Bella Butler

DISRUPTING THE IMAGE: The Reinstatement of Female Subjectivity in the work of VALIE EXPORT

As a feminist artist, VALIE EXPORT has always been interested in the position of the woman in society, but more specifically, the role of the image of woman. In a world of ever expanding technology, image and reality can become impossible to separate. But there are stakes in this, especially for female subjectivity. EXPORT writes in her essay “The Real and its Double,” that “perhaps one could even say that our culture has produced only images of women and that the only place where women can recognize themselves is in images.” But for woman to become synonymous with image, she must become object; she necessarily begins to approach her non-existence. 

But EXPORT is not interested in abandoning the image. It is with these identified stakes of the image that this thesis explores the material modes through which the artist searches for a way to engage and use the image without objectifying the female subject. In this project, using EXPORT’s library and personal archives at the VALIE EXPORT Research Center, Bella hones in on the material move of “the cut,” utilized in many different forms throughout the artist’s wide-spanning oeuvre. Specifically, this thesis takes up filmic cutting in …Remote…Remote… (1973) and Syntagma (1983) and body-cutting in her performance Eros/ion (1971). Her thesis argues that “the cut” is what allows for the reinstatement of female subjectivity for the image of woman through a creation of epistemological space and the physical disruption of the illusionistic continuity of the seemingly two-dimensional image.

Biography

Bella Butler completed her undergraduate studies in the field of German Studies at Princeton University. More specifically, she studies media and aesthetics within the department. Her research has focused on the representation of the female body in the context of art and media, leading to critical readings of the female subject within the medium of film. She has worked in the art world as an Editorial Assistant at Elephant Magazine, as well as published numerous articles for them on contemporary art.