• Text by VALIE EXPORT
• Chronology of Tap and Touch Cinema

Reconstruction of the first and second “Tap and Touch Cinema,” documentation through photographs, texts and a video of the action in Munich (Peter Hajek and Helmut Dimko for Apropos Film/ORF).

The “Tap and Touch Cinema” is VALIE EXPORT’s key work, a spectacular feminist action in which she demonstrated against the film apparatus as a materialized, bourgeois ideology. With a simple box, buckled to her naked chest, she went out into the street in several cities and invited people to “visit the cinema” for five minutes. A woman’s body became the screen, the film, which could not be seen but was instead expanded to include another aspect of perception, the sense of touch.

The first “cinema” of Styrofoam, made by the artist, had a little cloth curtain in front of the opening. It was destroyed after the first two actions in Vienna and Munich. The second “cinema” was produced out of aluminum with a foam-trimmed opening, by the designer Wolfgang Ernst. After the exhibition “Film as Film” (1977–78, Cologne, Berlin, Essen, Stuttgart, London), it was not returned and is considered lost. For the exhibition “Out of Actions” (Los Angeles, Vienna, Barcelona, Tokyo), EXPORT had Ernst recreate the second model. The Generali Foundation acquired this second model and also commissioned EXPORT to reconstruct her first “cinema. ” Like the destroyed original of 1968, the 1999 model was made by the artist herself; the shape, material, and size are the same as for the first “Tap and Touch Cinema. ” The two objects, shown in conjunction with photographs, original texts, reports and a video, document her historic action.

Text by VALIE EXPORT

The screening takes place in the dark as usual: except that the movie room has shrunk a little. It only has room for two hands. In order to see the film, which in this case means to sense and feel it, the “spectator” (consumer) has to put both hands through the entrance to the movie house. The curtain, hitherto raised only for the eyes, is now, at long last, raised for the hands as well.

Tactile reception guards against the deceit of voyeurism. For as long as burghers find gratification in reproduced copies of sexual freedom, the state can save itself the trouble of a proper sexual revolution. “Tap and Touch Cinema” is an example of activating the audience as reinterpretation of the screen. Tactile instead of visual communication. A new organization of filmic elements necessitates new communication and, along with it, new experience. Sociological models, as reinforced in movies, are thus broken down. New sociological models, new modes of human behavior emerge, such as the socialization of sexuality. Stop private ownership of eroticism, socialize sexuality.

“Tap and Touch Cinema” is the first genuine woman’s film. Attributes of women, which our culture turns into objects for the sexuality of men, have been directly abolished and taken out into the streets in a form that breaks the rules of society. The state allows the tactile and visual experience of sexuality only in the privacy of family and home. Visual experience in newspapers, books, and films encourages voyeurism and only seems to allow sexuality outside the home. The state prohibits tactile experience outside the private sphere. The senses are liberated and there is no way this process can be integrated into state regulations because it leads directly to the liberation of sexuality. This process of liberation is woman's first step from object to subject. She is free to dispose of her bosom, and no longer obeys social precepts. Since everything takes place on the street, and the consumer can be anybody, man or woman, this is an undisguised raid on the taboo of homosexuality. Since a bosom is no longer a male chattel, since woman now disposes of it independently, the morality of state precepts (state, family, ownership) is undermined.

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Chronology of “Tap and Touch Cinema”
November 11, 1968	Premiered at the 2nd Maraisiade “Junger Film 68” in Vienna. “Ping Pong” receives the festival’s Most Political Film award. At the award ceremony at the “Wirtschaftsförderungsinstitut der Bundeskammer,” VALIE EXPORT presents the “Tapp und Tast Kino” with a statement instead of her prize-winning film. The audience and filmmakers protest.
November 12–17, 1968	Second performance at the 1st European Meet of the World’s Independent Filmmakers organized by the Undependent Film Center at the Munich Künstlerhaus. On November 14, 1968, the legendary action is performed at the Stachus in Munich, with a provocative speech by Peter Weibel.
End of 1968	Another presentation by VALIE EXPORT takes place at the Cafe Savoy in Vienna.
1969	“Tapp und Tast Kino” by VALIE EXPORT is presented once again at the Stachus in Munich for a film shoot for Austrian TV (see video by Peter Hajek and Helmut Dimko).
Spring 1969	VALIE EXPORT performs the “Tapp und Tast Kino” as part of the “Underground Explosion” (with Amon Düül II, Paul & Limpe Fuchs, Guru Guru Groove, Pjotr Kraska Troupe, and Peter Weibel) at the Circus Krone, Munich, at the Zurich Volkshaus, in the Sporthalle in Cologne, and in Essen. A riot ensues; VALIE EXPORT sustains a head injury. The performance planned in Stuttgart is canceled.
1969–71	Further showings of the “Tapp und Tast Kinos” take place: Erika Mies performs the “Tapp und Tast Kino” on Breite Straße in Cologne; VALIE EXPORT gives an accompanying talk. VALIE EXPORT presents her cinema at the Every Day Club in Goteborg and at the Arts Lab in London and also during her “Electric Cinema” tour in Amsterdam, Breda, and Eindhoven, where she shows her work on expanded cinema.
1977–78	For the first time, “Tapp und Tast Kino” is exhibited as an object without the accompanying performance. It is on view in the exhibition “Film als Film— 1910 bis heute,” which tours the Kölnische Kunstverein, Cologne; the Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London. After the exhibition, the object is not returned to the artist.

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