\u2018As important as Yoko Ono\u2019s Cut Piece\u2019<\/p>\n
Peaches<\/p>\n
I still remember the first time I came across that poster of Valie Export wearing crotchless trousers, her legs spread apart, a gun in her hand. It was a fearless image that took my breath away and is etched in my brain for ever.<\/p>\n
Over the years, her work served as an inspiration to my music. Her Tapp-und-Tastkino (Tap and Touch Cinema) performance, where she strapped a miniature theatre to her bare chest and invited passersby to reach through a tiny curtain, felt as important as Yoko Ono\u2019s Cut Piece<\/a>. It was up to the spectators how they interacted with her, which could make for painful watching but always felt telling. I\u2019m saddened that she is gone.<\/p>\n Peaches is a Canadian musician and producer<\/a><\/p>\n \u2018The female body is not a polite object\u2019<\/p>\n Florentina Holzinger<\/p>\n I wrote a paper on Valie Export back in high school when I was 14. I have always taken legacy seriously; much of my own work evolves around what has been, and what those histories mean for us today.<\/p>\n It is 1969 when Genital Panic <\/a>happens. Valie walks into an experimental cinema in Munich wearing crotchless jeans. She moves slowly, row by row, forcing her exposed genitalia to eye-level with the seated audience.<\/p>\n Painful watching but felt telling \u2026 Tapp und Tastkino, 1968, by Valie Export. Photograph: No credit<\/p>\n Fast forward to today. We find ourselves in an entirely new landscape: We are drowning in algorithmic thirst traps, free internet porn etc, not to mention the rotting political backlash trying to legislate bodies back into the dark ages. So yes: the core political necessity to subvert how we handle nudity and real bodies endures. In fact, it has become more urgent and complicated than ever.<\/p>\n Thank you, Valie, for paving the way and for articulating this reality with such crystal clarity: the female body is not a polite object. It can be a registered trademark \u2013 a weapon to be exported directly against the structures we choose to battle. Rest in peace.<\/p>\n Florentina Holzinger is an Austrian choreographer and theatre director<\/a><\/p>\n \u2018Passionate, brave and certainly generous\u2019<\/p>\n Joan Jonas<\/p>\n Valie Export was a very important artist. In remembering her, certain words come to mind such as bold, radical, innovative, passionate, brave and certainly generous. Her body was central, in confronting architecture by men, for instance, and in general as vehicle for her many interactions. Several works are unforgettable, such as 1968\u2019s Grope and Touch, 1969\u2019s Genital Panic, and 1976\u2019s Encirclement.<\/p>\n Bold, radical, innovative \u2026 Valie Export with Die Geburtenmadonna, 1972 in 2019. Photograph: Guy Bell\/Alamy Stock Photo\/Alamy Live News.<\/p>\n Her own words [about Homo Meter II (1976)<\/a>] explain her position: \u201cWhen I went out on the street with the loaf of bread tied around me and offered it as a gift people were disturbed, perturbed and curious. They did not dare to cut off a piece with a knife. The loaf of bread was also meant as an extension of the body, a provocation \u2026 as an artist I was alone in many ways and especially the confrontation with the public in the public space was something very isolating.\u201d<\/p>\n