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Cutting, 1967-1968

Cutting deals with the cinematic technique of "cutting," or editing, and its importance in terms of the construction of filmic reality. The first part of the film shows a house projected onto a paper screen. The artist cuts out the window of a house with a pair of scissors, giving the impression that she is really opening it. Next, Marshall McLuhan's sentence: "The content of the writing is the speech" is cut out of the illuminated surface of the screen. The last word, however, is pronounced by the artist making the meaning of the spoken sentence a reality. The commitment to the abstract signs of linguistics triggers the image as well as contact with the human body, when Valie Export uses an actor's Bazzoka T-shirt to make a cloth screen, cutting out the bubblegum bubble. Subsequently, the body, now naked, serves as a living screen, the sign of which (the body hair) is shaved by the artist. The act of fellatio at the end clearly shows the most direct form of communication which eschews words and images.


Technical details

Original title:
Cutting
Registration number:
2643
Artist:
EXPORT, VALIE
Date created:
1967-1968
Date acquired:
2004
Fonds:
MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation
Object type:
Audiovisual recording
Media:
Single-channel video, b/w, sound, 1 min 41 s
Credits:
MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation
Copyright:
© VALIE EXPORT, VEGAP, Barcelona
It has accessibility resources:
No

The MACBA Collection features Catalan, Spanish and international art and, although it includes works from the 1920s onwards, its primary focus is on the period between the 1960s and the present.

For more information on the work or the artist, please consult MACBA's Library. To request a loan of the work, please write to colleccio [at] macba.cat.

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