A WOMAN IS A WEAPON

Valie Export was once loosely aligned with the Viennese Actionists, a group of confrontational performance artists who sought to challenge the post-war complacency of Austrian society, particularly with regard to their conveniently forgotten / ignored complicity with the Nazi regime. Whereas many of the Actionists were macho and aggressive, Valie was an avowed feminist, and much more subtle, though no less thought provoking.

In Tap and Touch, she walked the streets of Vienna, a large box attached to her chest. Passing men were offered the opportunity to reach inside the box, where they would be able to fondle her bare breasts. Watch the film. For all their old world respectability, the Austrian men are eager to cop a feel, queuing up to intimately touch a stranger in a way that, if it happened to their wife, girlfriend, daughter or mother, they would be horrified. Naturally, the media blamed the breasts, not the fondlers, even going as far as to suggest that Valie was a witch who should be burned.

Action Pants: Genital Panic is not only the greatest title for any work of art ever, but it is also a brilliantly simple but incredibly clever concept. Valie, her hair wild and strange, is photographed holding a machine gun. Wearing crotchless trousers, her exposed genitals are obviously the focus of the piece, but it takes a while for the eye to register her exposure, which makes it about her, rather than us, the observer. She looks like a dangerous revolutionary, a precursor to the Red Army Faction, but she knows that her vagina is the source of her power, not the gun.