Delta A Piece documents a 1977 performance at the Kunstlerinnen International 1877–1977 exhibition in Berlin. A woman is seated, as motionless as a statue. She has adopted a waiting position, which conveys a certain vacuity. Little by little, we are able to distinguish the artist's identity; it is indeed VALIE EXPORT.

She writes the words VIA MARITALIS on the floor with white chalk.
She then uses a plaster-cast fist to play a triangle, with its crystalline and high-pitched sound. It is a musical instrument whose shape directly references the female genital organ.
A photographic portrait hung at the back of the room stares at the viewer.
She writes WORT – word, speech.
Then ANTWORT – answer.
Then VERANTWORTUNG – responsibility.
And finally,
DIE MACHT DER
OHNMACHTIGEN
IST DAS SCHWEIGN - the power of the powerless is silence.

VALIE EXPORT doesn't allow any emotion to be displayed – that is the principle and the condition of her anonymity. The impassiveness of her expression is one of the recurring themes that the artist uses – it responds to an ethical form of mastery. To the dictates of representation, VALIE EXPORT responds with the mask. She covers her face in black – a face that refuses to show any feeling. The artist un-expresses. The only resistance possible is denial. She places a wooden structure around her neck that closely resembles a guillotine and then goes on to perform various connotative gestures – she places the plaster fist on her genitals, then caresses the mirror with her hand – the real one.

She plunges her hands into a bowl of water to clean her face. The camera is close to her and follows her movements.

The black painting is now on an angle, placed on a stand that elevates it. She moves along it with bare feet from bottom to top, and little by little her feet remove the words written earlier in white chalk. Then VALIE EXPORT trims her nails – or her fingers – with a kind of cutter. It is a bloody manicure, but more so than that, it is unfeeling. The artist carries out her task frigidly – a true professional – while remaining impassive. It is an infirm body that expresses itself. Here, the woman that she really is doesn't exist. I express myself, therefore I am, insists Western art. VALIE EXPORT, on the contrary, doesn't express anything, and the mask is a yardstick of her alienation, a face that defies all the laws of faciality.

Lou Svahn