A lesbian/feminist aesthetic proposing the connection between touch and sight to be the basis for a “new cinema.”
—Barbara Hammer

Join e-flux at their Screening Room on Thursday, September 22 at 7pm for Between Sight and Touch, a screening of selected works by Barbara Hammer, featuring Psychosynthesis, Women I Love, Sync Touch, No No Nooky T.V., Save Sex, and Lesbian Whale, accompanied by a screening of A Month of Single Frames by experimental documentary filmmaker and poet Lynne Sachs, who will also be introducing the evening via video.

Barbara Hammer (1939-2019), a pioneer of queer experimental filmmaking in the US, devoted most of her five-decade artistic career to the deconstruction of normative understandings of gender and sexuality. She was attempting to build a new cinema via material explorations of onscreen representations of the female body and analysis of the functioning of the film medium itself. This program features Hammer’s lesser-known short films and video works in which the artist questions the strict boundaries between the representation of gender and sexuality and the exploration of one’s body—between sight and touch.

Between Sight and Touch is part of Revisiting Feminist Moving-Image Art, a monthly series of screenings at e-flux Screening Room aimed at revisiting the origins, contexts, developments, and impact of feminist video art and experimental cinema around the world from the 1960s through the present.

Films

Barbara Hammer, Psychosynthesis, 1975, 6 minutes
“The sub-personalities of me, as baby, athlete, witch, and artist are synthesized in this film of superimpositions, intensities, and color layers coming together through the powers of film.” (Barbara Hammer)

Barbara Hammer, Women I Love,  1976, 23 minutes
A series of cameo portraits of the filmmaker’s friends and lovers intercut with a playful celebration of fruits and vegetables in nature. Culminating footage evokes a tantric painting of sexuality sustained.

Barbara Hammer, Sync Touch, 1981, 10 minutes
“…The film explores the tactile child nature within the adult woman filmmaker, the connection between sexuality and filmmaking, and the scientific analysis of the sense of touch.” (Barbara Hammer)

Barbara Hammer, No No Nooky T.V., 1987, 12 minutes
Using a 16mm Bolex and Amiga computer, Hammer creates a witty and stunning film about how women view their sexuality versus the way male images of women and sex are perceived. The impact of technology on sexuality, emotion, and the sensual self is explored through computer language juxtaposed with the everyday colloquial language of sex.

Barbara Hammer, Save Sex, 1993, 1 minutes
A minute-long, partly animated color video that is a humorous plea for good sex, safely prophylactic though it may be.

Barbara Hammer, Lesbian Whale, 2015, 6 minutes
A video animation of Hammer’s early notebook drawings set to a soundtrack of commentary by the artist’s friends and peers.

Lynne Sachs, A Month of Single Frames, 2019, 14 minutes
In 1998, lesbian experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer took part in a one-month residency at a Cape Cod dune shack without running water or electricity, where she shot film, recorded sound, and kept a journal. In 2018 she gave all of this material to Lynne Sachs and invited her to make a film with it.

Accessibility 
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the Screening Room and this bathroom.

​​For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.