A little while ago I met Grietje Keller through Twitter, and admired the visual images in her blog but couldn't read it because the words are written in Dutch. Grietje referred me on to a Netherlands International Women's Centre and Archive with a site in English, a wonderful place. Then Grietje sent out a tweet about a US exhibition, of new feminist videos, called Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video, at the Brooklyn Museum in New York (May 1, 2009–January 10, 2010—Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, 4th Floor— with an 'interesting' New York Times review and a New York Magazine article about one of the artists, Kate Gilmore.)
Jen DeNike (American, b. 1971). Still from Happy Endings, 2006. Video, color, sound, 1 min. 5 sec. Courtesy of the artist and Smith-Stewart, New York
This is the image that appealed to me most, because it made me curious about the rest of the story. (I have a mate who needs to know the ending before she starts a script. I don't but I always hope the ending will be happy.)
For a while now, I've been ambivalent about calling myself a feminist. 'Feminism' had become, for me, a meaningless term and a source of irritation as I read bits of poststructuralist feminist theory and psychoanalytic theory, both a long way from my experiences as a woman and a scriptwriter and not very useful to me.
But, when I followed the tweet string (the 'stweet'?) from Grietje, about the exhibition, I found another interesting feminist activist I'd never have found in any other way, MadamaAmbi. And felt delighted to know about new feminist videos. And amazed that they exist, named as feminist. Will these artists, born between 1968 and 1975, make features? Do they already? This show inspires me to come out as a feminist again, because it's a great shorthand for connecting with women filmmakers in the rest of the world.
And then, when looking on YouTube for one of the new feminist videos to share, I found this instead. It's for Erica, Development's producer—especially—and for the students who're using this blog as a resource.
Video and (edited) text below produced by the Brooklyn Museum.
Korean-born, New York City based artist Sun K. Kwak is shown creating a site-specific work composed of approximately three miles of black masking tape in the fifth-floor Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery. The mural-like piece is affixed to the walls and pillars until July.And tui, tui, tui? In Maori—te reo—with long vowels, it's the name of a bird, native to New Zealand, that sometimes imitates other birds. You can hear its call on this site, for White Heron Tours, and at our place, most days.
The exhibition's title, Enfolding 280 Hours, references the number of hours the artist estimated it would take her and her assistants to install the piece in the gallery. Work on the installation began in early February, and Museum visitors were able to view the work in progress. At the end of the Brooklyn presentation and after photographic documentation, the masking tape will be peeled off the columns and walls and discarded.
Drawing with masking tape has become her signature form of expression. Kwak continues to challenge perceptions of familiar surroundings with this technique, which for her is both meditative and performative.
Here's a pic of a tui, on harakeke/flax plants, like the ones in our garden.
With short vowels, tui means to sew, or thread, and that's how I think of Twitter now, as I am threaded into a network that includes new feminist videos from New York.
And then there's Tui beer, and the Tui beer billboards, but they're another story--
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