Meine Macht ist meine Ohnmacht

Description

"Closed-circuit recording, taken during the event at the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf.
The video shows the actor, dressed in a white bodysuit, lying in the large net that was suspended under the ceiling of the performance room during the performance. There is also the original sound of the action, which the artist spoke into a microphone for sixty minutes: a constant repetition of the word "woman". The recording was shown on two monitors in the performance room during the performance."
(Source: Gerhard Glüher (ed.), Ulrike Rosenbach : Wege zur Medienkunst 1969 bis 2004, Köln, Wienand, 2005, p.222.)

"A room that is divided into three parts and has four windows.
I placed large negatives of the photo series "Frauen aus alle kulturen" in front of the windows.
There is a salt surface on the ground in the middle room, which follows the jalve circular shape of the architecture. A large net has been stretched under the ceiling. I'm in the net. Above me hangs a large round mirror that catches light.
The light reflected in the mirror casts my shadow downwards to the salt carpet on the ground.
The "action" lasts 3 hours. I lie in the net and the only movement is the sound of my breath, which transmits to the room through a microphone: "woman-woman".
The video camera records the image of my shadow from above. My shadow is transferred to two video monitors in reverse shadow information via a mixer.
The text runs intermittently over the image: Meine Macht ist meine Ohnmacht...
After three hours I free myself from the net with the help of a pair of scissors and drop onto the salt carpet.
The knowing powerlessness, which heralds the death of the vital activity of male society, of its compulsive virility - where women dream an opposite dream, think in metamorphoses, overcome their POWER that has become POWERFUL, reimagine themselves.
— Ulrike Rosenbach"
(Source: Stedelijk Museum, "Ulrike Rosenbach, Valie Export", Netherlands: Amsterdam, 1980; p.13.)

Publications and Periodicals which reference the work

Gerhard Glüher (ed.), Ulrike Rosenbach : Wege zur Medienkunst 1969 bis 2004, Köln, Wienand, 2005.

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