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Optic Nerve, 1985

16 mm film on video

"Barbara Hammer's Optic Nerve is a powerful personal reflection on family and aging. Hammer employs filmed footage which, through optical printing and editing, is layered and manipulated to create a compelling meditation on her visit to her grandmother in a nursing home. The sense of sight becomes a constantly evolving process of reseeing images retrieved from the past and fused into the eternal present of the projected image. Hammer has lent a new voice to the long tradition of personal meditation in the avant-garde of the American independent cinema." -- John Hanhardt, Biennial Exhibition Catalogue, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1987

Barbara Hammer, Optic Nerve 1985, 16mm film, color, sound by Helen Thorington, 16:41 min, Edition of 7+ 2AP
Barbara Hammer, Optic Nerve 1985, 16mm film, color, sound by Helen Thorington, 16:41 min, Edition of 7+ 2AP
Barbara Hammer, Optic Nerve 1985, 16mm film, color, sound by Helen Thorington, 16:41 min, Edition of 7+ 2AP
Barbara Hammer, Optic Nerve 1985, 16mm film, color, sound by Helen Thorington, 16:41 min, Edition of 7+ 2AP
Barbara Hammer, Optic Nerve 1985, 16mm film, color, sound by Helen Thorington, 16:41 min, Edition of 7+ 2AP
Barbara Hammer, Optic Nerve 1985, 16mm film, color, sound by Helen Thorington, 16:41 min, Edition of 7+ 2AP
Barbara Hammer, Optic Nerve 1985, 16mm film, color, sound by Helen Thorington, 16:41 min, Edition of 7+ 2AP
Barbara Hammer, Optic Nerve 1985, 16mm film, color, sound by Helen Thorington, 16:41 min, Edition of 7+ 2AP
Barbara Hammer, Optic Nerve 1985, 16mm film, color, sound by Helen Thorington, 16:41 min, Edition of 7+ 2AP
Barbara Hammer, Optic Nerve 1985, 16mm film, color, sound by Helen Thorington, 16:41 min, Edition of 7+ 2AP

16 mm film on video, color, sound by Helen Thorington, 16:41 min, Edition of 7+ 2AP

  • INDEX:

Estate of Barbara Hammer

Vintage photos 1972–1984
Collages 1979–2003
Works on paper 1968–1976
A Horse Is Not A Metaphor, 2008
Blue Film No 6: Love Is Where You Find It, 1998
Save Sex, 1993
Vital Signs, 1991
Dr. Watson's X-Rays, 1991
Sanctus, 1990
Still Point, 1989
T.V. Tart, 1988
Place Mattes, 1987
No No Nooky TV, 1987
Snow Job: The Media Hysteria of Aids, 1986
Optic Nerve, 1985
Would You Like to Meet Your Neighbor? A New York Subway Tape, 1985
Reagan/Ferraro in Paris, 1984
Doll House, 1984
Tourist, 1984/1985
Tourist, 1984
Have a Crush, 1983
Stone Circles, 1983
If You‘re Bi, Goodby, 1982
Audience, 1982
Pools, 1981
Sync Touch, 1981
Double Strength, 1978
Women I Love, 1976
Multiple Orgasm, 1976
"X", 1975
Superdyke, 1975
Dyketactics, 1974
Menses, 1974
I was / I am, 1973
Über Alles / Protégée, 1971/1972
Cleansed II, 1969
Clay I Love You II, 1968/69
Barbara Ward will never die, 1968
Aldebaran Seas, 1969
Death Of A Marriage, 1969
Contribution To Light, 1968
White Cassandra, 1968

Barbara Hammer was born in Hollywood in 1939. Her documentaries and experimental films are among the earliest and most comprehensive depictions of lesbian identity, love, and sexuality. For more than five decades, Hammer was an increasingly influential voice of queer feminism, and a chronicler of women's self-empowerment in the U.S. and many other places around the world. Following film retrospectives at New York's MoMA in 2010, Tate Modern, London in 2012, and her first solo exhibitions at KOW beginning in 2011, the art world began to take an interest in Hammer's now historic body of work, which includes performances, installations, and works on paper. Numerous institutional exhibitions and successes followed, and today Hammer is considered one of the greatest examples of politically engaged feminist art. Hammer was a teacher for many years and held a professorship at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee (CH). She passed away in 2019.



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