Christian Eisenberger’s art work and performances often smack of insouciance, but, like a child and even more like an artist, his desire to engage is very real.

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When a tree falls down in the forest and noone witnesses it, did it really happen? When an artist makes a sculpture on top of a mountain and noone sees it, is it really art? more »

It was animals that were created first, only thereafter, human beings. Seniority, the privilege of age, was compensated by the privilege of designation, the late arrival meant: “the ability to observe and appropriately designate what came before“. (Peter Sloterdijk) But human beings are the notorious late arrivers, one should not be deceived by the biblical version. Because humans only come into their own through language, the individual must always harbor the eerily daunting gap of pre-linguistic existence.

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When Deborah Sengl uses metalinguistic capability in order to create a new word, she refers to the fact that the found language masks as much as it reveals. By creating the word “ertarnen“ (“to deceive through displacement”), which is used in most of the titles of her artworks, she incapsulates the central themes of her work: humans, animals, camouflage, and breeding. more »

There has been substantial evidence for the theory, according to the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, that it is far less important for humans to know who they are, than where they are. The persistent ignorance regarding one’s place of existence is one of the causes for what newer philosophy calls oblivion of being.

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The inquiry after the “where” and the placing of one’s person and works represent central aspects of Wilhelm Scherübl’s work. His work realizes itself in the examination of his locations of residence and life, and in the integration of the respective condition of the places and resources which he finds there. more »

We live in a visual age. Our pastimes are often dictated by those things we like to observe, in art galleries, at the cinema, at the zoo. In this surveillance-heavy era, our desire to watch often goes unchecked. Cameras dictate our day-to-day existence, we chase after images that fit our expectations and concepts of beauty, of nature, of gaze-worthiness. Our eyes are trained to seek out, capture, and fix on that which has meaning to us and could be potentially shared.

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But are we critical enough of that which we look at and the position from which we look at it? We set definitions for the subject and the object, we break down the constructs of viewing in the hopes that we don’t fall into a pre-manipulated, voyeuristic trap. Men should not objectify women, tourists should seek the unbeaten path, no one should remain in the position of “the other”. It’s rude to stare. more »

The border between nature and culture is a tectonic faultline of human self-understanding. For example, when humanism seeks to tame the animal instinct in people, this can be understood as a tectonically preventive measure on the level of cultural history. When humans dabble in creation regarding nature, the foundations of both sides sometimes clash. The resulting tremor can then be so large that it raises a mountain of questions, which are often so disturbing that they force us to reinvestigate the notion of being human.

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The exhibition, “Nature - Creation is not finished!”, at the Monastery of Admont, looks at the boundaries and dissolution of boundaries between nature and culture. However, the artistic directions of the exhibition are not limited to earthquake faultlines. Rather than becoming fixed on the precariousness of the boundary, a multiplicity of different presentations of nature becomes evident. The artistic handling of creation is more playful. more »