlung; Ludwig/ Antwerpen: ICC, 1979), pp. 13–14. 37. The event included Luigi Viola, Claudio Ambrosini, Luciano Celli, Michele Sambin and Mario ‘Piccolo’ Sillani Djerrahain who met local artist-friends Dalibor Martinis, Sanja Ivekoviƒ and Goran Trbuljak in Motovun. 38. Silvia Eiblmayr, ‘Personal Cuts / Personal Cuts’ in Sanja Ivekoviƒ. Personal Cuts, exhibition catalogue (Vienna: Galerie im Taxipalais, 2001), p. 9. 39. Luciano GiaccariPROOF was a guest in Belgrade already in 1972, where he presented his early video tapes. About the same time, in 1971, Willoughby Sharp did the same in Zagreb. Jack Moore and Video Heads from Amsterdam belong, with their early visits in the former Yugoslavia, to the early supporters of the local video pioneers. 40. C.f. Dejan Sretenovi, Video Art in Serbia, 1999. http://www.dijafragma.com/projects/videoartins.html (accessed February 2017). 41. Ješa Denegri, ‘Video in Yugoslavia’, in René Payant (ed.), Vidéo. International Video Conference (Montreal: Artextes, 1986), p. 124. 42. Braco Dimitrijevi, 1999. http://www.dijafragma.com/projects/texts/videoart2.html (accessed 18 February 2017). 43. As early as 1972, Goran Trbuljak in Zagreb received a visit from Willoughby Sharp (the body-and video artist and editor of the legendary art magazinedoParachute ) and had the opportunity to realise his first video work Perimetral test of the artist’s visual field. In particular, the connections to Austria and Italy provided information about video for the first generation of Croatian video artists and their audience. C.f. Marijan Susovski, ‘Video u Jugoslaviji’, Spot, 10, 1977 and Slavko Kacunko, Closed Circuit Videoinstallationen. Ein Leitfaden zur Geschichte und Theorie der Medienkunst mit Bausteinen einesnot Künstlerlexikons, (Berlin: Logos, 2004). 44. Video Heads Theatre Troupe (Multi Media Arts Lab & Video Theater) gathered since 1970, an increasingly large group of dedicated artists and technicians to act as ‘a social video concentration for breaking through the anti-social home-centered effect of monolithic mass-communication’. The most prominent appearance of the group was carried out in 1972; it was the framework program of the Munich Olympics closed-circuit video installation/performance or a ‘Multimedia Theatre Piece’ usingdistribute the Eidophor projector in the public, i.e. exactly the same technology as Jacques Polieri used in his first closed-circuit video installations in Europe. 45. Nadja Zgodnik, ‘Video Conquering Space’, in Videodokument. Video Art in Slovenia 1969–1998. (Ljubljana: SCCA, 1999), pp. 151–152. 46. Statement of the artist, facsimile. An extensive documentation of facsimiles can be found on http://vasulka.org/ (accessed 18 February 2017). PROOF

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Early ‘Female’ Video Experiments in Nordic CountriesPROOF in the 1970s and 1980s

Chapter 13 / Early ‘Female ’Video Experiments Lorella Scacco t was Video Art that contributed these American artists divulged a to the formation of a social femi-do‘feminist postmodernism’ that soon nist critique in Nordic countries, became the subject of study in art I where painting and sculpture schools, including the University Col- were mainly carried out by male legenot of Arts, Crafts and Design of artists. In the 60s, young Swedish fe- Stockholm.1 Another artist followed male artists, including Helena with interest in the 60s and 70s in Lindgren and Gunvor Nelson created Sweden was the Austrian VALIE EX- experimental films and video docu- PORT, whodistribute was active in the mentaries that dealt with topics such development of feminist and activist as women and women’s relation- strategies, as well as developments in ships. Their work anticipated the conceptual photography and film. feminist movement experiences of the In Denmark, Kirsten Justesen 70s, such as the interdisciplinary pro- and Jytte Rex left a feminist mark on jects of Carin Ellberg and Katarina the art created between 1965–75, Lindgren Cavallin whose video, Köket when expressive languages interwove [The Kitchen] (1987, Fig. 1), is now with popular culture, fashion and sex- part of the collection of the Moderna ual liberation. Their 1971 film, with the Museet in Stockholm. Two other ele- ironically fairytale-esque title Sleeping ments contributed to the formation of Beauty (Figs. 2–3), bluntly depicts the a Nordic female collective imagina- desires of seven women of different tion: on the one hand, there were the ages. Most of the desires have erotic ideas of deconstruction, originality undertones, while the others are for- and analysis of the male point of view ays into social and political realities. offered by Laurie Simmons and Bar- Since 1971, Justesen has continued bara Kruger, and on the other, the to use video as well as other expres- female stereotypes recreated and sive languages, such as performance, photographed by Cindy Sherman. All body art and installation. In the 70s, EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 196

whereby Lene walks naked, carrying with her a cross, in a place of ‘busi- ness’ frequented only by men. The scholar Birgitte Anderberg states that this action can be viewed as a feminist action because it shows ‘an erotic, sacred, vulnerable, naked, natural – female – counterpart to the powerful, patriarchal, authoritarian, capitalist social structures as symbolised by the stockbrokers and the Stock Exchange PROOF as the holy centre of the Capital’.2

Fig. 1. Carin she contributed to several feminist- Video Art as Commentary Ellberg and on Reality Katarina Lindgren themed collective exhibitions, includ- Cavallin, Köket ing Magna Feminismus which took In Nordic countries, documentary cin- [The Kitchen], 1987, still from place in two locations in Vienna in ema developed in parallel to experi- video. 1975 and Feministische Kunst Interna- mental cinema and created values Courtesy of tionaal at the Den Haag Museum in and languages that would inspire new Moderna Museet, Stockholm. 1979. Another duo,do Bjørn Nørgaard generations of video artists. Traces of and Lene Adler Petersen, commented documentary language can be found on contemporary society – with its in Denmark, Finland, Norway and gender defined roles and purelynot ma- Sweden, whereas Iceland was influ- terialistic orientations – through per- enced mostly by literary tradition and formances, films, actions and sagas, in particular. publications. Their video The Expul-distributeThere was a particular custom sion from the Temple/Female Christ at that occurred in cinemas in Denmark the Copenhagen Stock Exchange on during the 40s, whereby a good qual- 29 May 1969 recorded the action ity, lively short, lasting about six min-

Fig. 2. Kirsten Justesen and Jytte Rex, Sleeping Beauty, 1971, Super 8 blown to 16mm. Courtesy of the artists. 197 Chapter 13 / Early ‘Female’ Video Experiments | EWVA utes was screened before the begin- ning of the film and showed solutions to some institutional and social is- sues, glorifying the state’s heroism in supporting its citizens. This novelty led, until the 50s, to a wide production of documentaries, which brought about the so-called ‘golden age’ of Danish documentary. This ‘golden age’ would have a strong impact on future generations; so much so that Rasmus Dahl asserted that ‘it was now part ofPROOF Danish people’s everyday life. Maybe it wasn’t an essential ele- ment of it, but it nonetheless repre- sented an essential element of people’s education, knowledge and disposition. Since then, a tradition of cinema culture has carried forward into Danish society that differs fromdo commercial production, and docu- mentary has always been one, if not “the”, fundamental element’.3 Since not the post-war period, documentary film headed more and more towards an aesthetic dimension, because the distribute Danish state shifted its financial sup- in Haderslev and the other in Haslev. Fig. 3. Kirsten port from propagandist to cultural pur- Justesen and It was only in 1989 that, thanks to Jytte Rex while poses – to a narrower and more Torben Christensen’s initiative, the filming Sleeping cutting-edge field, that would later be- department of Media Arts was estab- Beauty, 1971. Photo: Jan come that of Video Art. A Danish artist lished at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wibrand. who started experimenting with video Copenhagen. Courtesy of the artists. for documentary purposes at the end It is difficult to define the exact line of the Eighties was Jeanette Land separating short film, documentary Schou, who would develop this tech- and art video in Nordic art during the nique further in the 90s, making sev- 60s and 80s, indeed, as it is for all eral videos. Her first work, Liberace, other European nations. During this was shot on Super 8 in 1987 with Erik time there were several directors and Slentø and is set to music. Another artists in Sweden who worked with film artist, born in 1955 and active in Den- in interesting and experimental ways mark in the Eighties, was Ane Mette and who had an important role in the Ruge who used both video and digital art world. Gunvor Nelson was one of cameras. In Denmark, however, there the most famous directors of interna- were only a few places dedicated to tional avant-garde film and she took video production that were active from part in the First International Women’s the end of the 60s, one of which was Festival in New York in 1972. Born in EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 198

1931, she studied and trained first in ternational Video Art reached the mu- Stockholm and then in the United seum’s exhibition rooms and once States in 1954, where she was in- again played an importantImplosion: volved in the buoyant cultural life of A Postmodern Perspective, curated by San Francisco. There she became Lars Nittve. During the 70s, the docu- well known with Schmeerguntz (1966) mentary genre entered Norway which dealt with the topics of mater- thanks to youth movements, which nity and domestic everyday life in an considered the video camera to be a amusing way. Some other important political, rather than artistic, instru- films by Gunvor Nelson include My ment, which was also used to repre- name is Oona (1969), with music by sent feminist issues, such as in the Steve Reich and shot on 16mm, Take film trilogy Hustru III [Housewives III] PROOFOff (1972), Frame Line (1983) and Red of 1975, 1985 and 1996 by Anja Shift (1984), where she merges influ- Breien, who presented the lives of ences from painting, collage and po- three women across three decades. etry in an original way.4 Helena In Norway, the first videos were made Lindgren was another protagonist of around 1970 by a small group of art- feminist cinema in Sweden in the 80s, ists who mainly challenged television and her film ... det skall vara så här ... companies and art institutions, offer- [... this is the way itdo shall be ...], (1985) ing an alternative form of expression on menstruation was so successful, to the one prevailing.6 In Relating to TV (unlike her films that would follow), (1977, Figs. 4–5) Marianne Heske crit- that it helped her to continuenot her work icised the influence TV had on people, within Swedish state TV. As written by in line with Nam June Paik, whom she Yvonne Eriksson, in this film, Lindgren would meet in Paris in 1984 and whom ‘blends both documentary footage she also quotes in her catalogue with staged scenes and bursts of ex-distributeWorks & Notes published in 1978, pressive and rapid cutting. Without [a] ‘television has attacked us all our life. doubt the film deserves a position as Now we can attack it’. In the video, a a Swedish feminist classic, a position group of people are sitting watching that it has never received due to the TV with their faces covered by doll fact that it was made well before the face-masks. These masks would re- moving image had re-entered the art turn in another series of videos in scene because of the rise in interest 1977, in All the World’s a Stage Etc. in video art that did not take place in Etc., as the symbol of the stand- Sweden until the mid-1990s’.5 ardisation towards which TV broad- In 1979 the association Video Nu casts were leading people. Marianne [Video Now] run by the artists Ture Heske’s first videotape called Sjölander and Teresa Wennberg Masque, dates back to 1975 and opened in Stockholm, while the Mod- showed some black and white takes erna Museet started organising regu- of a doll’s head. The artist then used lar screenings of art videos within the the video in the performing field, for activities of its theatre programme, example, in A Phrenological Self-por- under the supervision of Monica trait (1979), where the artist placed Nieckels. Yet it was only in 1985, dur- herself between the video camera and ing Bill Viola’s solo exhibition, that in- the screen to create a phrenological 199 Chapter 13 / Early ‘Female’ Video Experiments | EWVA

Fig. 4. Marianne Heske, Relating to TV, 1977, still from video. Courtesy of the artist.

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portrait. However, she only started us- 1976, at the Bonnefantenmuseum in ing video in an installation context Maastricht in 1977, and the IX e X from the Nineties onwards. During the International Open Encounter on 80s, she would also experiment with Video at the CAYC in Mexico in 1977 ‘video-painting’, which consisted of and in Tokyo in 1978. printing video stills onto canvas or silk. Kristin Bergaust started experi- Marianne Heske was also one of the menting with video art in 1983 in dif- first Norwegian artists to take part in ferent ways, from animations to international video exhibitions, includ- interactive installations, to the editing ing at the Aarhus Arts Museum in of works based on documentary EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 200

ticed traditional art techniques and also by the audience, as it was placed in relation to both the porn industry and to surveillance systems. Some articles by Heske for the art magazine Billedkunst [Visual Art] that explained how video was not a danger for paint- ers and sculptors, but rather a new medium to widen the expressive pos- sibilities of every artist, testify to this momentous situation.7 PROOF Travels and Study Abroad for Video Practice Video art spread quite slowly in Nordic countries because of the paucity of workshops with the necessary equip- ment, the lack of professional training do courses in academies and universi- ties, and the absence of institutions in charge of distribution of the media not format. Furthermore, there were very few places dedicated to video proc- essing. One of the first and most im- Fig. 5. Marianne materials. In her 1986 videos Linjer I e portant was the Film Institute Heske editing, II [Lines I and II], the main subject wasdistributeWorkshop, in Haderslev, Denmark.8 It London, September 1976. the body of a woman onto which col- was there that courses on video prac- Courtesy of the ours and lights were projected or ap- tice were organised and a magazine artist. plied, where the influence of body art on local video art was published from was obvious. Pictorial signs that draw 1979 – Dansk Video Periodical [Dan- triangles, rectangles and crosses over ish Video Periodical], with contribu- the human body were then displayed tions from experts and artists. The again in her video Signs (1987). Other diffusion of video art also occurred Norwegian [female] artists who ex- thanks to a few artists who studied perimented with video between the and worked abroad, among them: 70s and the 80s also included Inger Marianne Heske, who lived in Paris, Johanne Byhring, Inghild Karlsen, Pia London, Prague and Maastricht dur- Myrvhold and Camilla Wærenskjold. ing the 70s and made several vide- In Norway, the first places to host otapes – which emerged during the video art exhibitions were the Henje editing of her videography in the 70s; Onstad Centre in Oslo and Galleri F- Swedish artists Teresa Wennberg and 15 in Moss, but they were only insti- Antonie Frank Grahamsdaughter who tuted in the 80s. Video art was, in any studied at the Centre Pompidou in case, looked upon suspiciously by Paris in the 70s and at the Jan van Norwegians, both by those who prac- Eych Academy in Maastricht in 201 Chapter 13 / Early ‘Female’ Video Experiments | EWVA

Fig. 6a. Teresa Wennberg, Swimmer,1978, stills from video. Courtesy of the artist.

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1984–86 respectively; Icelandic Ásta holm that same year. This was fol- Ólofsdóttir, who included video lowednot by Nothing, a video produced among the other techniques with using 3D animation techniques by the which she worked from the 80s on- Moderna Museet. The videos Swim- wards and who lived in Paris between mer (1978, Figs. 6a–b), Norma or 1972 and 1974 and in Maastricht from Gene (1980),distribute and NO=ON (1983) 1981 to 1984; Finnish artist Mervi were produced by the Centre Pompi- Kytösalmi who took a course on video dou. In 1996, she became the guest at Düsseldorf Academy in 1977, artist of the Royal Institute of Technol- where the teachers included Joseph ogy in Stockholm, where she sub- Beuys and Nam June Paik; and Marita sequently developed Brain Songs,a Liulia, who started travelling through- work that showed a hexagon shaped out Europe, America, Asia and Africa as a virtual cube. Antonie Frank Gra- in 1980 as a professional photogra- hamsdaughter was born in Toronto in pher.9 1955, but moved to Sweden in 1962 Teresa Wennberg, one of the pio- and took part in several international neers of video art in Sweden, was one exhibitions. Her electronic images of the first artists to archive one of her were often accompanied by poems. videos at the Centre Pompidou in In 1986, she made the video Transit, Paris in the 70s.10 In 1978, together where she used the technique of so- with Suzanne Nessim, she made larisation with herself as the per- Swimmer, a video with visual vari- former, wrapped by a boa. The video ations about the sensations felt by a was really successful and took part in swimmer in a pool. The video was several international festivals. Further- presented at Galerie Paloma in Stock- more, in the late Eighties she started EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 202

Fig. 6b. Teresa Wennberg, Swimmer, 1978, stills from video. Courtesy of the artist.

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do making video-installations and she As stated by Tiina Erkintalo, ex- would often compose the videos’ mu- perimentation with video only started sical or poetic accompaniments.not Dur- in Finland in the early 80s, when a ing the 90s, she promoted video art group of artists, which included both by organising festivals at the Marikki Hakola, created a video per- Fylkingen in Stockholm, an artists’ as- formance for a seminar.11 This was sociation committed to the productiondistributethe Turppi Group formed by Lea and Fig. 7. Antonie and promotion of experimental music Pekka Kantonen, Jarmo Vellonen and Frank Grahamsdaughter, and interdisciplinary art that was es- Martti Kukkonen, as well as Marikki Transit, 1986, tablished in 1977, and by inviting other Hakola, who made the first art video still from video. Courtesy of the female artists to experiment with the in Finland in 1982, Earth Contacts (Fig. artist. new expressive medium. 8), based on the relationship between mankind and nature in an increasingly technological and industrialised soci- ety. After making a second video, Deadline (Fig. 9), which looked at the opposition between technology and nature, the group split up in 1983. Born in 1960, Marikki Hakola studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki between 1980–84 and started working with video in 1981. She then moved on to work on multi- media projects, independent produc- tions and experimental television productions. 203 Chapter 13 / Early ‘Female’ Video Experiments | EWVA

Fig. 8. Turpi Group, Earth Contacts, 1982, still from video. Courtesy of Turppi Group.

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According to Perttu Rastas, the in 1981 that they were presented at first Finnish female video artist was the Old Student House in Helsinki.12 actually Mervi Kytösalmi, who, be- In the 80s, Marikki Hakola, Minna tween 1978 and 1984, made several Tarkka and Perttu Rastas founded, videos in Germany where she also AV-Arkki in Finland, a video produc- won some awards for them. Her video tion and distribution organisation performances arrived in Finland in committed to gathering and archiving 1979 thanks to an article in the cultural Finnish film production and increas- magazine Taide [Art], yet it was only ing its circulation. This is still active EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 204

Fig. 9. Turppi Group, Deadline, 1983, still from video. Courtesy of Turppi Group.

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and is considered the most authorita- the 70s, both to document perform- tive public collection of videonot in the ances and to investigate the me- Nordic region. dium’s key elements, as asserted by It was in the 80s that Marita Liulia Gunnar B. Kvaran.14 This insular na- renewed interest in multimedia forms tion is the homeland of the Vasulkas of expression, pulling closer to videodistributewho committed their lives almost ex- first through her work on documenta- clusively to the experimental element ries for television programmes, such of video from 1969. Born in 1940, Ste- as NetTv (US), TV5 (France) and ina Vasulka trained in Iceland in the ARTE (Germany) and then turning to musical field, studying violin, to then interactive art in the 90s, producing move with her husband, Woody, to works in CD-ROM format. In an inter- New York in 1965. There, the couple view, the artist stated: ‘I am a writer, a founded a workshop, The Kitchen,in video artist, but also a researcher and 1971, which was committed to re- a producer. In my eclectic works, I searching video, including research merge different art disciplines with re- on image and sound elaboration search and technology’.13 In the 90s, processes and on the development of Finland would take on a prominent new equipment to put their creative place within the video art world with aspirations into action. This ranged Eija-Liisa Ahtila as a pivotal figure. from the MIDI system to autonomous hybrids, from interactive tables to the morphing technique. Their research The Icelandic Phenomenon branched into two main directions: to- In Iceland, by contrast, video art was wards video documentary on the one already widespread among artists in hand and towards what they called 205 Chapter 13 / Early ‘Female’ Video Experiments | EWVA synthetic videos on the other. This led together with that of video and film, the two artists to develop new instru- performance and multiples. Between ments together with some IT engi- 1970–1980 the artist was committed neers, such as the Digital Video to the dematerialisation of the art ob- Effecter between 1972–73, and the ject and the disregard of the financial Digital Image Articulator in 1976 with value of the same works, finding in Jeffrey Scheir, as well as to modify video the optimum medium to ex- existing instruments. Their most sig- press such an attitude. As the artist nificant discovery was to make aes- herself stated, ‘for me, art is philoso- thetically clear that, in electronics, the phy. In my research, I am the observer same electromagnetic frequency, if who documents her observations switched in one way creates sound; through art’.16 The artist started using and if convertedPROOF to another creates an video camera in 1978 and in 1980 she image. The same electromagnetic fre- made one of the first films in the series quency, if adequately distorted, ITEMS (Figs. 10a–b) on 16mm – trans- makes the line that our senses distin- ferred on video in 1983 – that she guish between sound and image visu- would only finish in 2005 with various ally apparent, and therefore, they editions. In this sequence of film epi- established that audio-visuals were sodes, the artist tried to convert her actually uniform for the very first time.doideas into visual form: the sky was the They defined their videos as environ- background for some words that ap- ments, because the word included the peared in a sequence on the back- idea of immersing the audience in groundnot of a sky while the sound of sound and image.15 While the Vasul- some sea waves marked the passing kas took part in several exhibitions, of time. The sky represents the im- including solo ones and particularly mense universe and everything that is important international shows, their impenetrabledistribute to our mind and our first appearance in Iceland only took soul, while the words represent place in 1984 in a collective exhibition patches of our knowledge and of our at Reykjavik Art Museum, while in existence, encouraging the audi- 1992 they held a solo exhibition at the ence’s mind towards philosophical re- National Gallery in Iceland’s capital flection. The words refer to the city. Therefore, the impact of their vast meaning of conscience, the universe research only reached Iceland in the and ethics. The artist wrote, ‘I think mid-80s. that a screened film is as immaterial In the late 70s, a small group of as an idea’.17 An important philo- artists, including Rúrí, founded the sophical aspect pointed out by ITEMS Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, that is in fact the immateriality of the pro- held the exhibition Film-Week in 1981 jected images and ideas, already containing experimental films and highlighted by her choice of medium, video art. Born in Reykjavik in 1951, i.e. film. It reminds us of the immateri- Rúrí studied in her hometown in the ality of thoughts, emotions, and eth- early 70s, where she was drawn to the ics, which are still of value for every ideas of Fluxus, and then in the Neth- individual and the foundation of our erlands, where she deepened her society. Her performances arose from knowledge of the Fluxus Movement, these considerations, and became EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 206

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Figs. 10a-b. Rúrí, videos, as exemplified by Rainbow, formance and the screening of the ITEMS, 1980, 16 mm transferred based on an installation created by video. After these moments it would to video (1983) the artist to produce the film in 1983 just become a memory in the human and edited in with the aim of celebrating the rain- mind. 2005. Courtesy of the artist. bow’s transitional nature. In this, the art object existed only during the per- 207 Chapter 13 / Early ‘Female’ Video Experiments | EWVA

From the Vote to Video: women a new opportunity to establish Female Visions themselves in the art world, detaching themselves from traditional tech- Finland was the first nation in the niques practiced by men and defined world to grant women the right to vote, as ‘boring’ by Kirsten Justesen in an in 1906, and nowadays it has the high- interview for an exhibition at the Na- est amount of women in political posi- tional Museum in Copenhagen,19 – tions worldwide (62%), followed by even though she had trained as a Sweden with 43.5% of female mem- sculptor at the Fine Arts Academy in bers of parliament. If in Nordic litera- Copenhagen. The same feeling was ture there are several examples of shared by Antonie Frank Gra- female authors during the 20th cen- hamsdaughter who stated that ‘video tury, such as Karen Blixen (1885– PROOF art was in some way free from the 1962), Tove Jansson (1914–2011) history of art and we women artists felt also known as an illustrator, and a great freedo7m’.20 Therefore, for Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940) within Nordic female artists of that genera- the arts field, it is again a Finnish artist tion, video was a medium that was still that is one of the most famous paint- uncontaminated by the hegemony of ers, Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946). a sexual gender, unlike painting and She proved to the sceptics of the late- sculpture, practiced for centuries al- 19th century that women too coulddo most exclusively by men. With video carry out the grande maniére. Her de- art, history of art enriched itself with termination provoked critiques of her female visions, finally interrupting work from her former painter contem- not male dominance. poraries, such as Fanny Churberg, who claimed, ‘even if we are for equal- ity, we do not believe in female paint- Acknowledgement:distributeThis chapter was trans- 18 lated from Italian into English by Simona ers on the battle grounds’. The Manca, and copy-edited and approved by invention of the video camera gave the author.

Endnotes 1. Whitney Chadwick (ed.), BENT. Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Scandinavian Art (San Francisco: San Francisco State University, 2006), p. 25. 2. Birgitte Anderberg, ‘What’s Happening? Art between experiment and feminism’, in exhibition catalogue What’s Happening? Danish Avant-Garde and Feminism 1965–1975 (Copenhagen: SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, 2016), p. 47. 3. Rasmus Dahl, ‘A National, Historical Perspective on Documentary in Denmark’, Screening the Past, Issue 7, 1999. 4. Astrid Söderbergh Widding (ed.), Konst som rörlig bild – från Diagonalsymfonin till Whiteout (Stockholm: Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening, 2006), p. 85. 5. Yvonne Eriksson, ‘The Visualized Femininity’, in Yvonne Eriksson, Anette Göthlund, Bokförlaget Signum (eds.), From Modernism to Contemporary Art, Swedish Female Artists (Lund: Bokförlaget Signum, 2003), p. 160. 6. Janne Stang Dahl, Norway: Networking Nodes, in Minna Tarkka and Mirjam Martevo (eds.), Nordic Media Culture – Actors and Practices (Helsinki: m-cult, Edita, 2003), p. 38. 7. Interview by Lorella Scacco with Marianne Heske, November 2010. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 208

8. Mats Stjernstedt, La macchina interferente, in Caroline Corbetta and John Peter Nilsson (eds.), Interferenze (Pistoia: Maschietto Editore, 2002), p. 169. 9. Maria Stella Bottai, Marita Liulia (Rome: Lithos, 2003), p. 58. 10. Konst som rörlig bild – från Diagonalsymfonin till Whiteout (Stockholm: Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening, 2006), p. 135. 11. Lars Movin & Torben Christensen, Art & Video in Europe (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi, 1996), p. 155. 12. Perttu Rastas, Mervi Kytösalmi special, in www.av-arkki.fi (accessed March 2017). 13. Marita Liulia, Interview, in www.artificial.dk, 2005 (accessed March 2017). 14. Gunnar B. Kvaran, Videotransit,inNuit Blånche: Scènes nørdiques: les années 90 (Paris: Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1998), p. 17. 15. Christian Schoen, ‘Being an Icelander … an incurable disease. Interview with Steina Vasulka’, Interviewstream, 2005 http://interviewstream.zkm.de/?p=25 (accessed March 2017). 16. Interview between the author and the artist in 2008 during the writing of the book, Lorella Scacco, Northwave. A surveyPROOF of videoart in Nordic countries (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2009). 17. Ibidem. 18. As quoted in Markku Valkonen, Arte in Finlandia (Helsinki: Otava, 1992), p. 46. 19. http://www.smk.dk/udforsk-kunsten/kunsthistorier/kunstnere/vis/kirsten-justesen-foedt-1943/ (accessed March 2017). 20. See ‘Interview with Antonie Frank Grahamsdaughter by Laura Leuzzi’, 2016, available at, http://www.ewva. ac.uk/af-grahamsdaughter.html (accessed March 2017). do not distribute Selected Bibliography

Selected Bibliography

Balsom, E., AfterPROOF Uniqueness. A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. Barlow, M., ‘Feminism 101: The New York Women’s Video Festival, 1972–1980’, Camera Obscura, 54 (volume 18, number 3), 2003, pp. 3–38. Béar, L. and Sharp, ‘W., Video Performance’, Avalanche, no.9, May/June (New York: Center for New Art Activities, 1974). Boomgaard, J. and Rutten, B. (eds.), The Magnetic Era: Video Art in the Netherlands 1970–1985, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2003). Bor iƒ, B., ‘Video Art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism’ in Miško Šuvakoviƒ and Dubravka Djuriƒ, Impossible Histories: Historic Avant-Gardes,do Neo-Avant-Gardes, and Post Avant Gardes in Yugoslavia 1918–91, Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. Cubitt, S., Partridge, S. (eds.), Rewind: British Artists’ Video in the 1970s & 1980s, New Barnet, Herts: John Libbey, 2012. not Curtis, D. (ed.), A Directory of British Film and Video Artists, Luton: Arts Council/Luton Press, 1996. Deepwell, K., ‘Felicity Sparrow: forming Circles’, n. paradoxa, volume 34, 2014, pp.86–95. Duguet, A.-M., Video la mémoire au poing, Paris: Hachette, 1981.distribute Elwes, C., Video Art: A Guided Tour, London: I. B. Tauris, 2005. Jeanjean, S., ‘Disobedient Video in France in the 70s: Video Production by Women Collectives’, Afterall A Journal of Art, Context, Enquiry, n. 27, Summer 2011, pp. 5–16. Fagone, V. (ed.), Camere incantate, espansione dell’immagine, exhibition catalogue Milan, Palazzo reale, 15 May – 15 June 1980 (Milan: Comune, Ripartizione cultura e spettacolo, 1980). Gazzano, M., Kinema. Il cinema sulle tracce del cinema dal film alle arti elettroniche, andata e ritorno, Rome: Exorma, 2012. Gogan, J. ‘Derry Film and Video Collective’, Film Base News, n. 3, September/October 1987. Guy, L. ‘Hiding in plain sight: Recognition and resistance in recent queer artists’ moving image’, MIRAJ, volume 5 number 1/2, 2016. Kacunko, S., Closed Circuit Videoinstallationen. Ein Leitfaden zur Geschichte und Theorie der Medienkunst mit Bausteinen eines Künstlerlexikons Berlin: Logos, 2004. Knight, J. (ed.), Diverse Practices: A Critical Reader on British Video Art, New Barnet: Arts Council of England and John Libbey, 1996. Krauss, R., ‘Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism’, October, v. 1., Spring, 1976, pp. 50–64. Gunnar B. Kvaran, Videotransit,inNuit Blånche: Scènes nørdiques: les années 90, Paris: Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1998. Halle, R., Steingröver, R. (eds.), After the Avant-garde: Contemporary German and Austrian Experimental Film, Camden House, 2008. Hanley, J-A., ‘The First Generation: Women and Video, 197–75’, in The First Generation. Women and Video Art 1970-75, New York: Independent Curators Incorporated, 1993. Hooykaas, M., van Putten, C. (eds.), Revealing the Invisible - The Art of Stansfield/Hooykaas from Different Perspectives, Amsterdam: de Buitenkant Publishers, 2010. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 210

Huet, L., Neetens, W. (eds.), An unexpected journey, Vrouw en kunst/Women and Art, Antwerpen: Gynauka, 1996. Leuzzi, L., Partridge, S. (eds.), REWINDItalia: Early video art in Italy/I primi anni della videoarte in Italia, New Barnet, Herts: John Libbey Publishing, 2015. Leuzzi, L., Shemilt, E. and Partridge, S., ‘Body, Sign and Double: A Parallel Analysis of Elaine Shemilt’s Doppelgänger, Federica Marangoni’s The Box of Life and Sanja Ivekoviƒ’s Instructions N°1 and Make up – Make down’, in Catricalá, V. (ed.), Media Art: Towards a new definition of arts, Pistoia: Gli Ori, 2015, pp. 97–103. Magri, L. (ed.), Centro Video Arte: 1974–1994, Ferrara: Gabriele Corbo, 1995. Marangon, D., Videotapes del Cavallino, Venice: Edizioni del Cavallino, 2004. Meigh-Andrews, C., A History of Video Art: The Development of Form and Function, Oxford: Berg, 2006. Movin, L. & Christensen, T., Art & Video in Europe, Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi, 1996. PROOFMulvey, L., Visual and Other Pleasures, London: Macmillan, 1989. Mulvey, L. ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (New York: Oxford UP, 1999), pp. 833–844. Murray, P. (ed.), 0044 – Irish Artists in Britain (Cork: Crawford Municipal Gallery, 1999). Nigg, H, and Wade, G., Community Media – Community Communication in the UK: Video, Local TV, Film and Photography, Zurich: Regenbogen Verlag, 1980. Nochlin, L., ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ (1971), in: Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1988). Payant, R. (ed.), Vidéo. International Video Conference, Montreal: Artextes, 1986. Saba, C. G., Parolo,do L., Vorrasi, C. (eds.), Videoarte a Palazzo dei Diamanti. 1973–1979 Reenactment (Ferrara: Fondazione Ferrara Arte, 2015). Scacco, L., Northwave. A survey of videoart in Nordic countries, Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2009. The First Generation. Women andnot Video Art 1970–75 (New York: Independent Curators Incorporated, 1993) Videodokument. Video Art in Slovenia 1969–1998, Ljubljana: SCCA, 1999. Video Positive ’89, exhibition catalogue (Liverpool: Tate Gallery, Merseyside Moviola, 1989). Video Positive ’91, exhibition catalogue, Moviola,distribute Liverpool 1991. Westgeest, H., Video Art Theory: A Comparative Approach, Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2016. Biographies of the Authors

Biographies of the Authors

Jon Blackwood is a Reader in Con- sign & Technology in Dublin. She is temporaryPROOF Art and Research Lead at the author of TV Museum: Contempo- Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon rary Art and the Age of Television (In- University, Aberdeen. He is also a tellect, 2014), on television as cultural freelance curator and writer. He stud- form, object of critique and site of ied at the University of St. Andrews artistic intervention, and The Place of and the Courtauld Institute of Art, Lon- Artists’ Cinema: Space, Site and don. Formerly Head of History & The- Screen (Intellect, 2009), on the cine- ory of Art at DJCAD, Universitydo of matic turn in contemporary art. Her Dundee, from 2011–14 he was based recent publications include contribu- between Sarajevo, Bosnia and tions to the anthologies Workshop of Skopje, Macedonia, where he re- thenot Film Form (Fundacja Arton and searched modern and contemporary Sternberg Press, 2017), Exhibiting the art in former Yugoslavia. This, along Moving Image: History Revisited (JRP with contemporary art in Scotland, re- Ringier, 2015) and The International mains the main focus of his work, with Handbooks ofdistribute Museum Studies: Vol- particular interests in performance, ume 3, Museum Media (Wiley-Black- sound and video. In recent times, he well, 2015). Connolly has contributed has authored books on Contempo- to journals and magazines such as rary Art in Bosnia-Herzegovina (du- Afterall, Artforum, Art Monthly, Frieze, plex 100m2, Sarajevo, 2015) and on Millennium Film Journal, MIRAJ, Macedonia (mala galerija, Skopje, Mousse, Screen, Third Text and The 2016) as well as curating exhibitions Velvet Light Trap, and authored cata- in Summerhall, Edinburgh, the WorM, logue essays on the work of numer- Aberdeen, and the Institute of Con- ous artists, including Anita Di Bianco, temporary Art in Zagreb. He is cur- Vivienne Dick, Laura Horelli, Jesse rently engaged in a number of Jones, Mairead O’hEocha, Alex Mar- research and exhibition projects in tinis Roe, Bea McMahon, Niamh Scotland, and in Macedonia. He di- O’Malley, Susan Philipsz and Sarah vides his time between Aberdeen and Pierce. She has also programmed Skopje. screenings in relation to her own re- search, at Bluecoat, FACT, the Irish Maeve Connolly co-directs the MA Film Institute, LUX, Mother’s Tanksta- in Art & Research Collaboration (ARC) tion Gallery, Project Arts Centre, and at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, De- Tate Modern. EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 212

Cinzia Cremona is an artist and aca- Press, 2004), EcoMedia (Rodopi, demic living between Sydney, Beijing 2005), The Practice of Light: A Gene- and London. She completed her prac- alogy of Visual Technology from Prints tice-based Ph.D Intimations: Videop- to Pixels (MIT Press, 2014) and Finite erformance and Relationality at the Media: Environmental Implications of University of Westminster in London in Digital Technologies (Duke University 2014. She graduated at Central Saint Press, 2017). Series editor for Martins College of Art and Design, Leonardo Books at MIT Press, his re- University of the Arts, London, in search focuses on the history and phi- 2003. Her artworks have been exhib- losophy of media, political aesthetics, ited in Europe, USA, Russia, China media art history and ecocriticism. and Japan. Her key concerns are gen- PROOFdered mediated relationality and per- Malcolm Dickson is a curator, writer formativity in the context of and organiser. Dickson is Director of contemporary art and emerging tech- Street Level Photoworks, an arts or- nologies. She has published chapters ganisation and production centre, in books about video art and digital which supports artists and the public performance. She is co-editor of the to make and engage with photogra- Critical Practice publication Non-com- phy. He curates a year-round pro- mercial Practicesdo of Market #Trans- gramme embracing different genres Acting Value, published by Intellect. of new photography by emerging and Since 2013 she has been an Honorary established artists, as well as bringing Research Fellow at Duncannot of Jordan- to public awareness neglected bodies stone College of Art and Design (Uni- of work from previous decades. This versity of Dundee). She is part of the has wider audience reach through a research cluster Critical Practice network of local and regional partners, (Chelsea College of Art and Design,distributewhich takes photography to outlying UAL), and was co-curator of the mov- towns and remote locations. Recent ing image and performance events international collaborations include Visions (London) between 2007 and VU Photography Centre in Quebec 2016. She is Associate Lecturer at City, Centre Photographique Wimbledon College of Art in London Marseille, Lithuanian Photographers (UAL). Association, aff Galerie (Berlin) and Ostkreuz Agency (Berlin). He is cur- Sean Cubitt is Professor of Film and rently developing a project connect- Television at Goldsmiths, University of ing Scotland to Northern European London, Professor Grade II at the Uni- countries. He regularly participates in versity of Oslo and Honorary Profes- international portfolio reviews. A for- sorial Fellow of the University of mer Senior Research Fellow at Univer- Melbourne. His publications include sity of Dundee, he writes regularly for Timeshift: On Video Culture (Rout- artists publications and contributed a ledge, 1991), Videography: Video Me- chapter to the REWIND book in 2012. dia as Art and Culture (Palgrave, Through Street Level, he initiated the 1993), Digital Aesthetics (Sage, web platform Photo-Networks 1998), Simulation and Social Theory (https://photo-networks.scot/) to (SAGE, 2001), The Cinema Effect (MIT raise awareness of and to grow audi- 213 Biographies of the Authors | EWVA ences for photo-based art in Scotland where he studied art history and phi- whilst providing a resource for those losophy. He received a Ph.D. and a outside the country. post-doctoral qualification in Art His- http://www.streetlevelphotoworks.org/ tory from the University of Düsseldorf (1999) and Osnabrück (2006). Since After a long career in teaching and 2011 Kacunko is Professor of Art His- research, Catherine Elwes retired as tory and Visual Culture at the Univer- Professor of Moving Image Art at sity of Copenhagen. Since 2014 he is Chelsea College of Arts in November an elected member of Academia 2017. Elwes is also known as a video Europaea. Key foci of Kacunko’s re- artist and curator, and was active in search profile are Video, Perform- the feminist art movement in the late ance, Installation, Visual studies and 1970s. ShePROOF co-curated the exhibitions Aesthetics. For his interdisciplinary Women’s Images of Men and About approach in Art History and Media Time at the ICA in 1980 and was the Studies he has received international director of the biennial UK/Canadian recognition. His Closed Circuit Film & Video Exchange (1998–2006) Videoinstallationen (2004) was re- and co-curator of Figuring Land- ferred to as a ‘milestone in the history scapes (2008–2010), an international of media art’ and ‘the pivotal source screening exhibition on themesdo of book for the decades to come’. His landscape. Elwes has written exten- Marcel Odenbach. Konzept, Perform- sively about feminist art, performance, ance, Video, Installation (1999) is de- installation, landscape and the mov- scribednot as an ‘Art history pioneer ing image and is author of Video achievement in the field of video art’ Loupe (K.T. Press, 2000), Video Art, a and awarded with the DRUPA-prize guided tour (I.B. Tauris, 2005), Instal- 2000. Kacunko has furthermore lation and the Moving Image (Wall- authored monographsdistributeSabine flower/Columbia University Press, Kacunko: Bacteria, Art and other 2015) and is currently writing Land- Bagatelles (2016), Culture as Capital scape and the Moving Image (Wall- (2015), Wiederholung, Differenz und flower/CUP). Elwes is Founding Editor infinitesimale Ästhetik. Matthias of the Moving Image Review & Art Neuenhofer (2012), Las Meninas Journal (MIRAJ, Intellect) and has Transmedial (2001), and Dieter Ki- published in numerous books, jour- essling (2001), as well as Spiegel. Me- nals, exhibition catalogues and peri- dium. Kunst (2010). Recently, he has odicals including Art Monthly, Third edited a comprehensive two-volume Text, MIRAJ,theMillennium Film Jour- anthology Theorien der Videokunst nal, Time Out, Independent Media, (2018). Performance Magazine, Variant, Film- waves (of which she was an editor), Marika Kuzmiczï (Ph.D.) is a gradu- Vertigo and Contemporary Magazine. ate of art history at the University of Elwes’ video practice is archived at Warsaw in the Institute of Art, Polish LUX online and REWIND. Academy Institute of Sciences, War- saw. She conducts research on Polish Slavko Kacunko (Ph.D. Dr. phil. ha- art of 70s. Head of the Arton Founda- bil.) was born in Osijek (Croatia) tion (Warsaw), a non-profit organisa- EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 214

tion, she concentrates on researching ings and events in Italy, United King- and exhibiting Polish art of the 70s. dom and Switzerland. She is co-editor Author and editor of books dedicated with Stephen Partridge of REWIND to the art of that time, such as Work- Italia. Early Video Art in Italy (2015). shop of The Film Form (2016, co-ed- ited with ºukasz Ronduda), among Adam Lockhart is the Media Archi- others. Currently, she is working on a vist and Researcher at Duncan of Jor- book dedicated to the history of per- danstone College of Art and Design formance art in Poland (1930–1982). (University of Dundee, Scotland, UK). Curator of many exhibitions, she is the He is a leading specialist in the con- originator and main coordinator of servation, preservation and restora- Forgotten Heritage – European Avant- tion of artists’ video. Lockhart has PROOFGarde Art Online , an international pro- worked on a number of AHRC re- ject supported by the Creative Europe search projects including “REWIND | Program. She is lecturer at the Acad- Artists’ Video in the 70s & 80s, Narra- emy of Fine Arts, Warsaw University, tive Exploration in Expanded Cinema” Warsaw and Collegium Civitas. with Central St Martins College of Art & Design, REWIND Italia, European Laura Leuzzi is an art historian and Women’s Video Art & Richard De- curator. Currently,do she is Research marco: The Italian Connection. He has Fellow and Co-Investigator on the Arts acted as curator, co-curator and con- and Humanities Research Council sultant for a number of screenings funded research project Richardnot De- and exhibitions at organisations such marco, the Italian Connection (Dun- as Tate Modern, Tate Britain, BFI can of Jordanstone College of Art and Southbank, Dundee Contemporary Design, University of Dundee). She Arts, Scottish National Galleries of was Post Doctoral Research AssistantdistributeModern Art, Ambika P3, Street Level on the AHRC funded research project Photoworks Glasgow, DOCVA in Mi- ‘EWVA – European Women’s Video lan and Shanghai Minsheng Art Mu- Art in the 70s and 80s’ (DJCAD, Uni- seum. versity of Dundee). From 2011 to 2014 she was Post Doctoral Research As- Laura Mulvey is Professor of Film sistant on the AHRC funded research and Media Studies at Birkbeck Col- project ‘REWINDItalia Artists’ Video in lege, University of London. She is the Italy in 70s and 80s’ (DJCAD, Univer- author of Visual and Other Pleasures sity of Dundee). She completed her (1989), Citizen Kane (1992), Fetishism Ph.D at Sapienza University of Rome and Curiosity (1996), Death Twenty- in 2011 and sits on the curatorial Com- four Times a Second: Stillness and the mittee of the Media Art Festival in Moving Image (2006) and is renowned Rome. Author of articles and essays for her essay Visual Pleasure in Narra- in books and exhibition catalogues, tive Cinema (1975) – which had a ma- her research and curatorial practice jor impact on the course of film focus on video art, new media, art and scholarship. Between 1974 and 1982 feminism, time and the relationship Mulvey co-wrote and co-directed six between word and image in visual art. films with Peter Wollen: theoretical She has curated exhibitions, screen- films, dealing in the discourse of femi- nist theory, semiotics, psychoanalysis peer reviewer for the Arts Council, and leftist politics; and two films - Channel 4, the Scottish Arts Council, more recently - with artist/filmmaker Scottish Screen, SACLottery, Ludwig Mark Lewis. Mulvey’s interests are Boltzmann Gesellschaf, European broad, ranging from contemporary art Research Area, Creative Scotland to the introduction of sound in cinema, Awards, REF2014, REF2021, Portu- from Douglas Sirk to Abbas Kiaro- guese Foundation for Science and stami. Technology, and the AHRC.

Stephen Partridge is an artist and A graduate in History of Art and Aes- academic researcher. He is the Prin- thetics, Lorella Scacco teaches Phe- cipal Investigator on research projects nomenology of contemporary arts in REWIND andPROOF REWINDItalia which Italian Academies of Fine Arts. Key have been awarded successive foci of Scacco’s research profile are grants in 2004, 2008 and 2011 from Videoart, Media art, Interactivity, Vis- the Arts & Humanities Research ual Studies and Phenomenology. She Council, and in 2012 the Royal Society has curated exhibitions and edited of Edinburgh. Currently is Co-Investi- catalogues for contemporary art exhi- gator on the AHRC-funded research bitions in public and private spaces in project, “European Women’s VideodoItaly and abroad, such as the Venice Art” (EWVA) led by his colleague Pro- International University on the occa- fessor Elaine Shemilt. He was in the sion of 52nd International Art Exhibi- ‘landmark’ video shows of the 1970s tionnot of the Venice Biennale, La including the Video Show at the Ser- Triennale in Milan and Stenersen Mu- pentine in 1975, the Installation Show seum in Oslo. Since 1999, she has at the Tate gallery in 1976, the Paris collaborated with Nordic institutions Biennale in 1977 and the The Kitchen and artists. Asdistribute a journalist, she con- in New York in 1979. His internation- tributes to specialised art magazines. ally renowned artwork Monitor (1974) She has authored a number of books was acquired by TATE Britain in De- including Media Aesthetic. From Jean cember 2014 and is in the current Baudrillard to Derrick de Kerckhove re-hang of the collection in AWalk (Guerini 2004), Northwave. A Survey of through 500 years of British Art. He has Video Art in Nordic Countries (Silvana also curated a number of influential Editoriale 2009), and Alberto Gia- video shows: Video Art 78 in Coventry; cometti and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. A UK TV New York; National Review of dialogue on perception (Gangemi Live Art, 1988–90; 19:4:90 Television 2017). She is currently a Ph.D candi- Interventions; and the touring tape date at the University of Turku, Fin- packages Made in Scotland I, II, Sem- land. blances, Passages. He has lectured since 1975 in a number of art colleges Professor Elaine Shemilt, BA, MA and established the School of Televi- (Royal College of Art), FRSA, FRGS is sion & Imaging at Duncan of Jordan- an artist, academic and researcher. stone College of Art & Design She holds the Chair of Fine Art Print- (University of Dundee). He is presently making at DJCAD, University of Dun- Professor of Media Art. He has been dee. Her artistic practice involves EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 216

sculpture, installation, printmaking histories and theories of media art, video and digital media. Shemilt was video art and avant-garde film. a pioneer of early feminist photogra- Shemilt studied at the Ruskin School phy, video and multi-media installa- of Drawing and Fine Art, University of tion work. The video works Doppel- Oxford, and holds a Doctorate in Mov- gänger (1979/1981) and Women Sol- ing Image Art from Duncan of Jordan- diers (1984), were recovered and mi- stone College of Art and Design, grated to digital by the AHRC funded University of Dundee. He was recipi- research project REWIND in 2011. ent of an Early Career Leverhulme She experiments with a combination Fellowship (contemporary moving im- of materials and media and has an age, theory & practice), and a Royal international reputation for innovation Society of Edinburgh/Caledonian PROOFin the use of printmaking across art European Research Fellowship. From forms and also collaborative work with 2015 to 2018, Shemilt has been a scientists. Her early work was exhib- Visiting Researcher within the School ited at The Hayward Annual 1979, The of Film, Philosophy and Spectacle, at Bradford International Print Biennale the University of Roma Tre, Italy. 1978, and the Video Show 1975 in the Serpentine Gallery, London. More re- cently her work hasdo been shown at the Siegfried Zielinski was Chair of me- Imperial War Museum, London and in dia theory/archaeology & variantology Warsaw, Berlin, Rome, Singapore, of media at Berlin University of the Melbourne and Shanghai. Shemiltnot is a Arts, and director of the Vilém Flusser Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Archive until 2016. He is also Michel Royal Geographical Society. She is a Foucault Professor of Media Archae- Shackleton Scholar and a Profes- ology and Techno-Culture at the Euro- sional member of Society of Scottishdistributepean Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Artists. She is the Director of the Cen- honorary doctor and professor of the tre for Remote Environments and is University of Arts Budapest, and also the Vice Chair of the South Geor- founding rector (1994–2000) of the gia Heritage Trust. These organisa- Academy of Media Arts Cologne. tions are principally involved in Zielinski has published numerous environmental management and pro- books and essays mainly focusing on tection and Shemilt was a founder the archaeology of media and co- member of both. authored, edited, or co-edited a number of anthologies. He is also a Emile Josef Shemilt is an artist and curator of large format exhibitions at academic researcher, with a speciali- the ZKM Karlsruhe, such as Allah’s sation in experimental film and mov- Automata (2015), Ramon Llull & the ing image art. Shemilt’s research Ars Combinatoria, and Art in Move- interests include contemporary art ment – 100 Master Pieces of Art with practice and theory, specifically lens- and through Media (curated with Peter based and print media, as well as Weibel in 2018). Index

Index

A Blañeviƒ, Dunja 55, 61, 65, 66 (n.10) Abjaniƒ,Dragan 64 Blixen, Karen 207 Abramoviƒ, Marina 1, 55, 60 fig. 3, 64, 74, Borèiƒ, Barbara 58, 62, 65 (n.1) 111-112 (figs.1a-b), Bordo, Susan 177 PROOF113 (figs.2a-b), 121 (n.4, 8-9), 123, 136 (n.4), 189, 192 (n.17) Borsari, Anna Valeria 5 (n. 3), 19 (fig.7), 20, 23 (n.10), 121 (n.2) Acconci, Vito ix, 12, 81 (n.16), 86 Borzello, Frances 11, 23 (n. 2,6) Ackerman, Chantal 52 Botticelli, Sandro 185 Adler Petersen, Lene 196 Bourgeois, Louise 101 Agha-Soltan, Neda 27, 39 (n.4) Boudry, Pauline (see also Lorenz, Renate) 133 Ahtila, Eija-Liisa 204 Breien, Anja 198 Alajbegoviƒ, Zemira 55, 63 (figs.5a-b) Bresson, Robert 95 Al-Hadid, Diana 135do Brisley, Stuart 144, 156 (n.37) Almy, Max 74 Brown, Wendy 73 Alonso, Teresa 46, 47 Butler, Judith 42, 54 (n.19,177) Anderberg, Birgitte 196, 207 (n.2) not Byhring, Johanne 200 Anderson, Laurie 73 Anguissola, Sofonisba 7 C Antonik-Parsons, Kate 139, 140, 155 (n.3) Cage, Johndistribute ix Artist Placement Group 74, 89 Cameron, Julia Margaret 123 Atherton, Kevin 91, 192 (n.17) Cameron, Shirley 124 Averty, Jean-Christophe 178 Campus, Peter 190 B Caramelle, Ernst 189 Bailly, David 17 Cardazzo, Paolo 10, 188 Bajeviƒ,Maja 64 Carlisle, Anne 140-141, 150, 155 (n.10), 156 (n.22) Banner, Fiona 31 Carnevale, Fulvia (see also Claire Fontaine) Barlow, Melinda 1, 5 (n.1) 123, 130, 131, Barnacle, Nora 141 136 (n.1,3), 137 (n.28) Barilli, Renato 12 Casalini, Giulia 2, 3, 22, 54 (n.1) Baudry, Jean-Louis vii Cashdan, Marina 134, 135, 137 (n.41) Beban, Breda 182 Cassatt, Mary 87, 123 Belkin, Gary 178 Cavarero, Adriana 3 Berlant, Lauren 50, 54 (n. 18) Chadwick, Whitney 207 (n. 1, 7) Bergaust, Kristin 199 Chatelain, Hélène 178 Berger, John 22, 106, 107, 110 (n.17) Chicago, Judy 94, 107, 109 (fig.1) Bertei, Adele 142 Churberg, Fanny 207 Beuys, Joseph 184, 201 Clarke, Shirley & Wendy 179, 190 Birnbaum, Dara 74, 182 Clayton, Lenka 134 Blackwood, Jon 209, 5, 55 Coleman, James 144, 145 EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 218

Comerford, Joe 143 87, 95, 115, 123,124, Comolli, Jean-Louis vii 125 (fig.1), 129 (fig.3), 135 (n.9), 137 (n.37), 164, 182, 211 Connolly, Cyril 123, 136 (n.2) Emery, Dick 92 Connolly, Maeve xii, 5, 139, 155 (n. 4, 7,19), 209 Emshwiller, Ed 190 Cooke, Liadin 150 Erkintalo, Tiina 202 Cort, David 179 F Cottell, Fran 134, 137 (n.42) Fabyc, Deej 51, 52, 53 (figs. 7a-b), 54 (n.1) Crabb, Annabel 127, 136 (n.15) Fahnan, Annie 150 Cremona, Cinzia 4, 5 (n. 3,5), 22, 41,210 Finn-Kelcey, Rose 182 Crilly, Anne 141, 142, 143, 154 Fischer, Hervé 177, 191 (n.4) Critchley, David 73, 91, 192 (n.15,17) Fisher, Jean 141, 152, 156 (n. 21,42) CRVENA (see also Dugandñiƒ, Andreja PROOFand JuÓiƒ, Adela) 56 Flanery, Partick 126, 136 (n.11) Cubitt, Sean xiii, 4, 24 (n.30), Fontana, Lavinia 7 28, 39 (n. 5), 83, Forest, Fred 177 121 (n.1), 182, 210 Fowler, Joan 139, 140, 141, 146, Cummins, Pauline 140, 141, 150, 155 (n.12) 155 (n.1), 156 (n.26,38) Frank Grahamsdaughter, Antonie D 5 (n.4), 121 (n.2), 200, 201, Dahl, Rasmus 197, 207 (n.3,6) 202 (fig.7), 207, 208 (n.20) Dars, Jean-Francois 178 Freed, Hermine 9, 185 Davies, John do 141 Frenzel, Hanna 185 (fig.1), 186, 193 (n.35) Davis, Jo 2 Frueh, Joanna 129, 137 (n.22) De Beauvoir, Simone 12, 178 G de Lauretis, Teresa not vii Garrard, Rose 114, 121 (n.11), Deepwell, Katy 5, 153, 182, 5 (n.6), 30, 155 (n.11), 156 (n.38,43) 31 fig. 7, 39 (n.10,21) Ó Denegri, Je a 188, 183 (n.41) Genet, Jean 178 Demarco, Richard 59, 66 (n.6), 74,distributeGentileschi, Artemisia 7 112, 121 (n.3-7), 212 Georgiu, Diana 2 Derbyshire, Delia 68 Ginsberg, Arthur (see also Video Dick, Vivienne 141, 142, Free America) 78 143 (fig.1), 145, 150, 154, 155 (n.4), 209 Godard, Jean-Luc viii, 178 Dickson, Malcolm xiii, 5, 67, 82 (n. 22), 210 Goddard, Judith 37 (fig.12), 38 fig. 13, 43, 44, 45, 54 (n.1), 182 Dimitrova, Iskra 64 Godfrey-Isaacs, Laura 134 Donovan, Tara 134 González, Marisa 31, 32 fig. 8, 121 (n.2), Dove, Katy 78 130 fig. 4, 131, 137 (n.29) Ó Dragan, Nu a 55, 58 (fig.1), 59, 65, 178, 189 Graham, Roberta 182 Dragan, Sre o 55, 58 (fig.1), 178, 189 Grosz, Elizabeth 16, 24 (n.31) Duchamp, Marcel ix, 20 Gruber, Bettina 5 (n. 6), 50, Duffy, Mary 139 51 (figs.5a-b), 52 (fig.6) Dugandñiƒ, Andreja (see also CRVENA) 56 Gustowska, Izabella 160, 161, duPont, Chantal 75 171, 172, 173 (figs. a-b-c), 174, 175 (n.22) E Guy, Laura 133, 137 (n.39)

Ellberg, Carin 195 H Elwes, Catherine (Cate) xii, 4, 5 (n.3, 4), 9, 16, 21, 22, 23 (n. 7, 8, 10,12), Hak Kyung Cha, Theresa vii 49, 50, 54 (n.16), 68, 78, Hakola, Marikki 3, 4 (fig.2), 81 (n.2), 82 (n.27), 85-86, 121 (n.2), 202, 203 219 Index | EWVA

Hall, David 24 (n.29), 29, 69, 70, 73, 74, Jacquier, Alain 178 81 (n.12), 91, 103, 106-108, Jaffrenou, Michel 179, 189 110 (n.9,11,15,20), 181 Johnston, Claire 141, 155 (n.13) Hammann, Barbara 185 Jones, Dave 27, 39 (n.3) Hand, Brian, (see also O’Kelly, Alanna) 154 Jungblut, Guy 179 Hanhard, John 157 JuÓiƒ, Adela (see also CRVENA) 56, 65 Hanisch, Carol 102 Justesen, Kirsten 195, 196 (fig.2), Hanley, JoAnn 159, 160, 174 (n.3), 175 (n.23) 197 (fig.3), 207, 208 (n.19) Haraway, Donna 183 Judd, Donald 91 Harkin, Margo 141, 142, 143, 154 Hartney, Mick 73 K Hatoum, Mona 159 (n.29), 182 Kaƒma, Leszek 163 Hegarty, Frances (Fran) 140, Kacunko, Slavko 4, 177, 191 (n.2), PROOF141, 142, 146 147, 193 (n.43), 211 148 fig. 5, 149 (figs.6-7), Kahlo, Frida 118 150, 152, 153, 154 Kantonen, Lea & Pekka (see also Herzogenrath, Wulf 12, 122 (n.30,31,33), Turppi Group) 202 191 (n.8,10) Kaprow, Allan 113 Heske, Marianne13, 14 fig. 3, 15, 23 (n.26,27), 24 (n.28), 198, 199 (fig.4), Karlsen, Inghild 200 200 (fig.5), 207 (n.7) Keane, Tina 5 (n.3), Hesse, Eva 101 30, 31 (fig. 6), 85, 87 (fig.3), 95, 115, 131, Hill, Gary 179do 132 (fig.5), 134, 150, Hiller, Susan 92, 99 (n.8), 114, 156 (n. 21), 182, 183 121(n.2),124,128,129,134, Kent, Sarah 145, 151, 156 (n.24) 137 (n.21), 144, 156 (n.37), 181, 182, 192 (n.12,23) Kelly,not Mary 124, 128, 129 Hockney, David 89 Key, Carole 150 Hoey, Brian 192 (n. 15,17), 24 (n.29), 73 Kidron, Biban 131 Holzer, Jenny 73 Kitaj, R B distribute89 Hoover, Nan 9, 10 figs. 1a-b, 182 (n.17), Kneale, Nigel 84 23 (n.10,14,15), 73, 74 Knight, Julia 182 Hooykaas, Madelon (See also Ko»aczkowski, Marek 168 Stansfield, Elsa) xiii, 5, 34, 35 (fig.10), Kollwitz, Käthe 129, 131 36 (fig.11), 37, 39 (n.14,15,17), 67-82,103,104, Korda, Neven (see also Alajbegoviƒ, 110 (n.10), 121 (n.2) Zemira and Zank) 63 Horn, Rebecca 118 (fig.5), 119 (fig.6) Koz»owska, Barbara 170, 171 Horvat-Pintariƒ,Vera 178,182,188 Kozyra, Katarzyna 174 Horvatic, Hrvoje 178, 182 Kracke, Bernd 179 Hyland, Oonagh 150 Krauss, Rosalind 12, 13, 22, 86 Kraus, ðiva 10, 11 (fig.2) I Kren, Kurt 93 Ikam, Catherine 179, 191 (n.7), 192 (n.30) Kriesche, Richard 179 Irigaray, Lucy 12, 16, 156 (n.30) Krikorian, Tamara 5 (n.4,6), IRWIN 63 17 (fig.5), 18, 24 (n. 29), 25, 27 (fig. 3), 69, 70, ƒ Ivekovi , Sanja 56, 60, 61 figs. 4a-b, 64, 65, 81 (n. 12), 83, 87, 103, 66 (n.8), 87, 94 (figs. 6a-b), 115, 182, 192 (n.15,17) 99 (n.4), 87 (figs. 2a-b), 188, 193 (n.37,38) Kristeva, Julia vii, 42, 129, 132, 156 (n.30) Kruger, Barbara 195 J Kubisch, Christina 178, 186 Jacobs, Mary Jane 159 Kubota, Shigeko ix, 74 EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 220

Kuchta, Klára 5 (n.7), 18 (fig.6), 19 M Kukkonen, Martti (see also Turppi Group) 202 MacArthur, Don 190 Kutera, Anna 161 Maciunas, George ix Kuïmicz, Marika 5, 157,211 Mackintosh, Alistair 181 Kvaran, Gunnar B. 204 MacKeogh, Aileen 150 Kytösalmi, Mervi 201, 203 MacWilliam, Shirley 148 Makarewicz, Zbigniew 170, 175 (n.21) L Manca, Simona 207 Laboratory TP (see also Singer, Jadwiga; Mannik, Andres 190 Singer, Jacek and Mantegna, Andrea 126 Ko³aczkowski, Marek) 168 Mara, Tim 90 Lacan, Jacques vii, 12, 41, 42, 107, 132, Marangoni, Federica 5 (n.3,7), 20, 136 (n.19), 147, 182 21 fig. 8, 22, 24 (n.37), 25, PROOFLachowicz, Andrzej 162 26 figs. 1-2, 28, 30, 32, 93 Lafontaine, Marie-Jo 29 (fig.5), 30, 34, 74 Marcolla, Jolanta 160, 163, 164, 165 (fig.3), 166 (figs.4a-b), Land Schou, Jeanette 197 167 (fig.5), 168, 170, 174 La Rocca, Ketty 2, 3 fig. 1, 5 (n.3) Marker, Chris 178 la Rue, Danny 92 Marroquin, Raul 73 Latham, John (See also Artist Marshall, Stuart 73, 81 (n.12), Placement Group) 74, 81 (n.5) 181, 192 (n.15,17) Laysiepen, Frank Uwe (See Martinis, Dalibor 178, 188, 193 (n.37) also Ulay)do 73, 74, 112, 178, 189 Mathis, Muda (see also Ledoux, Jacques 190 Les Reines Prochaines) 5 (n.4), 46, Leehman, Annette Jael 22 47 (figs.3a-b-c), 51 McGonagle, Declan 145 le Grice, Malcolmnot 93 McGrath, John 93, 99 (n.9) Lehner, Waltraud (See also VALIE EXPORT) 118 McGoldrick, Rosemarie 150 Les Reines Prochaines (see also McGreevy, Rose Ann 150 Mathis, Muda and Pipilotti Rist) 46, 47, 50distributeMegert, Franziska 179 Leuzzi, Laura xii, 1, 4, 7, Meigh, Alex 182, 192 (n.17) 49, 54 n. 1 and 10, 60, Meigh-Andrews, Chris 37, 115 82 (n.33), 86, 99 (n.2), Miéville, Anne-Marie viii 122 (n.14), 131, 212 Meskimmon, Marsha 8, 11, 12 Levy, Mark 127 Mette Ruge, Ane 197 LeWitt, Sol 91 Meynell, Katharine 129, 132, 133 (fig.6), 182 Lijn, Liliane 181 Miekle, Gayle 3 Lindgren, Helena 195, 198 Milano, Susan 179, 192 (n.25) Lindgren Cavallin, Katarina 195, 196 (fig.1) Minkoff, Gérald 178, 180 Lippard, Lucy 91, 101-103, 104, 105, 106, Moore, Henry Jack 73, 81 (n.14), 193 (n.39) 107, 108, 109, 110 Moraz, Patricia 178 Lizène, Jacques 189 Mori, Marceline 182, 192 (n.17) Lochner, Stefan 21,185 Morisot, Berthe 87, 123 25 Lockhart, Adam 1, 3, 4, 22, 24 (n.30), , Morreau, Jacqueline 124 99 (n. 2), 122 (n.14), 212 Morricone, Ennio 29 Loftus, Belinda 141 Mulvey, Laura vii, viii, xi, 5, 7, 42, 43, 46, 97, Lonzi, Carla 2, 3,130, 137 (n.28) 106, 107, 115, 116, 124, Lorenz, Renate (See also 136 (n.6), 147, 212-213 Boudry, Pauline) 133 Murak, Teresa 161 Liulia, Marita 201, 204 Murphy, Pat 141 Lunch, Lydia 142 Myrvhold, Pia 200 221 Index | EWVA

N Prochaines) 5 n. 4, 46, 47 (figs.3a-b-c), Nashashibi, Rosalind 78 48 (figs.4a-b), 51, 108, 109 Natalia LL 160, 161, Place, Pat 142 162-163 (figs.2a-b), 174 Plessi, Fabrizio 178, 179, 186 Nauman, Bruce viii, ix Pleynet, Marcelin vii Nedkova, Iliyana 4, 82 (n.33) Poensgen, Daniel 179 Nekes, Werner viii Polieri, Jacques 177, 193 (n.44) Nelson, Gunvor 195, 197, 198 Nessim, Suzanne 201 R Nicolson, Annabel 2 Rastas, Perttu 203 Nieckels, Monica 198 Raysse, Martial 177 Nietzsche, Friedrich vii Reckitt, Helena 5 (n.3), 117 Nittve, Lars 198 Rees, A. L. 182 Nochlin, LindaPROOF102, 123 Reich, Steve 198 Nørgaard, Bjørn 196 Rex, Jytte 195, 196 (fig.2), 197 (fig.3) Rhodes, Lis 2, 24 (n.29), O 121 (n.2), 156 (n.37) O’Grady, Gerald 190 Rigby, Jane 182 O’Kelly, Alanna (See also Stormy Rolfe, Nigel 143, 144 Petrel/Guairdeall) Rosenbach, Ulrike ix, 21, 22, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143-145, 43, 44 (figs.1a-b-c), 50, 144 fig. 2, 145 fig. 3, 116, 117 (fig.4), 178, 146fig.4,150,152,153,do 184-185, 192 (n.17,23) 154, 155 (n.5,6,20), 156 (n.21,23,29) Rosler, Martha ix, 46 Olesen, Muriel 178, 180, 191 (n.9) Ross, Alexandra 3 Ólofsdóttir, Ásta 201 Roussopoulos,not Carole 178 Ono, Yoko 181, 191-192 (n.11), 116 Ruane, Medb 139 Oppenheim, Dennis xi Rúrí 205, 206 (figs.10a-b) Orlan 183 Rush, Michael distribute12, 13 Osswald, Anja 12-13, 16, 22 Ryan, Orla, (see also and Stormy Petrel/Guairdeall) 154 P S Paik, Nam June viii, ix, 81 n. 16, 162, 179, 190, 198, 201 Scacco, Lorella 5, 195,213 Pane, Gina 178, 180 Scarlata, Jessica 143 Papillault, Anne 178 Schaeffer, Pierre 178 Palestine, Charlemagne 73 Schier, Jeffrey 190 Parker, Jane 84 Schmid, Regina Florida 46 Parker, Rozsika 126 Schouten, Lydia 5 (n.4), 45-46 (fig.2), 49, 50,54(n.1,10,74), Partridge, Stephen 2, 4, 17, 22, 24 (n.29,30), 119-120 (fig.7) 69, 81 (n.12), 111,181, 192 (n.15,17), 212, 213 Schum, Gerry 2, 178, 179 Partum, Ewa 160 (figs.1a-b), 161-162, 174 Seth, John (see also Tallentire, Perrée, Rob 73 Anne) 154, 156 (n.42) Pezold, Friederieke ix, 120-121, Seyrig, Delphine 178 179, 184, 192 (n.17,29) Shapiro, Helen 94 Phelan, Peggy 133, 137 (n.36) Sharp, Willoughby ix, 189, 193 (n.39,43) Phillips, Ciara 32 Shemilt, Elaine xi-xii, xiii, 1, 3, 4, Phillipson, Heather 78 5 (n. 3, 4, 7), 15-16 fig. 4, 17, 21, 22, 23 n. 10, Piper, Adrian 47 49, 83,89fig.5,115, Pipilotti Rist (See also Les Reines 118, 121 n. 2, 213-214 EWVA | European Women's Video Art in the 70s and 80s 222

Shemilt, Emile Josef 4, 101,214 Urch, Marion 5 n. 6, 115, 116 (figs.3a-b) Sheridan, Noel 144 Utti, Francis-Marie 36 Sherman, Cindy 195 V Simmons, Laurie 195 Sinden, Tony 24 (n.29), 69, 84-85 (fig. 1) VALIE EXPORT (Lehner, Waltraud) viii, ix, xiii, 33, 114, 118, Singer, Jacek 168, 169 119, 183, 184, 185, 195 Singer, Jadwiga 160, 168-70, 174 Vanderbeek, Stan 190 Sjölander, Ture 198 Vasulka, Woody & Steina 178, 190, 204, 205 Slentø, Erik 197 Vecellio, Tiziano 19 SLON/Vidéo/ISKRA (see also Marker, Vedder, Maria 5 n. 6, 50 Chris and Servolin, Inger) 178 Vellonen, Jarmo (see also Solana, Valerie 178 Turppi Group) 202 Soltau, Annegret 5 (n.4, 6), 94, 117-18 (fig.5), Vertov, Dziga viii, ix n. 1, PROOF 128-129 (fig.3), 131 Video Free America (see also » Sosnowski, Zdzis aw 163 Ginsberg, Arthur) 78 Sparrow, Felicity 2 Videofreex 78 Stansfield, Elsa (see also Hooykaas, Video Heads 189, 193 n. 39 Madelon) xiii, 34-36 (figs.10-11), 37, 39 (n.13,15,16,17), Vos, Ginny 3, 27-28 (fig.4), 67-82, 103-104. 32-33 (fig.9), 114 Steele, Lisa 163 Vostell, Wolf viii Stein, Gertrude 52 W Stones, Andrew (see alsodo Hegarty, Frances) 148 (fig.5), 149 (fig. 6), Wærenskjold, Camilla 200 154, 156 (n.31,32) Walker, Alice 135 Stormy Petrel/Guairdeall (see alsonot Walker, Dorothy 144 Hand, Brian; O’Kelly, Alanna; Walker, Kara 134 and Ryan, Orla) 154 Ward, Henrietta 123 Stubbs, Mike 91 Wegman, William 83 Susovski, Marijan 188 distributeWeibel, Peter viii, 178, 179, Sweeney, Moira 150 183, 184, 192 (n.17), 214 Welsh, Jeremy 182 T Wennberg, Teresa 5 (n.7), 198, Tallentire, Anne 140, 141, 142, 146, 200, 201-202 (figs.6a-b) 149-52 (fig.9), 153 (fig.10), 154, 155 (n.4,5,6), Wijers, Gaby 7, 82 (n.25) 156 (n. 37,40,42) Wilkinson, Norman 32,33 Thorp, David 151 Willemen, Paul 141 Tournier, Nicolas 17, 115 Wolfe, Lauren K. ix Trajkovska, Katica 64 Woolf, Virginia 12 Turppi Group (see also Hakola, Wollen, Peter viii, 97, 213 Marikki; Kantonen, Lea & Pekka; Kukkonen, Martti; and Z Vellonen, Jarmo) 202, 204 (fig.9) òebrowska, Alicja 174 Tyler, Imogen 129, 134 Zielinski, Siegfried vii,5,214 Tyszkiewicz, Teresa 161 Zieli½ska-Mamzeta, Monika 174 U Zgraja, Grzegorz 168, 169 ð ñ Ulay (Laysiepen, Frank Uwe) (See also ild o, Nermina 64 Abramoviƒ, Marina) 73, 74, 112, 178, 189 ðiñek, Slavoj 107-108