Women after they fuck walk different
“I’ve learned something there
I saw something there
I saw a film there
I saw this little girl
she was about twelve
and you bumped into her
you were taking footage of the flows behind her
you focussed on that and you bumped right into her
she was the most graceful
she moved in the most graceful way
and she was about twelve years old
and I remembered something about when I was a girl
the way she walked, she stumbled at some point
and she caught herself and the way she picked the rhythm up again
I remembered what it was like to be a girl
it was like before, before
before sex
you know
the kind of moving
I think women
after they fuck
walk different.”
(Monologue from From Romance to Ritual (1985))
I saw something there
I saw a film there
I saw this little girl
she was about twelve
and you bumped into her
you were taking footage of the flows behind her
you focussed on that and you bumped right into her
she was the most graceful
she moved in the most graceful way
and she was about twelve years old
and I remembered something about when I was a girl
the way she walked, she stumbled at some point
and she caught herself and the way she picked the rhythm up again
I remembered what it was like to be a girl
it was like before, before
before sex
you know
the kind of moving
I think women
after they fuck
walk different.”
(Monologue from From Romance to Ritual (1985))
In my first online conversation with American experimental film artist Peggy Ahwesh, she told me that over the years various writers and thinkers tried to understand and describe the evolution in her work. She does not try to put her finger on it herself and she continues to produce audiovisual work undisturbed, and, in my opinion, with enormous pleasure, enthusiasm, perseverance, radicality and directness. Always testing boundaries, taking risks, critical and with gratitude for the unknown. In a conversation with Leo Goldsmith, Peggy compares her editing processes to puzzles that need to be solved. When she figures out how all the pieces fit together, the whole turns out to be more beautiful than all the individual parts added together. I am convinced that Peggy’s entire oeuvre is also like a puzzle that can fit together in different ways, depending on through which lens you want to look at it. That makes her work so interesting.
I have tried to put together three of her films like a puzzle, where the different films combined pursue a greater meaning. Thirty-five years later, the films are still important and make female sexual emancipation imaginable.
Peggy’s often funny, poignant, disturbing films and videos connect new forms of time, space, representation and power dynamics. In her earlier works, Peggy invites women and girls to improvise in front of the camera in intimate and domestic situations. The young women portray different forms, versions and artificial representations of themselves while questioning gender norms and their own sexuality. The films are theatrical performances, a play with the camera that expresses an activist way of having fun in which having fun not only positions itself as a desirable goal, but as an underexposed resistance strategy.
During a meeting between Peggy and a friend in Martina’s Playhouse (1989) that friend proposes to recite erotic poetry. While holding the microphone, she points out to the camera woman, Peggy, that the device is perfectly shaped like a dildo. She ponders whether she would dare to actually insert the microphone into her vagina. The night before filming she had a fantasy where she begged Peggy to have sex with her, but now, due to the presence of the camera, she no longer dares.
The scene is a dance between freedom, shame, disarmament and self-awareness. There is a potential mutual attraction, a game of seduction, not necessarily with sex as the end goal, but the pace and the power dynamics that are part of the dialogue are reminiscent of a sensual love game. The erotic is portrayed here as creative energy that is about to be appropriated by the young woman. But there is still too much fear, anger and tension in the way. With trembling hands, the friend notes that she needs to be angry before she can speak, it seems to be a prerequisite for being able to articulate herself. But most of the time she is angry, she admits. She believes that almost everyone always has a reason to be angry. Especially women. The film is an attempt to reclaim female sexual pleasure as a space for new ways of thinking and shows how the artificial construction of sexuality is about to explode.
From Romance to Ritual is made up of different scenes in which women tell stories about their sexual histories and experiences in front of the camera. “He once beat me up in front of his mother, and then of course we fucked, and his mother baked me a steak,” one of the women recounts, laughing scornfully about her violent and degrading eight-year relationship. The anecdote shocked and touched me, because I know that many of my closest girlfriends, myself included, have found ourselves in equally alarming situations. In addition to the directness, the recognisability in Peggy’s films makes her works extremely moving. The testimonies in the film are interspersed with an explanation about Avebury, a matriarchal Neolithic society in England. A sacred place in the center of a magical circle of enormous rocks that were eventually torn down by the new Christian culture that took over. The editing, mixing and combining of different elements in the film generate new meanings. The pastiche of images are brought together in a playful, but also strategic way. Peggy is capable of combining the hard with the soft, to bring the offensive into contact with pleasure. By intertwining the history of our culture with the women’s personal stories, it shines a critical light on how female sexuality is dealt with and perhaps also suggests where our idea of that sexuality comes from. The film is an invitation to reimagine female eroticism.
In The Vision Machine (1997) we see women who sing, listen to music, dance, drink, dine and laugh. The tell each other dirty and sexist jokes and come together as little troublemakers to resist a dominant male gaze in a patriarchal society. I see the organised party as a form of activism where the women regain a feeling of joy and pleasure from the consequences and limitations of oppression and domination. The repressed sexual energy that was about to explode in Martina’s Playhouse is fully appropriated and celebrated in The Vision Machine. In a stubborn way, it pokes fun at the dominant machismo idea of what sensuality is or could be. Coming together is a response to that oppression: joy as liberation, love for each other as political resistance. With that thought in mind, I dare to view Peggy’s films as political.
The three works described above were made between 1985 and 1997. They say that a lot has changed in the field of feminism. That is true: today women and female sexuality are celebrated, honoured and defended from a variety of perspectives and cultures. Traditional and conservative beliefs on sexuality, joy and gender norms are being revised. The margins of feminism are being redrawn. There are endless thinkers, writers and artists who are concerned about the freedom and equality of women. A different perspective on, another representation of the feminine is emerging, one that goes beyond the heterosexual, binary and patriarchal. There is an ultra-modern feminism today that should be celebrated and praised. At the same time, it seems as if nothing has changed since 1985. Rape, sexual oppression, sexual harassment and femicide are still commonplace. Having fun is still a form of luxury for many. Sexual pleasure is still off-limits, alien terrain or inhospitable territory for many women.