Ansprache Aussprache

VALIE EXPORT

Ansprache Aussprache, 1968

"Expanded Movie", "Heimfilm"

Artwork text

The pioneering media artist VALIE EXPORT has questioned and changed the conventions of cinema and film more than almost any other artist. Since the late 1960s, her media and socially critical works have set new international standards. She exposed the domineering, patriarchal, capitalist nature of traditional television and cinema and its associated objectification of the female body. With radical actions, experimental films, and feature films, she broke through the subjection of a male, chauvinist gaze to develop a countercultural media and cinematic language. In 1968 EXPORT produced Ansprache Aussprache (Address Redress). A microphone is placed in front of a film screen. When someone speaks into this microphone, a crowd of people starts cheering the speaker enthusiastically. Here too EXPORT illustrates the relationship between stimulus and reaction in media. Interaction with the film is rewarded with particular emotions, as she articulates with conscious irony: “When to use the film: Before important conferences, rendezvous, receptions, exams, etc. By using the film, you enhance your experience of yourself; no matter what you say, approval is assured. No matter what you complain about, comfort is present.”1 (Jürgen Tabor) 1 VALIE EXPORT, “filmographie,” in Neuer österreichischer “Film. Katalog”, ed. Kuratorium Neuer Österreichischer Film, exh. cat. (Vienna: Viennale; Vienna: Kuratorium Neuer Österreichischer Film, 1970), unpaginated.