ABSTRACT
Over forty years in the making, Lynn Hershman Leeson’s !Women Art Revolution (aka !W.A.R., 2010) documents the feminist art movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Building on women’s experiences and memories outside official Art History, !W.A.R.’s feminist genealogy develops an art-world counter-history – notably, a concept associated with revolutionary practice. The film is not just “about” feminist activism and/in the art world, it is itself feminist art activism, generating further feminist paratexts, including a graphic novel and a traveling art exhibit. This chapter maps the stakes of Leeson’s documentary and archival project in terms of the production of counter-memory to assert its significance as a work of feminist historiography.
