By the late 1960s, video and film had become paradigmatic forms in contemporary art. The Ludwig Forum’s video archive holds some 200 works from the 1960s and 70s, many of them seminal moments from the history of the moving image in art. The 1970s are regarded as the pioneering phase of video art and saw artists experimenting with video and film cameras, consciously distancing themselves both from established art forms and from television, focusing instead on the body, experiences of self and other, feminist critique, meta reflections on the medium itself, and on socio-cultural analyses. Their aesthetic tools included reflections, refractions, and technical manipulation, but also playful moments, irony and humour.
Body Matters presents ten works that engage with corporeality in different ways. Hakudō Kobayashi and Bruce Nauman explore the body as artistic medium, with Nauman turning especially to its relationship with physical space. John Baldessari and Jacques-Louis Nyst pare things down to bare gesture – a hand’s interactions with a hat and a coil spring. Ron Hays turns his eye to hands at the piano; Robert Morris captures the interplay of body, space, and sculptural elements on 16mm film.
Shaped by the social movements of 1970s America – most notably the civil rights movement – the notion of “body politics” took hold, affirming that bodies are political in multiple, distinct ways, with the women’s movement of the era famously declaring that “the personal is political.” One key concern was the right to bodily autonomy. Feminist art, as shaped by Joan Jonas and Ulrike Rosenbach, used film and video to cast a critical eye on gender roles, patriarchal structures, stereotypical images of women and the family, beauty norms, and the objectification of the female body. The collaborative work of Marina Abramović and Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen) coverd a similar field, taking up interpersonal relationships, dependencies, and power dynamics between men and women.
With works by Marina Abramović and Ulay, John Baldessari, Ron Hays, Joan Jonas, Hakudō Kobayashi, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Jacques-Louis Nyst, Ulrike Rosenbach
Curated by Holger Otten
Credit: Bruce Nauman, Wall/Floor Positions, 1968, 60 min., Betacam SP, b&w, sound, digitised, Ludwig Forum Aachen. Image: Video still, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026