Laura Leuzzi | University of Dundee (original) (raw)
Papers by Laura Leuzzi
REWINDItalia Early Video Art in Italy, 2015
This chapter offers a critical analysis of Patella's early video artworks recovered by REWINDItalia.
Federica Marangoni is an important Italian media artist and designer based in Venice. She is a pi... more Federica Marangoni is an important Italian media artist and designer based in Venice. She is a pioneer of video, performance and installation in Italy.
Marangoni’s exhibition at Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art, Venice, entitled Il filo conduttore/The Leading Thread (2015), was curated by Gabriella Belli. [1] The exhibition was organised by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia in response to Venice Biennale’s 56th International Art Exhibition – All The World’s Futures.
The following interview consists of several conversations held before and after this major exhibition and are part of the AHRC funded research project ‘EWVA European Women’s Video Art in the 70s and 80s’, based at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee. [2] [3]
This article explores Elaine Shemilt’s video artworks from the Seventies and early Eighties. Gene... more This article explores Elaine Shemilt’s video artworks from the Seventies and early Eighties. Generally known as a printmaker, Shemilt started to use video in 1974 as part of her installation and performance work. Shemilt aimed to use video - a relatively new medium at the time – as a performative element within her installations. Since that time, her artistic practice has conveyed feminist themes as well as the re-elaboration of intimate and personal experiences. She destroyed her Seventies videotapes in 1984, considering those tapes as part of ephemeral installations. Photographs taken during the shootings and series of prints are the final artwork from those projects and act today as the remaining existing documentation of those videos. Only two of Shemilt’s videotapes from the early Eighties, Doppelgänger and Women Soldiers, are today available. They were both remastered during the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project Rewind in 2011. This article, based on documents, existing videos and interviews collected during the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project EWVA ‘European Women’s Video Art from the 70s and 80s’, discusses and retraces Shemilt’s early video artworks.
Body, identity, self-representation, sexuality, stereotypical images of women portrayed by the so... more Body, identity, self-representation, sexuality, stereotypical images of women portrayed by the society and the media, and the condition of female professional artists: these themes were expressed and developed in several early video works in the 70s and early 80s by women artists that didn't have direct knowledge or contact between each other. This simultaneity of thematic is an unusual phenomenon that reveals common, contemporary sensibilities within both Europe and the USA. To remark this significant trend, video artist and historian Catherine Elwes wrote: "women on this side of the Atlantic looked for ways of problematizing the appearance of the female body whilst negotiating new forms of visibility". 1 In her analyses Elwes identifies several strategies used by performance and video women artist to avoid the "pitfalls of sexual representation", exploiting the possibilities of the medium 2 .
On 17 May 1952, before RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana Studios began their regular broadcast from M... more On 17 May 1952, before RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana Studios began their regular broadcast from Milan, the Spatialist painter and sculptor Lucio Fontana broadcast his own experimental ‘artwork’ on Italian television, beginning a fruitful relationship between RAI and visual artists. For some, it provided careers as designers and art directors, such as the painter Mario Sasso and the Arte Povera artist Pino Pascali, while for others, who were given unique access to RAI’s television apparatus, it was an opportunity to explore their own artistic experimentations with an expensive and exclusive medium, such as Carlo Quartucci and Gianni Toti. RAI also hosted seminal artists’ performances on-screen including John Cage and Fabio Mauri. This article, based on documents and interviews collected during the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project REWINDItalia, discusses these and other seminal cases as well as tracing and assessing the history of this fruitful and complex exchange between RAI and visual artists.
STARTING FROM VENICE STUDIES ON THE BIENNALE, 2010
"Predella", n°26, anno IX, Dec 2009
Il 27 dicembre 1959 al Palazzo delle Esposizioni di Roma tra dissensi e assenze si aprì la VIII Q... more Il 27 dicembre 1959 al Palazzo delle Esposizioni di Roma tra dissensi e assenze si aprì la VIII Quadriennale Nazionale d'Arte di Roma, con oltre duemila opere di circa milleduecento artisti e imponenti retrospettive: il risultato fu una delle più ampie edizioni mai conosciute della Quadriennale, caratterizzata però da una forte disomogeneità dal punto di vista qualitativo 2 .
Since 2005 the research project Rewind has been recovering the 70s and 80s British video art and ... more Since 2005 the research project Rewind has been recovering the 70s and 80s British video art and has successfully brought back these experiences and the early video community to National and International attention. As the research assistant on RewindItalia -a research project following Rewind, I met many artists who had lost confidence in their early video works and in the medium in itself. The work of many early video artists has been marginalized for years and only recovered recently as the Seventies' video formats were soon abandoned, and had become obsolete, some videotapes were left in old cupboards, were forgotten or even got lost. Many videotapes are still to be rediscovered and the video work of women artists, in particular, has not yet been recovered completely.
Talks by Laura Leuzzi
Picture from Cesare Pietroius@'s Una risposta ad ogni domanda, 2008, Roma,
Edited Books by Laura Leuzzi
REWINDItalia, Early Video Art in Italy includes seminal essays, translated for the first time int... more REWINDItalia, Early Video Art in Italy includes seminal essays, translated for the first time into English, plus newly commissioned texts by leading scholars and artists, and a wide selection of video stills and other images.
Authors include: Renato Barilli, Maria Gloria Bicocchi, Lola Bonora, Silvia Bordini, Paolo Cardazzo, Cinzia Cremona, Sean Cubitt, Bruno Di Marino, Simonetta Fadda, Vittorio Fagone, Marco Maria Gazzano, Luciano Giaccari, Mirco Infanti, Laura Leuzzi, Sandra Lischi, Adam Lockhart, Stephen Partridge, Cosetta G. Saba, Emile Shemilt, Studio Azzurro, Valentina Valentini, Grahame Weinbren.
Foreword by Don Foresta; introduction by Stephen Partridge; the volume closes with 'The Chronology of Video Art in Italy (1952–1992)', by Valentino Catricalà and Laura Leuzzi. Translation by Simona Manca.
July 10, 2008, the Italian behaviourist artist Cesare Pietroiusti made a performance at MLAC Muse... more July 10, 2008, the Italian behaviourist artist Cesare Pietroiusti made a performance at MLAC Museo Laboratorio d’Arte Contemporanea at Sapienza University of Rome: the piece consisted in replying to all the questions that were made by students. He also asked to those who were presents to repeat the happening at one year distance. The performance was not recorded on electronic devices: the personal and collective memory was the only trace of the event, except for a few pictures.
Emanuele Sbardella, the curator of that performance, and I decided to accept the challenge and on July 10, 2009 and 2010 organized and curated 2 cycles of re-enactments of Pietroiusti’s original piece, performing two ourselves.
Those re-enactments involved people from different fields and experiences, such as artists, curators, photographers, video makers, writers, students and art lovers, who attended the original event or the first re-enactment, creating a community who debated on the documentation and transmission of a performance’s memory, of its personal and collective perception, and of the possibility to use of words, images, objects, new media to make a re-enactment that is just not a repetition but a re-elaboration and research on the artistic event.
Book Reviews by Laura Leuzzi
Series Editor at KT press by Laura Leuzzi
Local-Global Dynamics in Feminism and Contemporary Art is a new email list on JISCmail. This li... more Local-Global Dynamics in Feminism and Contemporary Art is a new email list on JISCmail.
This list aims to build an international community of feminist researchers exploring local and global dynamics in feminism and contemporary art, post-1960. This list is for posting relevant information, announcements, notices, projects proposals and outlines of research in progress where researchers seek collaborations/partners for transnational dialogues as well as holding discussions on key topics and issues.
If you are working in these areas, please join the list!
Co-owners: Katy Deepwell and Laura Leuzzi
REWINDItalia Early Video Art in Italy, 2015
This chapter offers a critical analysis of Patella's early video artworks recovered by REWINDItalia.
Federica Marangoni is an important Italian media artist and designer based in Venice. She is a pi... more Federica Marangoni is an important Italian media artist and designer based in Venice. She is a pioneer of video, performance and installation in Italy.
Marangoni’s exhibition at Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art, Venice, entitled Il filo conduttore/The Leading Thread (2015), was curated by Gabriella Belli. [1] The exhibition was organised by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia in response to Venice Biennale’s 56th International Art Exhibition – All The World’s Futures.
The following interview consists of several conversations held before and after this major exhibition and are part of the AHRC funded research project ‘EWVA European Women’s Video Art in the 70s and 80s’, based at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee. [2] [3]
This article explores Elaine Shemilt’s video artworks from the Seventies and early Eighties. Gene... more This article explores Elaine Shemilt’s video artworks from the Seventies and early Eighties. Generally known as a printmaker, Shemilt started to use video in 1974 as part of her installation and performance work. Shemilt aimed to use video - a relatively new medium at the time – as a performative element within her installations. Since that time, her artistic practice has conveyed feminist themes as well as the re-elaboration of intimate and personal experiences. She destroyed her Seventies videotapes in 1984, considering those tapes as part of ephemeral installations. Photographs taken during the shootings and series of prints are the final artwork from those projects and act today as the remaining existing documentation of those videos. Only two of Shemilt’s videotapes from the early Eighties, Doppelgänger and Women Soldiers, are today available. They were both remastered during the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project Rewind in 2011. This article, based on documents, existing videos and interviews collected during the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project EWVA ‘European Women’s Video Art from the 70s and 80s’, discusses and retraces Shemilt’s early video artworks.
Body, identity, self-representation, sexuality, stereotypical images of women portrayed by the so... more Body, identity, self-representation, sexuality, stereotypical images of women portrayed by the society and the media, and the condition of female professional artists: these themes were expressed and developed in several early video works in the 70s and early 80s by women artists that didn't have direct knowledge or contact between each other. This simultaneity of thematic is an unusual phenomenon that reveals common, contemporary sensibilities within both Europe and the USA. To remark this significant trend, video artist and historian Catherine Elwes wrote: "women on this side of the Atlantic looked for ways of problematizing the appearance of the female body whilst negotiating new forms of visibility". 1 In her analyses Elwes identifies several strategies used by performance and video women artist to avoid the "pitfalls of sexual representation", exploiting the possibilities of the medium 2 .
On 17 May 1952, before RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana Studios began their regular broadcast from M... more On 17 May 1952, before RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana Studios began their regular broadcast from Milan, the Spatialist painter and sculptor Lucio Fontana broadcast his own experimental ‘artwork’ on Italian television, beginning a fruitful relationship between RAI and visual artists. For some, it provided careers as designers and art directors, such as the painter Mario Sasso and the Arte Povera artist Pino Pascali, while for others, who were given unique access to RAI’s television apparatus, it was an opportunity to explore their own artistic experimentations with an expensive and exclusive medium, such as Carlo Quartucci and Gianni Toti. RAI also hosted seminal artists’ performances on-screen including John Cage and Fabio Mauri. This article, based on documents and interviews collected during the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project REWINDItalia, discusses these and other seminal cases as well as tracing and assessing the history of this fruitful and complex exchange between RAI and visual artists.
STARTING FROM VENICE STUDIES ON THE BIENNALE, 2010
"Predella", n°26, anno IX, Dec 2009
Il 27 dicembre 1959 al Palazzo delle Esposizioni di Roma tra dissensi e assenze si aprì la VIII Q... more Il 27 dicembre 1959 al Palazzo delle Esposizioni di Roma tra dissensi e assenze si aprì la VIII Quadriennale Nazionale d'Arte di Roma, con oltre duemila opere di circa milleduecento artisti e imponenti retrospettive: il risultato fu una delle più ampie edizioni mai conosciute della Quadriennale, caratterizzata però da una forte disomogeneità dal punto di vista qualitativo 2 .
Since 2005 the research project Rewind has been recovering the 70s and 80s British video art and ... more Since 2005 the research project Rewind has been recovering the 70s and 80s British video art and has successfully brought back these experiences and the early video community to National and International attention. As the research assistant on RewindItalia -a research project following Rewind, I met many artists who had lost confidence in their early video works and in the medium in itself. The work of many early video artists has been marginalized for years and only recovered recently as the Seventies' video formats were soon abandoned, and had become obsolete, some videotapes were left in old cupboards, were forgotten or even got lost. Many videotapes are still to be rediscovered and the video work of women artists, in particular, has not yet been recovered completely.
REWINDItalia, Early Video Art in Italy includes seminal essays, translated for the first time int... more REWINDItalia, Early Video Art in Italy includes seminal essays, translated for the first time into English, plus newly commissioned texts by leading scholars and artists, and a wide selection of video stills and other images.
Authors include: Renato Barilli, Maria Gloria Bicocchi, Lola Bonora, Silvia Bordini, Paolo Cardazzo, Cinzia Cremona, Sean Cubitt, Bruno Di Marino, Simonetta Fadda, Vittorio Fagone, Marco Maria Gazzano, Luciano Giaccari, Mirco Infanti, Laura Leuzzi, Sandra Lischi, Adam Lockhart, Stephen Partridge, Cosetta G. Saba, Emile Shemilt, Studio Azzurro, Valentina Valentini, Grahame Weinbren.
Foreword by Don Foresta; introduction by Stephen Partridge; the volume closes with 'The Chronology of Video Art in Italy (1952–1992)', by Valentino Catricalà and Laura Leuzzi. Translation by Simona Manca.
July 10, 2008, the Italian behaviourist artist Cesare Pietroiusti made a performance at MLAC Muse... more July 10, 2008, the Italian behaviourist artist Cesare Pietroiusti made a performance at MLAC Museo Laboratorio d’Arte Contemporanea at Sapienza University of Rome: the piece consisted in replying to all the questions that were made by students. He also asked to those who were presents to repeat the happening at one year distance. The performance was not recorded on electronic devices: the personal and collective memory was the only trace of the event, except for a few pictures.
Emanuele Sbardella, the curator of that performance, and I decided to accept the challenge and on July 10, 2009 and 2010 organized and curated 2 cycles of re-enactments of Pietroiusti’s original piece, performing two ourselves.
Those re-enactments involved people from different fields and experiences, such as artists, curators, photographers, video makers, writers, students and art lovers, who attended the original event or the first re-enactment, creating a community who debated on the documentation and transmission of a performance’s memory, of its personal and collective perception, and of the possibility to use of words, images, objects, new media to make a re-enactment that is just not a repetition but a re-elaboration and research on the artistic event.
Local-Global Dynamics in Feminism and Contemporary Art is a new email list on JISCmail. This li... more Local-Global Dynamics in Feminism and Contemporary Art is a new email list on JISCmail.
This list aims to build an international community of feminist researchers exploring local and global dynamics in feminism and contemporary art, post-1960. This list is for posting relevant information, announcements, notices, projects proposals and outlines of research in progress where researchers seek collaborations/partners for transnational dialogues as well as holding discussions on key topics and issues.
If you are working in these areas, please join the list!
Co-owners: Katy Deepwell and Laura Leuzzi