video art kitchen

video art kitchen vol.2 : PLAY!GENDER

Max Almy + Dara Birnbaum + VALIE EXPORT + Bettina Gruber + Marcel Odenbach + Ulrike Rosenbach + Shelly Silver

PLAY!GENDER, the second issue of video art kitchen from imai presents a selection of video art works which stand for a courageous and playful handling in an art historical context of the themes of gender, identity and body. On the subject of gender identity, a number of contributions are concerned with feminist issues and their discourse in the 1970s while other contributions use subtle irony or a performative approach.

As an instrument to reveal and break social standards, the medium of video is one with a long tradition of artistic commitment to feminist issues. The repertoire of international artists working on this subject includes the documentation of body performances and also ironic playfulness with the visual effects of social, cultural and sexual stereotypes. At the same time, these positions have decidedly influenced the aesthetic strategies and content of video art and helped forms of audio-visual art achieve their well-earned acceptance in art history.

To what extent does our gender – whether determined biologically or through social construction – influence our identity? How valid are social limits from which we take on predetermined roles to correspond to gender-based expectations? PLAY!GENDER is the ambitious reaction of a number of male and female artists who since the 1970s have reflected on traditional gender stereotypes and rigid role models. They use the camera to explore on a political and aesthetic level the mechanisms of social external determination and media external determination. In addition to the critical questioning of the mass media of television and film, PLAY!GENDER is also concerned with the assertion of own unconventional freedom and strategies for alternative identity conceptions.

The works selected from the imai distribution program for the PLAY!GENDER highlight a number of significant statements which exploit the language of the then relatively new and impartial audio-visual medium of video. Click on the individual position to access selected work in our online catalogue where further material is available for viewing and for download.

Ulrike Rosenbach: Reflexionen über die Geburt der Venus, 1976, 19:25 min

Botticelli's «Birth of Venus» is valid as an embodiment of the ideal conception of feminine beauty in the occident. Ulrike Rosenbach takes this painting from the 15th century as the starting point for her criticism of the external determination of the feminine identity. To this purpose the artist cross-fade the picture of the naked god with her own figure. Slowly she turns on her own axis and is alternately visible and invisible in a rhythm similar to day and night.

Dara Birnbaum: Technology Transformation - Wonder Woman, 1978, 7:00 min

Wonder Woman is a typical example of Dara Birnbaum's research into the language of television. It exaggerates pictures of pop icons through continual repetition of a number of characteristic gestures and in this way the artist slowly deconstructs the picture of the radiant female superhero. This work, which manipulates the classic television production of the 1970s, illustrates the sexist handling of femininity in the media.

Max Almy: Modern Marriage, 1979, 2:02 min

«He's perfect, absolutely perfect...» comments a female voice backstage of the big close-up of a man sunbathing and relaxing near water. «...dynamic, successful, ambitious,...» the list of admirable male attributes is initially recounted with constant worship until finally from nowhere the almost perfect husband mutates in the flow of words to become an insufferably boring and egocentric person.

Shelly Silver: Getting In, 1989, 2:47 min

In Getting In recordings of north Californian house facades and building entrances are combined with the audio track of a pornographic film. Symbolic and rhythmic, directly linked to the sexual act, the camera approaches doors, entrances, passages and facades, sometimes slowly, sometimes fast. The sequences appear more and more disquieting. In the apparent ineffectual images of the urban daily routine the frivolous symbolism of biological gender pattern clearly impacts.

VALIE EXPORT: Hyperbulie, 1973, 6:33 min

Hyperbulie is one of a series of BODY ACTIONS where VALIE EXPORT uses her own body as a medium to highlight questions of social external determination. With great exertion and bodily pain the naked artist passes a corridor where wires are electrically charged. She creates a physical and mental extreme situation to demonstrate how much the energy of the human - especially the woman – is always broken up and regimented by agonizing obstacles.

Marcel Odenbach: Zu schön um wahr zu sein, 1999/2000, 9:45 min

The message of affection of these kissing red lips are simply "Zu schön um wahr zu sein" (Too beautiful to be true). One after the other the mouths of beautiful Venezuelan women approach the camera lens in slow-motion to leave lipstick marks. In the sequence of the passionate kissing scenes Marcel Odenbach includes found-footage material of historic recordings of public riots. A gender-specific constructed reality runs up against political reality and the South American beauty cult runs up against explosive historical events.

Bettina Gruber: Erotic Clips IV, 1991, 2:36 min

Saxophone sounds play to a sequence of romantically idealised camera positions with a sunrise on the other side of the ship's railing, a powerfully built sailor in the moonlight, flower arrangements and floral accessoires with sexual associations. In her series of excessively erotic video clips Bettina Gruber creates the man according to apparent feminine fantasies. Voyeuristic games, kitsch and intimacy combine to create a humorous clip with the aesthetics characteristics of Bettina Gruber.

Concept: Elena Friedrich and Sven Seibel

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