Embracing the ephemeral: lost and recovered video artworks by Elaine Shemilt from the 70s and 80s

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.