‘Instructions for Happiness’

Anna-Sophie Berger, Keren Cytter, Heinrich Dunst, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Christian Falsnaes, Barbara Kapusta, Rallou Panagiotou, Angelo Plessas, Maruša Sagadin, Hans Schabus, Socratis Socratous, Jannis Varelas, Salvatore Viviano, Anna Witt; curated by Severin Dünser and Olympia Tzortzi

21er Haus, Vienna

8 July – 5 November 2017

Happiness is a fundamental human emotion, and every single one of us strives to achieve it in one form or other. This individual pursuit of happiness also forms the cornerstone of this exhibition, but instructions for happiness? Happiness is a very personal thing, and so it seems—quite frankly—absurd to promise that we can get closer to it simply by following a series of instructions. Whatever the truth of the matter may be, this exhibition attempts to approach the phenomenon of happiness from a variety of different perspectives.
Since the dawn of history, humans have sought to discover what it is that makes them happy and at what point they can truly be called a happy person. Although today we have access to a wealth of self-help literature on this very topic, instructions for happiness have existed since antiquity, albeit in a more philosophical form. According to Plato, happiness was to be found in maintaining the balance between the three parts of the soul—reason, spirit, and appetite—and preventing them from coming into conflict with one another. Aristotle saw a fundamental link between happiness and self-fulfillment, as when you do what you set out to do well, you gain a place in society and, at the same time, contribute to its betterment. As far as Epicurus was concerned, an individual’s happiness hinged on strategic abstinence: an individual could gain greater happiness by pursuing their pleasures, taking care not to numb their senses by pursuing desires that exceeded their basic needs. One of these pleasures was the cultivation of interpersonal relationships. ‘Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for’ is one piece of life advice offered by Epicurus. ‘Learn to be silent. Let your quiet mind listen and absorb,’ advised Pythagoras, who was also quoted as saying: ‘The more our minds understand, the greater the blessings received.’
According to the old proverb, ‘every man is the architect of his own fortune.’ We all have a different concept of happiness, and since we each have our own individual needs, the fulfillment of these needs must necessarily be taken into our own hands. Regardless of whether fulfillment is sought in human relationships, the immediate, everyday life, or the beauty of small things, this exhibition seeks to challenge notions of happiness.
Anna-Sophie Berger’s piece, for instance, invites us to build a house of cards and knock it down again; to work with care and precision towards a specific goal and retain the freedom to leave behind the fruit of our labors at the end. In Keren Cytter’s video installation, visitors reflect themselves on the surface of a screen while watching a story of a family, a lover, a beach house, and a lonely boy, and are drawn into a meditative state by a soothing voice. Heinrich Dunst, meanwhile, raises questions about status. The phrase ‘Nicht Worte’ (Not Words) has been written on a page but has then been scored out; ‘Dinge’ (Things) has been written underneath. Is this a double negative, thus meaning words and things? Beneath this image lies a doormat featuring a Piet Mondrian design: it remains unclear, however, whether this mat is anything more than a thing or whether it instead constitutes an image-like thing or a thing-like replication of an image. The photo by Simon Dybbroe Møller shows a hug between a cook and a plumber. Is this a photo about interpersonal needs? It is, if anything, a representation of physical needs, consumption and digestion, the ‘basics’, so to speak. Christian Falsnaes’s sound installation instructs visitors to interact with one another through simple actions that obviously bring pleasure by playfully transgressing social conventions. Barbara Kapusta, meanwhile, invites visitors to make cups and bowls from modeling clay, to use their own bodies in the molding of drinking vessels that will satisfy basic needs. Rallou Panagiotou combines impersonal suitcases with replicas of things associated with happy memories, such as a pair of sandals lost on a beach in the 1990s and a mask—presumably of Medusa—that once hung on the wall of her grandmother’s summer house. Under the motto ‘Sharing is caring’, Angelo Plessas offers us a USB stick with files that can be transferred onto our own devices. These files seem to cover every one of life’s eventualities and include self-help books, music for meditation, and advice on love and spirituality. Jannis Varelas, on the other hand, instructs us to leave the exhibition space and go for a walk around the city. As we walk, he asks us to think about whether or not we want to go back and turn our attention once more to art. Salvatore Viviano asks us to ask ourselves how lonely we feel while listening to Elvis Presley laughing as he sings ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ Maruša Sagadin’s sculpture collection invites us to reflect on life in public space. On the one hand, she scrutinizes the opportunities for regeneration in urban spaces and on the other, the function of make-up and the formulaic conventions associated with it and representations of the self: if lipstick is a building, does that mean my face is a façade? A different question is asked by Hans Schabus and his sculpture: if good luck is a birdie, does that mean it is fleeting? And if that is the case, wouldn’t it be better to build a house for it? Socratis Socratous’s sculptures also deal with forms of flight and refuge. Small islands and bollards, made partially from smelted-down munitions from the world’s conflict zones, symbolize landing sites. The work focuses on migration over the seas and the safe havens that migrants hope to reach. Finally, Anna Witt’s video installation shows a group of people smiling for sixty minutes. Revolving around the commercialization of emotions and the sale of our own feelings, her video becomes a form of endurance test.
With their artworks, the artists shown in this exhibition ask us to follow instructions, respond to constructed situations, use objects to engage with others, or think about a particular theme. The different perspectives on show, in terms of both form and content, reflect the diversity of the artists’s own perspectives on happiness and those of society in general.
Walter Benjamin once wrote: ‘To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.’ In this spirit, we invite you to interact freely with the artworks on display and to use this experience as a chance to reflect on the phenomenon of happiness. One’s own fulfillment is, after all, intrinsically linked to reflecting on one’s own needs and actions, which in turn leads to a conscious, self-determined life and mastery of the ars vivendi, the art of living. For as the sociologist Gerhard Schulze once said: ‘What does one live for, if not for the beautiful life?’

Exhibition catalogue:
Instructions for Happiness
Edited by Stella Rollig, Severin Dünser and Olympia Tzortzi
Including texts by Anna Sophie Berger, Keren Cytter, Severin Dünser & Olympia Tzortzi, Heinrich Dunst, Simon Dybbroe Møller & Post Brothers, Christian Falsnaes, Barbara Kapusta, Rallou Panagiotou, Angelo Plessas, Stella Rollig, Maruša Sagadin, Hans Schabus, Socratis Socratous, Jannis Varelas, Salvatore Viviano and Anna Witt
Graphic design by Alexander Nußbaumer
Photos by Thomas Albdorf
German/English
Hardcover, 22.5 × 16 cm, 128 pages, numerous illustrations in color
Belvedere, Vienna, 2017
ISBN 978-3-903114-41-8

‘The Grasping’

Heinrich Dunst, VALIE EXPORT, Franziska Kabisch, Barbara Kapusta, Peter Weibel, Tina Schulz, Javier Téllez

21er Raum at 21er Haus, Vienna

30 November 2016 — 22 January 2017

The expression “grasping” defines the process of intellectual realization and is used synonymously with “understanding.” Etymologically, it is derived from the physical-haptic act of touching—similar to the term “conceive,” which stems from the Latin “concipere,” and translated literally means “to grasp things together.” The exhibition attempts to pursue what converges in the terms: manual act and intellectual reception.  

For example, with his work “Writing the word hand by hand,” Peter Weibel inquires into the ability to confirm the existence of things, processes, and relations—and, first and foremost, the existence of the hand. There are very good reasons for this; already in early childhood, the hand is used to affirm external reality. In the bible, for example, doubting Thomas is quoted as saying, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”1 The philosopher Helmuth Plessner describes our perception as “eye-hand field,” which became a characteristic of humans when they learned to walk upright: “The eye leads the hand, the hand confirms the eye.”2 This seeing with the hand and the experience it brings is also at the center of Barbara Kapusta’s “Soft Rope”. In the video one sees a rope that the artist explores with her hand while sketching out her impressions of the procedure in a poem. Also Javier Téllez’s film, “Letter on the Blind, For the Use of Those Who See” (which can be seen in the Blickle Kino on the ground floor) is about tactile perception. Based on an Indian parable, the film shows six people who are blind, exploring an elephant with their hands. All have a different experience of the animal before them and their interpretations do not coincide—their subjective perceptions do not lead to an objective truth. 

The hand is, however, an instrument not only for touching, but also shaping. Richard Serra made the film “Hand catching lead” in 1968. In it, one sees a hand that is trying to catch pieces of lead and form them before letting them fall again. In Serra’s film, the same gesture is repetitively iterated, and no successful or failed products can be detected. Instead, focus is on the process of making, the film becomes a metaphor for sculpting per se. Tina Schulz adopts the film’s gestures and repeats them—however, without lead. What remains are the hand’s seemingly aimless motions, which only make sense when compared with the original film, and become exaggerated by the reduction.

The hand, seen as an object, is the subject’s performing agent—especially when the ego is an artist, such as Heinrich Dunst. In Dunst’s work, the hand does not “act” as it did in Schulz’s, but instead, is addressed. “Hello Hand” says Dunst to the Hand, which he has placed like an exhibit on the table. In a monologue, which he directs just as much to the hand, as the viewer and himself, he attributes the parts of his body functions that they actually do not primarily hold. He delineates a structure of relations that begins with perception and ends with communication—as a metaphor for acting, which keeps thought in balance with physical existence.3 

Martin Heidegger wrote on this: “Perhaps thinking, too, is just something like building a shrine. At any rate, it is a “hand-work.” … but the work of the hand is richer than we commonly imagine. The hand does not only grasp and catch, or push and pull. The hand reaches and extends, receives and welcomes—and not just things: the hand extends itself and receives its own welcome in the hands of others. The hand holds. The hand carries. The hand designs and signs, presumably because man is a sign. Two hands fold into one, a gesture meant to carry man into the great oneness. The hand is all this, and this is the true hand-work. Everything is rooted here that is commonly known as handicraft, and commonly we go no further. But the hand’s gestures run everywhere through language, in their most perfect purity precisely when man speaks by being silent.”4

VALIE EXPORT also refers to Heidegger in her video “Visual Text: Finger Poem”, as she loosely quotes him by saying “Ich sage die Zeige mit den Zeichen im Zeigen der Sage” (“I say the showing with the signs by signing the saying”). She performs the sentence with her fingers in “visual sign language”. “The body can thus be used to impart both intellectual as well as physical contents. The body as information medium. The human is adapted to the social structure by the body,” she explains about the intention of her video. And also Franziska Kabisch’s “Deklinationen (Can I inherit my dead parents’ debts?)” is about the social communication surrounding the hand. Beginning from the gallery of professors, which exists at many universities, contemplated is how knowledge production and scientific norms are manifest in postures—especially of the hands—and how they are adopted and continued. This final quote by Martin Heidegger is also from the university context, from a lecture: “It is only to the extent to which man speaks that he thinks and not the other way around, as Metaphysics still thinks. Every motion of the hand in every one of its works carries itself through the element of thinking, every bearing of the hand bears itself in that element. All the work of the hand is rooted in thinking. Therefore, thinking itself is man’s simplest, and for that reason, hardest, hand-work, if it would be accomplished by oneself in time.”5

1 The Gospel of Thomas

2 Helmuth Plessner, Anthropologie der Sinne, (1970), Suhrkamp, 2003

3 “I think and compare; I see with a feeling eye, feel with a seeing hand.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Roman Elegies (1788–1790)

4 Martin Heidegger, “What is Called Thinking?” (1951–1952), trans. J. Glen Gray, Harper Perennial, 1976, pp. 16–17.

5 Ibid.

‘Instructions for Happiness’

Featuring works by Anna Sophie Berger, Liudvikas Buklys, Heinrich Dunst, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Christian Falsnaes, Benjamin Hirte, Barbara Kapusta, Stelios Karamanolis, Alexandra Kostakis, Adriana Lara, Lara Nasser, Rallou Panagiotou, Natasha Papadopoulou, Angelo Plessas, Maruša Sagadin, Hans Schabus, Björn Segschneider, Socratis Socratous, Misha Stroj, Stefania Strouza, Jannis Varelas, Kostis Velonis and Salvatore Viviano; curated by Severin Dünser and Olympia Tzortzi

Lekka 23 – 25 & Perikleous 34, Athens

21 — 30 December 2016

Happiness can be understood as a basic human need. And the exhibition is all about the personal pursuit for happiness. But instructions for happiness? As happiness is quite an individual matter, instructions for happiness are of course a pretty absurd promise. Regardless of whether happiness is sought after in the interpersonal, the immediate or the everyday respectively the beauty of the small things in life – the exhibition tries to question the notions of happiness.

Selected artists were invited to contribute a work, that also includes a manual: A work that – based on an instruction – invites to do something, for instance use an object, react to a situation, interact with others under certain rules, perform something for others or oneself or simply initiates a thought process. The form of the work (as well as the instruction) could take any possible shape – resulting in artworks that are as diverse and formally divergent as the technical possibilities. But the seemingly chaotic diversity also reflects a plurality of perspectives on happiness that the artist (as well as society) share.

Aside from the question of happiness in the context of today’s Athens, the exhibition also tries to reflect upon art’s possibilities of immediate effects on society. Thus the boarders of the power of the aesthetic field can be questioned in the show on one side, while tracing the notions of happiness on the other side through experiencing the works in order to maybe also find answers for oneself.

Kindly supported by The Federal Chancellery of Austria, NON SPACES and KUP 

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‘Instructions for Happiness’

Συμμετέχουν: Anna Sophie Berger, Liudvikas Buklys, Heinrich Dunst, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Christian Falsnaes, Benjamin Hirte, Barbara Kapusta, Stelios Karamanolis, Alexandra Kostakis, Adriana Lara, Lara Nasser, Rallou Panagiotou, Natasha Papadopoulou, Angelo Plessas, Maruša Sagadin, Hans Schabus, Björn Segschneider, Socratis Socratous, Misha Stroj, Stefania Strouza, Jannis Varelas, Kostis Velonis, Salvatore Viviano

Υπό την επιμέλεια: Severin Dünser, Olympia Tzortzi

Λέκκα 23 – 25 & Περικλέους 34, Αθήνα

21.12. — 30.12.2016

Η ευτυχία μπορεί να κατανοηθεί ως μια από τις βασικές ανάγκες του ανθρώπου. Ο Freud έλεγε ότι σκοπός της ζωής είναι η επίτευξη και η διατήρηση της ευτυχίας – και στην αναζήτησή της επιδίδεται η έκθεση με τίτλο «Instructions for Happiness». Αλλά είναι δυνατό να υφίστανται οδηγίες;

Μια σειρά από Έλληνες και διεθνείς καλλιτέχνες έχουν κληθεί να καταθέσουν την δική τους εικαστική απάντηση σχετικά με την κατάκτηση της ευτυχίας η οποία, στον βαθμό ασφαλώς που είναι για τον καθένα υποκειμενική, δεν μπορεί παρά να καθορίζει και τις «απαντήσεις» ως αυστηρά προσωπικές. Υπό αυτήν την οπτική, όλα τα εκθέματα απηχούν διαφορετικές προσεγγίσεις ως προς την μορφή αλλά και ως προς τους «κανόνες» που θα πρέπει κανείς να εφαρμόσει (ή και να απορρίψει) προκειμένου να εκπληρώσει, έστω και πρόσκαιρα, το πολυπόθητο αποτέλεσμα και, πάντως, όλα αυτοσκηνοθετούνται ως «οδηγίες προς απόκτηση ευτυχίας». Συγχρόνως, όμως, τα έργα δεν λησμονούν ότι η ευτυχία είναι ατομική υπόθεση, ότι ουσιαστικά κάθε υπόδειξη πραγμάτωσής της συνιστά ανεδαφική ή ουτοπική υπόσχεση. Εντούτοις δεν παραιτούνται. Κι έτσι καταφέρουν να στρέψουν την προσοχή στα μικρά αντικείμενα της ζωής και να αναδείξουν, με απρόσμενο τρόπο, την ομορφιά τους (ιδού μια στιγμή ευτυχίας!) – ή εφιστούν τη προσοχή στην «ευτυχή συγκυρία» ή και στην ευδαιμονία που μπορεί, φέρ’ ειπείν, να πηγάζει από άγνοια ή παραγνώριση της πραγματικότητας ή και από τη ζωηρή φαντασία ακόμη.

Προπάντων, όλα τα έργα της έκθεσης αμφισβητούν τις παγιωμένες αντιλήψεις για το τι είναι ευτυχία και θέτουν το ερώτημα του κατά πόσο η ίδια η τέχνη μπορεί να αποβεί «πρόξενος ευτυχίας», όχι απλώς ωραιοποιώντας αλλά ενεργά μεταμορφώνοντας τον γύρω μας κόσμο. Και εντέλει θέτουν το ερώτημα των ερωτημάτων: μήπως η ευτυχία προϋποθέτει πάντοτε την ευτυχία του άλλου, δηλαδή, θα πρέπει επιτακτικά να εννοηθεί σε ένα πολιτικό πλαίσιο;

Barbara Kapusta

‘They She We Them’

21er Raum at 21er Haus

23 May — 23 June 2013

They She We Them is a seven-part photo series by Barbara Kapusta, which shows 13 people from the artist’s immediate surroundings. Standing behind the camera, the artist focuses on the gazes, gestures, postures and facial expressions of the protagonists. Formations, configurations and instances of physical contact give rise to a narrative of possible loves, bonds, friendships and professional collaborations.

The artist works primarily with moving pictures between reality and fiction, representativity, directness and presence. In doing so she mixes up the protagonists’ personal stories, endeavoring to make visible the construction, and simultaneously the reality, of fiction. In their conversations, the participants in her filmic and photographic works negotiate the ideals, wishes and conditions of friendship and cooperation, while also repeatedly questioning her idea of collaboration and collective authorship (“One never does things alone,” says Nina in Kapusta’s last film, Amazon, 2012).

They She We also explores the wide field of relationships in which the subject no longer encounters anything objective, where everything is associative and dissolves into the intermediate zone between the mutual and the collective. The protagonists are real people with genuine or possible relationships to one another, be it as friend, sister, ally. They are unusual individuals who cannot be indiscriminately combined into a homogenous group – just as the image of a circle of friends, as a narrative, is always a fiction and a construction.

Friendship is complicated: it demands commitment and is difficult to understand. Here gazes, gestures, spaces and colors form a circle, “the circle of this group, this story that we do not completely know,” Kapusta remarks. “Here we have seven forms of a gesture, a touch… a set of codes,” she continues, whereby “the poses, just like the light and the camera perspective, are extremely intentional. The bodily tension is deliberate, the closeness of the persons depicted is perhaps only imaginary. This is a game with the forms of group portraiture, of togetherness. It also plays with linguistic forms of address. Some of the protagonists address the camera and the beholder directly. They gaze at us, because we have been observing them. But we are not a part of the scene.” 

The pictures speak to their viewers. Nevertheless, one is torn between closeness and distance – one can dive into the narrative, but soon enough one is again kept at a distance. Friendships are not something static; they must be actively conducted, and there is a continual movement between giving and taking. A group forms a frame of reference for individuals, and likewise a circle of friends enables someone to step forward from the group from time to time, to step into the focus.

Barbara Kapusta lives and works in Vienna. In 2008 she founded the exhibition space Saprophyt with artist and filmmaker Stephan Lugbauer. Together with artist Katharina Aigner she initiates and organizes video and film programs in diverse contexts and spaces. Recently her work has been shown at 21er Haus, Vienna (2013), Kunstpavillon Innsbruck (2012), Galerie Lisa Ruyter, Vienna (2012), Die Diele, Zurich (2012), Freies Museum Berlin (2012), Unit One Gallery, Beijing (2012), Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna (2011).

In cooperation with / with the support of Clara Zeiszl, Manfred Unger, Paran Pour, Olga Pohankova, Tanja Nis-Hansen, Natures of Conflict, Thomas Münster, Teona Mosia, Marlene Maier, Stephan Lugbauer, Ulrike Köppinger, Miriam Kathrein, Johanna Kapusta, Christina Kapusta, Jessyca R. Hauser, Katharina Aigner

Exhibition catalogue:
21er Raum 2012 – 2016
Edited by Agnes Husslein-Arco and Severin Dünser
Including texts by Severin Dünser, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Paul Feigelfeld, Agnes Husslein-Arco, Lili Reynaud-Dewar and Luisa Ziaja on exhibitions by Anna-Sophie Berger, Andy Boot, Vittorio Brodmann, Andy Coolquitt, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Iman Issa, Barbara Kapusta, Susanne Kriemann, Adriana Lara, Till Megerle, Adrien Missika, Noële Ody, Sarah Ortmeyer, Mathias Pöschl, Rosa Rendl, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Anja Ronacher, Constanze Schweiger, Zin Taylor, Philipp Timischl, Rita Vitorelli and Salvatore Viviano
Graphic design by Atelier Liska Wesle, Vienna/Berlin
German/Englisch
Softcover, 21 × 29,7 cm, 272 pages, numerous illustrations in color
Belvedere, Vienna, 2016
ISBN 978-3-903114-18-0