Metanoia oder eine andere Sicht der Dinge

Exhibition in the Oldenburger Kunstverein and the Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst

Der Schrei (The Scream)

1994. Laser projection of Tibetan characters on a black oil surface in a metal basin as writing surface, two video projections. As an acoustic installation glossolalic speech expression, glottal sounds. Laser-scanned text:Records of Tibetan nuns and monks. Since the occupation of independent Tibet by the Chinese in 1950, more than one million people have been tortured, executed and murdered because they took part in anti-Chinese demonstrations. The projected texts are records that were smuggled out of the monasteries and out of the country at the risk of their lives. One stanza of the poem:

A Song from Prison

I think in these days there is surely
In no country, nowhere, is there a man
who is more fortunate than I.
Even though my designation is prisoner, I am a practitioner.
Even though this place is called a prison, it is a cloistered house.

Geshde Jhampa Khedup

(Based on the translation by Gonsar Tulku and Martin Willson at Tharpa Choeling, 1981)

LARYNX – GLOTTIS
Video, 1968/92, sound (Glottal sounds)
The video shows the glottis and throat of VALIE EXPORT speaking glottal sounds, recorded with a laryngoscope. (The idea of showing the glottis expressing different phonemes in moving images dates back to 1968, as part of my investigation into speech and language images).

SPEAKING

Video, 1992

Sound: Glossolalia, psychotic speech, recording from hospital wards

Video image: Sound frequencies are visualised, oscillograph for audio.

(excerpt from the video essay Das Unsagbare Sagen (Speaking the Unspeakable with I. Wiener and O. Wiener)

“Psychotic speech is anti-social because it loosens up, dissolves, questions the normalised contexts of thought and speech that a society needs for its communication. The psychotic's speech is thus excluded as such from the public discourse. The enforcement organs of the social order are the disenfranchisement procedures, the police apparatus and psychiatry. Under the justification of protection, the psychotic is denied articulation in the public sphere. In this protection, however, isolation, exclusion and segregation are revealed at the same time. In his speech, in her speech, the discourse of the psychotic, the psychotic, is excluded unless it is carried into another meaning, into a mythical form.” VALIE EXPORT (1992)

EXPANDED CINEMA

“Expanded Cinema, a part of the Expanded Arts movement in the sixties, which was characterised by multimedia events and happenings, was VALIE EXPORT's earliest medium for experimental work. At the time, it was quite common to define art through correspondences and crossovers between different disciplines, categories and genres. Linked to this urge to abolish boundaries was the general tendency, initiated by the classical avant-garde at the beginning of our century, to break through all the limitations imposed on the concept and practice of art. ... Within the framework of this intertextual expansion, EXPORT favours materiality and the body. This finds expression in various ways, whether by examining the film material (screen, projector, etc.) and, at most, exchanging it for other analogue processes and materials, or by focusing on the relationship between film and actor/audience in terms of interaction/reception.” Translated from: Roswitha Mueller, "VALIE EXPORT’s experimentelle Kunst", in "VALIE EXPORT", Oö. Landesgalerie, Linz 1992

PING PONG

1968/92/96
A film to play with – a players' film

Video installations, video (b/w), concept, ping pong rackets and balls

“PING PONG consists of a ping pong racket, a ball and a sample film. Here, too, the film action is created by the new function of the screen. A dot is projected on the screen that always appears somewhere briefly. The actor/user of the film has to hit this dot with the ball. The TV version is excellently suited for morning hours/early morning exercise. Dots appear bouncing on the TV screen with which the TV actor/morning gymnast has to play ping pong. This film action explicates the relationship of domination between producer (director) and consumer (viewer). What the eye tells the brain here is the occasion for motor reflexes and reactions. Viewer and screen are partners in a game whose rules are dictated by the director”. (V. EXPORT)

FACING A FAMILY

TV action, 1971, b/w photos, concepts, b/w video (20 minutes) programme invisible, imaginary screen, both families look at each other

 “Two families sit opposite each other, one in the TV set, the other in the flat. What can be seen is not the programme – because the screen on which one family is watching is also the screen of the other (specification screen transferred to TV) – but the reaction to the programme. This reaction, however, is again the same in the audience, because the reaction of this family is also/still a programme for the other family. The whole thing lasts about 5-20 minutes. TV in the family, family on TV”. (V. EXPORT). Realised by the ORF for the television show ‘Kontakte’, broadcast by the ORF on 29 February 1971