In Hyperbulie, VALIE EXPORT, naked and with her hands bound, moves around in a space bordered by electrified wires. Each contact between her body and her head sets off a shock that the artist inflicts upon herself for several minutes, the time it takes her to get across. The violence of crossing this electrified corridor is not of a theatrical nature, the risk that she is taking is clearly different from that of the spectacles conducted by the Viennese actionists – this violence is of an entirely different nature. Instead, VALIE EXPORT is proffering her female body, while retaining the impassive air that characterises her work: the expression on her face freezes, because she denies her pain.
Hyperbulie is part of a trilogy of actions (including Kausalgie and Asemie or the Inability of Expressing Oneself Through Facial Expressions, which also date from 1973) in which VALIE EXPORT expresses the inability to express herself through body language. The artist submits her body to violent tests that are both physical and mental. This woman’s body is a counter-power addressed to patriarchy. The artist de-eroticises the female body through the violence that she subjects it to, but she does not devote herself to a masochistic practice. The enterprise is a metaphorical one here, when we consider that the framework of the corridor of electrified wires may represent the authoritarian structures of the social framework. VALIE EXPORT undergoes the critical experience of a repression (which may also be a release) and the body thus becomes a political problematic.

Lou Svahn