Amsterdam, The Netherlands: BBK-Aktiecentrum; Electric Cinema, 1971. 34x21,6 cm. 4pp.

Two sheets printed recto verso. Invite / programme / press release for events on two consecutive weeks, organised by Electric Cinema*. Dutch; English. This was the first presentation of VALIE EXPORT's work in the Netherlands. Rare. Folded twice for mailing. Interesting example mailed by VALIE EXPORT (hand-addressed by her) to art historian, curator and later Groninger Museum director Frans Haks. · Saturday 6 November: All night dream of film by the one of the most important poetic underground filmmakers Antonio [Tonino] De Benardi · Friday 12 & Saturday 13 November: Expanded Cinema Event by notorious VALIE EXPORT from Vienna SEX POLITICS FILM all in one live film performance - Films and Action combined Some of the projects presented included: Electron Ray Tube (with Peter Weibel), Cutting, A Journey is Worth a Journey (with Peter Weibel), Ping Pong, Split Screen and many more. Most importantly Body Sign Action**, one of the defining pieces of VALIE EXPORT's early carreer, was presented.

*At the beginning of the 1970s, [Barbara] Meter and a small group of filmmakers set up Electric Cinema, a platform for experimental and avant-garde film in Amsterdam. Electric Cinema provided an alternative to the commercial film world, opening up greater scope for experimentation. In a small cinema on Haarlemmerdijk – now home to The Movies – films were screened and well-known international artists received, including Valie Export and Carolee Schneemann. The filmmakers behind Electric Cinema belonged to various film collectives, such as the Nederlandse Filmcoop (Dutch Film Co-op). Within this cooperative structure, they did everything themselves: from photography and production to distribution. Which meant they were able to work on their own projects, completely independently of the commercial production companies. [Meike Bartlema, 2023]

** On July 2, 1970, artist VALIE EXPORT had herself tattooed in Frankfurt in public. The action was a paradigmatic embodiment of her radical feminist and artistic work methods: her own body was permanently and painfully marked with a garter in order to reveal the functionalization and role of women as sexual objects. The garter—a fetish of male sexual fantasies—reflected her social determination through men. As philosopher Simone de Beauvoir wrote: “One is not born as a woman, one is made into one.” VALIE EXPORT writes about her “Body Sign Action”: “Tattooing the body demonstrates the connection between ritual and civilization. In the tattoo the garter appears as a sign of a past enslavement, clothing as the suppression of sexuality, the garter as an attribute of a femininity not determined by ourselves. A social ritual that covers up one of the physical needs, the opposition of our culture to the body is revealed. The garter as a sign of belonging to a class that demands specific behavior becomes a memory. The female body strips off, throws away the stamp of a world that till now was not the world of women, in order to arrive at a human world in which feminine existence is self-determined. [mumok blurb].