Lecture: There are no Video Artists in Iceland

The title of the lecture refers to answers that Icelandic artists gave in a Nordic study in 2002. The study revealed that artists who had made video works would not choose to be labeled "video artists". They preferred not to be categorized and argued that even if the video technology had been used in the process it does not mean that the works are video art.

This lecture is intended to shed light on the roots of this paradox by examining previous definitions of video art and discuss the changing position of artists in general to the medium through the nineties.

Margrét Elísabet Ólafdsóttir is associate professor of art education at the University of Akureyri and works as a freelance curator and critic. She completed her doctorate in arts and aesthetics in 2013, the same year she curated an exhibition of Icelandic video art from 1975 to 1990 in the Reykjavik Art Museum.

Margrét's work has for a long time focused on electronic and digital arts in Iceland, sometimes in collaboration with Lorna, a community of electronic art enthusiasts, she has also participated in international projects in the same field. She is now involved in MaKEY, an international research project that aims to see how to improve digital literacy and creativity of children with their participation in the so-called Makerspaces. In addition, she is working on an exhibition in collaboration with Listasafn Árnesinga Museum and writing a book on Steina Valsulka.