Vocal acts: video art and the artist’s voice

This article considers the interview as an on-going and underlying theme in artists’ moving image. Taking the dialogic back-and-forth of interview interaction as a starting point, it considers works of early video art, Kevin Atherton’s 'In Two Minds' (1978–2018) and Catherine Elwes' 'Kensington Gore' (1982) to explore how installations and performances alter understanding of recorded material and the archive. Framed by these analyses, it asks how and in what ways the interview as a format can be used to re-engage with history – activating re-examinations of queer and feminist approaches to making, disseminating, and encountering artworks.

The article is adapted from an earlier conference paper entitled ‘Speaking out: Split identities, politics and the ventriloquial voice in artists’ film and video of the 1970s and 1980s’, which was given as part of the panel ‘The Artist Interview: an interdisciplinary approach to its history, process and dissemination’ (6 April), organised by Lucia Farinati and Jennifer Thatcher as part of the Association of Art History Annual Conference (University of Brighton, 4 – 6 April 2019).

The ideas here develop those outlined in ‘Chapter 2, On the Use of History: telling stories and narratives of the 1980s’ and ‘Chapter 5, Specters of Modernism: multiple mediums and works depicting ghosts’ in the PhD thesis, History has Tongues: re-evaluating historiography of the moving image through analysis of the voice and critical writing in British artists’ film and video of the 1980s (University of the Arts London, 2015). Available at: http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/10771/ (Accessed 31 August 2020).

Multimedia article in a special edition of the Journal of Art Historiography on Artist Interviews, guest edited by Jennifer Thatcher and Lucia Farinati (Journal editor: Richard Woodfield).