VALIE EXPORT’s Facing a Family

Sophie Cavoulacos: Can you describe the making of your 1971 video Facing a Family?

VALIE EXPORT: When I began to work with video in the early 1970s, an important aspect was the “feedback feed,” or how one saw oneself on television, in the monitor. Facing a Family shows a story in which a family looks at the television—or, rather, a family looks out of the television—and the real family looks back at the mediated family. The initial idea was to show this during the news broadcast. The news is briefly interrupted and you see a family looking out of the TV at the real family sitting in front of the TV. Unfortunately this was not allowed, but that was the idea.

What reactions did the live broadcast garner when the piece was shown live on Austrian television?

Facing a Family was shown as part of an experimental video and film series called “Impulse,” so it was already identified as an art piece, but it still caused strong reactions, because the viewers did not expect to see themselves on television and thought it might be a malfunction in the broadcast.

How do you reflect on the work now, with the profound and ongoing shifts in the role of moving technologies in our daily lives? What do you see as the legacy of artists experimenting with television?

Unfortunately I only ever see it in connection with exhibitions or film projections, in museums and galleries. It does remind us that technology has changed a lot, and provides a contrast with how we experience today’s technology. Moving image technology has become ever more central in our lives and tied to the creation of value—production value, economic and cultural value. But it’s not about nostalgia for the past—this is the course of moving forward, always moving forward, always moving forward. Moving forward in life, in our ideas, for the planet.

The legacy of artists who experimented with television early on is that we drew attention to how this new technology functioned. This is our legacy, and it allows our successors to see how the technology has evolved and changed.

Thank you for sharing your insights and thoughts with us. We’re wishing you a safe and restorative holiday season! Is there anything you’re looking forward to in 2022?

I also wish you a restful and safe holiday season, and hoping that 2022 will be a year that makes many things easier for us. I am looking forward to many things that are currently ailing us getting better, or to us being able to bear them better. I would be pleased if I could read that the wars that take place everywhere are decreasing, and that the place of power and violence in our world would be diminished. I wish that in 2022 we become aware of the need for peace in our world. My wish for myself is to be able to keep and hold on to this positive energy.