HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt

Curators: Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg

On June 18, the exhibition No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image opens at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Through over 100 films and videos, it explores how artists and filmmakers have embraced the moving image as a wellspring of feminist imagination. Focusing on the formative period of the 1970s to 1990s across a global geography, it opens up an expansive view of underappreciated encounters between feminism and the moving image.

At a time when feminism is enjoying a mainstream resurgence but must be reclaimed from a neoliberal emphasis on individual success, and when the hybridization of documentary and artists’ film occupies a vital place in the landscape of contemporary practices, the exhibition No Master Territories makes a strategic return to the past. By revisiting the period of the 1970s to 1990s, it aims to pay homage to the important work that has come before and to respond to the urgencies of the present.

Bridging the fields of documentary and artists’ film, No Master Territories assembles a plurality of practices to offer an intersectional account of underappreciated genealogies of feminist film and video. It unfolds across the spaces of the gallery and cinema, featuring an exhibition, a film program that repeats weekly, and special one-off screenings. Traversing a polycentric, global geography, this multi-faceted presentation delves into how artists and filmmakers have explored the nexus of gender and power, often charting sites at which feminism connects to other struggles for justice.

Artists: Peggy Ahwesh, Chantal Akerman, Atteyat Al-Abnoudy, Claudia von Alemann, Helena Amiradżibi, Michal Aviad, Marjorie Beaucage, Berwick Street Film Collective, Camille Billops / James Hatch, Susana Blaustein Muñoz, Tabea Blumenschein, Lizzie Borden, Dionne Brand / Ginny Stikeman, Byun Young-joo, Gloria Camiruaga, Anna Carini / Rony Daopulo / Paola De Martiis / Maria Grazia Belmonti / Annabella Miscuglio / Loredana Rotondo, Ann Carney / Barbara Phillips, Sheba Chhachhi, Essie Coffey, Jo Davis / Lis Rhodes, Zeinabu Irene Davis, Maricarmen de Lara, Gardi Deppe / Barbara Kasper / Brigitte Krause / Ingrid Oppermann / Tamara Wyss, Maya Deren, Deepa Dhanraj, Assia Djebar, Loredana Dordi, Katherine Dunham, JoAnn Elam, Safi Faye, Frauenfilmgruppe München, Sara Gómez, Grupo Chaski, Krystyna Gryczełowska, Gwendolyn, Barbara Hammer, Han Ok-hee, Haneda Sumiko, Mona Hatoum, Zora Neale Hurston, Idemitsu Mako, Ana Victoria Jiménez, Tina Keane, Olga Khodataeva / Nikolai Khodataev, Ketty La Rocca, Sandra Lahire, Maria Lassnig, Robin Laurie / Margot Nash, Angelika Levi, Mirentxu Loyarte, Nalini Malani, Sarah Maldoror, Marilú Mallet, Cecilia Mangini, Barbara McCullough, Kate Millett / Sophie Keir, Annabella Miscuglio, Helke Misselwitz, Tracey Moffatt, Kitico Moreno, Mira Nair, Gunvor Nelson / Dorothy Wiley, Ulrike Ottinger, Paper Tiger TV, Letícia Parente, Alice Anne Parker (Severson), Pratibha Parmar, Qiu Miaojin, Yvonne Rainer, Mirha-Soleil Ross / Mark Karbusicky, Jocelyne Saab, Valeria Sarmiento, Claudia Schillinger, Gundula Schulze Eldowy, Delphine Seyrig, Esfir Shub, Cauleen Smith, Penelope Spheeris, Chick Strand, Khady Sylla, Leslie Thornton, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Abisag Tüllmann, Agnès Varda, Vidéa, Drahomíra Vihanová, Joyce Wieland

Collaborators: Madeleine Bernstorff, Shai Heredia, Nina Höchtl, Sarah Keller, Ricardo Matos Cabo, Sahar Salahshoor, Rasha Salti, Isabel Segui, Marc Siegel, Xiaoyu Weng

Exhibition architecture: Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik
Graphic design: Mevis & van Deursen

No Master Territories comprises a gallery presentation and a cinema program that repeats weekly throughout the duration of the exhibition. Special screenings in the presence of directors and other contributors complement the exhibition, as do a podcast and an online cinema.

The exhibition will travel to the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in 2023.

Publication

Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image
MIT Press
Editors: Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg
ISBN: 978-0-262-54452-8
In English
Price: 34 €
Released in June 2022

This book offers intersectional, intergenerational and international perspectives on nonfiction film- and videomaking by and about women. Concentrating on the period between the 1970s and 1990s, the contributions examine practices that range from activist documentaries to avant-garde experiments. They explore how the moving image has been a crucial terrain of feminist struggle – a way of not only picturing the world but remaking it. The contributors consider key decolonial filmmakers, including Trinh T. Minh-ha and Sarah Maldoror and investigate the cinematic expressions of tensions and alliances between feminism and anti-imperialist struggles. They meditate on the figure of the grandmother; reflect on realist aesthetics; discuss the issue of first-person expression; and ask what a feminist film historiography might look like.

With contributions by Helena Amiradżibi, Erika Balsom/Hila Peleg, Madeleine Bernstorff, Teresa Castro, Ayanna Dozier, Counter-Encounters (Onyeka Igwe/Laura Huertas Millán/Rachael Rakes), Forugh Farrokhzad, Safi Faye, Devika Girish, Elena Gorfinkel, Haneda Sumiko, Shai Heredia, Juliet Jacques, Sarah Keller, Julia Lesage, Beatrice Loayza, Françoise Maupin, Janaína Oliveira, Lakshmi Padmanabhan, Yasmina Price, Elizabeth Ramírez-Soto, Pooja Rangan, Lis Rhodes, Sara Saljoughi, Rasha Salti, Isabel Seguí, Chick Strand, Monika Talarczyk, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Françoise Vergès, Claudia von Alemann, Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, Shilyh Warren, Giovanna Zapperi

Graphic design: Mevis & van Deursen