Performance & Documentation

Touch and Tap Cinema - Peter Weibel & Valie Export (1968)

For Touch Cinema, EXPORT allowed people to touch her breasts through a portable curtained contraption for 30 seconds per person.

In the artist’s own words:

As usual, the film is ‘shown’ in the dark. But the cinema has shrunk somewhat – only two hands fit inside it. To see (i.e. feel, touch) the film, the viewer (user) has to stretch his hands through the entrance to the cinema. At last, the curtain which formerly rose only for the eyes now rises for both hands.
The tactile reception is the opposite of the deceit of voyeurism. For as long as the citizen is satisfied with the reproduced copy of sexual freedom, the state is spared the sexual revolution. ‘Tap and Touch Cinema’ is an example of how re-interpretation can activate the public.’

In this piece EXPORT comments on the cinema as a projection space for male fantasies, and confronts the male gaze/touch with the reality of the live woman. In doing so, she also comments on how desire has been captured by the mass media and questions the individual’s ownership of sexuality for both men and women.

Media Art Net Link

Stamping in the Studio - Bruce Nauman (1968)

From Video Data Bank:

From an inverted position, high above the floor, the camera records Nauman’s trek back and forth and across the studio; his stamping creates a generative rhythm reminiscent of native drum beats or primitive dance rituals. However, Nauman is not participating in a social rite or communal ritual—he is icompletely individualized. Isolated in his studio, his actions have no apparent reason or cause beyond his aesthetic practice.

Bruce Nauman Art21 Biography

Selected Works - William Wegman (1970 - 1978)

Visual artist William Wegman became a leading figure in the emerging field of video art in the early 1970s. He began making a series of tapes produced on low-end equipment in his apartment that featured himself, a few props, and his pet Weimeraner, Man Ray. This excerpt contains eight short pieces selected by Wegman himself, including two comic "body art" monologues performed by his slightly paunchy midsection, a pair of fake commercials (for a primitive version of a massage chair and an underarm deodorant that the artist endlessly applies), and two classics featuring Man Ray--Spelling Lesson, in which Wegman corrects his dog's misspelling of the word "beach," and Two Dogs Watching, in which Man Ray and a canine friend perform a synchronized routine keyed to the movement of a simple off-screen object.

William Wegman at EAI

Documentation of Selected Works - Chris Burden (1971 - 1975)

Chris Burden's provocative, often shocking conceptual performance pieces of the early 1970s retain their raw and confrontational force in these dramatic visual records, shot on Super-8, 16mm film, and half-inch video. Guided by the artist's candid, explanatory comments on both the works and the documentative process, these segments reveal the major themes of Burden's work -- the psychological experience of danger, pain, and physical risk, the aggressive abuse of the body as an art object, and the psychology of the artist/spectator relationship. This compilation is an historical document of one of the most extreme manifestations of 1970s conceptual performance art. Included are the infamous Shoot (1971), in which Burden allows himself to be shot in the arm; Bed Piece (1972), in which he stayed in bed in a gallery for twenty-two days; and the notorious Through the Night Softly (1973), which featured Burden, arms tied behind his naked torso, dragging himself over shards of broken glass. Also included are: 220 (1971) Deadman (1972) Fire Roll (1973) Icarus (1973) B.C. Mexico (1973) TV Ad (1973) Back to You (1974) Velvet Water (1974).

Film: Michael Brewster, Barbara Burden, Don Von Valkenburg, Phyllis Lutjeans, Paula Sweet, Charles Hill. Video: Andy Mann.  

Chris Burden on UBUWEB

Vital Statistics of a Citizen Simply Obtained - Martha Rosler (1977)

Taking aim at the social standardization enforced particularly on women's bodies, Rosler critiques the politics of "objective" or scientific evaluation that result in the depersonalization, objectification, and colonization of women and Others.  As Joseph Di Mattia has pointed out, "The title of the tape is ironic--just exactly to whom are these 'statistics' 'vital'? They are vital to a society which circumscribes the behavior and roles of women."  Throughout this tape Rosler situates the female body as the site of an ideological struggle, a site of physically realized domination, which degrades, demeans, and subjugates women.

"[This] is the most pointedly feminist of Rosler's tapes. Every inch of the artist's nude body is measured and recorded by two doctors, while voiceovers comment on standards, body ideals, and their relation to masochism."

--Mary Stofflett, "Art or television," Studio International 195 (June 1982)

Link to Martha Rosler's Website