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CastYourArt Video- und Audioepisodes

The author Josef Kleindienst, based in Vienna, writes “audio pictures”, plays, novels, and screenplays. His work, “Become a Member”, came out in 2007.

It is an audio picture of a relationship that is formed between three people due to an unexpected event. The ones involved are paralyzed in a moment of shock and unable to escape the situation. They are trapped in this involuntary gathering and struggle with actions and words to regain their fading composure.

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The speakers are Simona Sbaffi, Andreas Patton, Manfred Stella, and Simon Hatzl. Music by Hüseyin Evirgen. Sound by Johannes Kelz. Illustration by Elsa Mährenbach. Text and direction by Josef Kleindienst.

The little superhero, Superrobbie, who looks like a Playmobil figure, appears together with his other little brothers-in-arms in an image that resembles children’s room wallpaper, strewn in cheerful crayon shades. Surrounded by cute little ducklings, little Superrobbie places himself in a scene of contrasting reality, toting a pistol in his hand. Stretched out before him are his dead teachers, who are embodied in a similar Playmobil form. The dark side of the image reveals itself in its title: “Erfurt”.

Christian Pölzler create his art under the brand name, Heidi Popovic, which may seem cynical at first, but actually isn’t. Through pop poster images, through decorative wallpaper samples, through advertisements that promise us that “everything is OK”, Pölzler salvages forgotten images and maps a modern political apocalypse. The style of the artist’s works, with titles like “Erfurt”, “Enschede”, “9/11”, and “Fifty Years Contergan”, seems to be addressing the question, “What’s new, Pussycat?” But Pölzler’s blend of art hacks away at neurotic societal preoccupations in a different way than say, Woody Allen. His mix of visual images, which depicts a version of insanity that has become normal to us, brings to mind the lucidity of Thomas Bernhard. Pölzler creates critical pop art. (wh/jn)

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A number of the artist’s works can be seen in the Gallery Artmosphere by the curator Rudolf Budja.

The production of “living pictures” has a tradition. They could already be found in the royal victory processions of antiquity and they appeared again in Catholic masses, as well as in ceremonial processions during the Renaissance and the Baroque eras. By the end of the eighteenth century, the art progressed to unmoving, held poses, which became one with the scenery, and were displayed “on stage”. Originating in France and from that point on coined Tableaux Vivants, these embodiments of historical paintings and sculptures found their way into the drawing rooms of the elite and became part of the main repertoire of the theatre and revue world of the nineteenth century.

The artist Rita Nowak, based in Vienna and London, is carrying on the tradition of the embodiment of living pictures with her held-pose photography. Drawing from historical paintings, she composes living pictures using fellow artists as models thereby bringing the historical works up-to-date. Rather than creating mere reproductions, she investigates the possibilities of interpretation, thereby developing pictures that visualize the past in the present and modern images that are depicted through the visual language of past centuries.

[6:51 min] download for: mobile | computer & iPod | send feedback

Rita Nowak began her artistic work with portraits of statues, as well as self-portraits. She explores the capacity of portraiture, the creation of living portraits, through the technique of Tableaux Vivants. The poses of the figures and the space of the scenery in her Tableaux are therefore not only interpretations of classical subjects. They are also visual depictions of personalities in which the area, light, and objects merge with the embodying person, resulting in a self-representation that does not only occur in a historical, but also in an individual/personal sense. (wh/jn)

The job description for Marten Spangberg encompasses many terms. He got his start as a dance critic, writes on theory, is active as a performer, dance dramaturge, a curator, and a choreographer, and is considered a stage producer in quite a positive sense. Spangberg has been collaborating with the Swedish architect, Lindstrand Tor, since 2004 under the name International Festival. Their collaborative work explores perceptions of concepts related to body and space, and has gained international attention. At the present and in the last year, they have been invited to the European Arts Center in Cologne, the PERFORMA 07 in New York, and the Steirischen Herbst 07. For the festival in Graz, they developed “The Theater”, a multi-faceted enterprise which simultaneously describes a venue for stories, characters, and illusions, the performances that take place there, and the actual spatially-adaptable theater that was constructed from freight containers.

Aside from his collaboration with Lindstrand Tor, Marten Spangberg also works as a solo artist. He experiments in performances with himself and with others. The tools of his work are the body in relation to the world and the way the body behaves in space. He is concerned with the different behavior patterns we embody: our self, our reality, our sociability, our wants…

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We interviewed Spangberg in the context of the event series, “NICHTS ist aufregend. NICHTS ist sexy. NICHTS ist nicht peinlich.” (“NOTHING is exciting. NOTHING is sexy. NOTHING is not awkward.”), being held at MOMUK and Tanzquartier Wien. His performance in the series, “Slow Fall”, is a sketch, an artistic draft of a work which will premiere in November 2008. In the context of this performance, Spangberg explores the different behavior patterns which we embody and moderate, and the possibility thereby of creating a new understanding for ourselves.

Spangberg takes on the statement “NOTHING is not awkward” and tries to find a term for awkwardness which corresponds to the artistic emphasis of his work on the relationships of the body to area and the body to the world. By positing awkwardness as a displacement, as a deliberate ill-at-ease, as a levitation, our embodiments of our interactions become free-floating, thereby allowing us to grab hold of how they interact with us. For the choreographic realization of this program, Spangberg borrowed from elements of eastern spiritual out-of-body experience techniques, but denies his audience the exhibition of a performance for which they would already have words. By rupturing the typical ways in which we embody physical propriety, Spangberg brings about a displacement through which, during the performance, his nakedness, which has not yet been articulated, is experienced by the audience under the new guise, and in the best sense, as an “ill-at-ease” experience. The audience cannot find the words, for words have in fact become disproportionate, to describe the experience. However, afterwards, somehow a little space is created, to separately determine one’s own proportions, and to use this experience of awkwardness to find one’s own words and to take up one’s own position. (wh/jn)

Ian Fleming, the inventor of the character James Bond, published a book in 1964 which he dedicated to his son, Caspar. The story is about a poor inventor called Karaktakus Pott, who buys an old vehicle for his twin children, which—with a little imagination and inventive skill—he transforms into a marvelous device that can transport them on magical journeys. As the Pott family thereupon embarks on many adventures, the vehicle earns an onomatopoeic name, inspired by the inventor’s constant vacillation between failure and success: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

When one asks the young Viennese artist, Leo Peschta, for influences on his artistic work from his childhood, he mentions Karaktakus Pott. Innovation, fascination with technology, the defunct compilation of components originally designed to function, the readiness to fail, joy in the undefined—these elements connect the artist with the character from Fleming’s novel. The opposition between the perception and the production of space, the design of machine interfaces between media, in addition, the bulkiness and the unique aesthetic of machines and machine parts, inform the artistic agenda which defines his work. Peschta cites George Rickey and Theo Jansen, as the sources of his further influence by kinetic art.

Leo Peschta arrived upon the art world through a detour. He started out as a commercial artist in advertising. After the experience of monotonous production conditions, he decided to focus on being more artistically oriented. Peschta attended classes in digital art at the University for Applied Art in Vienna and the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. Instead of mechanics, he dedicated himself then to the design of machine-like objects and began to grapple with physical computation.

Like Fleming’s inventor, Peschta turns to industrially manufactured, functional spare parts for his artworks. In their artistic reassembly, he relieves these practical objects of their original function, creating at the same time a possibility for new ways to experience them. Surprising, altered aesthetic outlooks on everyday things: a playful invitation. Peschta’s work is like a vehicle that is embarking on a magical journey. (wh/jn)

[5:53 min] download for: mobile | computer & iPod | send feedback

Till the end of August Leo Peschta’s artwork “Der Zermesser” will be shown at the Lentos Museum of Modern Art Linz, afterwords it is exhibited from 19th-21st of September at the ArtBots in Dublin.