Shezad Dawood Livres

Just as punk created a space for bands such as the Slits and Poly Styrene to challenge 1970s norms of femininity, through a transgressive, strident new female-ness, it also provoked experimental feminist film makers to initiate a parallel, lens-based challenge to patriarchal modes of film making. In this book, Rachel Garfield breaks new ground in exploring the rebellious, feminist punk audio-visual culture of the 1970s, tracing its roots and its legacies. In their filmmaking and their performed personae, film and video artists such as Vivienne Dick, Sandra Lahire, Betzy Bromberg, Ruth Novaczek, Sadie Benning, Leslie Thornton, Abigail Child and Anne Robinson offered a powerful, deliberately awkward alternative to hegemonic conformist femininity, creating a new “punk audio visual aesthetic”. A vital aspect of our vibrant contemporary digital audio visual culture, Garfield argues, can be traced back to the techniques and forms of these feminist pioneers, who like their musical contemporaries worked in a pre-digital, analogue modality that nevertheless influenced the emergent digital audio visual culture of the 1990s and 2000s.

Feature: Reconstruction is not just simple documentation of a film. Instead a wide range of photographs taken by actors and volunteers, professionals and amateurs, capture action on both sides of the camera. The images are accompanied by footnotes, e-mail exchanges and written and visual contributions by artists Jimmie Durham, Doug Fishbone, David Medalla and writer Sebastian RoachFeature: Reconstruction accompanies a series of exhibitions and screenings of the film 'Feature'. The first is at Leeds Met Gallery (20 June-2 July), followed by Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (8 August-21 September), Eastside Projects, Birmingham (November-December), and finally at Tate Britain during the Tate Triennial in Spring 2009.