Two Faces

Hermine Freed

1972 | 00:06:24 | United States | English | B&W | Mono | 4:3 | 1/2" open reel video

Collection: Early Video Art, Single Titles

Tags: Body, Feminism, Video History

In her oft-cited essay “Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism,” Rosalind Krauss says, “self-encapsulation — taking the body or psyche as its own surround — is everywhere to be found in the corpus of video art” (October 1, Spring 1976). This certainly applies to this early work of Hermine Freed. Utilizing a split and reversed screen, Freed faces herself, caressing and kissing her doubled image. Without narration, the tape shows Freed suspended between two images, existing as a doubled person. In light of feminist discourse on women’s alienation from themselves in a male-dominated culture and the co-option of women’s images by advertising and the media, this tape reads as Freed’s attempt to contact her self-image directly — to, in effect, claim her image.

This title is also available on I Say I Am: Program 2.

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