Appendice per una supplica (1972)

9m 30s

Open Reel

 

In 1972 during the 36th Venice Biennale, the Italian feminist artist Ketty La Rocca took part in the Video-nastri section, organised by the German video pioneer Gerry Schum. For this, she made Appendice per una supplica. This video includes several recurring themes and issues raised by La Rocca in her photographic and performance work, and particularly in the book In principio erat (1971): language, communication, dialogue, relationships and duality. La Rocca considered verbal and visual languages as barriers to women’s expression and development, and questioned their status by researching new ways of communication through the body. In the 1970s, she employed spontaneous and intuitive hand gestures that could embody a universal and, at the same time, a very personal discourse.

La Rocca stated: ‘in our culture gestures only underline information, serving as a supportive means of expression, so as to better emphasise what we want to say even though a greater wealth of mythic, ritual and fantastic elements - the legacy of mankind and thus irreplaceable - is to be found in gestures’