Gray’s School of Art awarded major research funding
Tuesday 14 January 2025
Robert Gordon University (RGU) will share an AHRC funding grant totalling £436,000, to deliver a project called ‘Rewind Yugoslavia: (1969 – 1991)’, led by two academics from Gray’s School of Art, Dr. Jon Blackwood, Associate Professor in Contemporary Art at Gray’s and Chancellor’s Fellow Dr. Laura Leuzzi along with Adam Lockhart, Lecturer in Media Art and Archives at the University of Dundee, as co-investigators.
‘Rewind Yugoslavia’ builds on years of previous research and will investigate former Yugoslav artists' early video experimentation from late 1960s to the early 1990s.
The researchers will retrace artists' stories, their video artworks, and their achievements, and recover rare and marginalised videos and materials to bring them to international attention.
The project will provide an authoritative source on early Balkan artists' experimentation of videotape as a new medium and language for their artworks.
Dr Jon Blackwood said: “‘Rewind Yugoslavia’ had been in discussion for several years and features a timely synergy between previous projects in the history of video art, and histories of Yugoslav art, which are still under-researched in English.
“Whilst some artists from Yugoslav times have a global profile- such as Marina Abramović- there are many more innovative and groundbreaking practices from the Yugoslav period that remain under-researched and little known beyond the region. Critically, many early works from Yugoslav are in poor condition and on analogue technology and are in need of digitising and preservation for future generations.
“This project is hugely significant for the wider community because it will conserve and digitise materials at risk of being lost through obsolescence or decay. Whilst much research has been completed already in Slovenia and Croatia, video art histories in Bosnia-Herzegovina, North Macedonia and to a lesser extent, Serbia, are still largely unknown and disconnected to broader European and global histories of video art.”
Professor Nick Fyfe, Vice Principal for Research and Community Engagement; “We are delighted to be awarded funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council in partnership with academics from the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design at the University of Dundee. RGU is committed to growing the quality and impact of our globally recognised research, and ‘Rewind Yugoslavia’ will make a really important and innovative contribution to the narrative on early Balkan artists' work.”
Rewind Yugoslavia begins in February 2025 and will last until August 2027, with the research consisting of interviews with surviving artists and curators from the late Yugoslav years, leading to planned national and international exhibitions, publications and roundtables.
The research team will assess centres and hubs of video art in the former Yugoslavia and highlight their pioneering activities, and broadcasts, in cities such as Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, and Skopje.
Dr Jon Blackwood has an extensive track-record researching the Balkan states and has previously contributed to chapters on Yugoslav video art to previous Rewind publications and mounting exhibitions including Imaginarium : Contemporary Video Art from Macedonia (Gray’s School of Art, 2016), and Shaping the Contemporary : Macedonian Video Art since 1984 (Rewind Re-Exhibit Gallery).
Academics Dr. Laura Leuzzi and Adam Lockhart previously fulfilled AHRC funded projects ‘Rewind: British Artists’ Video in the 1970s and 1980s’, ‘Rewind Italia: Early Video Art in Italy’ and ‘EWVA: European Womens’ Video Art in the 1970s and 1980s’, and Blackwood’s long experience in working in the former Yugoslav context.
Main image shows video still, Dragan Abjanić, Ivan Cunihin, Vana Urošrević. Ana, 1987.