Lorrie and the She-Punks (In Memory of My Beautiful Friend)

Lorrie Millington 

Artist, Model, Dancer, Writer

 

 

It's vital to remember those whom we have loved: and to love those whom we remember. 

 

So I am grateful to the curators of the God Save the Queens exhibition currently showing at the Museum of Youth Culture for affording me the opportunity to include the above photograph of Lorrie Millington taken in a time that is now long ago, but not quite lost. 

 

Displayed in the company of many other young women that the Up Yours! Collective insist on calling she-punks [1], I hope she feels she is among friends. 

 

Some of these women are famous, some anonymous; some dead, some still alive and kicking. But all are beautiful in the eyes of their friends and family who remember them.

 

 

Typical Girls [2] on a display board 

at the Museum of Youth Culture

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The term she-punk was coined by Helen Reddington and later popularised by Vivien Goldman as an alternative to punkette and is presumably meant to sound a bit more spiky and savage, although it does make me think of Jennifer Walters and we might question this rejection of the feminine diminutive form; does it mark a victory for women or might it not be seen as an unintended reinforcement of the masculine? 

 

[2] The link is to the single by the Slits of that title, released from their debut album Cut (Island Records, 1979). 

 

 

For a rather more critical engagement with the God Save the Queens exhibition, please click here.

 

 

Genitalpanik 2: On Valie Export and Her Action Pants

VALIE EXPORT: Aktionshose: Genitalpanik 

Photo by Peter Hassmann (Vienna, 1969)

The claim made by Deborah de Robertis that her new project, Ma Chatte Mon Copyright, is basically an act of homage to the Austrian artist Valie Export (often written in upper case as VALIE EXPORT), is certainly intriguing - though, I must admit, due to my somewhat limited knowledge of 1960s feminist performance art, I wouldn't have guessed this from her recent appearance at the Louvre where she cheerfully stripped off and displayed her cunt in front of the Mona Lisa.  

This recently tweeted photo, however, makes things explicit (in every sense of the word):

Deborah de Robertis Ma Chatte Mon Copyright

Posted on Twitter 29 Sept 2017:  

In the original image, we see Valie Export sitting on a wooden bench, back against the wall, wearing a tight black leather shirt and a pair of crotchless trousers (or, if you prefer, Aktionshose). Although it's a fairly aggressive and confident pose - and despite the fact she's holding a machine gun - Export's bare feet betray a feral vulnerability.

The hair on her head, backcombed in proto-punk fashion, is almost as wild and bushy as that displayed between her legs. There's nothing Summer of Love about this picture; Export looks more fleur du mal than hippie flower child and you can imagine her in The Slits, but not The Mamas and the Papas.

I like the reimagining of it by De Robertis - in particular I approve of her decision to replace the machine gun with a camera - but, visually, it's not as powerful, not as provocative, not as strangely disturbing; the fact that it has been taken within the safety of a studio and the bench replaced with a simple wooden chair that might have come from Ikea, robs it of menace and dirtiness. 

The set of identical poster prints that Export produced in 1969 commemorate an action she carried out a year earlier in Munich. Entering an art-house cinema where experimental film-makers liked to show their works alongside European porn movies, 28-year-old Export paced between the rows of seated viewers wearing her action pants, her exposed cunt at face-level.

(Reports that she also carried her machine gun and put it to the heads of several men threatening to shoot them if they didn't agree they'd like to fuck her, are, alas, apparently untrue).

Export was challenging the representation and, in particular, the sexual objectification of women in art and film, forcing male spectators to acknowledge her agency and flesh and blood reality by staging a public encounter with that part of the female body usually kept under wraps and only seen or experienced in a private space.   

Genius: an inspirational act of guerrilla art and genital activism.

And it's conceivable that her crotchless action pants influenced Malcolm McLaren's thinking when he designed his bondage trousers with a revolutionary zip that didn't come to a stop in its usual position, but, rather, went all the way round and half-way up the arse, thereby allowing full exposure of and convenient access to the sex organs, perineum and anus.


Notes

Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969), by Valie Export, a series of six identical screenprints on paper, is on display at the Tate Modern (London), in the Feminism and Media Room (Level 4).

Now aged 77, Valie Export lives and works in Vienna and is internationally recognised as one of the most important pioneers in conceptual performance art, photography and film, influencing many younger artists, including Deborah de Robertis and Milo Moiré. Those interested in knowing more can visit her website, valieexport.at 

Those who would also like to listen to McLaren explain how to make a pair of subversive trousers, can click here for an episode of the French TV show Being Malcolm (2000), uploaded to YouTube by the Malcolm McLaren Estate, 30 Sept 2015. 

Finally, those interested in reading part one of this post on Deborah de Robertis and her Ma Chatte Mon Copyright project, should click here.