Simultaneously Naked

Two people, read as female, appear simultaneously naked before the camera. They take the stage in front of a stationary backdrop reminiscent of a variety show, moving pretty unambitiously to the rhythm of a Viennese waltz before exiting the stage three minutes later. The choreography: left arm to the hip, minimal hip swing; right arm to the hip, minimal hip swing; one step forward, one step back. Repeat. A black canvas hangs in the background painted with two blue clouds to the left and right, and a blue vase in the center containing an abstract bouquet of flowers, adorned by an actual bow of red-white-red barrier tape – these also happen to be the colors of the Austrian flag. On stage, a painter's atelier table with a sponge cuts into the left edge of the foreground. The waltz we hear was composed by Johann Strauss – in German a "Strauß" is a bouquet of flowers – entitled “The Blue Danube”, echoing the blue of the stage's backdrop. The allusions are clear and simultaneously ironic, the scene is ambiguous and wonderfully imperfect as staged by Ashley Hans Scheirl and Ursula Pürrer for this short film, which is in fact a remake.  

The original was shot on Super 8 without music in 1985. The film was presumed to be lost after having screened a few times. Scheirl and Pürrer made 21 shorts between 1984 and 1985, alongside their feature-length film Flaming Ears (1991), creating an incomparable body of queer experimental art.  Their films are anarchic, ironic, erotic, subversive, lesbian, DIY, self-confident and wild. They tap into the circus, performance, feminist self-assertion, BDSM, filmed Action art, lustful transgression and music video culture.

VALIE EXPORT, Jack Smith and Ulrike Ottinger serve as insufficient associations, but in regard to Simultaneously Naked it is especially Barbara Hammer who comes to mind – one of the few film/video artists who knew how to sensually and cheekily stage older lesbian bodies. Whether these bodies dance to the waltz is ultimately, but perhaps not entirely, irrelevant. (Toby Ashraf)  

Translation: Eve Heller