Olivia Poppe

Olivia Poppe

Home: UC Berkeley
Host: University of Vienna

Topic: “Close Contacts in Expanded Cinema - Valie Export, Renate Bertlmann, and Florentina Holzinger”

Her research project examines feminist contributions to film- and media theoretical inquiries into skin as screens and screens as skin. Her investigation runs along the cultural theorists Sara Ahmed’s and Jackie Stacey’s concept of “skin-tight politics”. Through her research, she will bring VALIE EXPORT’s artistic and theoretical contributions to Expanded Cinema, inquiring the means and conditions of projection within works such as TAPP und TASTKINO, and Renate Bertlmann’s exploration of gender politics through skin(like) surfaces, most notably in the variations of her work Streicheleinheiten, into conversation with contemporary performance artist Florentina Holzinger who, by negotiating skin as a culturally-political contested contact zone, seems to be in ‘close contact’ to Austrian feminist performance and audio-visual movements starting in the sixties.

With the generous support of the Marshall Plan Foundation, she is using her research stay in Austria over the summer to do research on the above mentioned artists, to visit archives such as the Filmmuseum Vienna and the VALIE EXPORT Center Linz, focusing her first round of research on the works and writings of VALIE EXPORT, and to share and discuss her work with faculty of the Department of Theater, Film and Media at the University of Vienna.