EWVA European Women's Video Art
Lydia SCHOUTEN
Key Works
The Lone Ranger Lost in the Jungle of Erotic Desire (1981)
17m 15s
Video
Prior to this tape Lydia Schouten had used video as part of her performance or to register it. But this is a television recording. 'In making this tape I started from the assumption that I wanted to produce a spectacle' she writes.
“I'm interested in the influence of the mass media on our attitude to everyday life. The images I show are about 'desire', 'rhythm' and 'emotion''. Just as in her performances, she uses herself as model in this jungle fantasy in a new wave setting - her body is the artist's brush. (LS)
Romeo is Bleeding (1982)
11m 18s
Video
When you switch on television, you can move from crime to passion, from the past to the future, in different rapidities, you are part of all possible times and spaces.
In 'Romeo is bleeding' time and space are in a same way wrenched from their original context. The producer of this video fulfills a variety of roles in a setting reflecting both comic-strip decors and primitive surroundings. Links are made with cultures of Africa, South America and Australia and the production makes clear, using both parody and seriousness that adventure and power are not male privileges. We see Lydia Schouten doing a ritual dance around a pair of primitive devil-like male figures, shooting a pistol and caressing male dummies. That she lives to see everything alone in a not existing world built from painted decors, has in the beginning a humoristic effect, but becomes later more and more dramatic. (LS)
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