REWIND ITALIA: Videoart in Italy 1968-1994

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The history of Videoart is a varied one. Linked to the appearance in 1965 of the Sony Portapak, the first portable video camera, or to the first video exhibition 'TV as a Creative Medium' (Howard Wise Gallery, New York, 1969), its conceptual origins can be traced back to Spazialismo, the art movement founded by Lucio Fontana (Milan 1947-52). Historiographies have often emphasized a pervasive American influence on the evolution of this art form particularly since by the end of the 1970s American museums, including the Whitney and the MOMA, added video to their curatorial departments, thus contributing to the survival of the medium.Traditionally, the history of Videoart in Europe has been of interest to restricted circles of specialists, although programmes devoted to the preservation of analogue videotapes have appeared in several European countries: the Netherlands Media Art Institute, The Video Data Bank Denmark, France Heure Exquise and ZKM in Germany. Recently, the inception of Videoart in Britain, has been the concern of the AHRC funded REWIND: Artists' Video in the 70s & 80s research project (2004-08) www.rewind.ac.uk. Such a project, whose aim was to encourage the re-exposure of a significant period of video production in Britain to a wider audience constitutes the intellectual springboard for the proposed REWIND ITALIA: Videoart in Italy 1968-81.The reiteration of the iconic term 'rewind' in our new project's title signals a continuity of aims, (within a culturally distinctive context like the Italian one) and our confidence in the validity of established research skills, methodologies and institutional context (Duncan of Jordanstone at the University of Dundee - an institution with an excellent track record in managing significant research grants).The impetus behind the REWIND ITALIA project stems from the consideration that Italy was a vibrant centre of Videoart production and exhibition throughout the 1970s. All the more remarkable because of the international reach of the work produced. Some of the artists connected to the Italian video centres include well known names such as: V. Acconci, J. Baldessari, C. Boltanski, D. Buren, G. De Dominicis, A. Kaprow, J. Kounellis, M. Abramovic, S. Bussotti, G. Cattani, C. Kubish, N. J. Paik, J. Shaw, P. Weibel, B. Viola. This early work laid the foundation for Videoart, thus it is only timely that its history and the social, cultural and economic circumstances that characterized its rise and, ultimately, its fall into critical oblivion are finally brought to light. In detail, REWIND ITALIA will focus on the activities of video production and documentation of three centres: Art/Tapes/22, run by Maria Gloria Bicocchi in Florence (1973-76),the first European studio for artist videos; the Centro Video Arte run by Lola Bonora in Ferrara (1972-94), a rare example of public sponsored videoart, and the Galleria del Cavallino based in Venice and run by Paolo Cardazzo. Between 1974 and 1981 the Galleria produced over one hundred videos shown in several (inter)national exhibitions. In addition, the project will consider the rich video tape collection of Luciano Giaccari whose group Studio 970/2 was interested in using the new medium for artistic documentation (see for example the 'Television as Memory' project, 24 hours no-stop Theatre, Varese June 2nd 1968).The activities of the above centres have received only scanty international exposure, (an exception is the exhibition Art/Tapes/22, Long Beach,CA. University Art Museum, 2008). To date, no critical overview of the above experiences has been produced. Also, there is an urgency to this research, illustrated by the fact that the pioneers mentioned above (Bicocchi, Bonora, Cardazzo,Giaccari) are already in retirement. Their impact on the history of video as an art form has for too long escaped the recognition that they so unequivocally deserve.