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FEMLINK

http://www.femlink.org
The FemLink-Art collective presents "FEMALE" one of its international video-collages

Evgenija Demnievska.
Serbia

This video has in its title the Venus symbol, historically associated with the Roman goddess Venus and the Greek goddess Aphrodite. This video is the complement to the video I did on the Male Fluid flux which bears the Mars symbol, usually interpreted as the shield and spear from the war god Mars/Ares. I see these two videos being presented together. While similar in structure, Fluid flux is solely based on the portraits of women and presents a rather poetic and luminous image of them. While we know so little or almost nothing about these women, the video leaves us with something surprising even hypnotic. Fluid flux was shot and edited using computer animation techniques. The video offers a new look at women, how they are seen and see themselves, when adopting new roles in a postmodern world.
(Technical support: Radisa Kostic; Thanks to Bojan Bulatovic, Predrag Gosta and Jana Jovanovic)

Mouna Jemal Siala.
Tunisia

Behind a shaded veil with branches dancing in little movements, appears the shadow of a female hand, then the torso of a body and a face. Like a shadowgraph, the body of this woman caresses the veil, which seems strange to it, and as if to cross it, it gets closer then farther, appears and disappears. A dialogue between nature, foliage, shadows, light and the female body which, delicately, struggles against the veil. The body is outlined at each movement and allows a few details to be briefly seen. Thus, it enhances the spectator’s curiosity, who, through the gaze, tries to «unveil it». The question remains: which veil do we talk about? which passage is it a matter of?

Angelika Rinnhofer.
Germany

“0.0.0” is a self-portrait. It reflects on the aging process and its effect on the female body. Hormonal fluctuations before and during menopause influence the body not only physically, but also psychologically.
These significant and often arduous transformations are caused by the decline of reproductive hormones, which in turn affects menstruation cycles. The endometrium, the lining of the uterus, consists of two layers, one of which regenerates periodically. In my video, the peeling of membranes from eggshells symbolizes a woman’s uterus and her endometrium. The wearing of different outfits mirrors the lapse of time.

Katya Nikonorova.
Kazakhstan

The third series of the cycle about Katipa Apai. As the ancient Diogenes, Katipa Apai walks in the social places with a flashlight and looks for a Man. Out of despair and impossibility to express her sexuality, that she has to hide with hijab, she commits an action, sacrilege, something perverse for the eyes of the audience, that the viewer can only guess about the end, but a recognizable pose of a woman who found
herself.

Maria Papacharalambous.
Cyprus

Video created through the use of selected original collages / cards made by myself, with respective quotations with the theme female.
(Video co-editing: Nefeli Kentonis / Sound editing and composition: A. Kentonis)

Camila Rodríguez Triana.
Colombia

When I was asked to make a video about the word «female», several questions came to my mind. I am a female, but what is a female? What does it mean to be defined or belong to a group of people who gather around the word «female»? What is it that we share that makes us all female? Having vagina? Having breasts? Menstruation? Being fortunate to feel that a child grows inside us? The strange power called intuition or sixth sense? Delicate movements? A special dress? Polishing our nails or making up our faces? Is it a struggle or the claim for equality against a history of oppression and pain? And after watching myself and several women around me, looking for answers to all those questions, the only thing that I noticed was how different we all are, how diverse, the number of ways of being woman, of walking, feeling, thinking, of getting on with life, speaking, moving, the
different ways in which women face the struggle for equality or justice. What I found were different women that are women in different ways.
Then I thought maybe the problem came from the same quest that started this dissertation, that is, from the need to define for all the cultures, ages, places what is woman. Maybe the problem is trying to attempt the impossible task of putting standards on life itself that is diverse and tied to a particular context. I do not know how to answer the question of what is a female? I could only say that I, who fall within the definition of female, not quite understanding why, am a human being who follows a path in this thing called life, a path somewhere. From this personal feeling I made the video «Timeline».

Áine Phillips.
Ireland

“In the Robing Room” is a video, shot by Vivienne Dick, of a performance made by Áine Phillips in the 18th Century Bishops Palace Robing Room in Kilkenny, Ireland. The piece explores ideas of female entrapment and confinement, especially in relation to histories of the Magdalen laundries in Ireland. In the performance the woman and her clothing become an evocative sculptural form, struggling with suppressed identity and bodily expression.

Amaranta Sánchez.
Mexico

In this video, the idea is to inhabit each other’s history, speaking of the cliché of the fantastic to transform into the character who inhabits stories. Highlighting the terrifying state of loss in a thick forest, in order to reach our reconciliation.

Dagmar Kase
Estonia

As long as girlhood is taught and sold only as pink and beautiful, and boyhood only as (dark) blue and strong, feminism is relevant.

Nicoletta Stalder
Switzerland

Cagdas Kahriman.
Turkey

The video shows an abstract landscape of female internal body. The surface is in a process of ‘being peeled off’ and projected onto the magnified surface of an intricate fabrication of colors – like vessels, muscles, and emotions that the female body goes through this process of ‘decaying’ and ‘rebirth’. The grid within the projection occurs because of the intense ‘zooming in’ of the image projected -- a digital artifact of magnification into the smallest observable unit, and a phantom-like reminder of the ocular desire for measurement and quantization of the body, juxtaposed here against the dynamic terrain of an interior psychobiological surface. Interplay between material and immaterial is also expressed through the music, as it sonically explores a fundamental dissonance in the physical structure of the instrument, the cello. Similarly, the video blurs the boundary between sculpture, painting, video, and performance art, and seeks an alternative representation of the ‘female’ without representation of the female body itself.

CROSSINGS

Hanae Utamura.
Japan

Sudsiri Pui-Ock.
Thailand

Woke up in the morning of my birthday, and feeling like hanging all the laundry that I have with me in the main library room of the castle. This room used to be the reception room in which the important guests were received. Above the large fire place is a text engraved “NONME DOMABIS” meaning “No one can dominate me”.

Madelon Hooykaas.
The Netherlands

Minoo Iranpour Mobarakeh.
Iran

Doris Mayer.
Austria

La video is questioning the female quality of the gestures while investigating the invisible phenomena of energy work. The female cliché of softness is relocated in the gentle, soft characteristics of the movement and is questioned when the motion, still soft and gentle and without breaking the flow, is showing attributes that might rather be associated with male quality. Based on the concept of yin and yang and the understanding of interdependence and inter-transformation - one is including the other and can change into the other - I am investigating the qualities of energy in general and female aspects in particular in this work.
Performing with my own - female - hand, the video seems to show a soft, floating motion, that does, at the same time, include some agressive parts. Sometimes clear, sometimes ambiguous. I am asking for female qualities.

Zoulikha Bouabdellah.
Algeria

Raya Mazigi.
Lebanon

A young girl, in traditional wedding attire, is trying to smile but one can sense her mind is absent, amidst sounds alternating between chaos and celebration. This video is a reflection on growing uncertainties in war torn regions of the Arab and Middle-East where thousands of women were thrown overnight into slavery and humiliation. As if by tragic premonition, the goddess of femininity Ishtar, local counterpart of Venus and Aphrodite, is also the goddess of war.

Xiuwen Cui.
China

C. M. Judge
United States of America

Sara Malinarich
Chile

Raquel Kogan/Lea van Steen.
Brazil

Véronique Sapin.
France

Little girls, teenagers and young women are still constrained to marry a man they neither choose or have ever met. The first part of the video shows a bride balancing on a wire, reflecting her uncertain future. Her fall is the symbol of all these married women that enter into this life of submission and often abuses. The second part of the video examines the protests of these women against violence, and their struggle for their rights.
The Conservative rejects their claims as a Western theory whose Universalist pretentions reflects an thnocentric prejudice. In our own societies, we saw actions against the dignity of women and their liberty becoming acceptable in front of the occidental courts: lay judges did not dare to condemn these barbarians’ practices against women because of a biased understanding of the concept of multiculturalism. From the daughter of a man to the spouse of another, the subordinate and inferior position of women goes against all our laws and reason.

Lusine Talalya.
Armenia

This video artwork is comprised of a number of photos that were taken with a Praktica film camera, in a sanatorium that no longer functions after the independence of Armenia. Mainly the working class was spending its recreation time at the sanatorium during the Soviets. Through my performance I tried to reconstruct the environment where women during the 70s were having "recreational time". But, even in the
sanatorium women were not enjoying their time, but rather were taking care of children, cooking and doing other housework – the reality of the 70s and especially women portrayed through the lenses of men. There is little evidence on the women's perspective on the reality of the 70's. Through the photos I tried to recall and reconstruct that reality. The titles of 70's vinyl records albums that were dedicated to women and the prices of the albums are illustrated in the photos. The Soviet weather forecast for my birthday date is uttered in the video.

Alena Kupcikova.
Czesch Republic

Anna Selander.
Sweden

I had this beautiful amaryllis flower with several buds at home. It grew and opened up bit by bit and I was filming it every day in different lights. The different phases of it’s development made me associate to the female sexual organ. I asked a dancer to watch the images and to interpret them. The filmed mouvements of the dancer seemed more mysterious and poetic than the filmed flower. A metalanguage or a meta-emotion that became more abstract. A secret language. The choreographed movements of the flower creates a poetic female sexual metaphor. The sound of the moving stems and leaves creates
the background sound.

Sté Termes.
Luxembourg

Vouvoula Skoura.
Greece

Angie Bonino.
Peru

"Blow Voice" is videoart that brings together video documentation of women from five continents of the planet in demonstrations calling for social justice, political and economic.