No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image

“Cut the line and chronology falls in a crumpled heap. I prefer a crumpled heap, history at my feet, not stretched above my head.” —Lis Rhodes, “Whose History?” (1979)

At a time when feminism is enjoying a mainstream resurgence but must be reclaimed from a neoliberal emphasis on individual success, and when the hybridization of documentary and artists’ film occupies a vital place in the landscape of contemporary practices, the exhibition No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image makes a strategic return to the past. Concentrating primarily on the period of the 1970s to 1990s, a time when women’s liberation movements took hold internationally, it presents works of nonfiction that seek to invent new languages for the representation of gendered experience. Across the cinema and the gallery, work by more than eighty artists and collectives emanating from diverse geopolitical contexts is displayed: activist tapes, avant-garde experiments, docufictions, essay films, and beyond. No Master Territories pays homage to the important work of the past and responds to the urgencies of today, enlarging available histories by tracing multiple genealogies that circumvent the impasses of contemporary neoliberal feminisms. 

The title “No Master Territories” is itself an archival return, borrowed from Trinh T. Minh-ha’s 1991 essay collection When the Moon Waxes Red. It is an abolitionist declaration, profoundly utopian, which speaks to the need for a bold reimagining of the world that would put an end to domination in all its forms—not only those related to gender. Gesturing to a feminist agenda that is irreducible to single-issue politics, the phrase deploys a geographical image, one freighted with the legacies of slavery and colonialism, to imagine a condition free from totalizing control and possession. It rejects the ideology of the artistic “masterpiece” and emphasizes cross-disciplinary pollinations. 

In addition to the gallery display and cinema program, special events in the presence of filmmakers and other invited guests will take place. Helke Misselwitz’s Winter adé (1988) will stream online, with free access. An accompanying book has been published by MIT Press.  

A world with no master territories would look nothing like the one that exists at present. It is perhaps an impossibility. Nonetheless, this demand has a generative force, registering a dissociation from punishing norms and sparking dreams of radical reinvention. The practices presented here take up this wager. They embrace the moving image as a wellspring of feminist imagination—a way of not only relating to the world but remaking it.

Curators: Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg

Contributors: Peggy Ahwesh, Chantal Akerman, Atteyat Al-Abnoudy, Claudia von Alemann, Helena Amiradżibi, Michal Aviad, Marjorie Beaucage, Berwick Street Film Collective, Camille Billops/James Hatch, Susana Blaustein Muñoz, Tabea Blumenschein, Lizzie Borden, Dionne Brand/Ginny Stikeman, Byun Young-joo, Gloria Camiruaga, Anna Carini/Rony Daopoulo/Paola De Martiis/Maria Grazia Belmonti/Annabella Miscuglio/Loredana Rotondo, Ann Carney/Barbara Phillips, Sheba Chhachhi, Essie Coffey, Jo Davis/Lis Rhodes, Zeinabu irene Davis, Maricarmen de Lara, Gardi Deppe/Barbara Kasper/Brigitte Krause/Ingrid Oppermann/Tamara Wyss, Maya Deren, Deepa Dhanraj, Assia Djebar, Loredana Dordi, Katherine Dunham, JoAnn Elam, Safi Faye, Frauenfilmgruppe München, Sara Gómez, Grupo Chaski, Krystyna Gryczełowska, Gwendolyn, Barbara Hammer, Han Ok-hee, Haneda Sumiko, Mona Hatoum, Zora Neale Hurston, Idemitsu Mako, Ana Victoria Jiménez, Tina Keane, Olga Khodataeva/Nikolai Khodataev, Ketty La Rocca, Sandra Lahire, Maria Lassnig, Robin Laurie/Margot Nash, Angelika Levi, Mirentxu Loyarte, Nalini Malani, Sarah Maldoror, Marilú Mallet, Cecilia Mangini, Barbara McCullough, Kate Millett/Sophie Keir, Annabella Miscuglio, Helke Misselwitz, Tracey Moffatt, Kitico Moreno, Mira Nair, Gunvor Nelson/Dorothy Wiley, Ulrike Ottinger, Paper Tiger TV, Letícia Parente, Parituh (Kim Soyoung), Alice Anne Parker (Severson), Pratibha Parmar, Qiu Miaojin, Yvonne Rainer, Mirha-Soleil Ross/Mark Karbusicky, Jocelyne Saab, Valeria Sarmiento, Claudia Schillinger, Gundula Schulze Eldowy, Delphine Seyrig, Esfir Shub, Cauleen Smith, Penelope Spheeris, Chick Strand, Khady Sylla, Leslie Thornton, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Abisag Tüllmann, Agnès Varda, Vidéa, Drahomíra Vihanová, Joyce Wieland