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Valie Export

{{short description|Austrian media artist}}

{{Infobox artist

| name = Valie Export

| image = Österreichischer Filmpreis 2013 C Valie Export.jpg

| image_size =

| alt =

| caption = Valie Export in 2013

| birth_name = Waltraud Lehner

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1940|05|17|df=y}}

| birth_place = Linz, Nazi Germany (now Austria)

| death_date =

| death_place =

| nationality = Austrian

| spouse =

| field = Artist

| training =

| movement = Avant-Garde, Performance art, Contemporary art

| works = Cinema Work, Photography, Sculpture, Computer Animations

| patrons =

| awards = Grand Gold Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria

| elected =

| website = [http://www.valieexport.at]

| bgcolour =

}}

Valie Export (often stylized as 'VALIE EXPORT'; born 17 May 1940){{cite book|last=Bock|first=Hans-Michael|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=z7gFT_Duq1cC&q=%22Waltraud+Hollinger%22+%22valie+export%22&pg=PA114|title=The Concise Cinegraph: Encyclopedia of German Cinema|publisher=Berghahn Books|year=2009|isbn=978-1-57181-655-9|page=114}}{{Cite book|last=Blazwick|first=Iwona|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B45PAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Waltraud+Lehner%22+%22valie+export%22|title=Faces in the crowd: picturing modern life from Manet to today|publisher=Skira|year=2004|isbn=88-7624-069-1|page=349}} is an avant-garde Austrian artist.{{Cite journal|last=Angkjær Jørgensen|first=Ulla|date=2012|title=Bodies and real-time interfaces: in video performance and interactive digital 3D installation art by VALIE EXPORT and Jette Gejl Kristensen|journal=Journal of Aesthetics & Culture|volume=4|issue=1|page=18149|doi=10.3402/jac.v4i0.18149|issn=2000-4214|doi-access=free}} She is best known for provocative public performances and expanded cinema work.{{Cite journal|last=Fullerton|first=Elizabeth|date=2020-02-01|title=Valie Export|journal=Art in America|volume=108|pages=94–95}} Her artistic work also includes video installations, computer animations, photography, sculpture and publications covering contemporary art.{{cite book|last=Warren|first=Lynne|title=Encyclopedia of 20th century photography|publisher=CRC Press|year=2006|isbn=978-0-415-97665-7|pages=468–470}}

Early life

File:GuentherZ 2011-03-19 1635 Allentsteig Landschaftsmesser.jpg, Austria.]]

Valie Export was born Waltraud Lehner in Linz, Austria and was raised in Linz by a single mother of three.{{cite book|last=Bock|first=Hans-Michael|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=z7gFT_Duq1cC&q=%22Waltraud+Hollinger%22+%22valie+export%22&pg=PA114|title=The Concise Cinegraph: Encyclopedia of German Cinema|publisher=Berghahn Books|year=2009|isbn=978-1-57181-655-9|page=114}}{{Cite book|last=Blazwick|first=Iwona|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B45PAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Waltraud+Lehner%22+%22valie+export%22|title=Faces in the crowd: picturing modern life from Manet to today|publisher=Skira|year=2004|isbn=88-7624-069-1|page=349}}{{Cite news |last=Kennedy |first=Randy |date=2016-06-29 |title=Who Is Valie Export? Just Look, and Please Touch |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/arts/design/who-is-valie-export-just-look-and-please-touch.html |access-date=2023-01-31 |issn=0362-4331}} Export studied painting, drawing, and design at the National School for Textile Industry in Vienna.”Biography.” VALIE EXPORT Center. https://www.roswithahaftmann-stiftung.com/en/prizewinners/2019_biography_ve.htm.

Career

= 1960s and 1970s =

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Austrian feminism was forced to address the fact that by the 1970s there was still a generation of Austrians whose attitudes towards women were based on Nazi ideology.Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger. Out From The Shadows. (Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1997): 229.] They also had to confront the guilt of their parents’ (mothers’) complacency within the Nazi regime. In 1967, she changed her name from Waltraud Hollinger to VALIE EXPORT. In conversation with Gary Indiana for BOMB magazine, Export described her name-change:

"I did not want to have the name of my father [Lehner] any longer, nor that of my former husband Hollinger. My idea was to export from my 'outside' (heraus) and also export, from that port. The cigarette package was from a design and style that I could use, but it was not the inspiration."
With this gesture of self-determination, Export emphatically asserted her identity within the Viennese art scene, which was then dominated by the taboo-breaking performance art of the Vienna Actionists such as Hermann Nitsch, Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. Of the Actionist movement, Export has said, “I was very influenced, not so much by Actionism itself, but by the whole movement in the city. It was a really great movement. We had big scandals, sometimes against the politique; it helped me to bring out my ideas.”Indiana, Gary. [http://bombsite.com/issues/3/articles/79 "Valie Export"], ‘’BOMB Magazine’’ Spring, 1982. Retrieved on August 15, 2011 Like her male contemporaries, she subjected her body to pain and danger in actions designed to confront the growing complacency and conformism of postwar Austrian culture. But her examination of the ways in which the power relations inherent in media representations inscribe women's bodies and consciousness distinguishes Export's project as unequivocally feminist. “In these performances and in my photo work of the 60s and 70s,” Export said in a 1995 interview with Scott MacDonald, “I used a female body, generally my own, as a bearer of signs and symbols - individual, sexual, cultural - that could function within an artistic environment.”{{cite book |title=A Critical Cinema 3 |last=MacDonald |first=Scott |author-link=Scott MacDonald (media scholar) |year= 1998 |publisher=University of California Press|isbn= 9780585339924 |page=255}}

Export's early guerrilla performances have attained an iconic status in feminist art history. In her 1968 performance Aktionshose:Genitalpanik (Action Pants: Genital Panic), Export entered an art cinema in Munich, wearing crotchless pants, and walked around the audience with her exposed genitalia at face level. The associated photographs were taken in 1969 in Vienna, by photographer Peter Hassmann. The performance at the art cinema and the photographs in 1969 were both aimed toward provoking thought about the passive role of women in cinema and confrontation of the private nature of sexuality with the public venues of her performances.[http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=-1&workid=90775&searchid=9353&roomid=5294&tabview=text&texttype=10 Tate.org] Apocryphal stories state that the Aktionshose:Genitalpanik performance occurred in a porn theater and included Export brandishing a machine gun and shooting at the audience, as depicted in the 1969 posters,[https://web.archive.org/web/20130212002347/http://bodytracks.org/2009/06/valie-export-aktionshosegenitalpanik-action-pants-genital-panic/ Bodytracks.org (archived 2013-02-12)] however she claims this never occurred.{{cite book |title=Valie Export/Fragments of the Imagination |last=Mueller |first=Roswitha |year= 1994 |publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=0-253-33906-5 |page=32}} In an interview in Ocula Magazine, the artist stated that: "The fear of the vulva is present in mythology, where it is depicted devouring man. I don't know if this fear has changed."{{Cite web|url=https://ocula.com/magazine/conversations/valie-export-the-voice-belongs-to-me/|title=Valie Export: 'The voice belongs to me'|last=Moldan|first=Tessa|date=6 December 2019|website=Ocula Magazine}}

Export's well-known performance piece Tapp-und-Tast-Kino (Tap and Touch Cinema) was performed in ten European cities, including Vienna and Munich, from 1968 to 1971.{{cite web|title=VALIE EXPORT, Tapp- und Tastkino (Touch Cinema)|url=http://bodytracks.org/2009/06/valie-export-tapp-und-tastkino-touch-cinema/|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130316000216/http://bodytracks.org/2009/06/valie-export-tapp-und-tastkino-touch-cinema/|archive-date=2013-03-16|access-date=2013-04-09}}{{Cite book|last=Molesworth|first=Helen|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1158437662|title=Work Ethic|date=2003|publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press|isbn=0-271-02334-1|pages=177|oclc=1158437662}}{{Cite web |url=http://pomeranz-collection.com/?q=node%2F40#flou |title=Valie Export | Pomeranz Collection |access-date=2021-05-10 |archive-date=2019-06-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190613233302/http://www.pomeranz-collection.com/?q=node%2F40#flou |url-status=dead }} For this bodily public performance, Export wandered the streets of cities with a "small mock-up of a [movie] theater," first made of Styrofoam and remade later in aluminum, strapped to her bare chest. Peter Weibel, her collaborator, invited passersby to "'visit the cinema' for five minutes" by reaching into the "theater" and feeling her bare breasts.

In Tap and Touch Cinema, Export inverts the sight-dependent functions of film and substitutes the "pleasure" of vision for physical touch. Instead of presenting a sexualized female body to be viewed, Export solicits physical contact. The "audience," actively participating in the performance, has direct, face-to-face contact with Export's body in the public sphere. The media responded to Export's provocative work with panic and fear, one newspaper comparing her to a witch. Export recalls, "There was a great campaign against me in Austria."Indiana, Gary. [http://bombsite.com/issues/3/articles/79 "Valie Export"], ‘’BOMB Magazine’’ Spring, 1982. Retrieved on August 15, 2011

Some of her other works including Invisible Adversaries, Syntagma, and "Korpersplitter", show the artist's body in connection to historical buildings not only physically, but also symbolically. The body’s attachment to the historical progression of gendered spaces and stereotyped roles represent Export's feminist and political approach to art.O'Reilly, Sally. "Valie Export." Art Monthly 280 (2004): 31-32. Art & Architecture Complete.

Web. 12 Dec. 2016.

In her 1970 photograph, “Body Sign Action,” Export portrays a politically charged agenda through her performance artwork. The piece features a tattoo of a garter belt on Export's naked upper leg. The garter is not attached at the top and only attached to a sliver of a stocking at the bottom- therefore suspended on the leg. Instead of the garter objectifying the body, the body objectifies the garter, flipping constructed societal roles in relation to the female body.Harris, Jane. "Valie Export: Frau Export." Artext 70 (2000): 72-75. Art & Architecture Complete.Web. 12 Dec. 2016.

Export's groundbreaking video piece, Facing a Family (1971) was one of the first instances of television intervention and broadcasting video art. The video, originally broadcast on the Austrian television program Kontakte on 2 February 1971,{{cite web|title=Facing a Family|url=http://www.eai.org/title.htm?id=6472|publisher=Electronic Arts Intermix}} shows a bourgeois Austrian family watching TV while eating dinner. When other middle-class families watched this program on TV, the television would be holding a mirror up to their experience and complicating the relationship between subject, spectator, and television.

Export published “Women’s Art: A Manifesto” in 1972. In it, she advocated for women to “speak so that they can find themselves, this is what I ask for in order to achieve a self-defined image of ourselves and thus a different view of the social function of women.”Stiles, Kristine, and Peter Howard Selz. "Performance Art." Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: U of California, 2012. 869. Print. Here Export points out the unjust way that women had been living their lives within the boundaries created by men. In this same manifesto, Export also wrote “the arts can be understood as a medium of our self-definition adding new values to the arts. these values, transmitted via the cultural sign-process, will alter reality towards an accommodation of female needs.”Stiles, Kristine, and Peter Howard Selz. "Performance Art." Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: U of California, 2012. 870. Print. This statement directly related her own work to the progress of empowering women.

Export's 1973 short film, Remote, Remote exemplifies the painful ramifications of the female body conforming to societal standards. In this piece she digs at her cuticles with a knife for twelve minutes, representing the damage societal beauty standards inflict on the female body.Eifler, Margret. "Valie Export's Iconography: Visual Quest For Subject Discourse." Modern Austrian Literature 29.1 (1996): 108-130. Academic Search Alumni Edition. Web. 12 Dec. 2016.

Based on the precepts laid out in her 1972 manifesto, Export curated an exhibition of feminist art at the Galerie nächst St. Stephan in Vienna in 1975. Titled MAGNA. Feminism: Art and Creativity, this exhibition “introduced the feminist artist as curator and as contemporary art historian.”Krasny, Elke. “Curatorial Materialism. A Feminist Perspective on Independent and Co-Dependent Curating.” Notes on Curating 29 (May 2016): 99. https://www.on-curating.org/issue-29-reader/curatorial-materialism-a-feminist-perspective-on-independent-and-co-dependent-curating.html#.X95bsMA8IlR.

1977 saw the release of her first feature film, Unsichtbare Gegner. For this film's script, she collaborated with her former partner, Peter Weibel.{{cite book |title=Valie Export/Fragments of the Imagination |last=Mueller |first=Roswitha |year=1994 |publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=0-253-33906-5 |page=126}} The film follows Anna, a young woman photographer, as she becomes increasingly convinced that the people around her are being taken over by the Hyksos, a hostile alien force. Her delusion, the film reveals, is caused by internalized behavioral expectations for herself as a woman that run counter to her true desires.Delpeux, Sophie and C. Penwarden, trans. “VALIE EXPORT: De-Defining Women,” Art Press 293 (Spring 2003): 41. However, Invisible Adversaries brought a lot of criticism towards her. In an interview she explains that some people actually thought she was cutting up a bird and a mouse where in reality she was not. She further explains that a man called Schtabel who writes on a column on a magazine released false information about her piece, even though she contacted him on various occasions. She then explains that after bringing a lawsuit against him he was forced to release the letters that were sent to him by Valie Export.{{Cite web|url=https://bombmagazine.org/articles/valie-export/|title = Valie Export by Gary Indiana - BOMB Magazine| date=April 1982 }}

= 1980s to present =

In her 1983 experimental film, Syntagma, Export attempted to reframe the female body by using a multitude of "...different cinematic montage techniques—doubling the body through overlays, for example".{{cite web|last1=Fore|first1=Devin|title=Valie Export|url=http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/valie-export#_|website=Interview Magazine|date=24 August 2012|access-date=12 December 2016}} The film follows Export's belief that the female body has, throughout history, been manipulated by men through the means of art and literature. In an interview with Interview magazine, Export discusses her movie, Syntagma, and says, "The female body has always been a construction".

Her 1985 film The Practice of Love was entered into the 35th Berlin International Film Festival.{{cite web |url=http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1985/02_programm_1985/02_Programm_1985.html |title=Berlinale: 1985 Programme |access-date=2011-01-12 |work=berlinale.de}}

Since 1995/1996 Export has held a professorship for multimedia performance at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

File:Österreichischer Filmpreis 2012 (08) Valie Export.jpg

In 2016, the city of Linz acquired her archive and opened a research center devoted to her work.“History.” VALIE EXPORT Center Linz. https://www.valieexportcenter.at/en/center/history.

Bard College hosted an exhibition centered around Export’s 1977 film Unsichtbare Gegner in 2016. The show featured work by Export as well as artists for whom Export’s art “blew open doors: Lorna Simpson, K8 Hardy, Hito Steyerl, Trisha Donnelly and Emily Jacir, among others.”{{Cite news |last=Kennedy |first=Randy |date=2016-06-29 |title=Who Is Valie Export? Just Look, and Please Touch |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/arts/design/who-is-valie-export-just-look-and-please-touch.html |access-date=2023-01-31 |issn=0362-4331}}

In 2019, Export won the Roswitha Haftmann Prize of £120,000, which is “Europe’s largest single-award art prize.”“Prizes.” Art Monthly July/August 2019: 428.

Russia's war against Ukraine

In February 2023, Export was among the 69 Erstunterzeichner*innen of the Manifest für Frieden, an online petition initiated by Sahra Wagenknecht and Alice Schwarzer calling on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to halt further arms deliveries to Ukraine and seek a negotiated peace settlement.{{cite web

|title=„Manifest für Frieden“: Das sind die 69 Erstunterzeichner*innen

|url=https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/manifest-fuer-frieden-das-sind-die-69-ersten-unterzeichnerinnen-9243576.html

|website=Der Tagesspiegel

|date=10 February 2023

|access-date=5 May 2025

}}{{cite news

|last1=Schmidtpeter

|first1=Anna

|title=«Manifest für Frieden»: Wagenknecht und Schwarzer mobilisieren Prominente

|newspaper=Der Spiegel

|date=10 February 2023

|url=https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/manifest-fuer-frieden-wagenknecht-schwarzer-a-c0f1a9f8-0e2f-4b6d-8ad0-1c2e3f4e5d6f

|access-date=5 May 2025

}}

Works

;Selected filmography

  • Splitscreen - Solipsismus (1968)
  • INTERRUPTED LINE (1971)
  • ...Remote…Remote... (1973)
  • Mann & Frau & Animal (1973)
  • Adjungierte Dislokationen (1973)
  • Invisible Adversaries (Unsichtbare Gegner, 1976)
  • Menschenfrauen (1977)
  • Syntagma (1983)
  • The Practice of Love (Die Praxis der Liebe, 1984)
  • I turn over the pictures of my voice in my head (2008)

Awards

  • 1990: City of Vienna Prize for Visual Arts
  • 1992: Austrian Prize for video and media art
  • 1995: Sculpture Award at the Generali Foundation
  • 1997: Gabriele Münter Prize
  • 2000: Oskar Kokoschka Prize
  • 2000: Alfred Kubin Prize Big Price culture of Upper Austria
  • 2003: Gold Medal for services to the City of Vienna
  • 2005: Austrian Decoration for Science and Art{{cite web | url = http://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/VHG/XXIV/AB/AB_10542/imfname_251156.pdf | title = Reply to a parliamentary question | language = de | page=1668 | access-date = 3 January 2013 }}
  • 2009: Honorary Doctorate of the University of Arts and Industrial Design Linz
  • 2010: Grand Gold Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria{{cite web | url = http://www.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/VHG/XXIV/AB/AB_10542/imfname_251156.pdf | title = Reply to a parliamentary question | language = de | page=1932 | access-date = 3 January 2013 }}
  • 2019: 19th Roswitha Haftmann Prize{{Cite web|url=https://www.roswithahaftmann-stiftung.com/en/prizewinners/2019_biography_ve.htm|title = Roswitha Haftmann Stiftung}}
  • 2020: Golden Nica Visionary Pioneer of Feminist Media Art Prix Ars Electronica{{cite web | url = https://ars.electronica.art/prix/en/winners/visionary-feminist/ | title = Visionary Pioneer of Feminist Media Art}}
  • 2021: Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society

In popular culture

Her name appears in the lyrics of the Le Tigre song "Hot Topic".{{Cite web|url=https://slate.com/culture/2019/10/hot-topic-lyrics-le-tigre-who-is.html|title=57 Champions of Queer Feminism, All Name-Dropped in One Impossibly Catchy Song|first=Tammy|last=Oler|date=October 31, 2019|website=Slate Magazine}}

References

{{reflist}}

External links

{{Sister project links|wikt=no|c=yes|n=no|q=no|s=no|b=no|v=no|d=Q459681}}

  • [http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/76/76valie_grossman.php "Finger Envy: A Glimpse into the Short Films of VALIE EXPORT."] Article in Brights Lights Film Journal.
  • [http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/facing-a-family Media Art Net] contains a description of Facing a Family as well as a video clip from the piece.
  • {{IMDb name | id = 0264072 | name = Valie Export }}
  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20080405230718/http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$artistdetail?EXPORTV Valie Export] in the Video Data Bank
  • [http://www.imaionline-katalog.de/servlet/collectioning?col=7324&r=1000 Valie Export] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20140203115738/http://www.imaionline-katalog.de/servlet/collectioning?col=7324&r=1000 |date=2014-02-03 }} in the Imai – inter media art institute
  • [http://dreher.netzliteratur.net/2_Export.pdf Thomas Dreher on VALIE EXPORT and Peter Weibel: Multimedia feminist art]. In: Artefactum Nr.46/December 1992-February 1993, p. 17-20
  • [http://dreher.netzliteratur.net/8_KonzeptuelleAspekte_Export.pdf Thomas Dreher: VALIE EXPORT - Bild im Bild] (PDF, ca. 13,8 MB). In: Kunst + Unterricht, Issue 106/October 1986, p. 56ff. Interpretation of an untitled photographic work (1981). In German.
  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20160303185311/http://www.mediatecaonline.net/mediatecaonline/SConsultaAutor?ope=2&ID_IDIOMA=en&criteri=Export,+Valie Valie Export in the Mediateca Media Art Space]
  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20110121123419/http://eai.org/artistBio.htm?id=5769 Artist Biography] and [http://www.eai.org/artistTitles.htm?id=5769 list of video works] by VALIE EXPORT at Electronic Arts Intermix
  • [https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/519 Valie Export: Innovator] at Museum of Modern Art

{{Performance art|state=expanded}}

{{Video art|state=expanded}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Export, Valerie}}

Category:1940 births

Category:Living people

Category:Artists from Linz

Category:Austrian video artists

Category:Body art

Category:Feminist artists

Category:Austrian film directors

Category:Austrian women film directors

Category:Austrian screenwriters

Category:Recipients of the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art

Category:Recipients of the Grand Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria

Category:Austrian contemporary artists

Category:Women performance artists

Category:New media artists

Category:20th-century Austrian women artists

Category:Austrian women artists

Category:Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize winners