Barbara Hammer Nitrate Kisses 1992 And On The Politics Of Ab

Barbara Hammer Nitrate Kisses 1992 And On The Politics Of Abstract

Barbara Hammer: Nitrate Kisses (1992) and "On the Politics of Abstraction" explore the relationship between queer aesthetics, self-making, and historical representation through experimental documentary filmmaking. Hammer's work emphasizes a politics of "self-naming" and community reclamation by deliberately overturning conventional narrative and aesthetic forms to assert lesbian identities and histories. Her approach employs a form of realism rooted not in representational accuracy but in personal, historical, and emotional truths conveyed through abstract montage and fragmented imagery. The film’s aesthetic choices serve as a political act of visibility, countering lesbian invisibility and erasure by emphasizing embodied presence, desire, and community.

Hammer’s aesthetic incorporates a variety of techniques, including stark black-and-white imagery, home movies, iconic representations of lesbian figures like Dietrich and Garbo, and abstract footage of abandoned buildings and female bodies. These images are juxtaposed variably, playing visibility against invisibility, vitality against decay. The soundtrack complements this with a polyphony of voices—recorded interviews, music from early eras, and ambient sounds—spanning American and European histories, encompassing languages like English, German, and French. This creates a flowing, multisensory historical continuum that requires active viewer participation to decode and interpret.

The montage strategy emphasizes a flow of history—past, present, and imagined future—highlighting the importance of documenting and recovering lesbian history. Hammer’s editing often omits glossy narration or direct narration, instead favoring fragmented voices and images that prompt viewers to do interpretive work, thereby involving them in the politics of self-naming and historical reclamation. The contrast between images of passionate sexuality and empty, derelict buildings underscores the tension between presence and absence, life and loss. This visual metaphor captures the precariousness of lesbian history—vital, embodied, and active, yet vulnerable to invisibility and marginalization.

Hammer’s work also engages with the complex politics of desire, emphasizing that sexuality is an ongoing human experience from childhood to old age, countering stereotypes and stereotypes of homosexuality. Her montage of images and sounds constructs a polyphonic "language" of desire and memory that challenges normative discourse about sexuality as organized by language and power, echoing Foucault’s theories of sexuality and discourse. The use of multiple languages, diverse musical selections, and varied visual sources underscores a transnational, multifaceted view of lesbian history, emphasizing that these histories are intertwined and must be collectively recovered.

In her examination of the discovery and disappearance of lesbian histories, Hammer distinguishes feminist inquiry from antihomophobic inquiry, emphasizing that the former seeks to recover the layered, coded realities of women and lesbians often excluded from mainstream narratives. Her use of kaleidoscopic and spiraling imagery of buildings, women, and icons visually conveys the complex coding of gender and sexuality, challenging viewers to interpret meaning beyond surface residues. The film contains personal stories of women like Jerre, whose narratives reveal the ongoing struggles for visibility, recognition, and equal rights amidst historical violence, discrimination, and AIDS-related losses.

Hammer’s work underscores the importance of activist-biography, using film as a means of inscribing social change and healing collective trauma through personal and political storytelling. Her method involves a unique honesty—balancing subjective voice with historical record—requiring viewers to interpret the layered images and sounds actively. The canvas of her film transforms her own body and image into a space for inscription, representing an ongoing act of self- and community-naming that resists erasure. Overall, Nitrate Kisses exemplifies a politics of abstraction that merges sensual aesthetic, historical recovery, and political activism, creating a dynamic space for exploring lesbian identities, desires, and histories.

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Barbara Hammer’s documentary Nitrate Kisses (1992) stands as a profound exploration of lesbian history, identity, and politics through an experimental and abstract visual language. At its core, the film challenges conventional documentary aesthetics by employing montage, fragmentation, and a multisensory approach that compels viewers to collaboratively reconstruct history. This essay examines the aesthetic choices Hammer makes within this framework, highlighting how these choices serve as political acts of self-naming, visibility, and community reclamation, particularly within the context of queer aesthetics that emphasize self-making and social making.

One of the most striking aesthetic strategies in Nitrate Kisses is its deliberate use of montage to play with visibility and invisibility—a central theme of the film. Hammer juxtaposes vibrant, passionate images of lesbian bodies and sexuality—often older women engaged in intimate acts—with images of abandoned, decaying buildings. This contrast encapsulates the tension between presence and absence, life and death, and visibility and erasure. The visceral imagery of sexualized women, contrasted with vacant structures, metaphorically underscores the precariousness of lesbian histories—how they are embodied and alive, yet simultaneously threatened by marginalization. These visual metaphors serve as a political statement, emphasizing the importance of recovering and preserving lesbian histories that are often hidden or forgotten (Sedgwick, 1990).

Hammer’s aesthetic choices extend into her use of black-and-white imagery, sometimes processed to achieve a stark, raw effect. She also employs home movies, personal snapshots, and mass-produced, iconic images like those of Dietrich and Garbo, which have symbolic resonance for lesbian communities due to their associations with gender masquerade and subversion. These images are intercut with footage of women speaking in interviews, walking in public, dancing, and engaging in sexual acts—sometimes with faces pixelated for anonymity. Such imagery emphasizes the embodied and relational aspects of lesbian life, illustrating how desire persists across the lifespan, countering stereotypical notions that associate homosexuality with deviance or pathology (Jagose, 1996).

The soundtrack plays a vital role in establishing the film’s multisensory flow. Hammer combines her voice, recorded interviews, and period music—ranging from blues to European opera—creating a polyphonic and polylingual fabric that mirrors the complex histories of lesbian identity. The use of music from early American blues singers like Ma Rainey, who was herself a lesbian icon, and European compositions featuring gender masquerade, underscores the intersectionality and transnational scope of lesbian history. This layered audio-visual montage fosters a sense of historical continuity and fluidity—implying that sexuality and desire are ongoing, ever-evolving experiences that span time and geography (Foucault, 1978).

Furthermore, Hammer’s abstract footage of buildings and erotic images shifts between clarity and ambiguity, encouraging viewers to interpret meaning actively. The inclusion of images of women in intimate gestures, overlaid with disembodied voices narrating personal histories—such as Jerre’s account of fighting to be recognized as a lesbian worker—embodies the confluence of personal storytelling and political activism. The filmmaker’s use of fragments invites viewers to participate in the process of reconstruction, emphasizing that lesbian history is never complete but always subject to reinterpretation and reassembly (Rich, 1980).

In her exploration of feminist and queer histories, Hammer distinguishes inquiry aimed at recovery from antihomophobic reductionism. Her kaleidoscopic imagery—of buildings, women, icons—serves to decode the layers of social and cultural coding that frame lesbian identities. The film also critiques the marginalization of lesbians in mainstream narratives, such as their exclusion from the WWII-era documentary on Rosie the Riveter, which reflects broader societal silencing. Through personal testimonies, archival footage, and symbolic imagery, Hammer creates a visual archive that asserts lesbian existence and resilience amid historical erasure and AIDS-related losses, like Jerre’s story of the death of a young friend (Jagose, 1990).

Overall, Hammer’s aesthetic choices craft a complex, multisensory experience that exemplifies a politics of abstraction. Her montage operates as a form of political activism—reclaiming neglected histories, affirming desire, and fostering community. The active participation required from viewers—interpreting fragments, recognizing shared histories—embodies the ongoing political project of self-naming and self-representation. In this process, the film promotes a view of sexuality as an unending dialogue between past and present, life and decay, invisibility and visibility. Through her layered images and sounds, Hammer transforms her own body and voice into sites for inscription, turning the act of watching into an act of political and personal revelation—the very essence of a queer aesthetic that seeks to challenge normative representations and establish new, inclusive narratives (Foucault, 1978; Sedgwick, 1990; Jagose, 1996).

References

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