Suffragette Slasher

Mary Richardson was a suffragette who grew up on the shores of Lake Ontario in the small town of Belleville in the early twentieth century. She is notable for one particular action that she carried out in London on March 10, 1914. As a member of the militant British suffrage group, the Women’s Social and Political Union, she carried out an act of violence to protest public indifference to the imprisonment of one of her leaders, Eveline Pankhurst. Richardson concealed an axe in her purse, entered London’s National Gallery, waited until the guards were not looking, and then slashed Diego Velázquez’s Rockeby Venus (1647) several times before she was forcibly stopped.

I re-enacted Richardson’s protest action and documented it with video, slashing a large digital copy of the Venus that I had obtained online. For two minutes, viewers see a single shot, the sustained action of Richardson getting dressed as she prepares to carry out this act. I focused on Mary Richardson’s act of preparing herself to be in public space because I was fascinated by how Richardson used her status as a non-threatening female figure to carry out this act of unexpected explosive public violence. I intercut this sustained shot with shots of Richardson at the museum carrying out the slashing action. The slashing event is decontextualized, the painting and performer appear to float in sea of sepia. The edits are extremely rapid, six times per second, the intensity is high right away. It seems as though a strobe light is spotlighting the slashing activity and time becomes collapsed as images appear to overlap one another.

Suffragette Slasher still image

from the production of Suffragette Slasher, photographed against a green screen

awards
2008: Special Recognition from Juror Kelly Reichardt at the 35^th Northwest Film & Video Festival

selected screenings
2019: Not Sorry: Feminist Experimental Film from the 1970s to Today (Portland Edition) curated by Mia Ferm, Northwest Film Center, Portland, Oregon
2008: 35^th Northwest Film & Video Festival, Northwest Film Center, Portland, Oregon

funding
New York State Council on the Arts & the Tonawandas Council on the Arts / Carnegie Art Center

Julie Perini is a filmmaker and artist in Portland, Oregon.