documents
visuels présentés :
Gestures is a series of performance-based works in which wilke faces the camera in extreme close-up and performs repetitive or durational physical actions. At times she kneads and pulls her skin as if it were sculptural material. Often her gestures -- rubbing her hands over her face, smiling so hard that she appears to be grimacing, sticking out her tongue -- take on a loaded significance when seen in the context of gender performance.
Hello Boys 1975 12' b&w sound ; 1974 35'30" b&w sound ; documents a performance at the gallery gerald piltzer in paris. Seen through the glass of a large fish tank, wilke, nude, performs a repertoire of studied erotic gestures to the accompaniment of rock music. Entrapped in her fish bowl, on display behind glass, she is both subject and object. Suggesting the iconic female figure of a mermaid, with its ambiguous implications of sexual power and powerlessness, wilke explores the representation of female sexuality and the male gaze.
So help Me Hanna 1982 29' color sound ; documentation of a 1982 event at the A.I.R. Gallery in New York features a riveting performance by wilke, who is nude (except for high heeled-shoes) and aiming a gun. As she stalks the performance space like Emma Peel crossed with an exotic dancer, two cameramen follow her, recording her every movement. Dissonant music and a voiceover text about art, violence, power and gender provide the aural counterpoint to her often provocative physical gestures.
Japon: un pays lointain, ce documentaire, tourné en proche périphérie de Tokyo, rend compte d'un phénomène peu banal. Observé chez plusieurs individus, ce qui pourrait passer pour une mode excentrique est en fait la manifestation violente d’un rejet des normes sociales japonaises.
Keiko Yamada, 31 ans, n'est pas mariée. Elle cultive une apparente normalité et, si ce n'est son célibat, semble socialement très intégrée. De ce geste, partiellement inconscient, Keiko a accepté de parler et a donné son accord pour être filmée.
Préalable éventuel à une étude sociologique, ce reportage s'attache à tracer, à travers un cas très particulier, un certain nombre d'axes de lecture sur la situation des femmes au Japon.
