A performative screening by Kate Cooper, Leslie Kulesh and Jess Wiesner and produced by Auto Italia, screened alongside Barbara Hammer’s Audience (1982) and Multiple Orgasm (1976). This event is included in The Fearless Frame, a major survey of the work of Barbara Hammer at Tate Modern curated by Barbara Hammer and Stuart Comer.

This performative screening considers what a feminist moving image practice might mean to artists working today. Departing from a wide range of references and source material, the artists consider ‘feminist’ or ‘women’s’ work within theatre, film and fashion. Layering archival material with live performances from audience members, the artists map out a new territory for women within the mainstream. This screening explores new forms of agency that the power relationships that govern both the work of women artists and also that the creation of the images of women open up. It introduces the figure of the young girl as subjected to dominant forces yet simultaneously empowered by this supposedly marginalised position.

This screening was commissioned and produced by Auto Italia and initially performed in December 2011 at Bodies Assembling. Produced through a collaboration between Auto Italia and the women’s film distributor Cinenova, Bodies Assembling saw a range of contemporary responses to feminist and women’s film and video. The project brought together the practice and ideas represented in the films and videos distributed by Cinenova, the individuals and organisations presenting the screenings. Taking Auto Italia as an active model in the dual creation of both new work and also the context in which that work is distributed, Bodies Assembling became a forum to consider contemporary forms of distribution and self-representation.

Special thanks to Rachal Bradley, Robert Carter, Marianne Forrest, Tim Ivison, Richard John Jones, Julia Tcharfas and Charlie Woolley.