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VALIE EXPORT: The Feminist Project was a Utopia
// Kommersant
12 july 2006
VALIE EXPORT (this is precisely how her pen-name is spelt, capitalized), a famous Austrian artist, will be one of the special guests of the Second Moscow Biennale to open in February 2007. VALIE EXPORT has visited Moscow to prepare her monographic show. She found some time to answer the questions of Irina Kulik, the Kommersant correspondent.
“Which of your classic works will be presented to the Moscow public?”
“Works of late 1960s, photo and video documentation of performances where I manipulated with my own body. From this documentation, a line is cast to my later short and full-length films which we are also going to show in Moscow.”
“Your 1960s performances were quite radical and the public of that period was quite shocked by them. The western audience has perceived them as classical for a long time, western viewers have learned to accept this kind of art. Yet, Russian public does not know how to respond to it. Are you interested in the reactions of such uninitiated viewer who still perceives everything as a scandal, or would you prefer more advanced connoisseurs of art?”
Already in 1960s I got accustomed to the aggressive reaction of the audience, to the fact that my provocation works. I have experienced all these reactions on my hide and I know how to behave in the situation of this sort. This is regarded as history in Europe, of course. So it is really interesting to find a new context for this material, to produce new interaction between the artwork and audience, to provoke new mutual aggression.”
“You art is closely associated with feminist ideology. What, from your point of view, women-artists have managed to change in art and in socium since 1960s when feminism was powerfully manifested in contemporary art?”
“There was absolutely tremendous change in art institutions. Numerous women-curators, women gallerists, art critics, museum directors have emerged, they began to present and promote women artists. The achievement of feminism is precisely in the fact that while in 1970s the main question was ‘a man or a woman created this artwork?’ Today nobody is interested in the answer to this sort of a question because women have won the position of equal rights. Today there is nothing interesting in the discussion of a certain specific female art.”
“And what about the socium? In 1960s you and other feminist artists said that you were striving to free the women, to make them perceive themselves in a different way exposing their sexuality. Have they succeeded in it?”
“The feminist project of 1960s-1980s was surely an Utopia. We haven’t achieved much if you assess everything from the big historical perspective. There is centuries-long tradition behind male domination, and it is impossible to change this situation in 20-30 years. The image of the woman is still as simple and too superficial as it was before. But today women have an alternative – they can follow this stereotype or reject it. And this is very important.”
“To whom did you address your feminist actions of 1960s? Were it women who were to change their notions of themselves, or men who were to review their opinions of women?”
“I did not have a concrete audience: I worked with the structure of this type as a whole and did not address men and women separately.”
“You had a performance where you walked your partner Peter Weibel on a leash as if he were a dog. Many years after that Oleg Kulik appeared in Russia, and this artist became famous for his dog-man walks on a leash. What is your attitude to his performances and to such a follow-up of your plot? Is it a coincidence, or plagiarizing?”
“I know Kulik’s performances only by photographs – I’ve never seen them live. But I would never speak of plagiarizing here: just the material involving our body (attitudes, behavior) used by different artists, is quite limited - it does not matter what you are using, it is important how you are doing it.”
“In 1970s you made a screenplay after The Piano Teacher, a book by Elfriede Jelinek. Why this screenplay was never made into a film and what is your attitude to the recent movie after the same book produced by Michael Haneke?”
“The first sketch of the screenplay was made by Elfriede Jelinek herself. I just changed it supposing that I would stage this film as a director. I proposed this project to the Austrian and German television. But they rejected it, for the book itself was quite provocative, and my interpretation of it did nothing to polish controversial components of it. Today it is not a problem to show what Jelinek wrote about on a movie screen. So it wasn’t such a great problem for the authors of the new film, I am sure.”
“Your pen-name, VALIE EXPORT, refers, as far as I know, to a popular Austrian cigarette brand. Doesn’t it create problems for you today when everybody is fighting against smoking?”
“As a matter of fact, VALIE EXPORT, my pen-name, appeared earlier than the work that associated it with a cigarette brand. It wasn’t the cigarettes that were important for me, it was the word “export” as a way to take my ideas and inner experience out of myself. And then I had an idea to associate my name with an advertisement of the popular cigarette brand: Smart Export. And I made a cigarette pack with my logo on it – it was my first artistic object. As for smoking, I dropped it 15 years ago, but I believe that it is absurd to impose a healthy way of life upon the individual. If one wants to smoke, he or she must smoke.”
“One of your most famous projects was a garter you tattooed on your thigh in 1970. Have you ever felt like removing this tattoo when this work was already photographed and made public, getting rid of this stigmata of ‘femininity from male point of view’?
“Oh, no, never.”
EXPORT of art revolution
VALIE EXPORT graduated from the design faculty of the Vienna Technical School for Textile Industry. She creates her first photographs and paintings in mid 1950s, being a student yet. In 1960s he works in the movie industry as a crowd scene actor, film editor, assistant director, and composes her first screen plays. The artist has been signing her works with VALIE EXPORT since 1967.
In late 1960s she produces her first street performances in the spirit of radical feminism. In Genital Panic she appears in the hall of the movie theatre wearing jeans pants with fabric cut out upon the privy parts. In her Tap and Touch Cinema action she offered everybody who wanted it to touch her breasts concealed under the cardboard box put over the upper part of the artist’s body. And in her Portfolio of Doggyness she walked through Vienna streets with Peter Weibel, her partner, on a leash like a dog.
In 1970s VALIE EXPORT organizes shows of women artists and writes a number of articles and manifests of feminist art. In 1977 she takes part in the Kassel Documenta and in 1980 – in the Venice Biennale, she teaches performance, cinema and video at different American and European universities. In 1985, The Practice of Love, a film by VALIE EXPORT, was nominated for the Gold Bear of the Berlin Cinema festival. In 2000 she is awarded the Oscar Kokoschka prize, the chief award of Austria in fine art. But she rejects it for political reasons.
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