Valie Export

Genital panic, 1969

She started to experiment with photography and what she called "expanded cinema" Her expanded cinema pieces started to include live performance of Export herself. The body then became her most important tool. Export used her body to question people's physical and mental identity. One of her important goals in performance was to separate the female body from eroticism. Export said "I felt it was important to use the female body to create art. I knew that if I did it naked, I would really change how the (mostly male) audience would look at me. There would be no pornographic or erotic/ sexual desire involved--so there would be a contradiction."





Her views on the female body carried on to other works such as her performance at an art street fair in 1968. She performed "Touch Cinema" which involved strapping on a box which enclosed her naked breasts. The box had holes in the front so that spectators could stick their hands through. She told the spectators "This box is the cinema hall. My body is the screen. But this cinema is not for looking--it is for touching." (Juna & Vale, 1985). Again, Export tried to create a contradiction, by taking a very erotic part of the body and offering it the way she wanted to people. The box and her blatant offering defused the situation from any eroticism.