Monika II   Austria / Poland   1999 - 2003

Bernadette HUBER  

Monika is the title referring to one of those inflatable plastic dolls that are customarily used to satisfy male sexual desire and are offered for sale in various sex shops. The artist Bernadette Huber uses one of these love dolls as the main protagonist in a series of video and web projects entitled Monika.

For the artist, the doll is firstly an easily transportable, multi-purpose medium with a high visual effect and, secondly, a societal reality: "Monika is a woman between fiction, fantasy and everyday life, between the illusions of fulfilled sexuality and role reality, she is the lover and the toy, the happiness to be tossed aside with a functional guarantee." (Bernadette Huber)

In the video Monika II, the artist places the plastic doll that functions as a love and sexual object upon an ironing board and assigns the housework to the doll ? through the use of single video stills in which the iron is brought into another position, the video shows the doll "with three pleasure points" (product description) as she is ironing.

Therefore, Bernadette Huber "disguises" her protagonist as the provider of housework services that are largely performed by women and primarily unpaid and, in this case, brings the definition of work to the forefront:
"Whether sex work or housework, the distance between sexual object and housework slave is minimal. Both roles are forms of exploitation which depress and frustrate the woman and ultimately bring her into a hopeless situation." (Bernadette Huber)

Close-ups from the kitchen, such as cooking pots that sit steaming upon the stove and the backdrop of noises from the vacuum cleaner and the rattle of dishes refer to work in the sense of toil and tribulation. Through the use of the post-1968 hit "the little bit of housework practically gets done itself, my husband says ..." by Johanna von Koczian, Bernadette Huber brings to discourse the man as the contractor of this work and the lack of viscosity which affects the subsequent re-adjustment of sexual attributes.

The rapid cross-fading of two different photos of the doll (one in which the doll is in a horizontal position and one in which it is in a vertical position) with the photos of the stove, the pot and cleaning materials allows the video to end, short-winded and rhythmically, with a rape.

The fact that the plastic dolls are not able to stand on their own is the societal reality, which the artist uses as a central theme in her works: Work done of love is a means of production that the woman has to perform.

(Suess / translation: www.dieuebersetzer.de)


Exhibitions

Frauenbild - Fotographie, Skulptur und Video, 2003

Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum, St.Pölten (NÖ), Austria

http://www.bernadettehuber.at/videobearbeitung/monika1.htm

Specifications

5min 3sec stereo color PAL

Technical protocol

Hi8 video camera, Sony, (recording); Fast Video Machine Studio Plus (digital video editing, post-production); MiniDV (Master).

Production

Bernadette Huber

Post production

Bernadette Huber

Edition

Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum, St. Pölten

Copyright

Bernadette Huber

Copy to see

Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum, St. Pölten; Medienkunstarchiv Wien

Bernadette Huber: Monika
"Das Bisschen Haushalt" Schlagertext