VALIE EXPORT: Fragments of the Imagination

Synopsis

An early, groundbreaking radical performance artist, VALIE EXPORT created a philosophy of "Feminist Actionism" and in multimedia performances used the female body to critique male spectatorship. Roswitha Mueller examines VALIE EXPORT's performance and installation work; her photography; her avant-garde film experiments and her four feature films; and her critical writings and interviews. VALIE EXPORT's primary object of study is the female human body, and as a multimedia artist, she has merged the discourses of the avant-garde and of feminism to reappropriate women's gestures, postures, images, and rights. This comprehensive and extensively illustrated study also includes an interview with VALIE EXPORT.

About Author

Roswitha Mueller, Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, is the author of Bertolt Brecht and the Theory of Media and co-editor of the journal Discourse.