To date, there is no European-wide history of video art. It is this gap that the present research programme proposes to fill. Firstly by gathering data on the artists, the works and the events that enabled the emergence of this new artistic practice in the 1960s, or that were important in its development in the following years in Europe, and by bringing to light specific national conditions of production and distribution.
This programme is based on an initial mapping of video art on a European scale undertaken between 2016 and 2020 thanks to the organisation of research seminars at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), the Institut d’histoire de l’art in Paris (INHA) and the Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL / HES-SO) in partnership with the Université Paris 8. This first research programme was jointly conducted by the Université Paris 8 and ECAL, co-financed by Arts-H2H laboratory of excellence and then EUR ArTec, in partnership with the BnF. This indexing should be continued with the aim of transnational rewriting.
The objective of this new research chapter (2021-2025) is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to re-evaluate continental production, to take the measure of its richness and variety, and to identify a European voice – mixed, plural, open, but nevertheless forming a cultural view – in the practice of video art. On the other hand, the aim is to rewrite the history of this medium on an international scale, offering an alternativ to the American specialised literature on the subject in order to draw other topographies (which also include Japan or South America), with Europe constituting a node within a wider network.
In order to carry out this project by renewing the approach to video art - both historiographically and theoretically -, the programme is relying on a network of some fifty national and international specialists, researchers, archive holders, artists, and witnesses that the previous research enabled to establish. By questioning the medium of video, the aim is also to contribute to the creation of an archaeology of new media in Europe through a series of publications and exhibitions.

Research Team
- François Bovier, research fellow at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO) and senior lecturer in the Film Studies department at the University of Lausanne (UNIL), Switzerland - françois.bovier@ecal.ch
- Ségolène Liautaud, researcher at Université Paris 8 Vincennes - Saint Denis, France - segolene.liautaud@gmail.com
- Grégoire Quenault, senior lecturer at Université Paris 8 Vincennes - Saint Denis, France - gregquenault@gmail.com
- Stéphanie Serra, researcher at ECAL, Switzerland - stephanie.serra@ecal.ch

Editorial Committee
- Laura Leuzzi, chancellor’s Fellow at Gray’s School of Art at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland - laura.leuzzi@gmail.com
- Slavko Kacunko, PD Dr. Phil. Habil. and CEO of Micro Human, Germany - contact@slavkokacunko.com
- Chris Meigh-Andrews, emeritus Professor of Electronic & Digital Art at University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom - meighandrews@btinternet.com
- Miklós Peternák, professor at HUFA Intermedia Dept. Budapest and director of C3 Center for Culture and Communication Foundation, Hungary - peternak(at)c3(dot)hu
- Lorella Scacco, professor of Phenomenology of Contemporary Arts at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and affiliated researcher at the University of Turku, Italy/Finland - lorellascacco@fadbrera.edu.it
- Tomasz Załuski, art historian in the Department of Cultural Research at University of Łódź, Poland - tomasz.zaluski@uni.lodz.pl

Documentation
Aliocha Durand (2024). Former documentalists: Matthieu Combe (2023-2024), Grégoire Chéhère (2023), Victor Tsaconas (2018-2019), Boualem Khelifati (2018)