Touch Cinema

Description

"Touch Cinema" is the video registration of a performance by VALIE EXPORT at Karlplatz (Stachus) in Munich. On her chest, the artist is wearing a polystyrene box, the front of which has an opening draped with curtains, and designed to resemble a cinema. Peter Weibel, from the inner circle of the Vienna-based group Wiener Aktionismus, assists by shouting into a megaphone, inviting the audience to touch the artist’s breasts for 33 seconds. The performance was considered transgressive at the time because of its erotic and sexual nature. The artist uses this act to point out and criticize the ways in which women’s bodies are objectified in the film industry.

VALIE EXPORT is an Austrian feminist artist and activist. She was close to Vienna Actionism artists such as Herman Nitsch and Günter Brus, although she considered her work to be distinct from the movement. She worked in the film industry from 1965 to 1968. In 1967 she changed her name to VALIE EXPORT (written in capitals) as both an act of self-determination and as an act of rebellion against the patriarchal system.

"Touch Cinema" relates to other films that the artist made in the 1960s and 1970s. VALIE EXPORT defines these films as "Expanded Cinema", which aims to challenge the traditional medium, presenting avant-garde ideas on rethinking cinematic aesthetics and settings (for instance in the street or on stage).

-2019

Queer perspective

Being an agent means doing something. Being an object means having something done to you. Where do they meet? VALIE cuts, VALIE is being touched. Each performance is confrontational in its own way. The body becomes the site of exploration where issues of control, power and embodiment are investigated.

%>Tags: agency, body politics, feminism, sex positive

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