Published by Spector Books. Edited by Katharina Müller, Eszter Kondor, Michael Loebenstein. Text by Erika Balsom, Sabeth Buchmann, Elfriede Jelinek, Gertrud Koch, Sophie Lewis, Hedwig Saxenhuber, Nadya Tolokonnikova, et al.
Austrian artist Valie Export (born 1940) has produced one of the most significant bodies of feminist art in the postwar period, as a pioneer in the fields of photography, video and installation art. Her groundbreaking performances during the 1960s and 1970s introduced a new form of radical, embodied feminism to Europe, examining the politics of the body in relation to its environment, culture and society. This book showcases individual works by Valie Export and reflects on ways to transpose them into the present and pursue their political potential. The contributors touch on questions of identity and difference as well as the possibilities of communication and the refusal to communicate; the self-positioning of women, gender-nonconforming and disabled people in the fields of art, film and media; and the works' frames of reference—war, division, fragmentation, objectification and nonbelonging.
Published by Kunsthaus Bregenz. Text by Yilmaz Dziewior, Jürgen Thaler, Astrid Wege.
Whether tattooing a garder-belt onto her thigh before a live audience or wedging her body into the recesses of urban architecture, Valie Export has combated patriarchal structures and cast off inhibitions throughout a career that has consistently refused to conform to any one genre. Perhaps best known for her early experimentations in expanded cinema and her performances of feminist Media Aktionism, Export has amassed a vast oeuvre spanning feature film, digital photography, sculpture and installation. Archive amasses all of this material and more, excavating Export’s own collection of documentation, preparatory drawings, scripts, posters, Polaroids, newspaper clippings and correspondence to provide an unprecedented overview. Each step of the creation process for iconic pieces such as “Tap and Touch Cinema,” “Action Pants: Genital Panic” and “BODY SIGN ACTION” are explored along with never-before-seen art objects and brand new pieces, making this volume the definitive Valie Export anthology.
PUBLISHER Kunsthaus Bregenz
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 8.5 x 10.5 in. / 322 pgs / 500 color / 100 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 9/30/2012 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2012 p. 88
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9783863350949TRADE List Price: $78.00 CAD $95.00
Published by Walther König, Köln. Foreword by Agnes Husslein-Arco and Stella Rollig. Introduction by Angelika Nollert. Texts by Sabeth Buchmann, Yilmaz Dziewior, Elke Krasny, Hanne Loreck, Maren Lübbke-Tidow, Letizia Ragaglia, Brigitte Reutner, Johanna Schwanberg, Berta M. Sichel.
Having quickly tired of life as an editor and extra in the Austrian film industry, in 1967 Waltraud Hollinger changed her name to Valie Export and plunged into the violent and often blood-soaked world of Viennese performance art and the extremist "Actions" of Hermann Nitsch, Günter Brus, Otto Mühl and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. Like them, Export subjected her body to pain, but where their work was inevitably drawn towards a religious idea of catharsis, Export politicized the inscription of women's bodies in terms of media representation, declaring her project as explicitly feminist. Export soon turned to video to record her performances and began to remove her person from her work, as in her now-famous 1971 video "Facing a Family." Today, across more than four decades of activity, Export has built a large and rigorous oeuvre comprising performance, photography, film and media installations. This volume surveys her career.