Hands
Collaborative video performanceApril and May 1975
“Hands” was a performance for video collectively devised by Lynn MacRitchie, Roberta Hunter Henderson, Tina Keane, Sonia Knox and Sylvia Stevens. MacRitchie shot and edited the video, which was commissioned for the Femmes Films film festival in Paris with travel funds from the British Council.
All the participants had taken part in the AFD Arts Festival for Democracy in Chile in 1974 and continued to meet after that. They decided to make a collaborative work addressing the then-current debates around women’s issues. Together they devised a performance based on a card game, with the pack made up of found images of women, divided into “suits” representing the various images that women were likely to be “dealt” during their lives. Only the participants’ hands were shown as the “cards” were dealt out to each “player” who placed them one by one face up in the centre of a square outlined in chalk on the floor. Each player was also given small white plastic slide frames to pick out sections of the image to emphasise.
There were four sequences – body image, family, work and political activism. As each sequence came to an end, one side of the chalked outlines was rubbed out. No one spoke during the action and there was no separate soundtrack, only ambient sound. In the final sequence, the players’ joined hands appear, then separated to reveal the Women’s Liberation symbol, followed by the word Audience. When performed live, a camera is trained on the audience, who suddenly see and hear themselves on the monitor screens.
After its first screening in Paris in April, the work was included as a multi-monitor installation and live performance at The Video Show, Serpentine Gallery, London, May 1975.