Methodologies, Strategies and Practice Based Research Methods to uncover and narrate early European Women’s Video Art

EWVA - European Women’s Video Art in the 70s and 80s is an AHRC funded research project based at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD), University of Dundee, and led by video pioneer Prof Elaine Shemilt.It aims to recover and reassess the seminal but still marginalised contribution of women artists to early video art in Europe at the benefit of scholars, researchers, practitioners, curators and heritage professionals.This paper will discuss the issues, methodologies and approaches emerging out of the research into EWVA and how the project has engaged with several issues including the identity and status of the artworks, preservation methods and the legacy of early women’s video artworks today. EWVA interviews have captured oral histories, memories and recollections, that in some cases would have been otherwise lost to future knowledge and have also uncovered lost artworks and their available documentation.Different practice-based research methods, platforms and strategies adopted during EWVA will also be covered alongside case studies, which will include: curated performative screenings, with selected artists’ and theoretical texts, performances and screenings with two events curated by Leuzzi with Giulia Casalini and Diana Georgiou (Autoritratti, The Showroom in London, 2015, part of the feminist program Now You can Go; Self/Portraits VRC, DCA, 2016); the re-enactment as research tool for early video artworks as in the case of Doppelganger Redux by Elaine Shemilt at Visions in the Nunnery (Bow Arts, London, 2016), curated by Leuzzi and Adam Lockhart; curated screenings (Rome Media Art Festival, MAXXI, 2016)