VALIE EXPORT

via wikipedia
Valie Export’s early guerilla performances have attained an iconic status in feminist art history. Tapp- und Tast-Kino ("Tap and Touch Cinema") was performed in ten European cities in 1968-1971. In this avowedly revolutionary work, Valie Export wore a tiny "movie theater" around her naked upper body, so that her body could not be seen but could be touched by anyone reaching through the curtained front of the "theater." She then went into the street and invited men, women, and children to come and touch her. The media responded to Export's provocative work with panic and fear, one newspaper aligning her to a witch. Export recalls, "There was a great campaign against me in Austria."^[5]

In her 1968 performance Aktionshose:Genitalpanik (Action Pants: Genital Panic), Valie 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.^[6] Apocryphal stories state that the Aktionshose:Genitalpanik performance occurred in a porn theater and included Valie Export brandishing a machine gun and challenging the audience, as depicted in the 1969 posters,^[7] however she claims this never occurred.^[8]