Visual Research Centre, Centrespace, Dundee Contemporary Arts
5:30 pm - 8:30 pm, 9th December 2016

Video Screening: Self/Portraits: Relating Narratives

Curated by Laura Leuzzi, Giulia Casalini and Diana Georgiou.

With the participation of the artists Cinzia Cremona, Lydia Sc

houten and Elaine Shemilt. Readings by Diana Georgiou.

Video support by Adam Lockhart.

Self/Portraits: Relating Narratives was the sequel to the performative screening Autoritratti which took place at the Showroom Gallery (London) in 2015.

This screening wove together the visual narratives of 12 international women artists or collectives who have worked around questions of identity and self-determination, often in confrontation to their respective social and political contexts. Employing real and interpreted voices, lyrics and unorthodox visual techniques, their works address female sexuality, motherhood, ecology and violence.

Self/Portraits: Relating Narratives employed varied methodological tools, including dialogue, autobiography, cross-genre and fragmented narratives. This curatorial approach was inspired by two Italian feminist authors who located everyday narratives and exchanges at the heart of their philosophical and political strategies. The radical thinker Carla Lonzi and her book Autoritratto [Self-portrait] (1969), offered an unprecedented montage of different artists’ interviews recomposed by the author in a continuous flux, a convivial conversation, and most significantly, as a personal portrait carved out of relations between artists and their critics. It also refered to feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero’s book Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood (2000), where an exploration of identity is framed as the desire to hear one’s story narrated by an other.

Videos on show: Pilar Albarracin, Furor Latino, 2003; Cinzia Cremona, The Other Person, 2010; Catherine Elwes, There is a Myth, 1984; Francesca Fini, Cry Me, 2009; Antonie Frank Grahamsdaughter, Transit, 1986; Sigalit Landau, Barbed Hula, 2000; Tamara Krikorian, Vanitas (1977); Muda Mathis & Pipilotti Rist, Japsen, 1988; Lydia Schouten, Romeo is bleeding, 1982; Elaine Shemilt, Women Soldiers, 1984; Annegret Soltau, Schwanger-sein II: phase three, 1978/80.

Doors opened at 5.30 PM. Screening started at 6.00 PM.

Followed by a Q&A with artists Cinzia Cremona, Lydia Schouten and Elaine

Shemilt, and Laura Leuzzi. Moderated by Giulia Casalini and Diana Georgiou.

Self/Portraits: Relating Narratives was part of the AHRC funded research project ‘EWVA European Women’s Video Art in the 70s and 80s’, based at DJCAD, University of Dundee. For more information please visit: www.ewva.ac.uk

Centrespace is in the Visual Research Centre, DJCAD located on Level 2 of Dundee Contemporary Arts, 152 Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4DY.