Superdyke, 1975

Transferred 16 mm film

A comedy about a troop of shield-bearing Amazons who take over city institutions before relaxing in the country. "Superdyke" takes women into the streets when Barbara arms of a platoon of vagina warriors with Amazon shields in an attempt to overthrow San Francisco. They march through City Hall, usurp the bus lines, demythologiz the consumer mentality at Macy's (to the recorded astonishment of casual shoppers), and wander through the erotic art museum. Barbara's frenetic handheld lens catches the startled reactions and the glee of the participants. "Superdyke" has a home-movie quality to it, but its committed and loose moments in the playground confirm its comic rationale.

Transferred 16mm film, 4:3, color, sound, 17:32 min, Edition of 7 + 2AP

Credits

Text: P. Gregory Springer

INDEX:

Anarchy

Feminism

Queer Culture

Power

Resistance

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Estate of Barbara Hammer

**Blue Film No 6: Love Is Where You Find It, 1998**

**THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD ACCORDING TO A LESBIAN, 1988**

**Snow Job: The Media Hysteria of Aids, 1986**

**Would You Like to Meet Your Neighbor? A New York Subway Tape, 1985**

Biography

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. Since, her work is still ongoingly displayed in major solo exhibitions such as Would You Like To Meet Your Neighbor? (Skulpturenmuseum Marl 2023), Women I Love (Ratio 3, San Francisco 2022 and Frans Josefs Kai 3, Vienna 2021), tell me there is a lesbian forever (Company Gallery, New York 2021), Sisters! (La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barceola 2020).

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Texts & Interviews