Touch Cinema marks the beginning of what VALIE EXPORT calls Expanded Cinema, which breaks the commercial chain of the cinematographic industry by displacing the filmic object onto a stage or into the street.

November 1968, VALIE EXPORT and Peter Weibel [1] lay siege to Stachus Square in Munich. He shouts at the top of his lungs into the tube of a megaphone that screeches at onlookers. As for the artist, she wears a perforated black box on her torso, into which she has fitted her bare chest. Passers-by are invited to come and put their hands in and feel her breasts.

VALIE EXPORT exaggerates here for effect.

Touch Cinema: Tapp und Tastkino is the original title.

Both manifested yet hidden, what is visible becomes what is felt through the sense of touch, and what is obvious is merged with what is concealed. The title evokes the shock of contact – an act that dissipates the border between the individual body and the social body; a gesture that remains as exhibitionistic as it is introspective in VALIE EXPORT's work. She stands in front of a movie theatre, and we notice a film poster behind her: Der Mann mit Dem Goldenen Arm [2]. The box is closed and people slide their hands in for a duration timed by the artist herself, her gaze locked to the hands of her watch. Her face remains impassive and distant. VALIE EXPORT offers only skin. Once inserted, it is as though the hands were cut off from the world. It is possible to see a metaphor for castration in this, insofar as the dissociation of touch and sight prevent the experience from being of an erotic nature. People touch her breasts, yet she cannot feel it physically or emotionally. VALIE EXPORT clearly explains the meaning of Tapp und Tastkino: “A woman's first steps from object to subject. She freely shows her breasts and no longer follows any kind of social dictates. The fact that everything happens in the street and that the consumer could be anybody, man or woman, constitutes an infraction that reveals the taboo of homosexuality.” [3]

Lou Svahn

[1] Peter Weibel was born in 1944 in Odessa. After studying in Paris and Vienna, he was part of the circle of Viennese Actionists. He contributes to all artistic fields, as an artist, performer, director of research, scientific editor, and museum director (ZKM Center for Art and Media since 1999).

[2] Man With the Golden Arm, directed by Otto Preminger and released in 1955. This film was inspired by the eponymous novel by Nelson Algren. It was the first Hollywood film to deal with drugs and the effects that they provoke.

[3] Cited by Roswitha Mueller, VALIE EXPORT. Fragments of the Imagination, Bloomington Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1994, p.17.