‘On the New – Young Scenes in Vienna’

Featuring works by Sasha Auerbakh, Anna-Sophie Berger, Cäcilia Brown, Marc-Alexandre Dumoulin, Melanie Ebenhoch, Johannes Gierlinger, Birke Gorm, Maureen Kaegi, Barbara Kapusta, Angelika Loderer, Nana Mandl, Matthias Noggler, Lukas Posch, Lucia Elena Průša, Rosa Rendl & Lonely Boys, Marina Sula, Philipp Timischl and Edin Zenun; Andreas Harrer, Florian Pfaffenberger and Julian Turner, curated by Bar Du Bois; Steffi Alte, Harald Anderle, Owen Armour, Abdul Sharif Baruwa, Christoph Bruckner, Karoline Dausien, Veronika Eberhart, Søren Engsted, Exo Exo, Manuel Gorkiewicz, Robbin Heyker, Martin Hotter, Paul Housley, Terese Kasalicky, John Kilduff, Axel Koschier, Diana Lambert, Lukás Machalický, Maria Meinild, Jakob Neulinger, Georg Petermichl, Stefan Reiterer, Nora Rekade, Florian Rossmanith, Ellen Schafer, Constanze Schweiger, Ditte Soria and Julian Turner, curated by New Jörg; unknown author, Abdul Sharif Baruwa, Karoline Dausien, Nicole Haitzinger, Ludwig Kittinger, Anja Manfredi, Thea Moeller and Martin Vesely, curated by Ve.Sch; Florian Boka, Bartosz Dolhun, Kasper Hesselbjerg, Lisa Jäger, Suzie Léger & Katarina Csanyiova, Xenia Lesniewski, Claudia Lomoschitz, Bert Löschner, Line Lyhne, Maitane Midby, Philipp Pess, Tobias Pilz, Julia Riederer and Christian Rothwangl, curated by One Mess Gallery; Bildstein | Glatz, Melanie Ender, Jonas Feferle, Michael Gülzow, Simon Iurino, Eric Kläring, Jürgen Kleft, William Knaack, Axel Koschier, Magdalena Kreinecker, Matthias Krinzinger, Claudia Larcher, Sophia Mairer, Andreas Müller, Lukas Matuschek, Noële Ody, Vika Prokopaviciute, Jörg Reissner, Stefan Reiterer, Niclas Schöler, Leander Schönweger, Lena Sieder-Semlitsch, SOYBOT, Laura Wagner, Angelika Wischermann and Alexander Jackson Wyatt, curated by Pferd; Agnieszka Baginska, Juliane Bischoff, Martin Chramosta, Julia Grillmayr, Bob Schatzi Hausmann, Helmut Heiss, Nima Heschmat, Maruša Höglinger, Andrea Jäger, Lisa Kainz, Sebastian Klingovsky, Kluckyland, Sophia Mairer, Iwona Ornatowska-Semkovicz, Bianca Phos, Martyn Reynolds, Yves-Michel Saß, Anna Schachinger, Vanessa Schmidt, Joakim Martinussen & Agnes Schmidt-Martinussen, Paulina Semkowicz, Lena Sieder-Semlitsch, Sophie Tappeiner and Lukas Thaler, curated by SORT; Ale de la Puente, Luzie Meyer, Nathalie Koger, Nadia Perlov, Laure Prouvost, Niclas Riepshoff, Vladimir Vulević & Nina Zeljković, curated by Gärtnergasse; Nicoleta Auersperg, Gabriele Edlbauer, Maria Grün, Lore Heuermann, Laura Hinrichsmeyer, Nika Kupyrova, Mara Novak, Maša Stanić and Dorothea Trappel, curated by GOMO; Ramaya Tegegne, curated by Kevin Space; Kareem Lotfy, Evelyn Plaschg, Fabio Santacroce and Anne Schmidt, curated by Foundation; Titania Seidl, Lukas Thaler and Laura Yuile, curated by Mauve; Ivan Cheng, Christiane Heidrich, Iku, Evelyn Plaschg & Marielena Stark, Julius Pristauz, Daniel Rajcsanyi & Nils Amadeus Lange (curated by school), curated by Pina; curated by Severin Dünser and Luisa Ziaja

Belvedere 21, Vienna

1 March – 2 June 2019

The New, the Young, the Local, and Other Myths
Severin Dünser & Luisa Ziaja (translation: Ishbel Flett)

We have given this exhibition the title “On the New – Young Scenes in Vienna” in full awareness of the difficulties posed by the connotations associated with such terms as “new”, “young”, and “scene”, because these also reflect the difficulties of the format itself and bring it into perspective. We would like to explore these aspects and link them to the underlying ideas of the exhibition concept, before finally comparing them with specific artistic approaches.

On the new

The “new” in art is a highly charged concept in many ways. In modernism, it paradigmatically represents the endeavor of the artistic avantgardes to reject and overcome preceding movements, and to create not only a visionary new art, but to shape the individual and even the world anew. In this respect, the new is closely linked with political and social utopias, with hopes for a radical change of existing power structures and the human condition. Once the totalitarian systems of the twentieth century had utterly discredited the claim to absoluteness of such approaches, progress-oriented ideologies came to be regarded as untenable. Post-modernism consequently broke away from all of this, rejecting the quest for innovation, the dictate of the new and its utopian mindset.
By contrast, pluralism, polyphony and multiperspectivity became key concepts of a postmodernist aesthetic that dismantled the boundaries between genres, media, high culture and popular culture, between art and the everyday. Appropriation, quotation, repetition and recontextualization became central tenets of an artistic strategy that called into question not only such categories as originality and authenticity, but also norms, values, structural frameworks and working conditions. In short, this was about much more than just a new approach. Rather, it was about a different attitude, a whole new outlook that was not homogeneous, but diverse: dialectical, variously coded, citative, reflective, subjective, and open. Artists, to paraphrase the curator Dan Cameron, were “freed of the historical compulsion to produce stylistically innovative original art”.[1]
Against this backdrop, the concept of the new in art seemed inadequate and even, paradoxically, outmoded. Then, in the early 1990s, along came the cultural philosopher Boris Groys with his publication “On the New” in which he recalibrated the concept of the new by decoupling it from the modernist claim to norm, authenticity and utopia. According to Groys, “every occurrence of the new is basically the making of a new comparison of something never compared until then, because it never occurred to anyone to draw the comparison.”[2] He saw innovation as an act of overstepping the boundary between the archive of organized cultural memory and the realm of the profane, and as a “revaluation of values” by which “the true or the refined that is regarded as valuable is devalorized, while that which was formerly considered profane, alien, primitive or vulgar, and therefore valueless, is valorized.”[3] Accordingly, the new follows the principles of recombination, contextual shift and revaluation, producing a perceptual differentiation of the already familiar. Groys’ concept of the new does not create a new reality; rather, it presents the new as a play on the new.[4]
In the meantime, the epochal term postmodernism has been replaced by the notion of the contemporary. Accordingly, critical diagnoses of our time describe it as a permanent or endless present, as a bloated continuum under the conditions of network capitalism, which seems to preclude progress and the future. With our view ahead blurring into dystopian darkness, we are either faced with a past that is not yet gone, or consumed by yearning for what the social theorist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman described in his book “Retrotopia” as a “lost / stolen / abandoned but undead past”.[5]
This breakdown of linear continuity, resulting in a life in an endless present, was already analyzed by Fredric Jameson as the cultural logic of late capitalism that lacks adequate forms of expressing the contemporary.[6] Twenty years later, contemplating the omnipresence of a retroculture seemingly reflected in the depression, melancholy and nostalgia of his own generation, Mark Fisher referenced Jameson in a treatise about the present being haunted by the ghosts of the past, using the term “hauntology” coined by Jacques Derrida [7].
Due to a combination of overstimulation (through digital media, virally circulating images or content) and sheer exhaustion (through the constant recycling of cultural forms of expression) the very concept of the new has now been all but eradicated from contemporary thinking. The present has become so fully inundated by the past that any differentiation between them has been eroded. Buried, too, is the knowledge that none of this is new, that innovation was once a real possibility, and that a different reality was once actually conceivable. While the notion that there is no alternative to capitalism may be ubiquitous, Fisher posits that the ghosts of the past evoke a certain nostalgia for those lost futures that the twentieth century was still capable of conjuring. And that the current political and cultural conservatism can only be overcome if a radically different future can be envisaged once more.[8] Fisher’s “hauntology” was widely welcomed, and his combination of political theory and analysis of (pop-)cultural phenomena struck a certain chord that also resonates in the artistic output of a younger generation.
As this brief outline indicates, the concept of the new involves a clash of different discourses and schools of thought, which might be taken as the framework for current artistic production. At the same time, the quotidian nature of this term also arouses expectations that may well be thwarted. It is this discrepancy and the resulting need for discussion that we have chosen to evoke in choosing a title that not only cites Boris Groys directly, but also addresses issues far beyond his approach.

Young scenes in Vienna

The subtitle, too, is a citation—albeit modified, but context specific. From 1983 onwards, the Vienna Secession held a (originally) biannual exhibition series “Junge Szene” [Young Scene], dedicated initially to local artists but later extended to incorporate international positions, with the involvement of external curators, culminating in the 2010 show “where do we go from here?.” Another point of reference is the exhibition series “Lebt und arbeitet in Wien” [Lives and Works in Vienna] presented at Kunsthalle Wien in 2000, 2005 and 2010 by changing teams of three international curators. Based on an open-call system, the series then continued in adapted form under the title “Destination Wien 2015” with a distinctly Vienna-related slant as its underlying principle.
Basically, these exhibition formats serve to collate a survey of the local art scene with the aim of providing a platform for contemporary and emerging works by a young generation of artists, reflecting not only the distinctiveness of the place, but also its connectivity to a wider international context. These contrasting aspects bring their own challenges.
For instance, the geographic boundaries imposed on the selection of artists clashes starkly with developments in the age of the worldwide web. Artists living and working in Vienna today have access to information from all around the globe. They are mobile and they exchange information with colleagues throughout the world. The potential for mutual influence is vast by comparison to earlier times, with localized phenomena rapidly developing a global reach that makes it difficult to pinpoint any specific geographical or historical commonality. The assumption of a geographically determined or culturally homogeneous form of expression is no longer tenable.
Another problem lies in the limitations imposed by determining a specific age-span. Exhibitions based on generation-related criteria risk reducing the causality of individual phenomena to a single factor that precludes other relevant aspects such as gender, ethnicity, class, education, economic situation or social setting. Indeed, the category of “young art” is often so encumbered by stereotypes and assumptions of a fast-paced and overhyped “event culture” that perceptions of individual creativity and its underlying significance can become distorted.
What is more, especially within the context of institutions that still have the power to set definitive standards, such blanket overviews tend to raise expectations and demands in terms of objectivity, comprehensiveness and representativeness that simply cannot be met. While any curatorial selection is ultimately a subjective one and thus, by definition, incomplete, what is exhibited is nonetheless often perceived as a benchmark for other works and norms. At the same time, even such a fragmentary insight implicitly establishes a representational framework, if only temporarily.
In addition to these general specifications, the diversity of the viewing public is another factor that needs to be taken into account, especially within a museum setting. Not only do individual visitors bring their own ideas and views into play, but other interest groups such as gallerists, collectors, students, teachers, art critics and curators may have widely diverging needs and expectations. Finding the right balance in order to appeal to such a broad audience, without sacrificing intellectual depth in doing so, is one of the biggest challenges of all.
In short, there are many different projections of what a locally and generationally defined overview of the artistic scenes should entail. The categories in question seem limited in their capacity to act as cohesive elements in the creation of added perceptual value, though they may undoubtedly fuel assumptions and generalizations. So, why this exhibition at this point in time at Belvedere 21? And how could the problems outlined here be tackled conceptually?
Since the reopening of the former 20er Haus as a contemporary art venue incorporated into the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in 2011, the exhibition pavilion has become a central new location for local art production within an international context. In addition to various exhibition formats ranging from major overviews and retrospectives to themed group exhibitions and smaller solo shows, the program of the 21er Raum between 2012 and 2016 focused primarily on providing a platform for young and not yet established artists to show their works for the first time in a major institution. “On the New – Young Scenes in Vienna” continues in this vein and also links in with the exhibition formats of the Secession and Kunsthalle Wien. The subtitle references its now historic forerunner, but in the plural. Even in the 1980s, there probably was no single homogeneous “young scene”, though the situation back then may well have been somewhat more cohesive than it is today.
Certainly, the world of contemporary art in today’s Vienna is extremely varied and diverse: The city’s two art schools have become increasingly international, in outlook as well as in terms of teaching staff and students. The “Independent Space Index”, established in 2017, currently lists some sixty or so independent venues and project spaces marking a considerable increase in recent years. After a long period of stagnation several new galleries also opened in 2017 and art institutions have been very active indeed, in spite of the closure of some privately financed art associations. The production, presentation and discussion of art is as dynamic and vibrant as rarely before while the functions of the many and varied venues complement one another in spite of their widely differing economic frameworks.

On the concept of the exhibition

With this exhibition, we aim to reflect the diversity and vitality in the practice of artistic production and presentation by a young generation in Vienna and to showcase individual positions as well. Beyond merely providing the artists with a platform, we seek to contextualize their various different approaches and attitudes in relation to the forms of expression they use. We want to make their individual practices clearly tangible, without ascriptions or determinations. To this end, we combine artistic and curatorial formats to achieve a dynamic structure that changes throughout the duration of the exhibition.
The architecture for this takes the form of an open-plan spatial structure reminiscent of an evolved urban setting, whereby a grid layout has been deliberately avoided. Instead, narrow passages alternate with open spaces. The individual wall elements have a L-shaped ground plot, while the wall thickness tapers towards the ends. This results in different angles on the inner and outer sides, mostly without any right angles. We have aligned the individual wall elements in such a way that, with just three exceptions, no room-like spaces are formed that might suggest any kind of groupings or categorizations.
The works of 18 artists are displayed within this architectural structure. That means 18 individually collated combinations of existing and newly-created works, presented on either an inner or an outer partition wall, thereby giving an insight into the respective practices that underpin the oeuvre of each artist. In this way, by contextualizing the individual approach that shapes each respective body of work, we have sought to shift the interrelational weighting from that of an overarching viewpoint to a smaller-scale experience that brings the individual artistic positions into clearer focus. Our curatorial selection of 18 artists was based on two fundamental requirements: Vienna as the artist’s centre of life and work, and an upper age limit of 35. We decided on this relatively low age limit (rather than the more usual limit of 40) in a bid to narrow the potential pool of possible artists so as to ensure that there were not too many mid-career artists mingling with the emerging artists.
Of course, we are fully aware that our selection is small, subjective and incomplete. However, in order to reflect, at least to some extent, the diversity of the Vienna art scene, we have invited twelve project spaces to complement these 18 positions and to devise exhibitions within the exhibition. They expand, enhance and multiply our curatorial view, and perhaps comment on or even contradict us. Either way, they introduce new perspectives from the city into the exhibition.
At three-week intervals, the project spaces stage three concurrent exhibitions, with complete carte blanche and no holds barred regarding format, choice or number of artists. The resulting solo shows and extensive group exhibitions, performances and screenings involving younger, older, local and international artists reproduce not only the art scenes’ many-sidedness and varied fields of interest, but also shed light on curatorial practices.
Project spaces, needless to say, frequently operate on a fairly precarious financial basis and, compared to public institutions, are therefore highly dependent on self-organization, mutual exchange, and personal commitment. Against this backdrop, it was important to us that the twelve project spaces, as well as the 18 artists, should all have access to the same production budgets, freely available and without preconditions. We also hoped that our invitation would not be regarded as a form of institutional appropriation, but rather as an opportunity to gain another form of visibility and reach out to different audiences.

Approaches and tendencies

While we have avoided presenting the various artistic positions thematically, so as not to add any further impetus to some all-too-tempting attributions and categorizations, the sum of the single parts of the exhibition do reveal certain tendencies in art—as that’s one main potential of such a format.
Craftsmanship and a mastery of traditional techniques are key to many of the works shown here, often in conjunction with experimenting with materials and their specific qualities. Marc-Alexandre Dumoulin, for instance, creates lucid paintings of old-master perfection, while Edin Zenun works in oils, clay and pigment to produce works that raise questions about the immanent painterly nature of both the figurative and the abstract. Angelika Loderer, on the other hand, experiments with means drawn from the craft of metal-casting, like casting sand, pressing and stamping it into autonomous temporary sculptures. Meanwhile, Sasha Auerbakh does not follow the specific qualities or characteristics of her material so much as she obsessively overrides them. Cäcilia Brown plays with the contradictory connotations of the fleeting and the permanent, when she casts cardboard boxes that serve as temporary night shelters in concrete. And in Birke Gorm’s vase-like sand sculptures and wall pieces made of jute sacks, the aesthetics of the haptic and of craftmanship meet the digital.
The constraints of digitality and the ever more gapless incorporation in various media dispositifs are reflected either directly or indirectly in a number of works. Maureen Kaegi, for example, devotes her meticulous drawings, created through analogue processes, to the perceptual phenomena of the digital noise that she counters with contemplative depths. Lukas Posch, by contrast, addresses with his paintings the invasively stimulating effects of the digital on the individual’s body and mind, while Nana Mandl explores the faultlines of present-day visuality by recoupling the inflationary production and distribution of digital images to the analogue realm in her largescale material collages.
The internet offers freedoms and endless possibilities for development, fulfilment, information, entertainment and consumerism. The flawlessness of the digital exerts an enormous appeal, even on those who are aware that there are algorithms in play, which are aimed at creating a frictionless experience, while manipulating our online behavior. Even the most savvy users are so tempted by what the internet has to offer that they end up spending a great deal of their spare time online. That in itself involves a certain disembodiment, an alienation from one’s own physis. Running against the tide of this development, however, corporeality seems to be an important theme for several of the artists in the exhibition. Such as Birke Gorm, who translates the idealization of the digital into the imperfection of the physical, with particular emphasis on the aspect of manual labor. The work of Lucia Elena Průša addresses subjective perception of time triggered by bodily processes. For Barbara Kapusta, the body is relevant as a connecting link between the internal and the external. Cäcilia Brown places the body and its needs in relation to the public space, while Marina Sula is interested in how behaviors and attitudes can be altered by architectural structures. She sees the body as a biomass formed by genetic materials and external influences, and also reflects on it as an expression of belonging as well as in terms of a machine and working instrument whose efficiency increase and (self-) discipline leads to alienation from it. Sula contrasts the transformation of the body through prostheses as optimization and concomitant self-fragmentation with its presence as a vehicle for potential social interaction.
For Anna-Sophie Berger, too, physical presence is a factor within the context of her own mobility between various geographic centres of her life. This results in a certain diremption between the cosmopolitan and the rooted in the construction of identity—raising the question of belonging, which is also addressed by some of the other artists in the exhibition. Johannes Gierlinger, for instance, looks at past and present forms of political radicalization within the context of national identity models. Matthias Noggler, on the other hand, describes belonging as a group-dynamic process underpinned by mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion (a factor that can also be found in the work of Lucia Elena Průša), spawning forms of subjectification. Birke Gorm, by contrast, sees the individual as being exposed to social norms and expectations and having to react accordingly by taking a demonstrative stance. Rosa Rendl’s photographs centre around identity and the way it is conveyed, as well as focusing on the construction of authenticity, while Melanie Ebenhoch explores the reciprocal effects between the reception of artworks and the supposed projections onto the figure of the artist behind them as the starting point for her reflections on painting as a medium of representation. Philipp Timischl, who focuses on issues of origin and sexuality in terms of how these factors influence a sense of social belonging, channels the question of constructing identity into reflections on representation, respectively emancipation through forms of self-exposion.
Formulating notions of belonging and identity is something that goes hand in hand with processes of individualization. In the exhibition, this manifests itself not only on the meta-level of the conditions that underly the construction of identity. Instead, it is also evident in the endeavors to artistically express the individuality of one’s own identity beyond the bounds of universal validities and objectivities. In contrast to the individual mythologies outlined by the likes of Szeemann, there is little to be found herein the way of the archetypical or the obsessive, though some of the artists in the exhibition do indicate a tendency to withdraw into the private and subjective sphere. Bouyed by a desire for authenticity, emotions and empathy take centre stage in works putting the human condition of the individual in focus. That can be felt as keenly in the music videos of Lonely Boys as it can in the inner landscapes that Marc-Alexandre Dumoulin spreads out before us. Even when Lucia Elena Průša presents time as a subjective notion, or when Sasha Auerbakh explores the psychological outlier of unrequited love, or Barbara Kapusta merges desire, lust and pain in a cognitive dissonance, or Philipp Timischl bundles personal emotional states into a kind of retrospective introspective—then states of mind become expressions of worldviews that include the wider whole in the existential.
Between the individual and collective presentations of the exhibition, interests and positionings can be connected to vectors, that point to various directions. These are narratives that indicate rough intersections, but also simplify. They are our subjective curatorial projections on the wider field of production and practice by young local artists, and they have influenced our selection for this exhibition. Although these narratives may well have contributed towards the overall impression of the exhibition, they do not constitute the pillars on which it is built. Instead, it is the variety of synergies and interdependencies between individual artistic attitudes and approaches, curatorial ideas and strategies that converge in the exhibition. Perhaps it is here that we might find an answer to the question of the “new” and the loss of utopias and perspectives for the future: In the interplay of individualization and the desire for shared aims, that creates a dynamic.

[1] Cf. Dan Cameron, “Neo-This, Neo-That: Approaching Pop Art in the 1980s” in Marco Livingstone (ed.), “Pop Art”, London 1991, pp. 260–266, cited by Boris Groys in “On the New”, transl. M. Goshgarian, London 2014, p. 2.
[2] Boris Groys, “On the New”, transl. M. Goshgarian, London 2014, p. 55.
[3] Ibid., p. 10.
[4] Cf. Brigitte Werneburg, “Le postmodernisme n’existe pas. Zu Boris Groys’ Theorie des ‘Neuen’—Versuch einer Kulturökonomie”, in taz. Die Tageszeitung, 18.1.1993.
[5] Cf. Zygmunt Bauman, “Retrotopia”, Cambridge 2017, p. 5.
[6] Cf. Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”, London / New York 1991.
[7] Cf. Jacques Derrida, “Spectres de Marx”, Paris 1993.
[8] Cf. Mark Fisher, “What is Hauntology?”, in Film Quarterly, 66., No. 1, Autumn 2012, pp. 16–24. – Idem, “Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures”, Winchester/Washington 2014.

Exhibition catalogue:
On the New – Young Scenes in Vienna
Edited by Stella Rollig, Severin Dünser and Luisa Ziaja
Including Texts by Severin Dünser, Stella Rollig and Luisa Ziaja
Grafikdesign by FONDAZIONE Europa (Alexander Nußbaumer & Benjamin Zivota)
German/English
Hardcover with linen coating, 18.5 × 28.5 cm, 320 pages, 247 illustrations
ISBN 978-3-903114-74-6

Quick tour through the show (video)

‘On the New – Young Art from Vienna’

Featuring works by Sasha Auerbakh, Anna-Sophie Berger, Cäcilia Brown, Marc-Alexandre Dumoulin, Melanie Ebenhoch, Johannes Gierlinger, Birke Gorm, Maureen Kaegi, Barbara Kapusta, Angelika Loderer, Nana Mandl, Matthias Noggler, Lukas Posch, Lucia Elena Průša, Rosa Rendl & Lonely Boys, Marina Sula, Philipp Timischl and Edin Zenun; curated by Severin Dünser and Luisa Ziaja

Kunstraum Innsbruck, 4 July – 31 August, 2019

‘The Value of Freedom’

Zbynĕk Baladrán, Dara Birnbaum, Jordi Colomer, Carola Dertnig, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Harun Farocki, Karin Ferrari, Forensic Oceanography, John Gerrard, Johannes Gierlinger, Lola Gonzàlez, Johan Grimonprez, Igor Grubić, Eva Grubinger, Marlene Haring, Hiwa K, Leon Kahane, Šejla Kamerić, Alexander Kluge, Nina Könnemann, Laibach, Lars Laumann, Luiza Margan, Teresa Margolles, Isabella Celeste Maund, Anna Meyer, Aernout Mik, Matthias Noggler, Josip Novosel, Julian Oliver, Trevor Paglen, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Ivan Pardo, Oliver Ressler, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Christoph Schlingensief, Andreas Siekmann, Eva Stefani, Superflex, Pilvi Takala, Philipp Timischl, Milica Tomić, Betty Tompkins, Amalia Ulman, Kostis Velonis, Kara Walker, Stephen Willats, Anna Witt, Hannes Zebedin, Center for Political Beauty, Tobias Zielony, Artur Żmijewski

Belvedere 21, Vienna

19 September 2018 – 10 February 2019

The Value of Freedom

The title of this exhibition portends to answer the question: what is the value of freedom? While suggesting that freedom is, fundamentally, of value, this rhetorical figure also unleashes a chain of further questions. After all, value is implicitly relational—but freedom in relation to what, exactly? And, quite apart from the evident difficulties involved in putting a value on freedom in the first place, there is no indication as to who is being addressed here. Is the question aimed at the individual, or at society as a whole? And what kind of “freedom” are we even talking about?
The very first questions to arise already provide us with some initial points of reference. For instance, it may be surmised that freedom is not a quantifiable entity, but a relational concept subject to constant change. It is thus an uncertain variable that takes on different meanings in different contexts, describing aspects of our existence at a psychological, social, cultural, religious, political or legislative level. So, in order to come anywhere close to reaching a contemporary understanding of the concept of freedom, it would seem fitting to shed a little light first of all on the historical background of its interrelations and intercontextualities.
The history of freedom can be traced back to the polis of Ancient Greece, where, from around the 8th century B.C., the body of citizens began to organise autonomously within city-states. Until the 2nd century A.D., these self-governing communities continued to prevail as democracies, with the power held directly by the people.[1] Plato held a critical view of this form of governance, maintaining that “A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally, usually by lot.“[2] What we can discern here is that, even back then, there was already a sense of dichotomy between rich and poor, freedom and equality, poltical freedom and economic servitude. Moreover, in the philosophy of classical antiquity, the concept of freedom was debated against a backdrop in which participation in the political process was not accessible to all. Certain troublesome groups were excluded from the body politic right from the start: women had no vote, nor had slaves. Based on these circumstances and issues, ancient Greek philosophy developed a concept of freedom that transferred such characteristics as autonomy and autarchy from the democratic body politic to the individual, irrespective of status or gender. The sovereignty of the individual was acknowledged, and freedom defined as having “control in life over things that concern oneself”[3]—albeit invariably within the framework of its interrelationship with the polis, which requires laws in order to assert and maintain its autonomy and, with that, the freedom of its citizens as well.
The Stoic philosophers ultimately distanced themselves from the notions of external and political freedom, shifting the focus instead to an inner freedom that could enable a meaningful way of life in spite of adverse external circumstances (even in the case of slaves, for instance) by using reason to counter one’s own desires and external temptations.
Even the Christian doctrine of salvation draws a clear line between the inner and the outer life. While the body is bound to a world full of temptation, the spirit and mind can experience freedom through faith in God. The individual’s own actions in the world are subject to self-discipline, though actions count for less than the true faith that underpins them. Freedom, in the era before the Enlightenment, was seen as something that could not be achieved through effort, but only through faith.[4] Nevertheless, the tenet of ora et labora (pray and work) held sway, for the aim was not only freedom of mind and spirit, but also of physical self-discipline, whether in a working environment or in interactions with others.
The Enlightenment brought yet another sea change, namely “man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity” as Kant put it.[5] Individuals, he urged, should think and judge for themselves, relying on their own powers of reason rather than on directions from others. Rationality became the order of the day, making knowledge and the control of knowledge the instrument of power that now replaced faith and enabled freedom. Body and mind could come closer together again, but now with external control taking the place of self-discipline.
From the 17th century onwards, democratic structures were able to take hold more firmly once again in Europe. In England, from 1689, parliamentary privilege granted immunity, financial sovereignty and the right of assembly, independently of the monarch. By this time, however, the political movement known as the Levellers had already long been agitating for all (male) citizens to be accorded equal rights and religious freedoms. The freedom they were demanding was one they perceived as the innate property of every individual—which the ruling elite of the time took as unsubstantiated egalitarianism, or “levelling.”
In 1748, building on the ideas of John Locke, Charles Montesquieu published his ideas on the separation of powers.[6] Legislative, executive and judicial powers should, in his view, be separated from one another in order to prevent despotism and to facilitate lasting freedom. It was from a combination of these ideas, including English parliamentarianism and the model of the Iroquois Confederacy, that, in 1787, the first modern democratic state was born: the United States of America. From the end of the early modern period, a number of upheavals occurred that further weakened absolutist rule, and so underpinned the rise of the bourgeoisie in the nineteenth century.
At the same time, the transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society brought new social problems, at the core of which lay the status of the worker. With the end of serfdom and the demise of slavery, labour took on a new and different symbolic value from the nineteenth century onwards. Now, workers received money in exchange for selling their physical abilities or intellectual skills to an employer. And that money, in turn, could be used—insofar as it sufficed to cover everyday expenses— to pursue opportunities and, with that, freedoms. As the reins of both state and religious power loosened, the potential broadened for the introduction of a new power structure: the market economy.
With the rise of industrial capitalism, a model was launched that would both rationalize and optimize the world of labor. Its underlying tenet was to maximize profits for those who owned the means of production, and its nirvana was the unrestricted free market. The degree of economic abstraction increased apace as the financial market and the trade in stocks and shares flourished, until ever more frequent dissonances eventually culminated in the global economic crisis of 1929. In reaction to an unfettered market economy on the one hand and interventionist state policies on the other, Walter Eucken and the Freiburg School developed the concept of Ordoliberalism, which was intended to unite political and economic freedoms. Based on the experience of both the Nazi regime in Germany and Soviet communist rule, Ordoliberalism rejected complete state control of the economy, arguing that the suppression of economic freedom went hand in hand with the suppression of political freedom; and that the state should therefore provide certain regulatory frameworks, for instance to curb monopolization, without actually interfering in the economic process itself. A balance should therefore be struck between upholding social justice and supporting competition, as well as between state order and subsidiarity.[7] Ordoliberalism influenced the emergence of the social market economy as a concept which, by contrast, envisaged rather more robust forms of state-imposed control mechanisms. The social market economy that was rolled out in the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria in the 1950s aimed at cementing social security and justice, while limiting unfettered capitalism yet lending it stability at the same time. In 2009, the aim of promoting social progress through economic achievement was formalised by the European Union in the Treaty of Lisbon.
When the so-called Eastern Bloc evolved into a group of states with democratic structures from the late 1980s onwards, it seemed as though democracy and capitalism had prevailed worldwide as parallel and mutually beneficient systems. However, against the background of globalization and the new social tensions this fomented, the relationship between market economy and democracy began to be perceived as problematic.
Yet a new undercurrent seemed to be gaining momentum in the wake of democracy: neoliberalism. If it is viewed, as Wendy L. Brown puts it, as “much more than a set of economic policies, an ideology, or the resetting of the relations between the state and the economy” but rather as a process that “transmogrifies every human domain and endeavor according to a specific image of the economic”[8] and consequently as a restructuring of our very way of thinking, then it can indeed be regarded as a serious challenge to democracy.
When we, as individuals, subject ourselves to the logic of the market economy, measuring ourselves solely in relation to our efficiency in optimising productivity, and thus defining the individual in terms of human capital operating only as a self-contained enterprise looking to gain a competitive advantage, then the question arises as to whether and to what extent that view might actually prove detrimental to libertarian democracy. Will our lives become more free if the rules that govern our political cohabitation are dismantled for the benefit of the market economy? Colin Crouch, for one, subsumes, under the epithet “post-democracy,”[9] the phenomena that he believes indicate a trend towards “deliberate democracy”: whereas nation states may be relatively slow-moving entities, the market economy can respond flexibly to external influences and thus put pressure on governments. This increases the influence of the (business) elite on state decisions, while the participatory possibilities for citizens are increasingly restricted to the ballot box, with debates being staged only for a few select topics.
This brief historical outline of freedom highlights a concept shaped by alternating counterpoints. Even in classical antiquity, the polis was founded on a notion of freedom in relation to equality, and economic equality in relation to political equality. In religion, there was a split between body and mind/spirit, with physical self-discipline being the prerequisite for the only possible attainable form of freedom, namely spiritual freedom. The Enlightenment, in turn, placed logical thinking above spiritual faith, promoting knowledge as the prime instrument of emancipation from tutelage. Hand in hand with this evolution came the democratic tendencies that countered the freedom of the individual citizen by means of new state control mechanisms. The serf became the employee, and liberty became a commodity to be bartered: labour was henceforth provided in exchange for money, money in exchange for freedom, and vice versa. Striving for monetary gain bolstered the rise of capitalism, which, in turn, led to the state restricting the freedom of the economically active subject. The increasing complexity and abstraction of the economy due to financial and stock market speculation, combined with the erosion of state control mechanisms, culminated in the complete collapse of the global economy, resulting in more stringent and restrictive regulations and efforts to bring these into line with ideas of social justice. Whereas, in the 1990s, the overwhelming view was that there could be no viable alternative to democratic government in conjunction with the market economy, increasing globalisation led to an upsurge of friction between the two. From here on in, the idea of neoliberalism took hold as a new leitbild, dismantling many hard-won and by then unquestioningly accepted freedoms, and thus gradually undermining democracy.
It is against this backdrop that the exhibition addresses The Value of Freedom. Like the topic itself, the exhibition involves a complex field of interconnected and co-dependent relationships. By way of multiple overlapping areas and cross-referencing narratives, it seeks to approach the topic from a number of different angles.
One central part of the exhibition is devoted to the question of what freedom actually means. Is freedom a question of liberty straddling the threshold between nature and culture (Alexander Kluge in conversation with Christoph Menke), or is freedom merely a game that is made interesting due to the regulations and resistances it encounters (Simon Dybbroe Møller)? Can individuals cope with freedom by themselves or do they need rules to guide them (Artur Żmijewski)? Can constraints also be objects of desire (Lars Laumann)? Is the slave ever ultimately freed at all (Kara Walker)? What do monuments to liberty symbolize, how do we perceive them, and what effect do they have on us (Dara Birnbaum, Luiza Margan)?
Another part of the exhibition explores democracy and forms of state governance that determine the structures of our coexistence. It asks what democracy actually is and what it could be (Oliver Ressler), analyzes the choreography and construction of public life (Christodoulos Panayiotou), encourages public speech (Carola Dertnig) and calls for love to replace fear at the heart of politics (Johan Grimonprez). The public space, which is as much a mirror image of politics as it is of often disparate individual needs, is addressed in another series of works. By means of “defensive architecture”[10] and prohibitions, not only is unwanted usage impeded, but specific actions, and the groups associated with them, are also banned from the public eye (Šejla Kamerić, Nina Könnemann). At the same time, the public space is the arena of potential (Milica Tomić) and actual violence (Teresa Margolles) that allows subjective feelings of safety to become a determining factor in politics. In order to ensure public safety and order and maintain its monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force (“monopoly on violence”), the state has at its disposal a control system with a quality and quantity of tools that can be deployed as an expression of the relationship between state interests and individual needs. Crowds are controlled (Eva Grubinger), the individual is checked (Aernout Mik), communications are surveilled (Trevor Paglen, Julian Oliver) and content is censored (Betty Tompkins).
Today, control of information is a key factor in wielding power. Whoever knows what information is relevant to which publics and what channels are most pertinent to the distribution of information that can influence people’s views is also able to target and massage majority opinion in order to push a specific political agenda. So the statistical knowledge held by those who operate online search engines and social media platforms is now pitted against the confusion and lack of orientation experienced by their users, resulting in part through their alienation from established media (Karin Ferrari, John Gerrard, Anna Meyer). All the while, think-tanks lobby in the shadows for their own ideas and interests (Andreas Siekmann), leading to an increased collective sense of the asymmetrical distribution of information in the field of political decision-making. This feeling of exclusion from the political process, in turn, generates activism that questions public portrayals and produces public expressions of criticism (Forensic Oceanography, Zentrum für Politische Schönheit, Igor Grubić, Hiwa K, Laibach).
A wide range of other works further underlines the fact that freedom is a fragile commodity. Insecurity is fuelled by increasing complexity, contradictions, and ever more rapid change (The Centre for Postnormal Policy & Future Studies), prompting calls for a stronger state, with fear as a social leitmotif (Christoph Schlingensief). Corruption, on the other hand, leads to a gradual disintegration of democracy (Superflex). With the dissolution of the strength of the law, we find ourselves confronted by the law of the strongest (Lola Gonzàlez) or the prospect of absolute freedom (Hannes Zebedin), depending on viewpoint. That is contrasted by utopian drafts (Jordi Colomer, Eva Stefani, Anna Witt), an escape into the self, into a dreamlike reality (Johannes Gierlinger) or the quest for counter-worlds (Tobias Zielony).
Freedom is also an issue in processes of subjectification, in which the individual is allocated a position within a social structure and thereby becomes a subject. Such a process not only changes the perception of the self, but also defines the sphere of action available to the subject (Stephen Willats). Yet the individual also wants to be perceived as the subject with which he or she identifies (Zbyněk Baladrán, Kostis Velonis) not only in order to be represented appropriately within society, but also in order to be able to appropriate the sphere of action they wish to pursue for themselves. While heteronormative gender roles and identities are individually constructed (Matthias Noggler, Josip Novosel, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Philipp Timischl), there are also groups that are formed according to cultural, ethical, social and sexual denominators (Leon Kahane), which, in the struggle for social recognition and rights (Isabella Celeste Maund, Marlene Haring) sometimes not only exclude people to varying degrees from their own communities (if they do not fulfil certain characteristic expectations) but even deny them the right to speak up for the communities’ interests (Lili Reynaud-Dewar).
Aside from any sense of belonging in terms of gender, ethnicity and social demography, work is also a factor that bestows identity. In contrast to the Christian notion of physical self-discipline as opposed to freedom of spirit through faith, the body today is honed in the gym in a bid to enhance longevity while working time is sacrificed in order to acquire short-term freedoms in exchange for money. It seems reasonable to pursue a work/life balance when the rationalization of labor processes and the organization of human capital (Harun Farocki) are regarded as the benchmark by which our private lives are measured (Amalia Ulman). Just as our smartphones can calibrate each step of our daily walk to the office, so too is every facet of selfhood measured and compared in a competitive way. But what is to be gained from such competition? Is there a prize for individual efficiency? Or does society have to pay the price? At any rate, the maxim of productivity (Pilvi Takala) does not appear to be negotiable.
And so the exhibition weaves a tapestry of contrasting dependencies and interactions between individuals and society, democracy and economy, work and leisure, body and mind, nature and culture. Freedom, in essence, turns out to be a relational concept. Those who have more money than others also have more power and, with that, more freedom. But does freedom even exist at all without a distinction from the “other”?
The freedom of the individual begins, in any case, with the individual becoming a subject emancipated from natural drives and instincts. This is a process of parental upbringing “in which the emotional unity of freedom and control within the symbiotic relationship gradually evolves into an awareness of freedom and control.”[11] We spend our lives trying to regain this combination of freedom and control that we once experienced as an expression of love. But in order to regain it, we need opposite poles. The movement between these poles, the process of self-emancipation, is what we experience as freedom—in other words, it is a process rather than a state.
Our entire human existence is accompanied by the experience of shifting between the two poles of nature and culture.[12] It is only in the space between these two that we recognize the difference that leads us to grasp what it is that we determine as freedom at certain junctures in our lives.

[1] The word “democracy” derives from the Ancient Greek “dēmos” (people) combined with “kratós” (rule).
[2] Plato, “The Republic” [Politeia], Book VIII (557a)
[3] Pseudo-Plato, “Definitions”, 412 d 1.
[4] Markus Metz / Georg Seeßlen, “Freiheit und Kontrolle”, Berlin 2017 (e-book), chapter “Der Christenmensch und seine Freiheit”.
[5] Immanuel Kant, “Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?”, [German original: “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? ”], chapter 1, opening sentence.
[6] Charles Montesquieu, “The Spirit of the Laws”, [French original: “De l’esprit des lois”], Geneva 1748.
[7] The principle of subsidiarity is based on the premise that a central authority should have only a subsidiary function and that tasks should therefore be performed at the most local level, for instance by the individual. Only when problems cannot be solved at one level should there be any intervention from the next level above, which should provide support to the lower level in order that it might assist itself.
[8] Wendy Brown, “Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution”, New York 2015, pp. 9–10.
[9] Colin Crouch, “Post-democracy”, Cambridge (UK) and Malden/MA (USA), 2004.
[10] Defensive architecture discourages certain uses of mostly public space, such as designing park benches so that they cannot be used to sleep on, or designing shop fronts to discourage loitering. This reduces the public visibility of unwanted groups such as the homeless or drug addicts.
[11] Metz/Seeßlen 2017 (see note 4, chapter “Ach, die Gefühle, oder Wie Freiheit zur Produktivkraft wird“).
[12] “It starts with us acquiring the ability, with the help of others, to free ourselves from base natural drives … . The world that has accorded us distance from these natural drives immediately enslaves us again … . By loitering on the threshold between first and second nature, we can form an analysis of this … . Emancipation only brings happiness the second time around.” Christoph Menke in conversation with Alexander Kluge, “Freiheit glückt beim zweiten Mal” [Freedom succeeds the second time around], in “10 vor 11”, dctp.tv, broadcast on 21.11.2016 (translated here from the German).

Exhibition catalogue:
The Value of Freedom
Edited by Stella Rollig and Severin Dünser
Including Texts by Severin Dünser, C Scott Jordan, Oliver Marchart, Elżbieta Matynia and Stella Rolling
Graphic design by grafisches Büro,, Vienna
German/English
Hardcover, 22 × 30.5 cm, 160 pages, 262 illustrations
Verlag für moderne Kunst, Vienna, 2018
ISBN 978-3-903114-63-0

Quick tour through the show (Video)

‘Bottoms Up!’

Featuring works by Martin Guttmann, Julian Göthe, Christina Gruber & Clemens Schneider, Michele di Menna, Fernando Mesquita, Michael Part, Lucia Elena Průša and Marina Sula; curated by Severin Dünser and Olympia Tzortzi

Fluc, Praterstern 5, Vienna

14 March 2018

Social ties are established while drinking, people communicate and interact. The choice of drinks thereby also defines the relation of the participants among each other, while the rituals connected to them force the structure of the way of being together. The artists of the exhibition conceived and appropriated a variety of drinks, respectively formulated instructions on how to use them:
Visitors could lay their hands on Martin Gutmann, trying to find out via thought transfer which artist he was thinking about. If visitors guessed wrong - and that was actually always the case - they had to drink a vodka shot.
Julian Göthe mixed his favorite martini using Noilly Prat Vermouth and Tanqueray Number Ten Gin.
Christina Gruber & Clemens Schneider offered a milkshake and a reflection upon the creeping decline of the idea of the American Dream.
Michele di Menna contributed a drink that she named ‘Cosmic Imbalance’. It consists of two shots in a row: A sweetish whiskey first, then a gherkin water shot.
Fernando Mesquita's contribution was a Portuguese drinking game, the ‘Jogo da moeda’. Each player in the ‘coin game’ can put up to three covered coins on the table - who guesses the total amount of coins is out, who is left at the end has to pay a round.
Michael Part confected a special vodka for the evening, that combined the spirit with the characteristic scent of Chanel's Nr. 5.
Lucia Elena Průša brought cocao from Mexico with her, that she boiled to a hot beverage together with chili, cinnamon and water, which is also drunk like that where the cocoa comes from.
Marina Sula brewed a magic potion using cinnamon, jasmine, grapefruit, rose petals and other ingredients. The love potion was made according to an old recipe and promised that the person who drinks it falls in love with the person who handed it over.
What normally accompanies the communication, became the subject matter in this participative exhibition. In the tradition of relational aesthetics it transformed a conversation piece into a social sculpture – and the other way around.

Video

Eva Koťátková

‘Stomach of the World’

21er Haus, Vienna

14 November 2017 – 18 February 2018

For Eva Koťátková, the evolution of the self is a tightrope walk between internal and external pressures. Featuring a multitude of objects generating an expansive installation, her exhibition on the lower level of the 21er Haus revolves around the film ‘Stomach of the World’ (2017), which forms the fulcrum of this thought. In the surreal and at the same time humorous film, the world is experienced from the perspective of children who perform various exercises.
The children draw our own bodies, an X-ray produced with pen on paper, to document a journey through their insides. Air that others have already used is rebreathed. Speaking becomes a kind of eating, with the teeth biting the words during articulating. The joint autopsy of a stomach becomes a lesson in unlearning empathy. During a puppet show, a stomach is filled to the brim with props. A snake is prepared for a game, the stomach sewn, a plan formulated. During the subsequent hunt, the mouse is always unlucky. The insides of the snake are explored, an exit sought and found. It is hung upside down in the hope that the organs might arrange themselves better in the body. An epidemic is played out until not a single body moves and it is time to apply oneself to somewhere new. The gaze is fixed on a rubbish dump – the open stomach of the world. Things are recycled, the actors become things – to the advantage of both.
In ‘Stomach of the World’ the protagonists imagine the world as a kind of body that internalises and transforms objects and subjects. Koťátková designs the notion of a world as a giant rubbish dump on which things pile up, rot and seep; a world as a stomach, which in turn is filled with stomachs and the things that they devour; the stomach of the world, the machine in the machine. It is about a world in which the ability to empathise is lost, interactions between micro and macro spiral out of control and communication about reality no longer coincides with everyday experiences. A world in which upbringing is equated with manipulation and victims and perpetrators are nothing but roles. The body is stuck in the body of the world. The world as a snake that surges up in its stomach: It is about the politics of eating and being eaten.
Eva Koťátková was born in 1982 in Prague, where she also lives today.

‘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

‘Specular Windows – Reflections on the Self and the Wider World’

Marc Adrian, Martin Arnold, Vittorio Brodmann, Georg Chaimowicz, Adriana Czernin, Josef Dabernig, Gunter Damisch, VALIE EXPORT, Judith Fegerl, Michael Franz / Nadim Vardag, Padhi Frieberger, Bernhard Frue, Walter Gamerith, Bruno Gironcoli, Samara Golden, Judith Hopf, Alfred Hrdlicka, Iman Issa, Martha Jungwirth, Jesper Just, Tillman Kaiser, Johanna Kandl, Joseph Kosuth, Susanne Kriemann, Friedl Kubelka/Peter Weibel, Luiza Margan, Till Megerle, Henri Michaux, Muntean Rosenblum, Walter Pichler, Tobias Pils, Arnulf Rainer, Ugo Rondinone, Isa Rosenberger, Gerhard Rühm, Markus Schinwald, Toni Schmale, Anne Schneider, Richard Teschner, Simon Wachsmuth, Rudolf Wacker, Anna Witt; curated by Severin Dünser and Luisa Ziaja

21er Haus, Vienna

22 June 2017 – 14 January 2018

The point of departure of every thematic group exhibition is the spatiotemporal difference of its parts, bearing in mind that they each stem from specific contexts that are more or less explicit in their aesthetic appearance. By bringing together these parts and especially by positioning individual works in specific constellations, inconspicuous connections between them become discernible, contexts of meaning emerge or are reinforced, and occasionally contradictions arise. The fact that the exhibition as a medium has such an ability to generate meaning makes it a space of negotiation where the visual and narrative threads presented are repeatedly picked up, spun further, dropped, or linked with another point by us as observers. Our curatorial selection and combination of works from the collections of the Belvedere and the Artothek des Bundes is motivated by the question of relevance for the here and now with regard to the tensions addressed in the title ‘Specular Windows: Reflections on the Self and the Wider World’: windows mark the threshold between private and public, they are openings that frame our view of the outside from the inside, whereas from the outside we see ourselves reflected in them. Both motifs—the mirror and the window—are known in the fine arts as metaphors for our perception of the world and our perception of self. This view of the internal, the external, and their interaction is the focus of this exhibition. The show opens with works whose topic is, in the widest sense, the subject’s ability to articulate in the face of an ongoing state of crisis. Joseph Kosuth, for instance, quite literally shines a light on a passage of text from Sigmund Freud’s ‘Psychopathology of Everyday Life’ on linguistic slips in times of war, while Muntean/Rosenblum connect the scene of a violent clash between demonstrators and police with the dissonance between individual memory and official historiography, and Anna Witt encourages viewers to ‘Radical Thinking’ and to sketching a different reality with her video installation. The photographs by Bernhard Frue and Nadim Vardag tell of the body’s presence in its absence: Frue’s negative print ‘Samthansen’ makes plain how the shadow economy of sex work leaves its mark on a public park in the form of improvised screens; in contrast, Vardag exposes mechanisms of fetishization by defamiliarizing an iconic image. ‘A Vicious Undertow’ by Jesper Just revolves around the production of desire in mainstream cinema and means to thwart it; Luiza Margan turns our attention to traditional gender relations by staging a gesture carried out by couples in public spaces, while VALIE EXPORT draws a connection between the normalization of the female body and urban architecture. Both Anne Schneider and Judith Hopf work with anthropomorphic qualities, though on very different levels: Schneider’s ‘Bodyguards’ stand their ground between figuration and abstraction while oscillating in their materiality and chromaticity, whereas Hopf’s waiting, seemingly permanently poised laptop as a quasi-animated object makes reference to the burnout-stricken individual. Finally, Till Megerle’s human wheelbarrow bears witness to a game of dominance and submission, which affects body and mind in equal measure.
Drawings by Megerle can also be found in the following constellation, which is dedicated to phenomena of the spiritual and inquires after the contemporary significance of religious symbols. His drawings of donkeys’ heads reference Georges Bataille, who interpreted them as the ‘most virulent manifestation’ of base materialism in the sense of the Gnostics. Marc Adrian, on the other hand, quotes Goethe’s striking proverb ‘No one against God but God Himself,’ positioning it in a polytheistic context with his depiction of a pagan idol. Adriana Czernin’s abstract drawings unmistakably allude to Islamic art while at the same time metaphorically breaking their symmetry, whereas Simon Wachsmuth’s video shows Iranian men doing physical exercises that date back to clandestine martial arts training and that have been ritualized and imbued with spiritual content over the centuries. Physical rituals as an expression of coping with social, economic, and political escalations are also represented in the works of Walther Gamerith, Isa Rosenberger, and Alfred Hrdlicka. Gamerith’s ‘Dance of the Cripples’ is testament to the woeful state of the war-wounded who must march to the beat of Death incarnate’s drum; he reappears in Rosenberger’s video work ‘Espiral’ in the supratemporal motif of the dance of death and is enmeshed in a dense fabric of references to and continuities since the first global financial crisis. On the other hand, ‘Bal des victimes’ by Hrdlicka deals with the phenomenon of the reputedly cathartic balls said to have been hosted by the survivors of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution in commemoration of their guillotined relatives. In turn, Iman Issa’s installation sets in motion an intellectual game that is rich in associations and revolves around whether we associate a bygone era of luxury and decadence with melancholy or revolution. And Johanna Kandl’s painting focuses on the fringes of the economy and on the precariousness of the everyday in societies shaken by turbo-charged capitalism. Nature and the laws of physics provide the focus of another room. As metaphors for society or the body, analogies emerge here from which conclusions are drawn and passed on to the observers. Peter Weibel, for example, quite literally realizes his appeal for ‘More Warmth among People’. In her work, Susanne Kriemann portrays a monolith of red granite and thus also the artist Robert Smithson, at the site of whose death the stone was erected. Judith Fegerl’s piece uses soldering to connect pieces of copper wire into a fragile installation that reveals a relationship between physics and the physical. Lastly, with the aid of the laws of physics the film ‘Entropy’ by Michael Franz and Nadim Vardag describes an atmosphere in the cultural field that faces a slow emptying of meaning and hence stagnation. The protagonists of ‘Hotel Roccalba’ by Josef Dabernig on the other hand seem to surrender themselves to a conscious, paradoxically positive emptying of meaning when they collectively yet separately pursue activities—though ultimately nothing happens. The intensification of this instance of banality, which shifts into the uncanny or culminates in the horror of the everyday, is testified to in works like Markus Schinwald’s life-size doll ‘Betty’, who swings apathetically— as if controlled by an external source—back and forth on a chair, and Samara Golden’s photograph ‘Mass Murder, Blue Room’, which portrays a hallucinatory room—in which past, present, and future are entwined—as a potential crime scene. In Walter Pichler’s drawing ‘Sleeping Man’, the resting position becomes an existential act and is associated with sickness and death, whereas Martin Arnold’s video ‘Passage à l’acte’ exposes the psychological tension and latent aggression in the idyll of a family scene and Tillman Kaiser’s disconcerting wallpaper ‘Habitación retorcida’ translates the loaded relationship between mother and child into a spatial visualization. This work is linked to another constellation in which everything revolves around the self. Ugo Rondinone’s protagonist in ‘Cigarettesandwich’ saunters along a wall in a loop: in its repetition, the movement becomes a meditative, timeless rotation around himself. Another product of self-reflection is the drawing ‘Me—Embedded Somewhere in (or out) There’ by Gerhard Rühm, in which the artist has used circular hand movements to write the word ‘ich’ (English: ‘I’ or ‘me’) innumerable times in the same place; in contrast, Adriana Czernin transforms internal processes into an interplay between figuration and abstraction in her self-portrait. Self-awareness and exploring one’s own psyche as well as the emphatically anti-rationalist creation of individual, surreal pictorial worlds are themes that unite a whole array of works. The ‘Self-Portrait’ by Georg Chaimowicz, for instance, shows the artist’s head dissolving and testifies to the existential search for identity after the Shoah. Martha Jungwirth’s fantastical ‘Beetle Creature’ arises from associating subconscious gestures with conscious experiences, while Richard Teschner’s ‘Downpour’ personifies the force of nature and depicts it as a monster-like being. On the other hand, with his comic-like anthropomorphic figures Vittorio Brodmann creates intensive visual worlds of emotion just like Gunter Damisch, whose composition originates in its own cosmos beyond our collective understanding of reality. In contrast, the aesthetics of Neue Sachlichkeit set the tone for Rudolf Wacker’s still life ‘Two Heads’, which thrives on the symbolic interplay of its pictorial elements. Henri Michaux’ écriture automatique oscillates between painting and poetry, figure and writing, and was seemingly transferred directly from his subconscious onto the paper. ‘Dealing with Small Quantities’ by Tillman Kaiser suggests the fantasy of a substance-induced journey through space, and with his ‘Pig Altar’ Padhi Frieberger produces a memorial to a fictitious religion while satirizing the idolatrous worship of things in our world. Bruno Gironcoli’s space-consuming sculpture ‘Maternal, Paternal’ represents an enigmatic universe of forms and symbols that appears to address human existence in terms of the physical and the psychological. This intertwining of internal and external worlds also lies at the heart of the works by Tobias Pils and Toni Schmale: Pils’ genuine formal vocabulary holds his works in a limbo between reality and mental imagination, while Schmale’s pieces of nitro frottage on concrete exercise and sketch out a destabilization of conventional interpretive patterns of how desire can be translated into objects. This narrative description of the exhibition is our attempt to briefly outline the interplay of works on display, in the knowledge that it is in fact much more multifaceted and complex, and occasionally more fragile. It is intended to serve as a springboard for new, subjective associations and narratives that intertwine different threads than those we interweave here. As the sum of its parts, the exhibition makes it possible to experience the modern-day tensions between individual and society and simultaneously reflects—appropriately enough for specular windows—effects on the body and mind.

Exhibition catalogue:
Specular Windows – Reflections on the Self and the Wider World
Edited by Stella Rollig, Severin Dünser and Luisa Ziaja
Including texts by Véronique Abpurg, Severin Dünser, Alexander Klee, Michaela Köppl, Naima Wieltschnig, Claudia Slanar and Luisa Ziaja on works by Marc Adrian, Martin Arnold, Vittorio Brodmann, Georg Chaimowicz, Adriana Czernin, Josef Dabernig, Gunter Damisch, VALIE EXPORT, Judith Fegerl, Michael Franz / Nadim Vardag, Padhi Frieberger, Bernhard Frue, Walter Gamerith, Bruno Gironcoli, Samara Golden, Judith Hopf, Alfred Hrdlicka, Iman Issa, Martha Jungwirth, Jesper Just, Tillman Kaiser, Johanna Kandl, Joseph Kosuth, Susanne Kriemann, Friedl Kubelka/Peter Weibel, Luiza Margan, Till Megerle, Henri Michaux, Muntean Rosenblum, Walter Pichler, Tobias Pils, Arnulf Rainer, Ugo Rondinone, Isa Rosenberger, Gerhard Rühm, Markus Schinwald, Toni Schmale, Anne Schneider, Richard Teschner, Simon Wachsmuth, Rudolf Wacker and Anna Witt
Graphic design by Atelier Liska Wesle, Vienna/Berlin
German/English
Softcover, 19 × 24 cm, 136 pages, numerous illustrations in color
Belvedere Vienna, 2017
ISBN 978-3-903114-36-4

Erwin Wurm – ‘Performative Sculptures’

Curated by Severin Dünser and Alfred Weidinger

21er Haus, Vienna

2 June – 10 September 2017

Attempts at Liberation in the Fog of Sculpture

On Erwin Wurm’s Performative Sculptures

“You can try to find the sculptural quality of everything. Whether anything comes of it, is another matter. Is there a limit to sculpturality, and if so, where does it lie? I have been thinking about these things for decades.”1 So says Erwin Wurm in conversation about his work. And indeed, for over 35 years he has been on an artistic Odyssey aimed at expanding the classic concept of sculpture.
It all began with sculptures of wooden slats Wurm banged together with nails in the early 1980s. He then painted them in bright colors, in a fashion similar to the style of the “Neue Wilden” (New Fauves) who were active at the time. Classified as “Neue Skulptur” (New Sculpture) the works were the exact opposite of what was hip at the time, such as Minimal or Conceptual art. But soon these novel ideas also became part of the canon, and Wurm sought again to liberate himself from his association with “Neue Skulptur.” So he discontinued his previous approach to work and tried to overcome the pathos and gravity of art.2 He abandoned the sublime and looked for a different tool with which to redefine his art. What he found was the paradoxical.
In the late 1980s, Wurm began to use garments as the basic material for his sculptures. He placed jackets, trousers, shirts and the like over cubes and cylinders. What made these works effective was their reference to the human body as opposed to the alienation of that same body when imposing a geometrical form upon it. In 1990, he developed this idea into the Hanging Pullovers which were no longer bound to an object, but hung on the wall picture-like, and were lent a sculptural character by being folded in a specific way. Conversely, some garments were folded and then placed in boxes. These were followed by the first “instructions”—drawings and notes to explain how the garments should be folded. In these garment-objects Wurm, on one hand, alluded to the classic methods of sculpture while also making an everyday item into a work of art by depriving it of its function. On the other hand, he shifted the focus away from the object itself to the sculptural process of creation, which was then potentially transferred to the recipients.
Then in the video Still I from 1990 we see a man standing motionless. He has covered his head with a bowl that hides the play of emotions on his face. The video is looped, creating a static impression that runs counter to the medium itself. Here for the first time, using a technique alien to the art, Wurm turns a person into a sculpture—a method that would soon become characteristic of his approach to sculpture.
The Dust Sculptures also saw the light of day in 1990. These consist of white pedestals with dust on their surfaces. But the dust is not everywhere, for there are also blank spaces as if something had stood there for a long time but has now disappeared. Normally of course, sculptures are put on such pedestals in exhibition rooms. With the Dust Sculptures Wurm has had them disappear or moved elsewhere: in our heads, where they must be imagined in all their immateriality. What the artist addresses here is time as a potential sculptural quality, and which expresses itself quite literally through the dust. In addition, Wurm introduces the principle of reproducibility to his creative work—after all, the dust sculptures can be produced again by other people according to exact instructions—and consequently he removes them from transience, while he also satirizes the exhibition business with dust-dry humour.
In Fabio zieht sich an (“Fabio Gets Dressed”), 1992, a man removes all the clothes from a coat stand and puts them on. Consequently, he disappears from the picture as a shapeless, swollen figure. In this piece, Wurm combines his point of departure, clothing, with an actor who performs a sculptural action within a certain time limit. The act of dressing is heightened and becomes a metaphor for sculpture (in that the work deals with volume); Wurm has joined the abstract process of creation with an everyday act and infuses it with social importance.
That same year he also produced the video 59 Stellungen (“59 Positions”) in which garments are put on in 59 different ways and in certain positions. As with Still I the people in the video remain in one position and move only minimally. “For the first time aspects such as ridiculousness and embarrassing behavior were added. Normally, you would like to produce brilliant, serious art, but I noticed that the ridiculous, the embarrassing and the frail are fundamental states of people that interest me more.”3
From here it is only a small step to the One Minute Sculptures, which have been produced from 1997 onwards. In these works, Wurm invites his audience members to themselves become sculptures for the space of a minute. In an interaction with certain objects following the artist’s instructions and comments, poses are adopted and become charged with meaning. The simple arrangements often involve complex questions or brainteasers: for example, think about Montaigne while pressing a felt pen against the wall with your head; guess the mass of a piece of wood that you are lying on; or think about your own digestion while lying down and balancing a bottle of toilet disinfectant on your head. But the instructions can also be simpler: say, being a dog, eating a sausage; drawing a pullover over your head like a terrorist. As well, subjects are asked to depict abstract topics as a kind of monument, such as the theory of labor, the organization of love, the theory of painting or the speculative realist. Paradoxes of a certain ridiculousness have become an integral part of the One Minute Sculptures. Techniques that had been featured in earlier works—the inclusion of observers who perform the work within a specific timeframe (and do so repeatedly), the use of everyday objects and the use of video and photography to capture sculptural actions—were all combined in the One Minute Sculptures.
These were followed by photo series such as Instructions for Idleness (2001) and Instructions on How to be Politically Incorrect (2002), which emphasized the socio-critical aspect of Wurm’s oeuvre again. Also produced at this time was Fat Car (2001), a “life-sized” car, which is bloated and somewhat too well-endowed to meet any ideal of beauty. Fat House follows the same principle: it is simply overweight and overflows at its sides. Once again the artist takes a basic principle of sculpture—namely, the adding of volume—as his starting point. He then transfers the human equivalent of overeating and getting fat from everyday life to the visual world of sculpture. The adipose status symbols of prosperity represent obesity in society and its underlying reasons such as addictive consumption and overproduction. You might say they are vanitas themes, symbols of transience.
In contrast, Wurm did not infuse any human characteristics into the Narrow House of 2010, let alone human proportions. It is not bloated, but has been compressed. Narrow House is a copy of his parental home in its original size—but shrunk down to a width of 1.1 meters. As a prototypical building from the 1960s in Austria, it symbolizes the widely realized dream of owning one’s own home, along with the attendant feeling of confinement that was manifested in petty bourgeois, stuffy and depersonalized living spaces. Finally, the artist goes one step further in the direction of inner feelings with the series Bad Thoughts from 2016. These shapeless clumps of material in tied-up garbage bags reject any ironic reading. The black surface hides from sight the objects inside, and only the amorphous bulges provide clues as to the bags’ content. In their material quality as bronze casts they suggest a heaviness that in combination with the title brings to the viewer dark moods and imaginings. There is something similarly and suggestively introspective about a body of work that Wurm was been working on with increasing intensely since 2011, namely the Performative Sculptures.
These include the previously mentioned Hanging Pullovers from 1990, and Pillow from 1992. The cushion can also be “worked” according to drawn instructions and turned “into a face,” “chicken,” “neck,” “ass” or ”someone squatting”. Wurm continued this group of works from 2012 with House Attack. This comprises models of European and American houses, some of them well-known buildings or by famous architects, and some anonymous buildings with which Wurm has a personal connection. The artist made the models out of clay and before being cast, he subjected them to further treatment: he attacked them in every conceivable manner. He might bash in a model, or sit on it and thereby squash it. For example, he lay down on his parental home and squashed it out of shape thanks to his body weight; he jumped onto the Fools Tower (a psychiatric hospital in Vienna), inflicted gashes on San Quentin prison, dug a hole into the high-security prison Stammheim, and aimed a kick at a German World War II bunker. In other words, certain types of buildings—those associated with the function of correcting behavior—are maltreated. The destruction of the closed shape—and thus the shell that keeps life in a certain order—becomes a rebellion against conformism and regulation. For Abstract Attack (2013), Wurm let sausages loose on the houses. The sausage is likewise a symbol of Western consumer culture. And it is an abstraction of food, as it is hardly possible to tell just what its innards are comprised of. The title Abstract Attack derives from this analogy, and provides an ironic spin on the almost Modernist austerity of House Attack.
From 2015, Wurm has developed two additional sub-groups to the Performative Sculptures, namely Furnitures und Objects. For Furnitures, he focuses on items such as sofas, armchairs, lounges, chests-of-drawers and refrigerators. Objects comprises such items as a soap dispenser, a wall clock, a mobile phone, a tape measure and a pistol. Here again Wurm follows the same principle that he used for House Attack. He makes models out of clay – which in the case of the Objects sometimes go beyond the size of the original—and he finds ways of acting violently towards them, even including running them over with a car. At the end he often casts the damaged models in bronze, aluminium, iron or synthetic resin, or he coats them with paint.
A final subgroup completes the Performative Sculptures. The works of Beat and Treat are begun in 2001, but are anticipated as early as 1995. However, unlike the other Performative Sculptures there is nothing mimetic about them. They are not based on houses or other objects. Their starting point is a material in its raw industrial form: the block of clay. The artist works the block with the entire force of his body. As the title infers he “beats and treats” the clay, going wild over it until the work is finished. It is hardly surprising that he has used the title Zornskulpturen (“Anger Sculptures”) to describe these works.
In the Performative Sculptures the artist seems to give free rein to his aggression; in other words, he portrays an expression of anger towards something. As in his earlier works he borrows from everyday life when he transfers such outbreaks of anger to the creative sculptural process. In doing so he exaggerates the principle of the sculptural gesture and satirizes it. Similarly, in these works allusions are made to the ridiculous and the embarrassing—after all, losing one’s self-control and destroying things in order to get rid of bottled up anger usually tends to happen in private. And if it does happen in public, onlookers generally feel embarrassed.
Erwin Wurm emotionalizes sculptural creativity here. At the same time, he psychologizes the observers’ point of view as they scan the objects for traces, and attempt to draw conclusions about the artist’s motives, his darkest depths and state of mind at the time of the sculptural action.
It is important for Erwin Wurm to be physically involved himself again: “I have noticed that many artists hardly do almost nothing at all themselves, but rather let their works be produced by others. That really strikes me. It irritates me because I have lost contact to my work, so to speak. And so I am trying to regain that contact, by creating everything myself, or at least for the most part by myself.”4 Naturally, one can argue that Wurm has many of his works performed by others—such as the One Minute Sculptures—and that this is a fundamental part of his oeuvre. Others might object that new ideas are largely developed during hands-on experimentation, an experience that cannot be made up for by abstract planning, and is indispensable for the continuation of a complete work. In addition, Wurm has never relinquished his role as author: even when visitors are allowed to perform his sculptures the artist remains the author of the work.
His Performative Sculptures are not only charged with emotion, they are also charged with authorship. Indeed, in this body of work authorship is overdrawn. And as an expression of this authorship the impacts of the artist’s body upon the material can very definitely be read as gestures. These gestures transport the aura of the unique, but simultaneously question them in their reproducibility by being cast. That said, the direct nature of the gestures supports the maintenance of an authenticity of expression. What is at stake here—and this is similar to gestural painting in Arte Informale—is the transparency of the gestural impulse, the energy transferred to the material. In emphasizing the creative process, implications of direct personal expression and speculations regarding traces of the apparently unconscious are thus connected here.
Through this exaggeration Erwin Wurm’s gestures can also be read as critical allusions to the myth of the artist, even though the artist himself leaves us in the dark about the status of his actions. Nonetheless, gestural expression is receiving greater attention again today as it unites qualities that counter the digitalization of everyday life with something refreshingly physical.
The main impression left behind by the Performative Sculptures is the emphasis on a creative process by which Erwin Wurm makes the physical objects in this body of work almost literally collide. The moral of the story? Things lack permanency, but by opting to take action it is possible to take control of one’s life. What Wurm advocates in other words is critical reflection of one’s own actions in the context of society, so as not to become an object (rather than a subject) oneself. But as Erwin Wurm himself once said: “My work deals with the drama of the triviality of existence. Whether you try to get a handle on it through philosophy or a diet, in the end you always draw the short straw.”

1 Erwin Wurm in interview with Tobias Haberl, “Gott sei Dank gibt es noch die dunkle Seite,” in: Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, no. 46, 18 Nov., 2016, p. 25.
2 See Erwin Wurm in conversation with Max Hollein, “Photography Knocks at the Door,” in: Aperture, autumn 2013, p. 50.
3 Erwin Wurm in interview with Brigitte Neider-Olufs, “Die Welt wird zunehmend breiter,” in: Wiener Zeitung, 15 Oct. 2010.
4 “I have come to realize how much contemporary art suffers, or has suffered, from the fact that artists’ studios have been transformed into manufacturing workshops. I have noticed that many artists do almost nothing at all themselves, but rather let their works be produced by others. That really strikes me. It irritates me because I have lost contact with my work, so to speak. And so I am trying to get that contact back again by creating everything myself, or at least for the most part by myself.” – Wurm/Hollein 2013 (as note 2), p. 51.

Exhibition catalogue:
Erwin Wurm – Performative Sculptures
Edited by Stella Rollig, Severin Dünser and Alfred Weidinger
Including Texts by Severin Dünser and Stella Rollig as well as an interview between Erwin Wurm and Alfred Weidinger
Graphic design by Atelier Liska Wesle, Vienna/Berlin
German/English
Hardcover, 29 x 22.5 cm, 216 pages, numerous illustrations in color and b/w
Verlag für moderne Kunst, Vienna, 2017
ISBN 978-3-903114-40-1

‘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;

‘The Gestural’

Thomas Bayrle, Andy Boot, Christian Falsnaes, Roy Lichtenstein, Klaus Mosettig, Laura Owens, Markus Prachensky, Roman Signer

21er Raum at 21er Haus, Vienna

8 September — 20 November 2016

Painting is the application of paint onto a surface. Brushstrokes are the constituent parts that make up an image. Unified through the process of painting, it is around these individual elements that this exhibition revolves.

A recent donation to the Belvedere, the painting ‘Rouges différents sur noir - Liechtenstein’ by Markus Prachensky, will act as the starting point for a discussion surrounding aspects of style and the very essence of the gestural. Completed in 1956/57, the painting was named after the Liechtensteinstraße, where Prachensky created it in a studio he shared with Wolfgang Hollegha. Incidentally, this was the place where these two founded the artist group “Galerie St. Stephan” in 1956 together with Josef Mikl and Arnulf Rainer. The painting comes from an initial series of images in which Prachensky painted with red paint on a black background. The color red became a recurring element and something of a characteristic in the works that followed. Prachensky’s work is totally committed to Informalism, which made its way to Vienna from Paris, where it was initiated at the end of the 1940s. The movement was developed in response to the phenomenon of geometric abstraction, with which it shared a rejection of classical concepts of composition. However, unlike geometric abstraction, Informalism was defined by its formlessness and spontaneity. Prachensky was, therefore, mainly preoccupied with the tracing of a gestural impulse and the energy applied to a canvas.

What Prachensky emphasizes in this image is the procedural moment in the production of the image – with all its implications, reaching from unmitigated personal expression to speculation around its echoes of the unconscious. These gestures on a monochrome background come forth as clearly legible and thereby manifest a stark contrast. They are themselves transformed into their own kind of sign, a recognizable symbol of the gesture. This was also employed by Roy Lichtenstein in his series Brushstrokes, which took form between 1965 and 1968. Ironically, using oil on canvas, Lichtenstein transformed individual, overlapping brushstrokes into his typical cartoon style – making, as it were, caricatures out of the spontaneous moment, while also referring back to Abstract Expressionism. In the case of the Little Big Painting Reproduction, the theme of the series was also translated into chromography, industrially reproducing the uniqueness of painting and reducing personal expression ad absurdum.

Thomas Bayrle works with reproductions and the repetition of forms. As in Pop Art, these forms often refer to objects of consumer culture and can thus be read through a socially critical lens. He distorts individual pictorial elements by way of mechanical and digital manipulation; from there arise systematic structures that tend to reflect their constituent parts and so refer to the underlying logic behind image making. In Variations of a Brushstroke, Bayrle appointed the brushstroke as the primary motif. Arranged in differing deformations that amount to a collage covering the entire picture’s surface, this meta-painting questions the authenticity of its expression through its mechanical repetition.

Since 2007, Klaus Mosettig has been translating works by other artists into his own drawings. He projects the works onto paper and, over months of diligent work, records his interpretation into different shades of gray in a way reminiscent of print processes. Despite his elaborate manual process, Mosettig leaves behind no detectable mark of his hand. And yet, he has afforded his works an artistic autonomy beyond the originals they seek to reproduce. This could have to do with the time he invests in his works, which becomes clear upon close inspection. The template for Informel 2 was a child’s drawing. Analogous to the movement mentioned in title, the child’s drawing is an attempt toward direct expression, toward the experimental search for a personal visual language. Mosettig alters the reception of small gestures through appropriation, by copying them with pencil and enlarging them.

Roman Signer is known for his actions, but sees himself as a sculptor whose works deal with temporality, speed, and transformative processes. Pyrotechnics are a recurring element in his oeuvre. In the 2006 video Punkt, he sits at an easel in a meadow, dips his brush in paint and holds it to the canvas. Shortly thereafter, a box explodes behind him and startles him. Jumping at the sudden loud noise, he plants a point on the painting surface. The result of Signer’s premeditated startle-response corresponds almost literally to the transference of energy to the canvas that was realized by Informalism – save that Signer exaggerated this process of gestural painting in order to find an authentic expression of his own.

Andy Boot dealt in the depiction of expressive gestures early on, an example being his work e who remained was M that is part of the Belvedere collection. Boot takes noodles that have been dipped in colored paint and lets them fall to the surface of a canvas placed on the ground. The result is a neo-abstract-expressionistic pattern that dilutes the absurdity of the gestural moment to that of an ornament, thereby caricaturing its dynamism as illusionism. However, his 2012 work Untitled (light blue) indulges in these gestures without a hint of irony. In this work, he draped a light blue ribbon typically used in rhythmic gymnastics within the frame and filled it with wax. The use of this sports device meant to make movement more visible somehow produces something reminiscent of an abstract composition – a sort of meta-painting that points to the gestural in painting, without itself actually being painted.

Laura Owens as a painter is known for both her abstract and figurative works that cross and overlap in their application of different media, while taking a variety of references from art history and elements of popular and folk culture. She often chooses to focus on smaller aspects and details in her images when she tries out new techniques, thereby changing the style once again. The brushstroke as a decorative element and sign, feature increasingly within her works over the past few years. For example, her 2013 work Untitled (Clock Painting) does not stray far from the decorative. In this painting, she has incorporated part of a clockwork in which a hand moves over the image. What is part of the process of painting is also linguistically part of the clock: the pointer is also called “hand” and the strike of the hour “stroke.”  Therefore, the second hand can quite literally be read as a metaphor for the arm that moves while painting on canvas and virtually takes the form of a stroke, enabling Owens’ allusion to time as a factor in the production of images.

Performance being his medium of choice, Christian Falsnaes works with pre-made scripts that he follows more or less, and which motivate the audience to interact. He is concerned with making group dynamics accessible, but also with drawing attention to rituals and norms of behavior, particularly those within the art world. For this exhibition, Falsnaes has developed a new iteration of his piece Existing Things, in which the public is prompted to paint a picture together with a performer acting as the brush. The action effectively dissolves individual authorship into a collective process, leaving multicolored brushstrokes within the exhibition. 

In general, the brushstroke stands alone as a metaphor for art itself and, especially within the contemporary context, can be read with critical reference to the myth of the artist. The exhibition shows how the views of individual authorship, artistic authenticity, and originality have changed. These categories, terms which we use to perceive and reflect upon art, seem never to have fallen out of our collective imagination. However, the possibilities afforded by technical reproduction and medialisation have transformed our attitude towards the nature of the gestural in painting. Gestural expression has recently gained new appreciation because of its unification of qualities that hold something genuine, unaffected, and refreshingly corporeal over the digitization of our everyday lives.