Angelika Richter

Defying the Constraints of Repression: Performing Women Artists in East Germany, the title of a lecture by Angelika Richter, presented at the “Reassessing East German Art” conference at Iowa State University, in Ames, Iowa. The focus of the lecture brings to light female artists in the late 1970’s and 80’s, describing some of the work being done at this time and how it if not predated, coincided with other subcultures of the time. Though East Germany had progressive ideals for women legally, there remained the cultural schism between male and female artists, where the later struggled to make their presence known.  Much of the work through the female subculture was time based and a mixture of media as well as performance art--embracing the tactile and physical acts of creating. Expressing painting through performance, female artists were analyzing their bodies in a way that undermined current art constructs. Working in collectives and as collaborating artists, groups of women were able to take attention under one name, rather than their own. These groups began to live together, giving performances for no audience, and focused on femininity in a gender determined society, leaving the occasional super 8 film, or pictures of the event as evidence.

            What I found fascinating about this lecture was how the artists discussed focused on their creation and experience of being a woman at this time and were able to detach from the slanted male centric artist community. How they chose to represent their bodies through creation was not meant as an antiestablishment but rather a questioning with uncertainty of what direction would result. The works from this time can easily be interpreted as feminist art when in reality it was proto-feminine, detached from the various movements of second wave feminism; it truly was about creating art, how they make the art over what or where the works goes. Because of this pure focus on the art and its creation, the end results were often over when the performance of the artist was over, leaving the byproduct of creation just that, an artifact. Without recording or documenting these performances there are but stories of some of these events—something you would be hard pressed to find today. It is unfortunate the lack of ability to access these performance experiences today but I believe that is one of the points of their existence at all, or at least the results of pure creation.