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Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

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Valie Export

Touch Cinema

1968

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Valie Export rose to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s as a pioneer of feminist art. In her early performance-based projects she employed her own body as a medium, expanding upon and countering the male-dominated group of artists known as the Vienna Actionists, whose taboo-breaking performance art dominated the Viennese art scene of the 1960s. Touch Cinema documents one of Export’s famous street performances, which took place from 1968 to 1971 in ten European cities. For these performances the artist built a tiny “movie theater” around her naked chest. She invited people to “visit the cinema” by touching her body inside the curtained box—a witty and provocative comment on the objectification of women’s bodies. Challenging the public to engage with a real woman instead of with images on a screen, she enacted with these performances her notion of “expanded cinema,” in which film is produced without celluloid and, instead, the artist’s body activates the live context of watching. [Permanent collection label, 2016]

  • Artist Valie Export (Austrian, b. 1942)
  • Title Touch Cinema
  • Date 1968
  • Medium Black-and-white video with sound
  • Dimensions duration | 1:8min.
  • Credit line University purchase with funds from Samuel Kootz Gallery, by exchange, 2014
  • Object number WU 2014.0004

Reframing Feminism: Visualizing Women, Gender & Sexuality
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/08/2017 - 01/08/2018

3/25/2014
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

This artwork record may be incomplete or need refinement. Our staff actively researches the collection and revises records when new information is available. If you have questions or comments about this record, please contact us.

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Theme

Feminist Art

go to Reframing Feminism: Visualizing Women, Gender & Sexuality page
Installation view, Reframing Feminism: Visualizing Women, Gender & Sexuality, 2017
Exhibitions

Reframing Feminism: Visualizing Women, Gender & Sexuality

September 08, 2017–January 08, 2018

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