Ausstellungsdetails (49)
‘Bread and Digestifs’
With works by Eleni Bagaki, Carina Brandes, Anastasia Douka, Francesco Gennari, Sophie Gogl, Lisa Holzer, Christian Jankowski, Jiří Kovanda, Soshiro Matsubara, Orestis Mavroudis, Maria Nikiforaki, Daniel Stempfer, Marina Sula and Philipp Timischl, a short film by Jørgen Leth and a hand axe
Callirrhoë, Athens
27 January – 24 March 2022
In addition to fat and protein, humans primarily need carbohydrates for their metabolism. The WHO recommends a 55-75% calorie content of carbohydrates in the diet. Bread can deliver that. It is compact energy and a staple food due to its ease of manufacture, storage and transport. You need bread to function. You earn bread by working. You work so that you have something to drink, something to eat, something to wear and something to sleep in. Those who earned themselves a place to sleep can seclude. But isn't isolation the downside of privacy? Bread also becomes hard if it lies around for too long. But if you have a stone in your stomach, you still have to digest it.
A stone in your hand, on the other hand, can be a tool. The stone in the exhibition used to be a tool a long time ago. Actually, the hand axe is the first tool to be used by humans. It's unknown what it was used for. But it's obvious that it had one or more functions connected to basic human needs.
Just a stone’s throw away in history is the house that provides shelter. In the show, Jiří Kovanda made one out of sugar. Sugar is sweet; sugar has not been always available -as it is today- and sugar tends to melt away under rain and heat. Thus, it is obviously not the best material for a house, but something that people like to have around them.
The bread by Daniel Stempfer is nothing edible. It's a 3D print made after scans. During the pandemic, the only unregulated activity left in the public space of Hong Kong was individual sports. The artist used the salt of his sweat to bake bread (that provides energy for more sporting activities). Thus, the 3D print is an archiving of the cycles of absorbing and releasing energy during the pandemic.
The snail on the photograph of Francesco Gennari also goes in circles. Having lost its footing on a dollop of whipped cream, it starts to turn around itself instead of getting any further.
In Carina Brandes's photograph, the artist is hanging on a string to dry in the sun, like the textiles next to her. The human becomes inactive, the subject becomes an object, pausing in a state of awaiting its reactivation in a brighter future.
In her painting, Eleni Bagaki lets herself "immerse under the sun". Only the feet are sticking out of the water, becoming a fragment of the body- just like her "standing hand" that is an image of a body part and not an actual body, more like the debris of an ancient sculpture that once portrayed an individual now forgotten.
Philipp Timischl's depiction of a young man goes into an opposite direction. He seems highly active, trained and muscular. His self-optimization becomes manifest in building his body, thus also embodying an object.
The man and the woman in Jørgen Leth's film are presented in a way that one would rather expect to see in an animal documentary. We observe our objects of interest during their everyday activities, some eccentric performances and we experience their weak moments in order to learn about "the perfect human".
In Christian Jankowski's video, we see him walk into a supermarket with a bow in his hands. He is on the prowl, but what he is hunting down are processed foods and goods that he pierces with arrows. He is going back to the roots, drastically ironing out the alienations and abstractions of modern life.
Sophie Gogl's painting is an enlargement of an objet trouvé (found object): The cap of a Fanta bottle. On an inscription, it asks the buyer to recycle it, thus claiming the status of a speaking subject (requesting to be treated like an object that has lost its use) - while also reducing the role of the consumer to a passive one.
A still life of consumer goods by Marina Sula kidnaps the formal language of advertising photography to exaggerate the banality of the things that surround us. Another one shows two motorcyclists sleeping on a boat, with their armor and helmets taken down - vulnerable for a moment before they rush away again.
The tin lid of Anastasia Douka's work is perforated with the word "sex", connecting the world of food and bodily desires. But it also raises associations to things that were conserved (in masses) and suddenly emerge again.
Lisa Holzer's grapes play with being objects of desire: they "(always) hang too high (for almost everyone), they remain a promise, they are not to reach like the positive magical effects of the trickle-down-effect. They trickle downstairs and are not to be found anywhere."
The grapes in Maria Nikiforaki's video are pressed between the chest of a man and the feet of a woman. The collaborative making of wine here shows its erotic potential between excess and expenditure and points towards an alternative, more pleasurable idea of economy.
In the two paintings by Soshiro Matsubara, two heads are depicted kissing each other. The protagonists are Oskar Kokoschka and Alma Mahler, who had an affair over the course of 3 years that ended abruptly in 1914. It's all about tragic love and loss and its recurring commemoration.
Finally, Orestis Mavroudis's "Note on Death #5" depicts the 16 orders of soil taxonomy in a side view of the depth of 110 cm. The cut-outs represent the gap between 30 and 110 cm, in which a coffin is normally buried. And that's where we turn into humus, becoming a good foundation for new forms of life.
The exhibition was kindly supported by the Federal Ministry of the Republic of Austria for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport
Lois Weinberger
‘Basics’
Belvedere 21, Vienna
1 July – 24 October 2021
Basics
The man on the catalogue cover wears a piece of seashell jewelry under his nose as though he were a member of an Indigenous community. He also wears glasses and a shirt; his gaze is downcast and serious. The face belongs to Lois Weinberger, and he has painted it green. Why does he present himself in this manner? Is he trying to provoke us with a stereotype of the Civilized Savage? Or does he wish to embody a Gregor Samsa, who one morning “found he had turned into a large verminous insect”?[1]
Franz Kafka’s character is crushed by the contradiction between self-perception and how others see him. He feels human yet is treated like a beast. He appears to be the “other” even though a self akin to those around him is hidden within him. As an ostensibly instinct-driven bug, Gregor Samsa is the personification of nature in contrast with rational humankind and its culture.
The same stigma—that he is at the mercy of his urges—is attached to Aristaeus in Virgil’s ‘Georgics’.[2] He tries to rape Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus; fleeing him, she is bitten by a serpent and dies. Her sisters avenge her by killing Aristaeus’s bees. Seeking to regain the favor of the gods, Aristaeus sacrifices four bulls and four heifers at Eurydice’s tomb. Nine days later, bees swarm forth from the cadavers.
Kafka used the animal form to manifest his character’s nonconformism, his failure to comply with his community’s expectations. Gregor Samsa withdraws from society and its conventions of behavior, so much so that he eventually perishes. The story of Virgil’s Aristaeus, by contrast, comes to a more comforting end. He reflects on his misdeed and demonstrates his return to civilized behavior with a sacrificial offering, which is transformed in turn into the bees that Aristaeus had previously lost due to his actions.
Nature and culture collide in both stories; clear boundaries are drawn and transgressed. There are parallels here with Weinberger’s oeuvre, albeit ones that no more than touch on the thematic core of his self-portrait. Unlike the two narratives, the latter is not about morality but about relations. Still, it has more to do with Virgil’s bees than with Kafka’s bug: the notion that bee colonies originate from the cadavers of cattle was widespread in antiquity. Such nascence of new life out of the passing of the old bears a resemblance to what Weinberger embodies in the photograph. For he is impersonating neither an insectoid nor a Civilized Savage—and certainly not a “little green man”—but the Green Man.
The Green Man is a recurring figure in Christian ecclesiastical architecture.[3] The motif of the face from which leaves sprout melds human and plant in a hybrid creature. Scholars locate its likely provenance in the pre-Christian area. As an expression of polytheistic religious beliefs, the Green Man might have ancestors in Persian, Celtic, and Roman symbolism. Leafage with human figures appeared as a decorative element in Roman temples; Christian churches may subsequently have adopted it to visualize their claim to legitimate succession. Alternatively, such cultural appropriation may have integrated existing local beliefs into Christian iconography. Hence the archetype’s amenability to a range of interpretations: from an echo of the pagan imaginary of a forest deity, a representation of a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature and symbol of growth and prosperity; to the sylvan sprite, an embodiment of dark, untamed, and dangerous nature and antagonist of the light of Christian revelation; to the head overgrown with vegetation, a memento mori reminding the beholder of the impermanence of all existence.[4]
Just as the head of the Green Man stands pars pro toto for the human being, Lois Weinberger’s self-portrait encapsulates the major thematic complexes of his oeuvre. The latter probes existential questions concerning the relationship between subject and world: What constitutes my being? How do formative cultural influences, my own history and that of my family, and geographical circumstances both empower and constrain me? What are the implications of rationalization and the consequent alienation from nature? Are nature and culture actually opposites? Is culture not part of nature? Can I even conceive of my being outside of nature?
Weinberger’s answers reflect his eclectic readings, synthesizing ideas from philosophy (Roland Barthes, Gregory Bateson, Emil M. Cioran, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and Martin Heidegger), sociology and cultural studies (Stuart Hall), ethnology (Hans Peter Duerr, Hubert Fichte, Michel Leiris, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Aby Warburg), art and cultural history (Kathleen Basford), biology (Rupert Riedl, Erwin Schrödinger, and Edward O. Wilson), and literature (Jean Genet, Peter Handke, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Laurence Sterne, Henry David Thoreau, and Vergil). As his book recommendations illustrate, he is usually most interested in works of a Post-Structuralist bent that cross disciplinary boundaries in pursuit of holistic approaches (which he also finds in Eastern thinking). He developed a personal ecological philosophy, “an ethico-political articulation […] between the three ecological registers (the environment, social relations and human subjectivity),” as Guattari sums up his own project of an ecosophy.[5]
Weinberger, too, was “tired of trees,” just like Deleuze and Guattari, who propose to discard the tree as the model for systems of knowledge structured by hierarchies and dichotomies in favor of the rhizome.[6] In contradistinction to the rigid organization of the tree, the rhizome does not exert a regulative authority over interpretations, instead representing a complex ensemble of cross-connections that knows no dependencies but only interrelations. The goal is to shift the focus of interest from categories and states of affairs to vectors in a performance of information. In the same spirit, Weinberger, instead of modeling his oeuvre on the bildungsroman, in which one follows thing from another, grew it as a heterogeneous organism in which a complex coexistence of diverse equipollent narratives can continually engender novel interconnections.
Weinberger’s exhibition lends expression to this anarchic interrelationality. It is the last presentation for which he personally compiled a selection of works; it is not a retrospective that divides his oeuvre into creative periods or tries to spell out its evolutionary logic. Although ‘Basics’ gathers works made between the 1970s and 2020, it puts the focus on reciprocities within this artistic ecosystem. Which currents, then, can we trace in the exhibition’s meandering circular flows?
The “basics” on which most of the works build convey Weinberger’s understanding of nature. Mankind’s use of nature and its symptoms, like environmental pollution and climate change, are increasingly discussed as problematic, suggesting an existential need to subject this relationship to critical scrutiny. Weinberger does not subscribe to those proposals for practical solutions that seek to restore the natural environment, implying an ideal vision of a pure and pristine nature. To his mind, the problem is rooted in much more profound questions concerning humankind’s self-conception. Culture and nature, he believes, are not opposites; man is neither nature’s ruler nor its steward but part of it. Rather than seeking a reconciliation with and return to nature, he aims at a paradigm shift in which the anthropocentric model of this relationship and the projections onto the “environment” bound up with it are supplanted by a holistic perspective, one in which humans come into view as one phenomenon among others of equal value and nature’s autonomy from our projections is recognized.[7] ‘Skulptur La Gomera’ (La Gomera Sculpture), for instance, a shrub with shoe soles hanging on its branches, might be interpreted as Surrealist. But it is actually a realistic representation, one in which human products are self-evidently borne by a plant as though they were leaves or fruit. The same applies to ‘Baumskulptur’ (Tree Sculpture), though this one wears a bucket like a lampshade. ‘Roter Faden’ (Red Thread), too, is a visualization of an all-embracing nature. Birds use the product of culture to build a nest that the tree eventually grows around. In ‘Invasion’, fungi pervade the space of culture that is the exhibition room; in ‘Raum’ (Space), meanwhile, a plant is isolated in an improvised architecture—or, as Franziska Weinberger puts it, the artist “dreamed” himself and the plant “into the white cube.”[8] The grasses plaited together like strands of hair in ‘Zopf’ (Braid) read as a transgressive gesture, as do the watercolors in the series of ‘Wildniskonstruktionen’ (Wilderness Constructions), which expose the idea of the “wilderness” as a human construct and (de)valuing categorization.[9]
By transforming a landfill into a leisure park, Weinberger’s ‘Hiriya Dump’ aims to let the visitor experience the repressed remains of our consumerist dreams as though in an excavation site that presents itself to the eye as a kind of cultural landscape. Culture as nature—that is also the essence of the garden, whose history is as old as human sedentism. The latter was one prerequisite for horticulture and agriculture and gave rise to the concept of property as well as the cultivation of green spaces, which underlies the idea of ordering nature. Order eventually turned into subordination, and the first great civilizations devised suitable ancillary structures such as fences and walls within which they laid out gardens.[10] Gardens were an expression of fertility and prosperity. They were not only retreats from city life but, as representations of empire, also symbolized the ruler’s sovereignty over everything within its bounds. Weinberger counters the metaphoric connotations of the garden with ‘Gebiet I’ (Area I): he collected wild plants growing in urban environments and propagates them on an unused piece of land he has leased for the purpose to resettle them on brownfields, from which he extracts other plants that he releases into the city in turn. By cultivating this “ruderal society,” he accelerates migration flows and negates habitat boundaries arbitrarily imposed on nature. Such efforts to remedy marginalization carry distinct political overtones, as his ‘Portable Gardens’ underscore, PVC bags he filled with soil and set up as refuges for seeds scattered by the wind and animals. Not coincidentally, immigrants often use just such bags to carry all their worldly belongings with them.[11] For his ‘Wild Cube’, by contrast, he draws boundaries of his own. The work is the opposite of the white cube, a literal hortus conclusus.[12] Only this time it is not nature that is locked up in a cage but the human being that is held at a distance, locked out of an asylum for flora and fauna that demonstrates the untamed force of nature.
‘Laubreise’ (Journey of Leaves), meanwhile, draws our attention to processes. It was created in collaboration with Franziska Weinberger, who has been a coauthor on several projects for public settings since 1999.[13] And such cooperation is inherent to the installation: foliage, lop, and algae are piled up in a rectangular block that is slowly decomposed by soil organisms. Crammed into a small space, the quasi-alchemical transformation of “waste” into nutrient-rich humus exudes an air of the abject. The sensually vivid metamorphosis illustrates the transitoriness of all existence—the cycles of becoming and passing away that we, too, are subject to.
A situation of transit is also rendered in the works in the series ‘Wege’ (Paths). Paths are a kind of barrier between tracts of land, but also a connective element. In prefacing the collected edition of his writings with the epigraph “ways—not works” and equating thinking with traveling along paths, and hence with the process of self-knowledge within the world, Heidegger gestures toward a web of movements that limn existence as an act of differentiation.[14] Weinberger here addresses the same structure of vectors, although his prototype are the tunnels carved by bark beetles rather than road networks or veins. The functional logic of these sinuous trajectories eludes us. The function of wayside sheds, by contrast, is readily comprehensible. Weinberger encountered them in Greece, where they serve not only as memorials to victims of accidents, but also to store provisions offered by locals to wayfarers who might need them. The artist reprises this philanthropic idea in his ‘Wegrandhaus’ (Wayside House), which he supplied with poems on pieces of paper on which the visitor can print bark-beetle tunnels (in analogy with the hiker’s passbooks in which stamps earned on the summits document the distances they have covered).
Weinberger’s ‘Hochhaus für Vögel’ (Skyscraper for Birds) is his take on a different kind of dwelling. Transposing the human rationalization of residential real estate into the animal kingdom, he articulates a trenchant critique of the indignity of living conditions subjected to the pressures of efficiency enhancement. Heidegger has characterized dwelling as the essence of being and building as the portrayal of its processual quality.[15] Weinberger, too, takes an interest in this nexus between dwelling and being within the built reality of a house, exploring it in his multipart work ‘Debris Field’, which gathers around seven centuries of history in the form of countless found objects he retrieved from his parents’ farmhouse in Stams, where he grew up. In his psycho-archaeology, he does not just return to his roots, he unearths them: his excavation maps the “debris field” of his personal origins, while also charting a referential system of the everyday lives of peasants.
Weinberger wore a filter mask during the work in the dusty environment that he subsequently gave to his sculpture ‘Bischof’ (Bishop). The figure, whose rootstock face moreover echoes the Green Man motif, emblematizes religious piety—another integral part of peasant life in Stams—as a common ground across cultural differences. Agrarian societies’ dependency on nature forces them to be attentive to it. Observations of inexplicable phenomena used to be explained by religious beliefs or, failing that, by magical powers; a way of thinking not fundamentally different from what Claude Lévi-Strauss has characterized as the “savage mind” in cultures living in close touch with nature, which, instead of rationalizing their fragmentary perceptions, weave them together into a patchwork of stories that let them make direct sense of observations. Inducing or averting certain situations requires the performance of rituals that are said to be immediately effective. Weinberger enacts just such a ritual in ‘Home Voodoo I’, which amalgamates local traditional customs and family mythology with voodoo, Catholic, and pagan practices in a humoristic ceremony: a ritual of purification and liberation whose modus operandi he describes as “chthonic—arising from the Earth.” Something similar is at work in ‘Basics—die Idee einer Ausdehnung’ (Basics—The Idea of an Expansion). The seven sculptures, resting on their backs like unfinished golems awaiting morphogenesis, were molded out of an earthen mix around pieces of wood. The loamy primeval forms suggest both the developmental process and the pleasure of creation, visualizing becoming as the rhythmical performativity of nature and fundamental condition of being.
The principle behind these repeated changes of direction that many of Lois Weinberger’s works retrace is a model that conceives of the essence of being as permanent change: nothing is, everything is becoming, or to put it with Heraclitus, “everything flows.” The exhibition ‘Basics’ may likewise be seen as a scrollwork of interwoven vectors that define possible ways of navigating oneself and one’s thinking through the artist’s oeuvre. This sprawling rhizome was created by one who set forth from a farmstead to become an ornamental blacksmith and metalworker, an actor, and, finally, a visual artist. One who was socialized in a time of cultural upheavals—the 1968 protests were making headlines—and took inspiration from Minimal and Land Art, the Wiener Gruppe, Surrealism, and the Junge Wilde to forge the singular path of his own conceptual art. One who, unlike Joseph Beuys, did not mean to undertake a controlled greening of the city, but embraced rank growth and allowed the marginal to come to the fore. Lois Weinberger was one who became—also becoming a Green Man, adroitly embodying becoming and transience in their inevitability. And he was one who left in order to stay: “When all the plants will have moved away from my / place I destined for them / which happens anyway / I will no longer be the gardener / but innocently use their variety. The essence of my gardening has condensed into a single / flowerpot outdoors / filled with poor soil / a portable garden / to be taken along on inspections in the field and forgotten somewhere. But maybe by planting plants outside my territory in the open I have already foreseen and anticipated / that the concern with plants and gardens can only lead beyond them. Toward the sky / Toward the ground.”[16]
[1] Franz Kafka, ‘The Metamorphosis’ [1915], in ‘The Metamorphosis and Other Stories’, trans. John R. Williams (Hertfordshire, 2011) opening sentence.
[2] Virgil, ‘Georgics’ [29 BCE], in ‘Virgil: Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid’, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb Classical Liberary (Cambridge, Mass., 1916), book 4, verses 281–558.
[3] Lady Raglan coined the term in her essay “The ‘Green Man’ in Church Architecture,” ‘Folklore 50’, no. 1 (March 1939), pp. 45–57. ‘Blattmaske’ (“leaf-mask”) is the more common designation in the German-speaking countries.
[4] Cf. also Kathleen Basford, ‘The Green Man’ (Ipswich, 1978), pp. 9–22.
[5] Félix Guattari, ‘The Three Ecologies’, trans. Ian Pindar/Paul Sutton (London/New York, 2000), p. 28.
[6] Gilles Deleuze/Félix Guattari, ‘A Thousand Plateaus’, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis/London, 1987), p. 36.
[7] In this respect, Weinberger’s standpoint is akin to positions of speculative realism, which postulate a reality that is independent of man and autonomous, existing without relation to human thought and reason. Yet it also evinces an affinity to the thinking of Heidegger, who, as Hannah Arendt put it, “never thinks ‘about’ something. He thinks something,” Hannah Arendt, ‘Heidegger at Eighty’, in ‘Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding’, 1953–1975, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York, 2018), p. 422.
[8] Around 1978–79, when this work was made, Lois Weinberger was still living in the Tyrolean countryside; he did not start showing his works in exhibitions until 1980.
[9] It is evaluative in the sense that the idea of “wilderness” makes sense only from the vantage point of culture.
[10] The term “paradise”, for example, derives from the Avestan pairi-da?za, which may be literally translated as “walled enclosure” and was the name for Persian royal gardens in antiquity.
[11] Similarly, ‘Stein mit Federn’ (Stone with Feathers), a literal “flying stone,” is an unmistakably political work.
[12] Latin for “enclosed” or “closed garden.”
[13] The public interest in their respective roles in making the works eventually leads them to the decision to desist from subsuming what remain shared intellectual processes under a shared authorship in order to eliminate the distraction from the essential substance of the works.
[14] “Time and again, thinking follows in the same writings, or goes by its own attempts on the trail where the Fieldpath passes through the field […] The expanse of all grown things which dwell around the Fieldpath bestows the world.” Martin Heidegger, ‘The Fieldpath,’ trans. Berit Mexia, ‘Journal of Chinese Philosophy’ 13, no. 4 (December 1986), pp. 455–58.
[15] “Let us think for a while of a farmhouse in the Black Forest, which was built some two hundred years ago by the dwelling of peasants. Here the self-sufficiency of the power to let earth and heaven, divinities and mortals enter in simple oneness into things, ordered the house. It placed the farm on the wind-sheltered mountain slope, looking south, among the meadows close to the spring. It gave it its wide overhanging shingle roof whose proper slope bears up under the burden of snow, and which, reaching deep down, shields the chambers against the storms of the long winter-nights. It did not forget the altar corner behind the community table; it made room in its chamber for the hallowed places of childbed and the ‘tree of the dead’—for that is what they call a coffin there: the Totenbaum—and in this way it designed for the different generations under one roof the character of their journey through time. A craft which, itself sprung from dwelling, still uses its tools and frames as things, built the farmhouse.” Martin Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking,’ in ‘Poetry, Language, Thought’, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York, 1971), p. 160.
[16] Lois Weinberger, ‘Notes from the Hortus’ (Ostfildern-Ruit, 1997), p. 19; translation modified based on the original: ‘Lois Weinberger, Vienna 1996,’ in ‘Lois & Franziska Weinberger,’ exh. cat., Kunstverein Hannover; Villa Merkel, Esslingen (Hannover, 2003), p. 85.
Translated from German by Gerrit Jackson
Exhibition catalogue:
Lois Weinberger – Basics
Edited by Stella Rollig and Severin Dünser
Including texts by Pierre Bal-Blanc, Catherine David, Severin Dünser, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Stella Rollig and Philippe Van Cauteren
Graphic design by Astrid Seme, Vienna
German/English
Hardcover with paper changes, 24 × 31 cm, 232 pages, 256 illustrations
Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Cologne, 2021
ISBN 978-3-903327-22-1
‘Liquidity’
Friday, 16 July 2021 from 8 pm
FLUC, Praterstern 5, Vienna
Featuring works by Karoline Dausien, Sophie Gogl, Birke Gorm, Lena Henke, Maurício Ianês, Lukas Posch, Hans Schabus, Christian Schwarzwald, Katharina Schilling & Philipp Lossau, Johanna Charlotte Trede and Julian Turner; curated by Olympia Tzortzi & Severin Dünser
Going through several lockdowns made clear, how essential collective experiences are for everyone. In response, "Liquidity" repeats a concept from 2018, but this time against the backdrop of (supposably) overcome social restrictions:
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. What normally accompanies the communication, becomes the subject matter in this participative exhibition. In the tradition of relational aesthetics it transforms a conversation piece into a social sculpture – and the other way around.
‘On Heavy Rotation’
With works by Keren Cytter, Panayiotis Loukas, Matthias Noggler, Malvina Panagiotidi, Vasilis Papageorgiou, Lia Perjovschi, Evelyn Plaschg, Socratis Socratous, Nadim Vardag and Gernot Wieland; curated by Severin Dünser and Olympia Tzortzi
Callirrhoë, Athens
2 November 2020 – 23 January 2021
The exhibition’s point of departure is a motion, that is constantly accelerated this year: the rotation on one’s own axis. Conditioned by the pandemic and the accompanying limitations, spinning around became a collective experience. Between a steadily repeated mental rotation and a physical reeling off of recurring processes, a dynamic arises, that resembles the experience of a hall of mirrors. Introspection and self-awareness generate a turning point, that affects the individual and – like the dance of a derwish – results in fluctuating between vertigo and contemplative trance. The exhibition follows these rotational movements on the basis of several works and tries to establish intersections between their thematic radii.
For the exhibition, we either invited artists to produce new works, selected works that were made during the pandemic or chose older pieces that gain new layers of significance in the context of the current health crisis’ epiphenomenons:
“The Fools” for example were created by Malvina Panagiotidi in 2018. The series of clay figurines illustrates the imaginary creatures haunting on the Greek islands. Symbolically standing for the gaps between what we encounter and what we know, and how these gaps are filled with speculations that can turn into monsters, they represent the things that take on a life of their own in our heads. One of the creatures of Panagiotidi is of special interest: A horned figure with a snake-like lower body-half, that eats its own tail. It resembles the pose of the Ouroboros, that symbolizes autarky and a never-ending cycle of life, death and rebirth.
Also the story of Keren Cytter’s film “Der Spiegel“ (The Mirror, 2007) moves in a circular course without a beginning or an end. Set in an apartment, her small drama evolves around a 42-year-old woman facing her aging, being rejected by her crush and not interested in the man who loves her. By blending narration and analyzation of the filmic medium into each other, the protagonists are objects and subjects at the same time - turning the plot into a self-aware perpetual motion machine, that keeps the viewer in a meta-poetic, existentialist loop.
A drastically reduced social life combined with a physical threat induces a continuous reflection of the self as a soul attached to a potentially weak body. This very existence in that one body we own is a point of departure of Evelyn Plaschg’s paintings. Leaving imagery of idealized bodies behind, her abstractions of female physicalities are an effort to merge the mental and the corporal. Her self-explorations are self-empowerments, that are backed by a trust in one’s own feelings as a valid basis for joyfull decision-making – and oppose society’s normative codes of behavior.
Our relation to society is also addressed in Gernot Wieland’s film “Ink in Milk” (2018). In it, the artist is the narrator of various poetic, absurd and tragicomical stories that are illustrated with child-like drawings, diagrams, photos and plasticine animations. They deal with the individual’s adaptation to dominant ideologies and structures of power. With his highly subjective monologue, Wieland reveals how our perception of reality, truth and language affect us in constructing our image of the self through our interpretation of the past.
Matthias Noggler employs diverse visual genres and styles to generate figurative and abstract compositions that describe contemporary urban milieus and more intimate domestic settings. The outside world is absent in his new works, that create a somnambule atmosphere of artificiality and psychological tension. The depicted characters are gathered at home, engaged in daily routines or immersed within themselves. The drawings establish the interior as a place of subconscious conflict and silent enchantment, offering an ambivalent view on the complex mechanisms of subjectivity and social self.
Concepts of togetherness, communication and loneliness are the targets of Vasilis Papageorgiou’ artistic investigations. He focusses on semi-private and semi-public spaces such as bars, small casinos or football stadiums where people reclaim the idea of free time and the right to be alone together. Creating new narratives which reflect our everyday, he rethinks and rearticulates the imagery of those places. Also his very recent sculptures are abstractions of support structures, in this case chairs. With dolphins on one seat, that symbolize sociability, safety, security and salvation, and the absence of a body manifested in a deposited blouse on the other, they remind us of the stability we are lacking without company or a counterpart.
In his installation, Socratis Socratous also deals with the idea of privacy and seclusion of the interior. Inspired by the US-American poet Emily Dickinson, who spent most of her life in the isolation of her bedroom, Socratous manifests the idea of detachment in one crucial element: a door. It’s an aluminium door in the style of the time around 1920 – the time of the Spanish flu. There is a short sentence on the door: “There is no place like home”. It refers to a famous sentence in the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz”, that triggered the homecoming of its main protagonist. In the film, the sentence stays unclear in considering “home” a good or bad situation (that the protagonist ran away from before). Also Socratous leaves it unclear, if it’s better to be at home in isolation, satisfy one’s desires by escapisms or search for oneself in the company of others. He just wants to let us know, that not everyone has a home to hide at.
For Sigmund Freud, the uncanny locates the strangeness in the ordinary. In German, the ‘uncanny’ is literally the ‘unhomely’. Strangely familiar are also the worlds that Panayiotis Loukas creates. Often characterized as “fairytale-like”, they mix our common surroundings with the mystical and the imaginary. In “The Visitor” (2015), an object consisting of geometrical forms is about to enter a rural home through a door. An object becomes a subject here, the subconscious takes over reality and turns it into a psychedelic fever dream.
How our reality is shaped is also the topic of Nadim Vardag’s works. The technique of drypoint etching is used by the artist as means of a picture language that engages with the conditions of visual systems and the grids and structures that order our world and its images. In his series, the textile-like structures are based on a grid and densify towards knots or diverge into web-like formations. The structuring visual aids – the lines of the grid – thus become the motive of the image themselves. Metaphorically, those images could be interpreted as being entangled in fixed frameworks – or in a situation of insecure balance between order and chaos.
Bringing order into chaos is a quest for knowledge that Lia Perjovschi persues with a series she started in the late 1990ies. Interested in the accumulation and transfer of information, she creates mind maps that organize and memorize it. Her clouds of keywords and notes simplify complexities by clearly laying out relations and interconnections. The works on display were made in 2020 as a “research from the beginning till the relaxation” and express a subjective history revealing the artist’s particular view of the current situation.
The exhibition was kindly supported by the Federal Ministry of the Republic of Austria for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport
Eva Grubinger
‘Malady of the Infinite’
Belvedere 21, Vienna
22 November, 2019 – 13 April, 2020
The cockpit sticks up in the air, the hull is already under water. In spite of this, the superyacht dominates the space, held in check only by several mines that protrude from the floor, as if floating on the ocean. It is Eva Grubinger’s artistic trademark to defamiliarize and activate objects via enlargement, change of material, reduction, or decontextualization. Here, too, these means are used to create a sculptural scene combining poetic lightness with real political relevance.
The exhibition also reflects a sociopolitical and psychosocial mood known as anomie, a situation in which societal norms are weakened or entirely lacking, giving no moral orientation. In this way, the dominance of global capitalism, paired with neoliberalism, creates a lack of solidarity that runs through all strata of society. This is accompanied by the notion of a boundless horizon of possibilities that promises all individuals self-determination and self-realization, but which ultimately leads to an unlimited longing that cannot be satisfied in material terms and that grows ever stronger. Sociologist Émile Durkheim speaks in this context of a “malady of the infinite.”
Grubinger articulates this mood via a luxury object that neither functions nor satisfies. Even the yacht—a symbol of power, dominance, autonomy, and advanced capitalism—is not immune to the dangers posed by those with nothing left to lose. For not only the superrich suffer the malady of the infinite. Even the middle classes have fallen victim to the neoliberal wish machine. They are now in existential crisis, hollowed out by the resulting economic injustice. And the precariat is increasingly frustrated by ever more obvious inequality, leading it to turn its back on ethical behavior.
Grubinger’s sculptural ensemble conveys a feeling of tension and grim foreboding. The ocean as a setting makes room for contradictory associations including conquest, colonialism, desire, and freedom. Where not only leisure activities like sailing and travel taken place, but also fishing, transport, piracy, and human trafficking, Grubinger stages a conflict of power and powerlessness. Malady of the Infinite paints a picture of structural inequality, of endless longing with no hope of fulfillment for rich or poor, for tycoons or pirates. With this exhibition, the artist creates a striking parable on our fraught times.
Eva Grubinger (born 1970 in Salzburg) studied at Berlin’s University of the Arts with VALIE EXPORT and Katharina Sieverding (1989–1995). Since the mid-1990s, her work has been shown in museum and gallery exhibitions internationally, including solo shows at Bloomberg SPACE, London (2016), Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2015), Belvedere, Vienna (2012), ZKM – Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe (2011), Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (2009), Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2007), Berlinische Galerie (2004), BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2003), Kiasma Museum, Helsinki (2001). Also many group shows in Austria and abroad, including: Neues Museum, Nuremberg (2019), Busan Biennale (2018), Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2014, 2015), Witte de With – Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2014), Marrakech Biennale (2012), Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux (2011), Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2010), Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois (2009), Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremberg (2009), Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2008), Kunst-Werke, Berlin (2005), Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2002). The artist lives and works in Berlin.
Exhibition catalogue:
Eva Grubinger – Malady of the Infinite
Edited by Stella Rollig and Severin Dünser
Including Texts by Severin Dünser, Chus Martínez, Stella Rollig and Jan Verwoert
Graphic design by Heimann + Schwantes, Berlin
German/English
Swiss hardcover, 23 × 30 cm, 176 pages, ca. 150 illustrations
Koenig Books Ltd, London, 2019
ISBN 978-3-903114-95-1
Henrike Naumann
‘Das Reich’
Belvedere 21, Vienna
26 September, 2019 – 12 January, 2020
Henrike Naumann grew up in Zwickau, as the political end of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was approaching and the state was absorbed into a reunified Germany. She processed the experiences of her youth, which straddled hedonism, consumer culture and increasing right-wing radicalization, into installations in several exhibitions. As an artist, she is interested in the design vocabulary that these everyday extremes have evoked in the populace. To what extent do furniture and objects reflect an attitude and a history? In alternative history scenarios, Naumann examines the interplay of aesthetics and ideology and creates walk-in spaces where it can be experienced.
The starting point for her exhibition “Das Reich” in Belvedere 21 is the year 1990: The Reich Citizens movement refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the Federal Republic of Germany and quickly takes control after reunification. Austria soon joins the reconstituted German Reich. Henrike Naumann sketches this fictional scenario in an immersive spatial installation consisting of furniture, home accessories, decor elements and videos. Here the Reich (Citizens‘) Chancellory, staged as a Germanic Stonehenge, coexists with home videos by the National Socialist Underground and of partygoers in Ibiza, a 1990s furniture store and all manner of finca chic. The exhibition can be read as a psychogram of an alternative worldview, which alarmingly resembles the worlds of thought of today’s extreme right-wing movements.
“Anschluss ’90”
With her walk-in installation, Henrike Naumann develops a fictional scenario in which the Reich Citizens take control over reunified Germany in 1990 and Austria decides without hesitation to join the newly reinstated German Reich. The reawakened feeling of racial (völkisch) unity is celebrated with euphoria, but not by parades as in 1938 – instead, it finds expression in an exuberant consumer culture. “I shop, therefore I am!” is the motto, which derives the power to form a new Germanicness (Germanentum) from a total shopping spree. Because just as in East Germany, furniture stores are popping up like mushrooms in Austria. Instead of “just living,” Germanness is experienced as a hedonistic lifestyle that can be acquired as a product.
In her installation “Anschluss ’90”, which was first presented at the “steirischer herbst” contemporary art festival in 2018, Henrike Naumann stages the display floor of a furniture store that opened shortly after the hypothetical re-annexation in 1990. Furniture, amenities, books, and decor elements merge to reflect a society that wishes to express its identity founded on German nationalism and consumerism even in its home furnishings. Henrike Naumann’s alternative history scenario clarifies the ruptures that a neglected processing of German/Austrian history has left behind, and which still provide fertile ground for populist and radical right-wing politics.
“Terror”
This video is the counterpart to “Amnesia”, which was also produced in 2012. While in that film young people enjoy themselves in Ibiza, “Terror” takes place in Jena. In 1992, two young men and a young woman experience their “last summer of innocence,” as Henrike Naumann puts it, before ultimately becoming radicalized. In the names of the protagonists — Beate, Böhni and Uwe — Naumann makes reference to Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, the trio who carried out right-wing terrorist attacks and murders as the “National-Socialist Underground” beginning in 1999.
“Terror” begins with a scene in which the three steal a VHS video camera. They go on to document their everyday life: in their Neo-Nazi teen bedroom surrounded by the swastika flag, stuffed animals, and an ALF greeting card, they pass the time reading an article in the teen magazine “Bravo”, an article about the dangers of Ecstasy and pranks. Beate boxes against a sofa while the others cheer her on. Uwe poses for the camera and shouts “Sieg Heil!” while pulling up the right arm of a plush Pink Panther over and over again. Finally the video shows them breaking into an abandoned school. Incapable of articulating their affection, they seek physical contact through tussling before they begin indiscriminately destroying things (“88, here we go!”). In the final scene, Böhni and Uwe surprise Beate with four pistols arranged in a swastika.
Henrike Naumann juxtaposes the sexual self-discovery of the young protagonists with the question of individual responsibility for one’s political education. In her video, the artist explores the banality of evil by mimicking the look of a VHS home video, making moments of creeping right-wing radicalization graspable.
“Amnesia”
In contrast to “Terror,” “Amnesia” takes place in 1992 on the Spanish island of Ibiza. Here, the circle of protagonists expands to include a young man. However, alongside Bianca, Sven and Dave, Mike only takes on the passive role of cameraman. The young people move into their hotel room. They gather around a table to smoke and talk about the stresses and strains of their journey. A party mood sets in: they bellow “Ibiza 92,” fool around, drink hard liquor, make out, do lines of cocaine, get dressed up, and move to the “Amnesia,” Ibiza‘s hottest club. There, they dance to electronic beats, smoke, and drink individually. Bianca loses track of Sven and Dave and finds them again embracing tightly and kissing. She goes back to the dance floor and loses herself in moving to the music under the influence of drugs. In the empty club, she throws a vase at a glass pyramid in which she had been looking at herself earlier.
There are several parallels between the video works “Terror” and “Amnesia”. These include the motif of destroying one’s own reflection as well as aggressive, excessive behavior caused by boredom. The young people are also similar in terms of the extremism they develop in the course of finding an identity. In Ibiza, they seek healing in intoxication and forgetting, in the dissolution of the old ego through opening up to a new one – in contrast to connecting with a racial (völkisch) identity that is sought in Jena in the past. “I look into the question of where the innocence of the three young Neo-Nazis ends – and the responsibility of non-political hedonists begins,” says Naumann of her video works. And even today, the combination of Ibiza and partying can quickly lead to questions of political responsibility.
“Das Reich”
Henrike Naumann’s extensive installation “Das Reich” was first presented in the banquet hall of the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin. It is a symbolic place, where the reunification treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) regarding the dissolution of the GDR, its entry into the FRG, and German reunification was signed in 1990. But not everyone agrees to this particular reunification: the Reich Citizens do not recognize the legitimacy of the Federal Republic of Germany and insist on the continued existence of the German Reich. In their eyes, an injustice has befallen the “German people”: they see themselves as an endangered indigenous community in an occupied country and ask the United Nations for support against violations of international law. They stockpile weapons and munitions for Day X, when the final battle will come and the German Reich will rise again.
“Das Reich” is Naumann’s outline of a dystopia in which the Reich Citizens actually take over the business of government in 1990. Within this scenario, the walk-in ensemble consisting of cupboards, shelves, and glass cabinets is arranged like Stonehenge in memory of the early years of the Fourth Reich along with memorabilia from the second Anschluss of Austria in 1990. Naumann’s “Das Reich” stages the provisional Reich (Citizens’) Chancellery as an ethnic (völkisch) shrine. In this monument to Germanicness, nationalist conspiracy theories intersect with the destinies of individuals and with the ruptures in German history.
Henrike Naumann was born in Zwickau in 1984. She lives and works in Berlin. Her works have recently appeared at such venues as Kunstverein Hannover, KOW (Berlin), Museum Abteiberg (Mönchengladbach), MMK (Frankfurt am Main), steirischer herbst (Graz), the Busan Biennale, the Ghetto Biennale (Port-au-Prince), and the Musée d’Art Contemporain et Multimédia (Kinshasa).
‘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
In Vienna there is a varied and vibrant practice of art production and presentation by a new generation. “On the New – Young Art from Vienna” aims to reflect the vitality of Vienna’s art communities: It provides an insight into the practices of eighteen artists up to the age of thirty-five. Based on “On the New – Young Scenes in Vienna”, that was on display at Belvedere 21 in spring 2019, the concept and selection for this exhibition were adapted to the spatial possibilities at Kunstraum Innsbruck. In general, the curators Severin Dünser and Luisa Ziaja seeked to contextualize the different approaches and attitudes of various protagonists in relation to the forms of expression they use – even if it is impossible to reproduce the young Viennese art production in all its’ variety within a single exhibition.
The exhibition was titled “On the New” 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. 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. 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. 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. So 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 the curators have chosen to evoke in choosing a title that not only cites Boris Groys directly, but also addresses issues far beyond his approach.
While searching for the “new” in the studios of the younger Viennese artist, some tendencies became clear: 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.
‘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
‘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.