First Memory (1980-81) is a multi-media work which comprised Super 8, slide tape and audio and was publicly premiered in the Events Programme of the landmark women’s show About Time, ICA (1981). (The 16mm film First Memory (1981) was premiered in New Contemporaries 1981). First Memory 1980-1981 made significant contribution to experiments in women’s time-based work and influenced peers. David Curtis in A History of Artists’ Film and Video in Britain (2006), acknowledges the significance of its methods which influenced peers. “The unseen narrator formed an essential building block of feminist film and video in the 80s, for example in the work of Lis Rhodes, Mona Hatoum or Nina Danino, it also shaped the fictions of Patrick Keiller” P195. In 2010, the work was invited to be shown for the first time in 30 years in the landmark group show From Floor to Sky British Sculpture and the Studio Experience (2010) curated by Peter Kardia. The exhibition was accompanied by a fully illustrated book From Floor to Sky with critical essays by Hester Westley, Malcolm Le Grice, Peter Kardia, A & G Black. More recently, Mary White curated it in Slide/Tape: Key Work in the UK since the 1960s, Vivid, Birmingham 2016. The 16mm film was screened in the important survey show From Reel to Real, Women, Feminism and the London Filmmaker’s’ Co-op (2016) Tate Modern, in a counter-history of experimental films where I was also invited to take part in panel discussions, which testifies to its significance and influence. First Memory is a foundational work in my career and is ground breaking in the context of introducing the woman’s voice, narrative, word and image to a time-based form and feminist context of film in the 80s. First Memory (1980-1981) introduced the use of the voice to create narrative forms to represent woman as subject. This was a significant formal breakthrough and was the first exponent of the use of the voice in this form and context which influenced other contemporaneous works.

• Danino, Nina. 1980. Slide–tape: Key Work in the UK since the 1960s. In: "Slide-tape: Key work in the UK since l980s.", Vivid , Birmingham, United Kingdom, 4 October- 30 November 2012. [Show/Exhibition]

Related Link 1) Edited by Mo White (2018) SLIDE/TAPE, published by Vivid Projects, Birmingham
http://www.vividprojects.org.uk/programme/slide-tape-2/

Related Link 2) White, MC. 2019. After All This Time, Isn’t It Still ‘About Time’? Artist’s Work in Slide-Tape in the UK Since the 1970s. Open Screens, 2(1): 3, pp. 1–15. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/os.15

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/27966