Oswald Wiener

She is the godmother of performance art. With her shocking public actions she created in the late 60s images that have burned into the general visual memory until today. The life and work of the Austrian artist Valie Export exemplify a development in art history in which women sought and found new ways and means of expression. Her work provides a feminist counterpart to the Viennese actionism of her time, which has influenced numerous artists of subsequent generations. The innovative diversity of her artistic approaches makes Valie Export an icon of 20th century art history.

The focus of this documentary film, originally titled Speaking in Tongues: . The Unspeakable Speaking. Glossolalia among Natives, Christians, as an Emergency Language and Poetic Experiment, was the Pentecostal movement in America. The 45-minute video documentary, which was broadcast on Austrian television under the title The Unspeakable Speaking, used glossolalia to examine speech without apparent meaning. By examining speech defects, literary texts and the babbling of babies, forms of articulation for which normal linguistic logic plays no role were explored. The focus, which is beyond moral judgment, lies on various forms of expression and other, possible approaches and representations of reality.

"1. 'Das Ohr'-a human ear, stuck through cardboard, is poured over with food-stuffs. 2. 'Dolorosa'-a naked female body is continuously sprayed with red paint. 3. 'Kardinal'- a face is continuously slapped with food and paint. 4. 'Michaelangelo'- three naked human bodies are wallowing continuously as they are sprinkled with paint."- Progressive Art Productions