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The First Hit of PHANTOMAK
Opening, September 13 6 p.m., Gumpendorfer Straße 55, Vienna

Kahlo’s Retrospektive can be seen at the Bank Austria Kunstforum from 9.09.2010 till 5.12.2010.

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When André Breton, during a visit to Mexico in 1938, thought having discovered the surrealist counterpart to the European avant-garde of his time in Frida Kahlo’s work, she briskly deemed her own painting anything but an escape. “I never painted dreams. What I painted was my reality.” To this, the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes stated in one of his essays: “Frida Kahlo reminds us permanently that the matter used by the French surrealists to make a system was always everyday reality in Latin America, part of the cultural stream, a spontaneous fusion of myth and actuality, dream and waking, reason and fantasy.”

Surrealism was marked by a revolutionary anarchistic conception of art and searched for a new unburdened reality within the unconscious. In the Mexico of the 1920ies everything was about renovation as well, as the longstanding dictatorship had finally found an end after the Mexican revolution. However, reflections on concepts of art theory were not Frida Kahlo’s most pressing concern. She had created her own important world, which was neither defined academically nor politically. After a serious bus accident she discovered painting for herself and used it to overcome the loneliness overwhelming her at times, caused by consequential health damages. At the beginning she mostly painted her family, her friends and acquaintances, often giving away her paintings in order not to be forgotten.

After she gradually began to ascertain herself as an artist in her own right by the end of the 1930ies, she produced a series of self-portraits that represent the highlights of her painting today.
There we see Frida Kahlo as an unassuming, if lightly flirtatious but always proud character, protecting herself with traditional Mexican attributes as it were. Even her most intimate experiences would not be spared from her self-assertion. She consequently painted the miscarriage she had suffered in the form of a votive image, as well as a woman injured by stab wounds in a world of machismo and the absence of women’s rights. Frida Kahlo is the first female painter in art history who radically focused on subjects of femininity.

Nevertheless, the partially perturbing contents of her works were not really meant to shock but rather to depict, to remember, to appreciate and to place matters into the center of attention that were until then private and only attributed to women. But they are also subjects coming from a world that does not equate death with taboo, and which would call a self-confident shorthaired girl “la pelona”, baldheaded.

As she once noted in her diary, Frida had in fact two accidents: “One happened when I got run over by a streetcar, the other is Diego.”
At the age of 19 she married Diego Rivera, already famous for his large-sized mural paintings; he would become her lifelong companion despite a short separation due to his countless affairs. She subscribed to his communist ideology and through him soon found contacts to the avant-garde of the time as well as to friends and sponsors, so cherished by her throughout her life. By consistently dressing up in traditional Mexican costumes and abundantly wearing handmade regional jewelry she attained a magical and iconic charisma, rather compared to a circus performer by children in the streets of New York.

Insofar, from today’s viewpoint her political attitude was her private performance, in which she proudly displayed her indigenous heritage and thus became a living symbol of the newly arising Mexican self-confidence in the 1920ies.

Never over-zealous, always with humor and some self-mockery, she painted until the end of her 47 years of life, at the end hallucinating and under the influence of alcohol, as her last pictures indicate that were rediscovered only recently.
Her conscience of death also found expression in the still lifes of her last creative years. Overripe fruit and hints at decaying fruit pulp are combined with little hidden anecdotes. There are even traceably encrypted self-portraits to be discovered in two coconuts: Frida, weeping, and Diego, superior and withdrawn.

After her death in 1954 initially things have gone quiet around her. Her first rediscovery happened in the feminist movement that saw a projection figure of patriarchal suppression in her. But the recognition she enjoys today does not need the male counterpart as initiator and origin of her feelings and her art anymore. Her painting is rather a self chosen colorful sensuality, dedicated to life and not to moaning. Shortly before her death she noted in her diary: “I hope the end will be cheerful and I wish never to come back.”

Artists: TOMAK and Alek Kawka.

Monday, September 13, 2010 the exhibition opening of “The First Hit of PHANTOMAK: The Ear Problem. No Problem.” takes place at CastYourArt Gumpendorfer Straße 55, Vienna. We are going to show artworks by TOMAK and photographs by Alek Kawka.

Twenty pictures, in which TOMAK dissects the project PHANTOMAK and literally shows us cutouts - heads, sculptures, identities, masquerade are the themes this pictures call into question. The artist Alek Kawka accompanies the project PHANTOMAK with her photography works.

Exhibition opening: Monday, September 13, 2010 at 6p.m., the artists will be present
Exhibition: September 14 until October 8, 2010 | Mo-Fr | 12p.m. – 5p.m.
Address: Gumpendorfer Str. 55, 1060 Vienna

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Among its many branches within the insurance field, UNIQA is active within the the art insurance sector. Dealing with art institutions as well as private collectors requires the insurer to secure value, promote culture, and bring people together. The enterprise is therefore not just limited to providing insurance benefits, it also offers knowledge, contacts, and support, in order to make it possible for art and the art world to develop. We at CastYourArt have found in UNIQA a business partner whose commitment has made a number of our podcast episodes possible. In the following episode, we spoke with Konstantin Klien, CEO of UNIQA, and Petra Eibel, the director of art insurance department at UNIQA, two important representatives of the UNIQA art sector, in order to get their views on their company’s position, philosophy, services, and identity.

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The art collection of the Erste Bank group focuses on contemporary art of Central and Eastern Europe, at which media like film and video were included from the beginning. Due to a lack of structures to back up production and networking, in the post-socialist states there was less exchange between the artists than there was with the international art world.

In the collection, development trajectories of specific practices in central and Eastern Europe’s art production are traced and their significance on an international level studied, in order to recover a part of the cultural memory and to create bonds between previously unconnected art scenes.

A change of perspective is achieved regarding the reception of contemporary eastern European art produced within local contexts, an art in which the historical and political changes of recent history are reflected in manifold ways – but also the transformation of the “West” taking place simultaneously, that has generated new positions of art in the light of current historical developments.

The aim of the artists is to transmit a message relevant to all of us, beyond being a mere product of consumption. It is not only a question of forms of expression but also about means of transmission - in order to tackle political, social and economic issues that would rather be kept under the rug by ruling powers.

The paradigm of subversion and the necessity to restitute their voice to the subjects is defended, as well by practices of popularization and democratization of means of (art) production and the subsequent exhibitions. These dynamics of creativity are not orientated towards competition on a market but towards subversion, therefore they represent an important antidote to the institutions of art business.

Currently the dividing line is not along questions of technology, critical reflection does not demand for democratization of the media but of the contents. The production of art and critical reflection avails itself of media as iconographic database, in order to generate texts and subtexts where the citation is left aside in favor of the implicit meanings and their variations. As soon as two objects or contents are viewed together, a new unity of preexisting elements is established as if through contagion, in which fragments of content recombine themselves within a new correlation – like words of a sentence.

The artists create, every one in his or her unique manner, new contexts that establish a connection between work and viewer, in a perpetual game of experimentation. Since the end of the metanarrative and of mythologies the rules are not binding anymore, and the artists liberated of their historical burden to “produce objects that enslave us” (Guy Debord).

No more is it necessary to find ultimate truths, neither questions nor solutions, no more is it about the individual against the rest of the world, nor does the end justify the means; indeed the incessant vortex of images forces individualism to reconstitute itself – within the process and not the outcomes.

In their selection and analysis the works convey something which was ostensibly absent beforehand: a hidden pattern of power structures and their representations. Nowadays the critical artist is like a kind of virus, deconstructing the original text in order to upturn it into smaller individual results. The ultimate political goals have been transformed into social events on a small scale – personal documentations about human beings and their era. (ca)

This podcast was realised with the kind support of The Arts and Civil Society Program of Erste Group.

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Vain is the attempt to classify this corpus of ideas into orderly progressions, straight lines, fixed positions, separate stages. Edgar Honetschläger’s work and life do not allow for that. He moves between cultures and working techniques and operates with the diversity and inconsistency of a globalized world.

We find ourselves before a buried treasure, like an archeological site, where we would cause damage to the traces and clues by digging. The deposits and sediments that would be removed are traces of the artist’s self; in all layers we can feel the spiritual circling movement, a search for identity, a certain physicalness. 


To try to disentangle the system of analogies permeating his oeuvre, the symbolic dimensions, the circular movement, the sensuality, the social reflection about eternity, the mechanisms of identity and concealment governing the body, this effort is ultimately doomed to fail.

In the course of time, the irresistible vocation to construct text and to generate narrative produces surprisingly consistent structures – where one either joins the other or it does not.

A dense network of references comes into being, embedded in a network of discourses, within which the elements do not make sense without the others, where the processual character of the work becomes more and more evident, an open work without completion and finality.

From the outset his artistic endeavor consists in narrating, storytelling, a narrative patchwork, with absurd, epic, comical stories. These fragmentary tales touch on the sources of mythology; derive from popular stories, current news, political affairs, persons and objects of his surroundings.

From this viewpoint it seems that his work as a whole obeys a double functional principle of an almost linguistical kind: articulation and integration, assembly and fusion, syntax and poetics. The compression of meaning he carries out in his artistic figures has its original impulse in a mental activity that can be interpreted as decipherment. The signs generate what we can not help doing: thinking.

He discloses metaphorical realms of autonomy and creates cultural spaces, geographically, imaginarily, socially with an open and thus autonomous temporality. He works with narrative sequences which can be full of contradictions at times. Sometimes he reveals himself as object; on the other hand he is the subjectivity creating them.

His visual art is characterized by the effort to reach an existence outside of themselves, independent of the artist and the recipient. He uses exterior areas and architecture, experiments with space and the friction between two-dimensionality and tri-dimensionality, a coordinated interaction between architecture, drawing and painting occurs. Drawing constitutes an important means within his work, as a result of his consistent examination of two-dimensionality. Within the sequences, the second and third dimension are interchanged quoted or merged. Honetschlaeger has made himself independent from the belief in perfection as well as its opposite. The one focal point of perspective does indeed exist, but only in close connection with all possible constellations of focal points.

The objects of daily use that surround us, tools, artifacts, attire, they all hold a peculiar fascination for him. They tell us of universal issues and at the same time of certain eras, cultures and ways to understand the world. Finally they tell us of their ownership’s fugacity, how they and we have different existences that intersect and meet temporarily in time and space. We are nothing but circumstances. (ca)

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„We are in a constant process of translation“ ascertains Kowanz. “Perception is translation. Language is translation.” Kowanz concerns herself with phenomena eluding conscious perception. In this respect she was influenced by Paul Virilio, who dealt with The Aesthetics of Disappearance of “stable” images.

Internet and television enable us to be at several locations simultaneously. Virilio describes “picture-tube and display screen where shadows move, representing the phantoms of a society in dissolution” and declares that the simulation of reality replaces the immediate perception of reality. Jean Baudrillard also refers to the mediated reality of the world. In his theory of simulation he argues that reality is created artificially from the outset, so there could be no reference to a relation between a subject and the world. In fact, reality is a priori supposed to be the product of a determined ideology.

The media and writing constitute the coordinates of our information society. Yet cognition is more than vision. In the works of Kowanz, processes of perception become processes of cognition. The function of light corresponds to the function of language; they both serve as filters through which things are perceived. At the same time, light as well as language are basic prerequisites for perception and render it possible in the first place.

The exhibition displays interventions in architectural space from 1984 until today. Light as basic principle of all being is the medium and the subject of the artists’ earlier oeuvre as well. Only later the question of semantics becomes the focus of her attention. With the involvement of language, the artist now produces works full of poetry as well as analytically precise definitions.

The titles, among them Lumen and Lux, already refer to light by themselves. In the neon light works, light itself generates the words and sentences. Form and content coincide, the utterance undergoing a tautological reduplication, such as in Volumen and Outshine. Morse code signs are also used to form words and phrases dealing with light as a phenomenon - Light Is What We See. In contrast there are light installations to be seen which emulate the artist’s handwriting, and where legibility is eclipsed by the calligraphic effect.

For Kowanz, the mirror is another instrument of reflection about phenomena like perception or observation, as well as the subject-object problem. Reflecting foils spread the Morse code message over the entire space (Point of View), while language is condensed into networks in the tridimensional mirror cubes, and barely legible. The highlight of the show is a hall of mirrors that requires a conscience of the perception process from the viewer, and assigns him the task of questioning his self perception.

By means of light it becomes possible to visualize the experience of space as well as the experience of time (Lichtgeschwindigkeit SEK/4M). Besides verbal pronouncements, architecture is also a carrier of the general discourse, and is as such semantically determined from the outset. Kowanz, who is most notably known for her projects in public space internationally, transforms spaces by means of light, thus referring to their structure which is contingent but always immanent to their significance.

The current exhibition also includes two interventions of the artist in public space. While the façade of the MUMOK is being measured and the results displayed on the exterior of the building, the second work on the UNIQA tower, Now I see, deals with the fugacity of language and light. (bl/ca)

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“I like not your festivals: I have found there too many actors, and the spectators also often behaved like actors” (Nietzsche, Zarathustra)

As social beings we are forced to restrain ourselves and to civilize our behaviour. Education means for the most part to accustom ourselves to the social space designed to optimize productivity. During this individual and collective effort to adapt, parts of us that are not suitable for everyday life are being pushed into the background. We establish ethical, moral and aesthetic taboos and channel our tamed wildness through idealized passion. Psychoanalysis calls this process projection.

“The passion”, Nitsch wrote, “is the reverse image of the orgiastic”. Christian religion - taking advantage of the repression and projection mechanisms in the passion of Christ and its idealized reproduction in order to underscore its own credibility - and Nitsch with his “Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries”, both respond to the same fact of mans alienation from his existence. This explains the resemblance of Nitsch’s staging with liturgical ceremonies and also its perception as a threat by the Catholic Church and its representatives: a person who has undergone the Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries, who has dealt with all aspects of his own self, could no more be receptive to the idealizing of his own repressed side within the other, to the projection that creates faith. Nitsch’s work has Nietzschean features, “Ye flee from yourselves unto your neighbour and would fain make a virtue thereof; but I see through your ‘unselfishness’”. (Nietzsche, Zarathustra)

The self-examination and the breaking of taboos are considered to be characteristics of Viennese actionism, to which Hermann Nitsch is to be included as an important exponent, besides Günter Brus, Otto Mühl and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. Their actionist art, counting on action and experience, tried to break the shackles of conservative religious post-war society characterized by the silencing of the past. In order for Nitsch’s theatre action to work out in the sense of an actionist self-confrontation of man, in his staging there are not merely actors playing their roles and spectators admiring the performance. Whoever is present, participates, is involved with all his senses and experiences himself in a real situation. Nitsch’s Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries and his painting performances are designed as escape valves of civilization, as older societies established in the myth of Dionysos and its dismemberment rituals. In modern times such social extraterritories organized as collective hiatus have become unusual and are but practiced individually. As (painting) action experienced by artist and participating audience together, his art strikes a chord in deeper layers of collective being - or as Jung, appreciated very much by Nitsch, puts it: the archetypical of our existence.

The path leading Nitsch to theater was marked by actionist painting working with materiality; squirting, smearing, mixing, dispersing painting. He claims to have come upon using blood through the very intensive colour red, in combination with his interest for mysticism and it rituals. It was only a step from blood and his actionist approach to painting, to the materials of his theatre of Orgies and Mysteries. His painting originates in action; it bears witness to ecstasy in the way a room in which a festivity took place still gives account of it. In times between his performances he paints in his studio – also alone – or he composes, an art which fascinates him since long time ago. Up to now he has composed nine symphonies. Here also he privileges real staging to playing. “My music”, says Hermann Nitsch “has its origin in screaming, in intensive agitation, in a state availing itself of preverbal utterances.” (wh/ca)

Part 1. What does the city need?

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Part 2. Interview with David Liss, artistic director of MOCCA.

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Part 3. Interview with Olga Korper and Fela Grunwald.

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Part 4. Interview with Ben Portis.

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Part 5. Interview with Jessica Bradley.

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There has been much debate over whether a national style, philosophical outlook, or unified and cohesive culture exists or ever has existed within Canada. The country is large geographically, with many distinct regions, and its population is diverse and made up of varying national and ethnic backgrounds. Like every other cultural activity taking place in the country, Contemporary art is influenced and shaped by the vast distances and different identities that separate Halifax from Vancouver and Montreal from Toronto. In Europe, museums and art galleries are relatively close to each other, thus giving a chance to private collectors, curators and art critics to travel to visit exhibitions in other countries, write about foreign artists or buy their artworks. Canadian artists can’t really count on collectors or gallerists from other national urban centres, let alone international buyers, to come and look at their work in the city where they exhibit. Since there are very few important collecting families in the country and the collecting practice itself is fairly young, the most renown Canadian artists, such as Jeff Wall, Michael Snow or Stan Douglas, have to exhibit in New-York or in Europe to sell their work. And the lesser-known artists have to rely almost exclusively on local buyers to survive.

Creative isolation, lack of exposure, difficulties to export their works of art beyond their region’s borders; many artists of the Great White North struggle to make ends meet. But in that sense, they are no different than most artists in any other country, especially those living outside of the big Contemporary art markets. And if the differences in the national cultural identities might be seen as barriers when it comes to establish a solid and organized art community across a territory as vast as Canada, it can also be a proof of the uniqueness of the artists and the richness of their work, no matter where they live. Nevertheless, many artists choose to leave their hometowns and move to urban centres to pursue their careers. And the number one destination in Canada is Toronto.

Toronto has been the financial centre of Canada for decades. But in the past years, it has also become the cultural centre, taking the title away from Montreal. Some would argue that it has to do with the 1980 Referendum on the separation of Quebec from the rest of Canada, when many Anglophone artists and writers are believed to have fled the city in fear of losing their cultural identity. Some would beg to differ. But in any case, Toronto is where the money is. Not only there are more museums and galleries but there is also a larger number of collectors interested in acquiring Contemporary works of art than anywhere else in the country. Aside from the public funding from the Federal government, there are other public projects that can help artists selling their artworks. For example, there is a city programme that requires of the developers to invest 1% of their budget to finance projects of public art that will be exhibited in their buildings. Although Toronto is one of the biggest and most exciting art centres in North America, the cosmopolitan city has not yet been able to find its own identity and its place in the international Contemporary art scene.

We asked curators Ben Portis at the Art Gallery of Ontario and David Liss at the Museum of Canadian Contemporary, gallerists Jessica Bradley and Olga Korper, both working with local and international artists, and private and public art consultant Fela Grunwald, to talk about the development of Toronto’s contemporary art scene and the challenges the art community faces. (jfl)

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The Museum on Demand MUSA houses much of the artwork purchased by the City of Vienna through the years and is currently displaying them in the exhibition “re_figuring spaces”. The collection that owes its existence mostly to sponsorship initiatives of the municipality provides a glimpse of the different positions on sculpture and their evolution in the last half-century, as well as a who’s who of the Austrian postwar art scene.

The interest for the preoccupation with the human figure is the constant of the exhibition, likewise the themes of irruption and fragmentation defining modern and postmodern sensibility can be found in the very diverse works.
While the techniques of dealing with the issue of the human body have been expanded enormously, from photography and performance to the allusion to the body by its mere absence, the stone pedestal statues made for eternity still maintain their position. A huge variety of materials is used in the works; guided tactile tours for the visually impaired are also available.

The body allows access to beauty as well as to the brutal and grotesque, but by the same token questions arise regarding the historical, social and political context. The body has still maintained its vital importance in modern and postmodern times; perhaps only by now it has reached the necessary ambivalence to achieve its goals in artistic practice, and to question the boundaries of social identity as well as political and sexual orthodoxies.

In many of the displayed works the conceptions of how the self and identity are embedded within, and confined by the body, are being undermined in more or less subtle ways. They remind us of the frailty of the human body’s existence, eternally in peril of passing over into a different physical state, at which the artworks present themselves as a memento mori.

So where is this self located, if not within the boundaries of our body? If the body can be a valid object for display even as divided, fragmented or actually absent one, where is the limit? Finally, beyond movement and the flow of time one arrives at mere existence or nonexistence.

The human figure is treated, penetrated, displayed, transformed, is being operated with. Here the artists or a live persons body itself becomes the location, origin and subject of reflection. Beyond the parameters of sculpture as such, a large part of this current in postwar art has generated a vide variety of practices by which the territory of the body can be explored subcutaneously. More radical forms of reflection serve as backdrop for referring to the “I” as the center of existence. The recurrent re-turn to the body as origin of contemplation and container of identity reveals the eternal relevance of the issue.

The evolution of the enquiries concerning the human body, which are subject to constant changes, ranging from new diseases to genetic engineering, robotics, to the expansion of the limits of human life with comatose states, in vitro fertilization and prenatal diagnosis, perpetually generate new domains of reflection.
The question whether if there is any identifying feature distinguishing the sculptural oeuvre of postwar Austria has to be decided by the visitor, given the enormous variety of artistic production. At least the exhibition provides a good overview. It is in any case not too daring to predict that the interest for the examination of the human figure will remain a constant in fine arts. (ca)

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In Allyson Mitchell’s world, art isn’t precious or formal. In fact, you can touch it, feel it, and sometimes even walk on it. Take off your shoes in her Brooklyn, NY studio at the ISCP→ International Studio & Curatorial Program toe your way across a patchwork quilt of crocheted pot holders, toilet seat covers, blankets and you quickly become part of her signature installation in-progress “Hungry Purse; The Vagina Dentata in Late Capitalism”.

Which is exactly the idea. The Toronto native wants you to be comfortable with her radical, provocative works. Mitchell uses grandmotherly softness, faux fur, warm 60’s and 70’s hues, and familiar objects to entice hesitant viewers to contemplate edgy themes related to lesbianism, nudity, feminism, and fatness.

“Hungry Purse” is, in-fact, a gigantic vulva crafted from thrift store finds and sewn together with rough “Franken-stitch” strokes. “It’s not beautiful work, and I don’t want it to be,” says Mitchell. But there’s something undoubtedly becoming about the kaleidoscopic colors that clash with crude, undulating textures. The multifaceted artist, who works in sculpture, film, music, and installation, spends tedious, solitary sweat-shop hours on her hands and knees, watching television sitcoms on her laptop and piecing together art that both challenges and honors themes that are very personal to her.

Raised in a prototypical, middle-class Canadian W.A.S.P. family, Mitchell began to craft as an outlet as she earned a Masters in women’s studies (she now has a PhD). At university, the queer and fat activist was ‘blown away’ by feminist theory. But she was also disappointed by how inaccessible it was to the general public and she resolved to realize feminist ideas in ways that made people feel smart rather than dumb. The result: towering, thoughtful, direct art you can feel—both physically and emotionally. (ul)

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Viennafair - Part 1 - Focus on CEE Countries

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Viennafair - Part 2 - Focus on Film and Art

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As is the case everywhere, the financial crisis has separated the wheat from the chaff—in the art market as well. In the meantime, the storm is past, and the art market has recovered. Sales records have once again been reported from London, New York, and Paris.

As is the case everywhere, the financial crisis has separated the wheat from the chaff—in the art market as well. In the meantime, the storm is past, and the art market has recovered. Sales records have once again been reported from London, New York, and Paris.

In Vienna, the Viennafair is entering its sixth year. Optimism is the key word at the moment. “Cooperation is the key to success”, as noted in the press release for the most important art fair of Austria. In this case, necessity breeds inventiveness. Hence, some galleries and art institutions are collaborating in order to present themselves as one “EC”- exhibitor community. Such symbioses originate from financial grounds. The result, an artistic dialogue, is what counts for the visitor in the end. The end effect is one of hushed expectation, thanks to the financial crisis.

A fair survives on sales, an art fair, on the art on the sale. The Viennafair has enhanced its profile by representing 33 galleries from Eastern Europe. Once discounted as “unsexy”, Eastern European art is now considered exciting and attractive, including its representatives: young galleries and “off spaces”, whose appearance in the western world is made possible by the fair—in cooperation with its main sponsor, the Erste Group—through special arrangements.

The Viennafair has been developing in the last few years into an important “point of transfer” for Central and Eastern European art, a strategy from which not only the Eastern European art market profits. On the one hand, the appearance of the eastern vendors has become more professional in the last few years, according to Edek Bartz, the artistic director of the fair. On the other hand, the directness and the minimal degree of commercialization of the Eastern art has had a positive influence on the Central and Western European art world.

In addition to the work of young artists and artistic performances taking place on Friday evening, a special emphasis has been placed on film and video art. Collectors of video art are still classified as exotic birds of the scene, raising the question: why has so little attention been devoted to this art form and its developments? Is it due to its presentation or to the physical non-existence of moving pictures? In the end, the image does disappear as soon as the light of the projector goes out. The special exhibition, “Borrowed Time”, curated by Edek Bartz, puts film and video art back into focus. The goal is to bring more attention to this art form, not just to present it as a sideshow, but rather, under the most ideal conditions possible. Exhibition visitors would normally only notice videos in passing, but this year, for the first time, the Viennafair will present this art form in a way that allots it the time and attention it deserves. Among the works presented will be those of Dorit Magreiter, Florian Pumhösl, Ana Jarmolaewa, and Günter Brus. An additional presentation platform will show video work from the collection, “Kontakt: The Art Collection of Erste Group”. Instead of small screens and hard stools, large screens and comfortable seats will invite viewers to linger.

Bartz’s organizational ability has led him to position the Viennafair as an art event that extends far beyond the fair itself. International collectors and art enthusiasts will be spread throughout the city during the time of the fair. The air will be buzzing with art, performances, and discussions, special tours, studio visits, numerous openings, exhibitions, and late nights. The mild May evenings will only add to the fun. (oh/wh/jn)

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Choosing the organic eggs off the shelf, eating locally grown apples, drinking fair trade coffee, going without strawberries in December—by now, these are things we take for granted. Is it due to our awareness of climate change? Perhaps. Or maybe we are looking to shift gears - to slow down and live more sustainably. For years now, the word “sustainability” has come up time and time again as a catchphrase of the moment.

The fashion industry seems to have dodged this demand for sustainability for quite some time now – just look at the annual craze to follow the latest trends from fall/winter or summer collections—not to mention all those cheap t-shirts made in Asia. However, the Viennese Slow Fashion agency proves that this does not have to be the case, that one does not have to just jump on the bandwagon. Their concept is based on sustainability within the fashion industry and design. High quality, small lines, regional productions, and fair labor conditions—as opposed to children sewing in Bangladesh—make Slow Fashion “the organic egg” of the fashion industry. The movement is based on a socially conscious approach to fashion: “We must re-develop a sense of quality, take into consideration what kind of clothes we buy, by whom and under what conditions they are manufactured,” says Lisa Niedermayr, who runs the Slow Fashion agency together with Barbara Denk. A change in thinking is required, by the consumer as well.

The Slow Fashion Award 2010 is an unusual design competition. Ten designers will take on the challenge of going through a cycle of production and application of African textiles, processing them into recyclable accessories that are presentable to the public. Following the slogan, “making the old into the new”, the participating designers received clothes from the African Agadez: holiday clothes, house clothes, everyday clothes - a cross-section of clothes from the region, including a baby sling from the Niger. The task consisted of developing economical and innovative accessories from these pieces.

Sustainable work is also about quality: clothes that can be worn longer. “I cannot accept that one must throw out a dress just because it’s spring”, Coco Chanel was once quoted to say. Such style icons were already progressive thinkers.

It remains to be seen whether the concept of recyclable fashion catches on with the general public in the same way that organic food has. But in any case, it has already been proven that one must not rely on Birkenstocks and self-knitted items to be a Slow Fashion supporter. The clothes make the man (or woman). (oh/jn)

MODEPALAST 2010, the exposition for fashion, jewelry, and accessories, which takes place at MAK, the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, is based this year on “Green Design”, applying ecological and economic criteria to design and fashion. In conjunction with this year’s MODEPALAST, the Slow Fashion Award will also be awarded.

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Why do we constantly need images and want to reflect, recreate ourselves in them? Certainly they allow us to to enjoy insights unattainable to us by ourselves alone. They help us to escape, to distract and to intoxicate ourselves but at the same time bear the danger of overwhelming, narcotizing and alienating us.

Deconstructing, dismantling and dissolving of the images implies loosening or at least weakening the ideological ties which inform their conception, production and reception, making them accesible to an alternative reading. This appropriation also connotes criticism, although in Thomas Draschan’s case no ostensibly political posturing in the sense of manifest criticism of media or capitalism is being transmitted.

His collages do not force the new nexus between originally unconnected images upon the viewer, he forms allegories which wrest away the single elements from the context and isolate it, thus stripping it of its function.

It is essentially about fragments, the elements of found material are decontextualized und the appearance of totality, present in conventional works, is being fractured.
Draschan neither creates nor destroys; the received result is neither an exclusive product of his nor of the viewer’s subjectivity. Many sequences are already perfect the way they are found, revealing, be it on the conscious, semi-conscious or subconscious level.
He takes the liberty of a new staging that takes possession of the realm of public images for private use, by use of added visual and sound effects. The discontinuities of the editing force the viewer to perceive and determine implicit meanings. The justification of this editing is founded in the possibility of reproducing a mental process in which one image follows the other, determined by the content on which our attention is focused.

Of course these films challenge us to the question whether this is still art or not.
The piece claims to create allegories by virtue of the non.-linear principle underlying the interaction, allocation, adjacency, connection of the images, which mutually implies isolation and inversion of scenes and images into a different context, in order to unhinge the subjacent idea from the apparent banality and to decipher the false naturality lying under the physiognomies and characteristical configurations that encode our habitual perception.

In the end this transposition of objects within the virtual world changes nothing at all. It only brings the structures of art to consciousness, the former requiring a certain historical development before these metaphors become possible. In the video scenes, images and sounds are interlaced and like in the collage a surface emerges in which mental incisions create free spaces in order to find insights and inspirations. Draschan’s work is a perpetual search, an opening towards the interior through the surface, where the levels are entangled and the visual surface becomes object instead of being merely a foundation. (ca)

The Grimaldi Forum served as host to more than 60 exclusive galleries, presenting 2000 pieces of art from well-known and emerging artists coming from countries countries such as the United States, China, Mexico, Africa, Russia, Lebanon, Colombia, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, France, Germany, Canada, Israel, Thailand, Mongolia, Taiwan, Czech Republic, etc. CastYourArt has been invited to participate at this years ArtMonaco. We presented our international video and audio productions as well as an interactive projection and the stereoviewer installations of the swiss artist Daniel Zimmermann. (wh)
Installationen des Schweizer Künstlers Daniel Zimmermann und eine interaktive Bodenprojektion! (wh)

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“The infinite is in the finite of every instant” (quote from a fortune cookie)

Time passes, irreversibly. Man can do nothing about it; at best he can feel it and regrettably, only be able to realize it. He learned to interpret natural phenomena, he created tools which allowed him to measure it, try to grasp its notion, and capture it in concrete images. They are the symbols, the technical artifacts, the scientific investigations and the artistic creations through which he tries to represent it and give it shape.

The great yearning nowadays is the quest for time. In arts this is reflected by the key notions in contemporary arts theory: transition, process, assembly, sequence, development….the traditional genres, classifications and categories disappear. The creative process, the procedure and even the spectators’ participation have primacy in artistic production and consumption.
Miki Eleta takes the risk of pursuing the idea of a complete piece of art and taking the required time to produce it.
But we are entering the era of instant time. The influence of micro-processors in the way of measuring time is already making its influence felt in our ways of conceiving the universe and our ways of thinking…

Today, in our era of microprocessors, instantaneousness has taken over in our lives and with it everything that makes it alarming, disquieting. There is reassuring sense of repetition in phases, as was in times when time was cyclical. There is a loss of sense of continuity, as opposed to when time appeared to be a vast mechanism, now there is only the moment that counts. Just take a look at a digital clock, time comes from nowhere and goes nowhere – it is the instant. Eletas merit is to return to us this sense of continuity.

The time is the same for everyone but the personal clock materializes the relationship of a person to his very own time. A clock individually «ties us to time». The fascination of clocks is that they all show the same thing which is to indicate the moment. But this universal functionality does not keep them from showing enormous differences (especially in price). In reality there is no more time to be seen in the inside of a clock than on its outside, as it exposes itself nowhere directly. Never have we seen, heard or touched time. It is never present as a raw phenomenon; we actually perceive only its effects, its avatars. Every clock hides time in a mixture of movements and periods and incites us to confound them with it. This strange needle of the clock which advances without showing us anything else than what it symbolizes - time resides outside of the clock.

Alice sighed wearily. `I think you might do something better with the time,’ she said, `than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.’
`If you knew Time as well as I do,’ said the Hatter, `you wouldn’t talk about wasting it. It’s him.’
`I don’t know what you mean,’ said Alice.
`Of course you don’t!’ the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. `I dare say you never even spoke to Time!’
`Perhaps not,’ Alice cautiously replied: `but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.’
`Ah! that accounts for it,’ said the Hatter. `He won’t stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he’d do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o’clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you’d only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!’
(Alice in Wonderland)
(ca)

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The Swiss artist, Christoph Büchel, is presenting a swinger’s club in the basement of the Secession. The “Bar Rectum”, the dark blue sperm, “Darwin”, and the “Bikini Bar” from the Dutch studio van Lieshout, are all currently being featured in the courtyard of the Museumsquartier in Vienna.
We’re not sure whether this is a reference to art legend Peter Weibel’s 1983 “Sex in the City”, or a never-before-seen “Sexplosion”, as it was referred to in a daily rag. After a portion of the Viennese population responded through an initial, spontaneous outpouring of letters to the editor, the public reaction has calmed down a bit. With our camera team in tow, we braved the streets of Vienna in order to gage public opinion for ourselves. Going Artsy - Art criticism hits the streets. In collaboration with the Schuberttheater Vienna. (wh/jn)

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”We never wanted to overthrow tradition, but rather build on it”. In retrospect, when Wilhelm Holzbauer emphasizes the idea of building on tradition as a central aspect of arbeitsgruppe 4, one becomes aware of the timeframe and circumstances of their development. The post-war period, characterized by financial hardship and the reconstruction of the country, could not really embrace the new trends of a developing modern age. These movements could probably only take root in this country when the desire for security and the good old days had sufficiently challenged the cultural scene. While the avant-garde had a relatively easy starting point, based on work that was not always oriented towards utility, the architecture scene had to persuade politicians, officials, and a conservative society through their own visions and negotiations. In Johannes Spalt, Wilhelm Holzbauer, Friedrich Kurrent, and Otto Leitner, Austria found four visionaries who were ready to meet this challenge, but build on tradition at the same time.

Studying under Clemens Holzmeister at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, they founded a working team at the beginning of their studies in 1952. Their “masters“ rarely attended work reviews, however, they observed the creative endeavors of their students in a well-meaning manner. The Salzburger “School of Seeing”, the summer academy under the direction of Oskar Kokoschka, contributed a great deal to the development of art and architecture. Here, the four students got acquainted with the architect Konrad Wachsmann, who emigrated to the US in 1941, and who had a substantial influence on the group with his innovative work methods. Within the environment of this group, there were poets, composers, and filmmakers such as the Wiener Gruppe, Peter Kubelka, the music ensemble, die reihe—who all partied together, as well as influenced each other.

Member Otto Leitner left the group after one year in order to participate in a competition to design the City Museum of Vienna in Karlsplatz, which he wanted to take on alone. His colleagues, Spalt, Kurrent, and Holzmeister, participated in the competition as well. The group did not win, however, the experience paved the way for the group for projects that followed. The unofficial name of the group, “the 3/4“, was coined by the designer Anna Lülja Praun, which reffers to Leitner’s separation from the group with a sense of humor. The new constellation held together until 1956. Holzbauer’s journey to the US, as well as opposing points of view of the individual members on the role of the architect in public life, led to a further reduction of the team.

The arbeitsgruppe 4 harbored a special interest in the building of churches, not so much due to any commitment to this tradition, but rather due to the church’s ability and willingness as a client to support their extravagant projects at this time. Although many of their projects won competitions, none of their housing projects were realized. Their ideas, especially in terms of “Wohnraumschule” (“living room” schools), were regarded either as trend-setting, or too innovative for their time. This reception was also applied to their concepts for urban planning. Only years later did the ideas of the group come into fruition—for example, with the revival of the Flaktürme, the flak towers in Vienna, and the redirection of the Argentinierstrasse around the Karlskirche.

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In any case, it tames the wildness of our thinking, which means that when it happens –ever so rarely- the hegemony of the concept is erased and for a moment we are cured of our illness separating us from time – our rationality. When music happens, time does not pass, it expands, accumulates, can not be measured. It is no longer in the clock and enters our blood…

The cure in this case is not overcoming the ailment but seizing it, transforming it into a score. The mystery of the silence that surrounds us –existence itself- lies at the root of the surprise and consolation of the notes which we produce as medicine. It is true that any instrument is fine - if this relationship with the magic of silence is given.

To serve this desire, Constantin Luser offers us an object with an imagined subject.

All components must have their place determined by their function and meaning. The object itself has primacy over its components while the space itself and the place and role allocated to man in it, is a constitutive element of the work and creates new realms of experience.

There is no form without its opposite – they constitute a unity of meaning where the negative is an imprint of the positive: Absence (life), presence (sound) and the will to the structuring and usage of space. And where does it all lead to ? To chaos (χάος) or to order (κόσμος) ? In other words, order of the world….

The essential key is his personal approach, the current in which he inscribes himself being an intermediator, in order to strike a chord in the collective alterity.

He creates a space, topos, which belongs to an utopía…where the abstract, the absence of sound, is a consequence of the presence of the corpus and a way of reading it. The impossibility of the real, its spirit would otherwise not be conceivable. It could not converge with individual life which is always an incarnation of its abstraction. Whenever we create an open form, it is filled with spirits. This is the faculty of the form: it cannot avoid conjuring up the unshaped.

Without the rupture which the violently new form provokes, we shall not be able to listen to the return of meaning to the cacophony of our existence. Is there anything stranger than our existence? Music is there because the sense of immediacy is literally untranslatable.

Instead of reconstruction, there is construction, there is installation which does not reproduce the visible but instead, makes the invisible visible. The impetus of his work has its starting point in this constructivist core which not only emancipates creation from representation but orientates it towards the creation of space and time through sound, gesture and dramaturgy.

He demarcates the final sense of the forms and directs it towards a vertebration of an animist reality. As a product of its power of shaping the world, the structures do not exist just by themselves but possess the idiosyncrasy of roaming between the merely obvious and the unreal.

In this leap to meet the image, the poetic moment transgresses the merely existing in order to visualize the possible, the virtual: limit and metamorphosis, because finally it is about a shift where from the physical, material limitation of life a metamorphic process comes into being. In a transmutation of the sensible which interrupts the oscillation, the continuous stream of our inner voice… (ca)