Fw: Female Geographies, London

[Marina Grzinic]

Mons Veneris: Female Geographies
opening Thursday 24 October 2002, 1830h
exhibition continues until 6 December 2002
Austrian Cultural Forum, 28 Rutland Gate, London SW7 1PQ
MondayFriday 09001700h

Uli Aigner, Jamika Ajalon, Fiona Banner, Sadie Benning, Ursula 
Biemann, Anca Daucikova, Valie Export, Christina Della Guistina, Roza 
El-Hassan/Milica Tomic, Sanja Ivekovic, Susanna Jacobs, Le 
Tigre/Elisabeth Subrin, Ly Lestberg, Marth, Mara Mattuschka, Muda 
Mathis/Sus Zwick, Tanja Ostojic, Fiona Rukschcio, Cindy Sherman, Mare 
Tralla, Julia Wayne

co-ordinator: Rosemarie Reitsamer
consultants: Anthony Auerbach, Anca Daucikova, Marina Grzinic, Sally Tallant

Mons Veneris is an expedition into transsexual geographies, border 
regions, strategic locations, spaces of conflict and isolation, 
places where identities are fragmented and overlap.

'I always wanted to see an exhibition dealing with female sexuality 
and desire that wasn't going to fall into a dry and anxious politics 
or curatorial didacticism ... an exhibition capable of avoiding 
so-called 'mainstream Feminism'where political issues have almost 
disappearedbut refusing to be marginal. After all, Feminism is a 
dissident political standpoint and a strategy to work with.' 
(Rosemarie Reitsamer, editor, Female Sequences)

The exhibition brings together pioneering work by some of the women 
who developed their artistic practice in the 1960s and 70s alongside 
a strongly political feminist theory, and work by younger artists who 
made their reputations in the 1990s or who are gaining recognition 
now in very different circumstances. While, in the 'developed' 
economies of western Europe, feminism has become mainstream and 
identity politics a 'lifestyle' issue, this exhibition investigates 
dissident feminisms and specific aesthetic strategies dealing with 
sexuality, politics and daily life as well as the experience of women 
in post-communist countries.

East and central Europe have experienced sudden political change and 
more than ten years of rapid economic reorganisation during which 
contemporary artistic practices and discourses have been assimilated 
along with the other baggage of western capitalism. They have also 
experienced some of the most brutal forms of identity politics and 
slowness of social change. The exhibition aims to show that art 
remains a site where identities can be contested, desire is not 
always sublime and borderslike the supposed line between art and 
pornographyare not so easy to draw.

The pornography issue becomes at once more problematic and a lot 
clearer when it is a matter of artwork by women, especially at a time 
when the art world seems more eager than ever to adopt material 
directly from the world of porno, without questioning its own 
structures of consumption and exploitation. Each in their own way, 
works by Fiona Banner, Tanja Ostojic (Looking for a husband with EU 
passport) and Julia Wayne seek to find expression and intervene on 
this sensitive topic. Banner almost obsessively consumes a porno 
film, a film not intended for a female subject. She goes through it 
over and over, she drinks it in, transcribes and transforms it. The 
distancing effects of Banner's work do nothing to reduce the 
intensity of her engagement, or to soften the material for the sake 
of art. Wayne's window installation Discrete Side Entrance, also 
touches on the theme of subjectivity, subtly disturbing expectations.

Pioneer artists, like Valie Export and Sanja Ivekovic, whose work to 
some extent still awaits an appropriate historical assessment, showed 
in their early engagement with the female body how a woman could be 
come a subject in art and not just an object. Aktionshose: 
Genitalpanik shows Valie Export in her 'action trousers', machine gun 
in hand, with her eyes fixed on the camera.

Violence against women, one of the main issues of Feminist theory and 
activism in the 1970s, is taken up again by Fiona Rukschcio (b. 1972) 
in her instructional video Self-defence Earflaps, a thoroughly 
humorous work which nonetheless deals with a serious subject in a 
poignant way. Works by Mare Tralla and Mara Mattuschka, likewise 
deploy and absurdist, satirical humour.

Although female homosexuality has become little more than a 
'lifestyle choice' in western society, one can hardly find artists 
accepted by the mainstream who deal with Lesbian sexuality and 
identity in their work. Artists like the outstanding video-maker, 
Sadie Benning (also know for her work with the band Le Tigre) have 
avoided the art world. In her video Desire. Different Codes, Marth 
compiles clips from existing works foregrounding Lesbian 
representation and desire.

Saturday 26 October, 2.006.00pm, Austrian Cultural Forum London
Coming Round the Mountain: Female Geographies discussion
An opportunity to discuss some of the issues raised by the 
exhibition, Mons Veneris, and the aesthetic strategies that artists 
have adopted to deal with their specific contexts and interests. How 
is political feminism in post-communist countries affected by the 
headlong westernisation of the last decade? What happens when 
identity politics becomes a 'lifestyle' issue? How does the 
globalised art world deal with female sexuality and dissident 
feminisms? With artists and theorists Marina Grzinic (Ljubljana), 
Anca Daucikova (Bratislava), Katy Deepwell (London), Kathy Rae 
Huffman (Manchester) and Sally Tallant (London, chair), co-ordinated 
by Rosemarie Reitsamer (editor of Female Sequences, Vienna).

A special bi-lingual issue of Female Sequences: 
FrauenLesbenKulturHEFTig on Female Geographies will be published in 
February 2003 containing contributions from the participating artists 
and theorists.

Contact Rosemarie Reitsamer
e-mail: fem.seq at gmx.at
T: +44 20 7370 7976
http://www.austria.org.uk/art/news/index.html
Austrian Cultural Forum
28 Rutland Gate
London
SW7 1PQ
UK