No No Nooky T.V.

Part of Pavilion Shorts: Barbara Hammer on October 2.

The rise of the home computer in the 1980s gave Barbara Hammer a new medium to experiment with. She seizes on the challenge with the eagerness of a teenager in this almost manic, exuberantly creative film, combining coarsely pixelated erotic computer drawings and flashing keywords with audio recordings and 16mm footage. The mounting arousal in the creative process reaches a climax when the screen of her Amiga (what’s in a name) itself becomes an object of desire .

Beneath all this explicit, colorful expression lies an activist intent. Hammer playfully explores how she can use a new set of tools to give visual form to a lesbian eroticism of her own. However, the film begins with a computer-generated voice commenting on the fact that the machine speaks with a male voice. By drawing attention to the heteromasculine norm already embedded in the earliest consumer software, also in this field Hammer places herself in the critical vanguard.

This screening is part of Focus: Barbara Hammer, a program presenting films by American filmmaker and visual artist Barbara Hammer. See the full program here.