Group exhibition, Graz/Austria:
Untitled (The Author Entitles Texts By Experimenting With Art.)
The prevalent components of the art reception are, at present, the continuum of the artist’s visage, the integration into the world of celebrity, the calculation of capacity and municipal marketing of the institutions, the pop- and soap connection and the child-oriented cooperative interactivity.
— Diedrich Diederichsen
Pseudonyms, avatars and artificial characters – incognito and bodiless, authors hastily appear in blogs and online forums using these as retreat in an increasingly more transparent world. Nameless, without age and descent and dwelling in this vague anonymity, they seem to honour “The Death of the Author” [1] as emblematically as it has already been postulated, long ago, in the context of literary theory. However, even if the biography – in theory – might have disengaged from the meaning of the work, the literature- and the art scene symbolically and actually focus on the individual. Institutions which adjust their program to the market according to significant stages in the life of their protagonists, but also debates around copyrights and copyright licenses directly refer to the irrevocable relevance of the biography in a “regime of biographism and narcism, service processuality and authenticity” [2] – the curriculum as measure of all art production?
Starting from the idea of a “modern scriptor” who is “born simultaneously with the text” [3] – as introduced by literary criticism – the exhibition untitled (The Author Entitles Texts By Experimenting With Art.) questions an art market-driven orientation towards subject and biography as meaningful criteria in the valuation of art. The foremost language- and text-based artworks in the exhibition reflect the role of the artist-subject in the production- and reception aesthetics-based discourse in the current socio-political context and with respect to the interpretation practice in the exhibition space. First of all, the art scene acts as superstructure, as a mechanism which outlives itself and seems to only make possible the construction of sense relations. The main focus of the exhibition is the figure of the “author”, which is raised to an universal instance, meaning a model-like artist-subject, an existence that is independent from the individual and evolves only with the interactive relation of artwork and audience – text and reader – and is defined during its time “of the enunciation” [4]. The complex and entangled relations between the producing and the receiving subject are, thus, opened up for the aesthetical valuation of art in a medial context: “The autonomy of art, consequently and according to this understanding is not anymore inside the object, but is inferred from the relation of subject and object: with respect to the specific manner of how we experience objects of art – in particular in contrast to other things.” [5]
Not least by the title of the exhibition, the role of the curator is analysed in the light of the complex interplay of artist status and its commercial marketability, of the artwork’s production- and reception processes and the institutional critique which opposes the system of the “art market”. The unassigned untitled puts up for discussion the editorial tasks of the exhibition makers, thus allowing the reader’s/visitor’s imagination the greatest possible range. The computer-generated subtitle – Der/die AutorIn tituliert Texte durch eine versuchsweise Kunst. (The Author Entitles Texts By Experimenting With Art.) –, on the other hand, summarizes on the text level what Roland Barthes has described – referring to Julia Kristevas’ theory of intertextuality – as a “tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.” [6] . Finally, the work emancipates itself from the artistic concept and the reader is defined as “the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost” [7]. The audience becomes the meaningful subject and the author no longer is at the helm.
In this controversial context Anna Artaker reviews in Unbekannte Avantgarde (2008) the gender balance in portraits of artist groups, which had advanced, in the course of the twentieth century, to the position of crucial reference sources. Without hesitation, she furnishes the male representatives of these collectives with female names. The discourse of gender is also implicated in the poster installation Some Of The Names Of Photoshop (2009): the artist not only faces the authors but also the commercial and social reference framework of those technical means which are essential for today’s digital image production.
Miriam Bajtala’s two-part video work Ohne Schatten: trigger (2009) and satellite me (2009) also revolves around the perception of digital image material: in her arrangements, the artist creates containers for narration where the shown action becomes a variable. The video images – for satellite me re-arranged by a computer program – are left as visual common property and form for possible narrations to the perception of the audience. In arbeiten für ohne titel (2008/2009), Bajtala, finally, transfers the responsibility of seeing the artwork totally to the readers. Expectations that are brought forth on a text level are visually not fulfilled – the gap in the immaterial world is only filled by the audience’s power of imagination.
An active reading on the part of the audience is also demanded by Nikolaus Gansterer with his analogue hypertext installation Mnemocity (Figures of Thought II – VI) (2005/2010). He concentrates individually selected and processed theoretical texts of various authors to a three-dimensional web of network nodes and interconnections, which can be deciphered over and over according to the respective spatial position of the reader. The relations between the word and its meaning, the text and its author are in the center of Jörg Piringer’s video works wir alle (2001), vielleicht (2002), and vorsprung (2004). On the basis of already existing text material like declarations, advertising messages and political speeches and by means of moving text-images, he noticeably dissolves the borderlines between art and literature.
Michael Kargl’s book installation a misunderstanding (2008-2010) encapsulates the topic of the exhibition in terms of a documentation of non-accepted calls of the artist, which are interpreted as waste product of the intricate mechanisms of the art scene and puts up for discussion the production conditions of contemporary art. Commercial strategies of marketability are also topicalized by the artist with objects of desire (2005-2008). In the course of a continuous process – original – artworks are generated of successive numbers, which disappear as quickly from the screen as they appeared thereon beforehand.
By the art scene often used metaphors and concepts are finally subject of Miriam Laussegger’s und Eva Beierheimer’s series of works worte#25/installation/ der/die betrachterIn interpretiert/2010 (2010) and the corresponding online text generator worte.at/art-words.net (2006/2010). With their collection of technical terms and terminologies, they reduce to absurdity language that relates to art by generating artificial language and return it again to the exhibition space as installation which is detached from the author-subject. (Übersetzung: Helga Droschl)
References:
[1] Barthes, Roland: Image Music Text, Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath, Fontana Press: London, 1977
[2] Diederichsen, Diedrich: Eigenblutdoping. Selbstverwertung, Künstlerromantik, Partizipation, Kiepenheuer & Witsch: Cologne, 2008, p. 196
[3] Barthes, Roland: Image Music Text, Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath, Fontana Press: London, 1977, p. 145
[4] ibid.
[5] Rebentisch, Juliane: Ästhetik der Installation, Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 2003, p. 105
[6] Barthes, Roland: Image Music Text, Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath, Fontana Press: London, 1977, p. 146
[7] ibid., p. 148
-
Anna Artaker, Some Of The Names Of Photoshop (2009)
banner, paper, black-and-white, 464 x 91 cm
Who are Sarah Kong and Andrew Coven, who is Jackie Lincoln-Owyang? Who is responsible for today’s production and manipulation of photographic images? Who defines the international standards of image data? During the loading procedure of Adobe Photoshop, 41 names briefly appear on the screen. The list of persons who were involved in the development of the image processing application begins with Thomas Knoll, its inventor, in order to proceed hierarchically in a descending line. In Some Of The Names Of Photoshop (2009), Anna Artaker shows all names on a four and a half meters long paper banner – the static presentation of what otherwise hardly can be noticed. With her text installation for which Photoshop’s built-in font Myriad is used, the artist not only puts to the proof the capability of the audience and perhaps of Photoshop users of assigning the names to the program; but, at the same time, questions the role of the worldwide leading monopolistic corporation Adobe Systems Incorporated by looking behind the scenes of the contemporary image production and its tools. Those persons are in the foreground who – in a metaphorical and literal sense –, automatically and with every new loading procedure of the computer program inscribe themselves in the process of image editing.
Anna Artaker, Unbekannte Avantgarde (2008)
10 historical photographs, black-and-white print on baryta paper, measures of photographs (unframed) from 10 x 6,70 cm to 30 x 18,60 cm; 10 captions, paper, each A5
Group Zielscheibe, Dadaists, Surrealists, Bauhaus, Experimental Groep, Cobra, Abstract Expressionists, Situationist International, Spur and the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative: If popular portrait photos from art history books are to be believed, all quoted artist groups of the twentieth century were male, except of one respective female artist for the gender quote. In Unbekannte Avantgarde (2008), Anna Artaker faces this phenomenon with an alternative research. On paper sheets which are added as caption to the original photographs, she doubles the portrayed persons as silhouettes and attributes to each abstract male head a female name. Kurt Kren, Hans Scheugl, Gottfried Schlemmer, Peter Weibel or Ernst Schmidt jr. become, for example, Linda Christanell, Mara Mattuschka, Lisl Ponger, Moucle Blackout or Maria Lassnig. Starting from an allegedly imaging function of photography which inevitably makes each dispositive a historical document, in Unbekannte Avantgarde Anna Artaker develops a parallel history of artist-subjects aiming at revising, to a certain extent, the staging of documentary photographs and their gender relations.
Biography — Anna Artaker, born 1976 in Vienna, lives and works in Vienna | study at the Universities of Vienna and Paris 8 (philosophy, political sciences) and at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (conceptual art) | exhibitions (selection): Quasi dasselbe…? Diskurse mit poetischer Funktion (Kunstpavillon, Innsbruck 2010), 48 Köpfe aus dem Merkurov Museum (Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg 2009), Modernologies (MACBA – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona 2009), Fortsetzung Folgt. (Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna 2009), Am Sprung (OK – Centrum für Gegenwartskunst, Linz 2008)
Miriam Bajtala, arbeiten für ohne titel (2008/2009)
60 paper sheets, each A4; 3 framed collector’s versions
Artists name their works with the term untitled when they do not want to constrict them by signs of language, thus seeking to draw the attention of the audience increasingly to the form. In arbeiten für ohne titel (2008/2009) (works for untitled), Miriam Bajtala reverses this process. Fictional series as improvisation mit zeugen, unerforschte zeitprobleme (improvisation with witnesses, unexplored time problems) or geschenkte keller mit fundament (given basements with foundation) serve the artist to create artworks exclusively in the form of titles like, for example, die sehnsucht war ein längenmaß (desire was a measure of length) or am boden liegend, sieht sie den himmel nicht (she cannot see the sky when lying on the ground). The text- and photo installation is presented in two different variants. The collector’s version shows the photographed images of the respective backs of the frames, wherein the photos are presented. By reversing the frame, the original appears: a text applied with a typing machine on a white sheet of paper. The artist version shows the originals in the form of paper sheets whereupon the respective texts are written. Through the oscillation between artistic object and its visual and language-based representational form, the audience is faced with an offer full of expectations, an offer which, however, remains without visual fulfilment – and finally sign of language.
Miriam Bajtala, Ohne Schatten: trigger | satellite me (2009)
videos, 2:25 min | 3:56 min
The setting of both videos Ohne Schatten: trigger (2009) and satellite me (2009) by Miriam Bajtala is an ample space of the former Anker bread factory in Vienna. On the floor of this space, a circle of chalk with a diameter of eighteen meters is drawn and separated into fifty regular fragments which narrow towards the middle, where the actress Anna Mendelssohn sits in a rigid pose. The lighting of a lighter in the hand of the actress is the dramaturgical culmination. Whereas in trigger, Miriam Bajtala films the protagonist of the video from fifty different angles and brings the singular tracking shots in line with the marks towards the middle on the floor, the video images in satellite me are not anymore timely-linear, but spatially structured with the help of a computer program: The respective five-seconds-long sequences – the fifty tracking shots to the middle of the circle which are taken from the original video trigger – are re-arranged alongside singular frame lines. Dramaturgical culmination of satellite me is the lighting of a lighter in the hand of the actress. With her arrangements, Miriam Bajtala creates containers for narration where the shown action becomes a variable. The artist blueprints an open depot of looks, which she returns to the perception of the audience as alleged common property.
Biography — Miriam Bajtala, born 1970 in Bratislava, lives and works in Vienna | study at the Academy of Fine Arts (photography) and at the Universität of Music and Performative Arts (electroacoustics and experimental music) | exhibitions (selection): asymmetrical focus (Galerie Stadtpark, Krems 2009), Performance I (Fotogalerie, Vienna 2009), unORTnung V – Ankerbrotfabrik (Vienna 2009), Ohne Namen (Technisches Museum, Vienna 2009), Austria Contemporary (Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg 2008)
Nikolaus Gansterer, Mnemocity (Figures of Thought II – VI) (2005/2010)
paper, text, nylon, neon lamps
A meme, like a gene, does not purposely do or want anything – it either gets replicated or not.Analogous to the gene, the so called meme is a structure of notions which is capable to reproduce autonomously. According to the theories of the biologist Richard Dawkins, Nikolaus Gansterer’s text installation Mnemocity (Figures of Thought II – VI) (2005/2010) takes up the idea of a literally to understand figure of notion, which is shaped of modified text material. Scrappy text fragments, singular words and pieces of conversation are extracted from books and arranged to long text widths. The re-arrangement of linear books results in an organic-looking structure of knowledge, which is similar to an analogue hypertext, whereas its substance increasingly consolidates by the networked interplay of the elements of this complex library. With Mnemocity, Nikolaus Gansterer reveals the multidimensional topographies of language, which only continuously reproduce when being received. The installation is added by a Lecture Performance, which translates the text installation to drawing, a class where the process of realizing, thinking and denoting appears extremely concentrated. For the artist, the act of drawing is research in its classical form: one feels his way, experiments, always anew, step by step.
Biography — Nikolaus Gansterer, born 1974 in Klosterneuburg, lives and works in Vienna | study at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (transmedial art) and at the Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht (postacademic studies) | member at the Institute for Transacoustic Research and of the Wiener Gemüseorchesters | exhibitions (selection): Bureau of Found Appropriations (Vooruit, Gent 2009), Mifan (Anni Art Gallery, Beijing 2009), The Stone Road (Argos, Brussels 2009), Quergeblickt (Technisches Museum, Vienna 2009), Am Sprung (OK – Centrum für Gegenwartskunst, Linz 2008)
Michael Kargl, a misunderstanding (2008-2010)
installation, book objects, 210 pages (around 20 x 9 x 3 cm), edition of 3 copies
In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes – Andy Warhol’s vision of an increasingly medially transported star cult and the staging of everyday occurrences was the starting point for the call Everyone will be famous for 150 kbytes, which was published by a design platform on the internet. Michael Kargl’s a misunderstanding (2008-2010) is a documentation of an e-mail communication between him and the announcing institution. His application comprised two hundred monochrome white planes, which had been automatically generated by a, for this purpose developed, computer program and should have been sent to the email address quoted in the call. After only fifty-seven deliveries, however, the proposed performance was harshly interrupted: you, evidently, are a time waster came the answer, which programmatically describes the production conditions of contemporary art in a medial environment, closing with the words don’t lose time anymore. The unsuccessful participation in calls and the drafting of concepts to nowhere is an actual component of the artist’s daily routine. With a misunderstanding, Michael Kargl makes the procedure of applying to art and the failing a point of doing it.
Michael Kargl, objects of desire (2005-2008)
custom-made computer, shellscript
In short successions, a text sequence appears on the screen of a transparent object with the, for an art audience, promising title objects of desire (2005-2008): white standard typography on black background, sentence for sentence, second for second, with each restart a serial number, thus, a new artwork: i am file number 1100. – i am a unique piece of art. – i was just created and will be gone in a few seconds. The sentence sequence is concluded with you own me now until you forget about me., in order to restart shortly thereafter again with i am file number 1101. The basis of Michael Kargl’s work objects of desire is the question of the determining parameters for digital art, of its role in the art scene and – moreover – of originality and authenticity of artistic works whose authorship is directly bound to the person of the author. Do one has to touch and own an artwork before being able to define it as such or is the serial number sufficient to speak of an original: 1102, 1103, 1104? The custom-made computer – the transparent object (of desire) – contributes, on a formal level, to the reflection on the momentariness of art.
Biography — Michael Kargl, born 1975 in Hall, lives and works in Vienna | study at the University Mozarteum Salzburg (sculpture) | exhibitions (selection): Übersetzung ist eine Form. | Translation is a mode. (Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna 2010), Quasi dasselbe…? Diskurse mit poetischer Funktion (Kunstpavillon, Innsbruck 2010), Interzone/Economy (Galerija Galzenica, Velika Gorica 2009), anti-bodies (Art & Social Technologies Research, Plymouth 2009)
Miriam Laussegger and Eva Beierheimer, worte.at/art-words.net (2006/2010) | worte#25/installation/der/die betrachterIn interpretiert/2010 (2010)
installation, website on server, air cushion foil, internet workstation | worte-installation
Self-creation or self-preservation? The formal language of contemporary art seems to be undecodable without its theoretical vocabulary, since the artwork is only ultimately shaped by the tool of language. Today, artists are forced to match this language and acquire text-related skills, in order to be able to contextualize their work. Miriam Laussegger’s and Eva Beierheimer’s worte#25/installation/ der/die betrachterIn interpretiert/2010 (2010) is based on a collection of around 3500 specific technical terms from art magazines, catalogues, talks and lectures, and is on display as freely accessible text generator on the internet and as text installation in the exhibition space. Under worte.at/art-words.net (2006/2010) on the Internet, users can select singular terms from a German and English words database, add own words, define their frequency and the number of sentences and finally generate an “individual” text. With respect to the spatial installation, the artists function as the generator. Only the interaction of the components of this hybrid determines its purpose: autopoiesis, or in the language of the generator: Die Zeit-Raum-Sprachbezüge verknüpfen in diesem Regenwetter eine irreversible Formensprache mit einer Kunstmaschine, (The time-, space-, language-references link in this rainy weather an irreversible formal language with an art machine) or: Der/die AutorIn tituliert Texte durch eine versuchsweise Kunst. (The author entitles texts by experimenting with art.).
Biography — Eva Beierheimer, born 1979 in Graz, lives and works in Vienna and Stockholm/S | study at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (textual sculpture) | exhibitions (selection): art-words (HIT Gallery Bratislava 2010), worte (KroArt Gallery, Vienna 2009), in reference to… (Galleri Mejan, Stockholm 2009), Competition exhibition for the Styrian art price (Neue Galerie, Graz 2009), In Fragments, Ada Street Gallery, London 2008)
Biography — Miriam Laussegger, born 1980 in Vienna, lives and works in Vienna | study at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (textual sculpture) | exhibitions (selection): homebase (KroArt Gallery, Vienna 2010), Übersetzung ist eine Form. | Translation is a mode., (Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna 2009), worte (KroArt Gallery, Vienna 2009), twilight zone – art hits design (Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna 2009), Flavours of Austria (The Art Foundation, Athens 2009)
Jörg Piringer, wir alle (2001) | vielleicht (2002) | vorsprung (2004)
videos, each 2 min
The language follows the rhythm of grammar, speaking that one of the sound: In the videos wir alle (2001), vielleicht (2002) and vorsprung (2004), Jörg Piringer generates abstract visual text compositions by means of concrete language-related manifestations and stages these in a flickering of black typography on a white background. He couples the type face of the words which are taken from text fragments of a politician (2001), declarations (2002) and advertisement (2004) to their articulation and detaches, in favour of image and sound, the sense of the written and spoken words from its original medium. Through the analysis of the evolutionary process of language and its meaning, he extends the concept of the early literary avant-garde. The voice becomes the interface in a dynamic electronic context which evolves on location as quickly as it dissolves again. The animated lots of characters and signs which are on display on the screen seem to dissolve the language bit by bit. The system of language that has been constructed by social consensus is reduced to the Arbitrarität der Zeichen (arbitrariness of signs) (Ferdinand de Saussure). As in scientific experiments, Jörg Piringer creates test set-ups, where he literally lets collide the particles of language.
Biography — Jörg Piringer, born 1974 in Vienna, lives and works in Vienna | study of informatics at the Technical University of Vienna | member of the Institute for Transacoustic Research and of the Wiener Gemüseorchesters | exhibitions (selection): Wiener Gerücht. Das Private und das Öffentliche (eop, Emergence of Projects – Museum auf Abruf, Vienna 2009), Fluten 09. Work:Space (Wasserturm am Wienerberg, Vienna 2009), Im Prinzip, zeitbasiert (Fluc am Praterstern, Vienna 2009), ARTmART (Künstlerhaus, Vienna 2008), Entscheidungen sichtbar machen (eop, Emergence of Projects – Museum auf Abruf, Vienna 2008), You own me now until you forget about me. (Mala Galerija/Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana 2008)
-
