Laura Cottingham
Not For Sale: Feminism and Art in the USA
Laura Cottingham (*1963, USA) is primarily a critic and a filmmaker. She celebrated her debut in 1998 with her first documentary film "Not For Sale" in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2005, she published "Fear Eats the Soul", a book about Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who greatly influenced her work.
“Not For Sale introduces and reintroduces some of the art, artists and activities of the Feminist Art Movement [in the USA]. Many contemporary artistic strategies and modes of production that are taken for granted in the 1990s — including video and performance work, activist–based practices, collective art efforts, sculpture and painting that incorporate materials and processes previously dismissed as craft, autobiography as subject, archival–based installations and explorations in identity politics — were first introduced and championed within the broad based aesthetics and practices that constituted the Feminist Art Movement” (Laura Cottingham, 1998). The film consists of moving footage and photographs of numerous artists and includes performance documentation and video performances by, among others: Nancy Angelo & Candace Compton, Eleanor Antin, Nancy Buchanan, The Cunt Cheerleaders, Mary Beth Edelson, Leslie Labowitz, Suzanne Lacy, Lesbian Art Project, L.O.V.E. Collective (Lesbians Organized for Video Experience), Cynthia Maughan, Barbara McCullough, Ana Mendieta, Susan Mogul, Linda Montano, Senga Nengudi, Howardena Pindell, Adrian Piper, Yvonne Rainer, Rachel Rosenthal, Martha Rosler, Carolee Schneemann, Barbara T. Smith, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, The Waitresses, Hannah Wilke, Martha Wilson, Womanhouse Performances (Sandy Orgel, Shawnee Wollenman, Faith Wilding, etc.)