Self portrait in four hands: Emotional performativity
Barbara Hammer in conversation with Virginia Villaplana
Thursday, 15 December 2011
Palau de la Virreina, La Rambla 99, Barcelona
18h, screening of Tender Fictions (1995, 50min, V.O.S.)
19h, conversation and screening of Lover Other: The Story of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore (2006, 55 min, V.O.S.)
The relationship between Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore calls into question the unique "I" of a portrait built in collaboration with four hands. The uniqueness of the couple’s work resides in a performative creativity embedded in everyday life, which, to some extend, can be interpreted as an intimate game. This session addresses ways of understanding art as "emotional politics" in relation to privacy and the spaces of everyday action. The session with Barbara Hammer is presented in a dialog format with Virginia Villaplana, based on the drifts of the intimacy narratives, the emotional politic and the self-representation of lesbian identities in the experimental cinema.
Claude Cahun
28.10.2011 - 05.02.2012
Palau de la Virreina
La Rambla 99
Lover Other. The Story of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
Lover Other presents two French artists, stepsisters and lovers who become resistance fighters during the Second World War. Recently recognised as an early example of lesbian artists working together, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore were two brilliant, inventive women who lived on the Channel Island of Jersey during the five years of Nazi occupation. Their surrealist photographs, which challenged the stability of their identities, were only shown in public once during their lifetime.
Tender Fictions
Tender Fictions is an autobiographical exploration of the search for and meaning of gay community. From her childhood to her current work as an activist and filmmaker, Barbara Hammer casts a wry eye on her life and changing world. In a rich montage of home movies, experimental films, news footage, and personal photographs, Hammer charts her growth from 1950s child star to 1990s lesbian artist and activist. Documenting how Hammer's personal and artistic development grew out of and became a part of the feminist and gay activist movements, Tender Fictions is both the story of an extraordinary filmmaker and a compelling portrait of the changes wrought by a generation of women.
Barbara Hammer
Visual artist working primarily in film and video. She has made over 80 works in a career that spans 30 years and is considered a pioneer of queer cinema and the first female filmmaker to champion lesbian identity. Her documentaries tell the stories of marginalised peoples who have been hidden from history. Her 1970s experimental films often dealt with taboo subjects such as menstruation, female orgasm and lesbian sexuality. She made the first lesbian films in the world in 1974 (Dyketactics) and 1976 (Women I Love). Her works include Nitrate Kisses (1992), Lover Other (2006) and Resisting Paradise (2003). The MoMA in New York recently held a retrospective on her extensive career and included screenings of I Was/I Am (1983), Bent Time (1983), Optic Nerve (1985) and A Horse Is Not A Metaphor (2008), as well as some of her performances. The exhibition coincided with the publication of her book Hammer! Making Movies Out of Sex and Life (Feminist Press at CUNY, 2010). Her latest film, Generations (2010), made together with Gina Carducci, won the Teddy Award for Best Short Film at the Berlinale.
Virgina Villaplana
Artist and writer. She has a PhD in fine arts and is an associate lecturer at Department of Communication, Art History and Documentation at the Universitat Politècnica in Valencia. Her work explores writing on memory and history, fiction and documentary stories, narratives on gender and the notions of identity, authority and community, and pursues strategies such as the media-biography. Her artistic projects include El instante de la memoria (Offlimits-MNCARS, Madrid, 2010), Diario de sueños Intermitentes (MUSAC, León, 2010), SoftFiction (Consonni, Bilbao, 2009), Narrativas de la transición española (Montevideo, 2009), Poéticas de la resistencia (Visor, Valencia, 2009-2010), En una corta unidad del tiempo (MediaLab Prado, Madrid, 2008), Working Documents (La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, 2008), Imaginarios en tránsito (CGAC, 2007), Relatos culturales sobre la violencia de género (MNCARS, 2005) and In/security in a Global Context. The City of Women (Ljubljana). She has written the books El instante de la memoria (2010), Cine infinito (2007), Zonas de intensidades (2008),24 Contratiempos (2001) and co-edited Cárcel de amor. Relatos culturales sobre la violencia de género(2006). She is a member of the editorial board for the scientific journal Arte y Políticas de Identidad (published by Editum) and forms part of Las Lindes group on art and cultural practices at the Dos de Mayo Art Centre in Móstoles (Madrid).
