Exhibition - Narcisa Hirsch: On the Barricades

Microscope is very pleased to present “On the Barricades” as the first exhibition in New York of works by Argentine artist and filmmaker Narcisa Hirsch, who died this past May at the age of 96 in Bariloche, Argentina.

A central figure of Argentinian experimental cinema, who referred to herself as “a famous unknown filmmaker,” Hirsch made groundbreaking works in film, art happenings, installation, photography, and writing — on themes such as love and eroticism, femininity and the female gaze, cinematic structuralism, family and mortality, art and friendship, among others — that are gradually being rediscovered such as in the exhibit “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985” at the Hammer Museum, LA, in 2017, as well as in the recent solo screenings at MoMA, New York and ICA London, UK, earlier this year.

“On the Barricades” concentrates on several of her early films — shot on Super 8 and 16mm between the late 1960s and 1970s — which range in approach from those documenting art happenings she organized such as “Marabunta” (1967) and “Muñecos” (1972) to the diaristic collections “Diarios Patagonicos 1 & 2” (1972), to her structuralist films “Come Out” (1974) and “Taller (Workshop)” (1974) and the lyrical work of social critique “Mujeres” (1979).

A selection of photographic works from Hirsch’s series “Graffitis” in which she takes pictures of the graffiti she painted on the otherwise unadorned walls and streets of Buenos Aires in the early 1980s, during the time of the 1976-1983 military coup and its “Dirty War” of state terrorism, are also on view.

Hirsch’s first film “Marabunta” — which refers both to an army ant and to a swarm — is a b&w 16mm film of the eponymous happening she organized with Marie Louise Alemann and Walter Mejía that took place on October 3rd, 1967 at the Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires, right after the premiere of Antonioni’s film “Blow Up.” A six-meters long sculpture of a female skeleton subsequently covered in sandwiches and fruit, with parrots and pigeons painted in fluorescent colors hiding within it, was left for the crowd exiting the movie theater for a “ceremony of collective anthropophagy.” Because of the intense editing process on the film — carried out with Raymundo Gleyzer, who was the camera person — Hirsch became more familiar with the medium and decided to start making films.

Her multifaceted filmmaking is informed by both surrealist cinema – more specifically that of Buñuel and Dali — and by her research on the New American Cinema through several visits to New York beginning at the end of the 1960s where she watched films at MoMA, Anthology Film Archives, and Millennium Film Workshop, as well as through the process of building her own experimental film collection in order to bring back and share with artists and friends in Argentina.

Two of Hirsch’s best known films “Come Out” and “Taller” (Workshop) on view — both from 1974 — were prompted by her discovery of the works of Michael Snow. The first is inspired by “Wavelength” after a viewing at MoMA and uses as its soundtrack Steve Reich’s composition of the same title. The work features two shots of a record spinning on a turntable slowly coming into focus and plays on the idea of focalization both visual and acoustic. While the latter is inspired by Andrée Hayum’s essay in Film Culture on Snow’s single 35mm slide piece “A Casing Shelved.” In Hirsch’s work, we watch a 10-minute long static shot of a section of a wall in the artist’s studio, under shifting lighting, while the voice of the artist — like in Snow’s work — casually describes what the viewer sees. Her piece, however, reaches beyond the visible to include other off-camera elements throughout the room and thus appealing to our imagination. And, the work is accompanied by a warmer and less analytical narration — she is talking to a friend.

The Super 8mm film “Muñecos” (1972) — shot by the artist, Leopoldo Maler and Carolee Schneemann — combines recordings of a happening by Hirsch that took place in three cities: in Buenos Aires, London, and New York. In each, she is seen handing out 500 tiny baby dolls to bystanders, while candidly suggesting to everyone: “Have a baby!” This work was made in response to a period of strong pro-natalist and anti-contraceptive policies pushed by the Argentinian government. In each city the public has a very different response, and in New York — at the bottom of the steps of the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue — we see Hirsch interacting with passersby in sequences unfolding at various speeds.

In Hirsch’s Super 8mm film diaries “Diarios Patagonicos 1 & 2” — comprising two family trips through Patagonia, in 1970 and 1972 — one has the chance to witness the artist’s drive towards cinematic experimentation, as well as her contemplation of nature and the animal world. Through vivid scenes interspersed with extreme close ups, rapid cutting, frame-by-frame and time-lapse shots, the artist playfully captures moments of her daily life, from her encounters with tiny caterpillars and flies to the immense landscapes before her as she records from the hood of a moving car.

Lastly, more than a decade after her happenings, Hirsch returns to the public space with her photographic series “Graffitis,” documenting her own graffiti interventions on the walls of Buenos Aires, which are otherwise empty because of the repression of the military government. Despite the subversive nature of her actions, the artist’s messages are not political but poetic, emotional, and reflect on the human condition.

Hirsch enjoyed the autonomy that the lack of mainstream success allowed her and her connection with fellow artists and friends, showing at small venues, her studio, or someone’s basement. Freedom in making art was critical to Hirsch’s practice, remaining “on the margins” during her lifetime or, as she would also say, in a more militant fashion, “on the barricades.”

Narcisa Hirsch (Berlin, Germany 1928 – Bariloche, Argentina 2024) was the grande dame of Argentine experimental film. Today, many younger filmmakers in her home country, with whom she maintained an active exchange, consider her work to be a point of reference. Hirsch was born Narcisa Heuser in Berlin in 1928, the daughter of a German-Argentinean mother and the expressionist painter Heinrich Heuser. In 1937, she immigrated to Argentina with her mother via Vienna. Originally working as a painter, her interest in film arose during the documentation of collaborative public performances and happenings undertaken in the streets of Buenos Aires, New York, and London. Hirsch has completed 50+ films since the mid-1960s. Thematically, her films often deal with women, bodies, death, but also with the very personal cinematic appropriation of landscapes.

Her films have been the subject of major retrospectives at venues including Viennale (2012, 2023), MoMA (2024), Media City Film Festival (2023), s8 Festival de Cine Periferico (2024). She is the author of several books including “Philosophy Is a Useless Passion” (2015). The Filmoteca Narcisa Hirsch was established in 2019 to preserve her films and provide a cultural space for artists’ film in Buenos Aires. She was active as a filmmaker until the very end of her life, and her great influence on the following generations will remain. She lived and worked between Buenos Aires and Patagonia.