‘Her crotchless trousers are etched in my brain for ever’: Valie Export remembered by the artists she influenced ⁠10%

By Guardian staff reporter⁠40%

5/19/2026, 10:42:37 AM

BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Halo Effect, and Hasty Generalization, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 31% saturation with 233 hits. Analysis detected 1,932 faulty-reasoning hits from 751 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 26.3% and a BS Rank of ⁠10% (19,871 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 90.80% of the article peer group.

I still remember the first time I came across that poster of Valie Export wearing crotchless trousers, her legs spread apart, a gun in her hand. 
It was a fearless image that took my breath away and is etched in my brain for ever. 
Over the years, her work served as an inspiration to my music. 
Her Tapp-und-Tastkino (Tap and Touch Cinema) performance, where she strapped a miniature theatre to her bare chest and invited passersby to reach through a tiny curtain, felt as important as Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece. 
It was up to the spectators how they interacted with her, which could make for painful watching but always felt telling. 
I’m saddened that she is gone. 
Peaches is a Canadian musician and producer 
I wrote a paper on Valie Export back in high school when I was 14. 
I have always taken legacy seriously; much of my own work evolves around what has been, and what those histories mean for us today. 
It is 1969 when Genital Panic happens. 
Valie walks into an experimental cinema in Munich wearing crotchless jeans. 
She moves slowly, row by row, forcing her exposed genitalia to eye-level with the seated audience. 
Fast forward to today. 
We find ourselves in an entirely new landscape: We are drowning in algorithmic thirst traps, free internet porn etc, not to mention the rotting political backlash trying to legislate bodies back into the dark ages. 
So yes: the core political necessity to subvert how we handle nudity and real bodies endures. 
In fact, it has become more urgent and complicated than ever. 
Thank you, Valie, for paving the way and for articulating this reality with such crystal clarity: the female body is not a polite object. 
It can be a registered trademark – a weapon to be exported directly against the structures we choose to battle. 
Rest in peace. 
Florentina Holzinger is an Austrian choreographer and theatre director 
Valie Export was a very important artist. 
In remembering her, certain words come to mind such as bold, radical, innovative, passionate, brave and certainly generous. 
Her body was central, in confronting architecture by men, for instance, and in general as vehicle for her many interactions. 
Several works are unforgettable, such as 1968’s Grope and Touch, 1969’s Genital Panic, and 1976’s Encirclement. 
Her own words [about Homo Meter II (1976)] explain her position: “When I went out on the street with the loaf of bread tied around me and offered it as a gift people were disturbed, perturbed and curious. 
They did not dare to cut off a piece with a knife. 
The loaf of bread was also meant as an extension of the body, a provocation … as an artist I was alone in many ways and especially the confrontation with the public in the public space was something very isolating.” 
Joan Jonas is an American artist 
Valie demonstrated to so many of us – with her fierce attitude and badass flair – that it was not necessary to live by the rules of those we could not respect. 
As a feminist provocateur, she made a virtue of civil disobedience, consistently claiming space that had for far too long been dominated by men. 
In an intervention staged in 1968, she quite literally put patriarchy on a leash, dragging the legendary curator Peter Weibel through the streets of Vienna on all fours. 
Her legacy will live on not only in her work, but also through her empowerment of those of us who continue in her footsteps. 
Candice Breitz is a South African artist 
Photography played a central role in Valie Export’s practice. 
In her iconic Body Configurations series she placed her body in urban public spaces, contorting to the architectural structures of the built environment. 
She understood the power of engaging with the tools of mainstream media and became one of the first female artists to critically examine representations of women in mass media using photography and film. 
During her exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery in 2024 she commented on her use of photography in relation to feminist practice from the 1960s onwards, saying: “We used the aperture of the film camera in the way to see things with our own eyes, with our own thoughts.” 
Her radical use of photography as a tool to document, record and question influenced generations of female artists to follow. 
Shoair Mavlian is director of The Photographers’ Gallery, London 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 3.2%Guardian staff reporter: 0.9%the Guardian: 3.7%Confirmation Bias3.2%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.2%the Guardian: 0.6%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 8.4%Guardian staff reporter: 2.3%the Guardian: 3.1%Availability Heuristic8.4%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.7%the Guardian: 1.2%Representativeness Heuristic0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 3.2%the Guardian: 1.0%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 2.7%Guardian staff reporter: 0.6%the Guardian: 1.6%Overconfidence Bias2.7%This article: 13.0%Guardian staff reporter: 2.2%the Guardian: 6.1%Framing Effect13.0%This article: 0.8%Guardian staff reporter: 0.8%the Guardian: 0.6%Loss Aversion0.8%This article: 2.1%Guardian staff reporter: 0.3%the Guardian: 0.6%Status Quo Bias2.1%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.3%the Guardian: 0.2%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 3.5%the Guardian: 2.5%Optimism Bias0.0%This article: 1.5%Guardian staff reporter: 1.4%the Guardian: 2.1%Pessimism Bias1.5%This article: 12.5%Guardian staff reporter: 6.3%the Guardian: 10.4%Negativity Bias12.5%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 1.1%the Guardian: 1.6%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.8%the Guardian: 1.4%Fundamental Attribution Error0.0%This article: 5.3%Guardian staff reporter: 0.2%the Guardian: 0.3%Actor-Observer Bias5.3%This article: 5.9%Guardian staff reporter: 0.9%the Guardian: 1.3%In-Group Bias5.9%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.2%the Guardian: 0.7%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 26.6%Guardian staff reporter: 9.8%the Guardian: 3.2%Halo Effect26.6%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.1%the Guardian: 0.3%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 2.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.8%the Guardian: 1.2%Recency Bias2.0%This article: 5.5%Guardian staff reporter: 0.7%the Guardian: 0.4%Primacy Effect5.5%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.1%the Guardian: 0.1%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.4%the Guardian: 2.0%Ad Hominem0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.6%Straw Man0.0%This article: 4.4%Guardian staff reporter: 1.4%the Guardian: 3.8%Appeal to Authority4.4%This article: 2.1%Guardian staff reporter: 1.3%the Guardian: 1.7%False Dilemma2.1%This article: 4.7%Guardian staff reporter: 0.3%the Guardian: 1.1%Slippery Slope4.7%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 18.4%Guardian staff reporter: 3.0%the Guardian: 6.3%Hasty Generalization18.4%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.1%the Guardian: 0.2%Red Herring0.0%This article: 4.3%Guardian staff reporter: 0.1%the Guardian: 0.7%Bandwagon4.3%This article: 27.8%Guardian staff reporter: 4.3%the Guardian: 5.6%Appeal to Emotion27.8%This article: 6.3%Guardian staff reporter: 0.6%the Guardian: 0.9%Begging the Question6.3%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 1.4%the Guardian: 2.9%Post Hoc (False Cause)0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.1%the Guardian: 0.1%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.1%the Guardian: 0.4%Burden of Proof0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.2%the Guardian: 0.2%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 2.7%Guardian staff reporter: 0.3%the Guardian: 0.4%Composition/Division2.7%This article: 11.6%Guardian staff reporter: 1.5%the Guardian: 3.1%Anecdotal11.6%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.1%the Guardian: 0.1%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 5.3%Guardian staff reporter: 1.6%the Guardian: 1.6%Ambiguity (Equivocation)5.3%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.3%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 10.4%Guardian staff reporter: 0.9%the Guardian: 1.6%Unattributed Quote10.4%This article: 5.6%Guardian staff reporter: 1.0%the Guardian: 1.1%Quote-first Misdirection5.6%This article: 31.0%Guardian staff reporter: 5.2%the Guardian: 10.4%Biased Writer Voice31.0%This article: 16.4%Guardian staff reporter: 1.1%the Guardian: 1.8%Indoctrination16.4%This article: 16.9%Guardian staff reporter: 1.0%the Guardian: 3.1%Politically Left Leaning Bias16.9%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.3%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Guardian staff reporter: 0.3%the Guardian: 1.0%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…0.0%

751 words analyzed.

Speakers

No attributed speakers were identified in this analysis.

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Analysis

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