No Master Territories
Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image

No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image is an exhibition devoted to film and video work about women, by women. It comprises stylistically diverse works of non-fiction, including documentaries, experimental films, video art, educational films, and essay films. The creators of the works come from many different geographical contexts: North and South America, Asia, Australia, Western Europe, and countries of the former Eastern bloc. The films and videos presented were created mainly between the 1970s and the 1990s, at a time when women's liberation movements sprang up around the world. Many of these works were made in intimate relation with feminist activism; others were not affiliated with any social movement; some are made by women who did not identify as feminist, even though their works touch on issues important for feminism. By revisiting the past, the exhibition aims both to pay homage to the important work that has come before and to respond to the urgencies of the present.

The works take up such issues as female sexuality and eroticism (Between, directed by Claudia Schillinger), depictions of the female body in film and photography (We Aim to Please, Robin Laurie and Margot Nash), economic exploitation of women and workers’ rights (Solidarity, Joyce Wieland), reproductive rights (Protesta por el aborto, Ana Victoria Jiménez), the illusion of socialist emancipation (24 godziny Jadwigi L., Krystyna Gryczełowska), ecology (Serpent River, Sandra Lahire), the life of women in Indigenous communities (Nice Coloured Girls, Tracey Moffatt), and the image of Black femininity (A Tribute to Black Women, Ann Carney and Barbara Philips). They share an attempt to find a new visual language that can convey different experiences and overcome the existing manner of presenting women, typically as subordinated to the male gaze and male pleasure. As stated by Gundula Schulze, the main character in Helke Misselwitz’s film Aktfotografie – z.B. Gundula Schulze shown in the exhibition, the point of departure for which was a guide for amateur photographers on female nudes: “The image of female beauty created for the public is not real. It is an illusion. And the woman who jointly creates it is devoted to it, has nothing in common with it, because her everyday life … is in fact entirely different.”

An important inspiration for the exhibition is Trinh T. Minh-ha, an US-based director, writer and film theorist from Vietnam. The title of the show was taken from a phrase that appears in her collection of essays When the Moon Waxes Red. This phrase calls to mind the image of master and slave, alluding to one theme of the exhibition, colonial exploitation and slavery. It also resounds with a view of the world free of division into separate competing territories. Trinh rejects the notion of the “master”—an omniscient authority—which dominated post-war cinema, to create room for art inspired by women’s activism, often collective, arising in mutual cooperation.

The exhibition does not seek to create an alternative canon of women’s filmmaking or to narrate a linear history. The gallery display is organized in a loosely thematic way, guided by an intuitive logic that resists separation into distinct chapters.The driving force of the artistic works presented is a dream of radical transformation and a rejection of accepted norms. These artists and filmmakers embrace the moving image as a wellspring of feminist imagination — a way of not only relating to the world but remaking it.

Artists:
Peggy Ahwesh; Helena Amiradżibi-Stawińska; Marjorie Beaucage & Rebecca Belmore; Ann Carney & Barbara Phillips; Gardi Deppe, Barbara Kasper, Brigitte Krause, Ingrid Oppermann & Tamara Wyss; Maya Deren; Katherine Dunham; Sara Gómez; Grupo Chaski (María Barea, Fernando Barreto, Fernando Espinoza, Stefan Kaspar, Alejandro Legaspi, Margreth Noth); Krystyna Gryczełowska; Gwendolyn; Barbara Hammer; Mona Hatoum; Zora Neale Hurston; Ana Victoria Jiménez; Sandra Lahire; Robin Laurie & Margot Nash; Nalini Malani; Barbara McCullough; Helke Misselwitz; Tracey Moffatt; Gunvor Nelson & Dorothy Wiley; Newsreel (Bev Grant & Karen Mitnick Liptak); Han Ok-hee; Paper Tiger Television (Nicole Cousino, Sarah Lewison, Julie Wyman); Letícia Parente; Alice Anne Parker (Severson); Claudia Schillinger; Gundula Schulze Eldowy; Delphine Seyrig; Esfir Shub; Milica Tomić; Agnès Varda; Joyce Wieland
 

The works presented in the exhibition may contain content inappropriate for underage viewers, including elements of nudity or vulgar language. Admission for minors over the age of 15 is possible with the prior consent of a parent or legal guardian (statement to be downloaded from the Museum website). Before giving consent, we recommend that you familiarise yourself in advance with the exhibition.

Photo: still from Han Ok-hee’s film Untitled 77-A, 1977