Ruidos y susurros de las vanguardias - Medialab Prado

involved after World War I in a political radicalism. Höch expressed less as a
politician than many of the others in the group. From 1926 to 1929, she lived and
worked in Holland.
Hannah Höch (1/11/1889 31/5/1978)
The artist made a great contribution to the inter-war art; she was a member of a
privileged group of creators with an enormous validity today: as predecessor of a
form of image processing of which the digital technologies have nourished; as a
woman who defended her place in the masculine world of the avant-garde
movements and who satirized female topics; and as practitioner in her first
decades of a political art that was simultaneously an absolutely modern art.
Within this framework, Hannah Höch created numerous photomontages of great
quality. She juxtaposed the German modern woman with the colonial German
woman. Raising problems such as the sexuality of women as well as the role of
her gender in this new society. With her images Höch creates a disturbing vision,
dealing with fears and hopes about the new possibilities of the modern German
women. In her work, she used photos, paper objects, pieces of machines,
objects, and so forth to produce images. Some of her more significant works are:
Dada Ernst - 1920
In Dada, Ernst Höch deals with the role of women in the new society. A pair of legs
with an eye of money and a man placed between them is the main focus of the
picture. An arc like the machine, binds the money to a gymnast who symbolizes
the modern athletic woman. To her side a woman plays a trumpet symbolizing the
feminity of women.
These are Höch's juxtapositions, the modern images of mind (symbolizing
machinery) against the woman's flesh (symbolizing femininity). Thus, she asks us
on the role of women's sexuality in the modern world under the omnipresent eye
of the male gender. With these images she creates a disquieting vision, which
deals with the hopes and the fears of the new woman.
Indian Female Dancer - 1930
It shows a woman's head, half woman half Indian sculpture. Her hair hides behind
the cut silhouettes of the knives and the bifurcations arranged as a crown. Höch
creates an allegory of the modern woman recognized by her fashionable haircut,
called Bubikopf. She creates the juxtaposed images, in a sense a modern
crowned woman, but in another, she identifies her with the stereotype of the
housewife. The face of the woman comes from a photo of a popular actress of her
time called Marie Falconetti. Höch creates an image composed by many female
identities: actress, modern woman, housewife, queen or warrior.
Do Women Have to be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum? Guerrilla Girls
1989. The influence of Hannah Höch is evident in later generations of artists and
young feminist artists. GUERRILLA GIRLS in their work Do Women Have to be
Naked to Get into the Met. Museum? , seems to pay a tribute to the artist Hannah
Höch, deep investigator of the identity, masks and feminine sexuality of
contemporary women.
“Feminine Red Pavilion .
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The work entitled: “Pabellón Rojo Femenino” (Feminine Red Pavilion). As its
name indicates is a pavilion/instalation, where two monitors are installed with two
videos face to face. And a videoprojector that displays the robotic images in
interaction with the public.
The first monitor shows the video entitled "Feminine Red Pavilion". This video
consists of three parts:
1) Parallel Spaces: Public Sphere/Private Sphere
2)Transgressing the space.
3) Feminine Red Pavilion
Tribute to Jefym Golyschev and Hannah Höch. This latter collaborated in the work
"the Circular Guillotine", antisymphony in three parts by Golyscheff. In this work
Höch participates by playing a set of saucepans and kitchen utensils.
I selected this work for its clear link with the house and its evident relation with the
private sphere, until not long ago excluding territory assigned to our feminine role.
Empar Cubells: During the last years I have been devoted to research the field of
women video producers in the current artistic scope. Video figures such as Joan
Jonas, Marta Rosler,Dara Birnbaum,Hannah Wilke,Valie Sport, Shirin Neshar,
Ursula Hodel…… ...... have shaped their vision of women through the camera,
explored the identity, the role and the feminine sexuality. Expressing an alienating
relegation to the home field by a patriarchal society.
The multimedia installation: “Pabellón Rojo Femenino” (Feminine Red Pavilion)
is a tribute to the fundamental role of women in the avant-garde movements and
nowadays, conceptually "activists".
Feminine red pavilion
This public pavilion shows a double paradigmatic sphere: the set of saucepans
and kitchen utensils, representative of the public sphere and the private sphere
(Höch/Empar Cubells). From this, the subject of the expression of the patriarch is
approached. Such analysis turns FEMININE RED PAVILION in a Ring to the
Public, where privacy and voyeurism become the constants that allow us to be
passive agents of the aggression. While technology becomes an active and
testimonial agent that offers in a screen at real time the changing image of the
installation after the intervention of the public, being influenced by a directed
robot. The public generates the work and gives its shape.
The work serves as catharsis to different performances, fictitious
documentary/films of different artists on the violence against women. At the same
time, a careful data base and internet forum generates new ways on the discourse
that will end up by conforming new interventions on the installation and create an
action and reflection area on the subject. Mediatic reality, feminism and
cyberspace, the interaction of the spectator. It opens a debate on reality, utopias
or clearly feminist apocalypse.