Vienna. Making use of performances, performativity and »performative installations«, these three exhibitions focus on the body and the way in which its »linguisticality« has been construed both historically and at present. The supposedly »long«-established knowledge of the meanings communicated by the body referred to in the title of the Generali show is however addressed from very different angles in each exhibition. While »Mothers of Invention« unfolds a history of feminist/agitative knowledge of the body, »That bodies speak*…« explores the body’s potential for gestural action. In »Body Display« on the other hand, an exhibition that was initiated by the Siemens Arts Program as part of its »performative installations« series, the body becomes a projection surface, which subsumes various body-related approaches and is combined with the installation concept. It seems appropriate to undertake a more differentiated analysis of the diverse curatorial approaches here, not least because the concept of performance by now goes hand-in-hand with a very diffuse political consensus.

»where is Performance coming from«

A wide range of artistic and activist approaches, which were developed in close conjunction with feminist politics and the drafting of feminist theory, are presented by the exhibition »Mothers of Invention – where is Performance coming from«. Laid out as a feminist archive and launched already back in 2003 at the Kunsthalle Exnergasse by curators Carola Dertnig and Stefanie Seibold, with contributions from the Austrian performance scene, as »Lets twist again«, the show has now been expanded to include international »groups and producer networks«.
»La lotta non é finita« (1973), a rare film document of the Collettivo Feminista di Cinema, was the programmatic model for the curators’ approach: the film is about two demonstrations taking place on International Women’s Day on 8 March 1972 and the following year. In 1972 the activists organized their demonstration along classical lines, while the next year they decided to do something different. They sprang into action in small masked groups at various places in the city – at schools, universities and the markets in the various city districts. This revision of the customary forms and means of presentation, which succeeded on the one hand at making political demands visible, and on the other hand was applied as a strategy against attempts to exert control over the demonstrators, entailed an active encroachment on the public and media space. What the exhibition also shows is how the demonstrators were able to establish «real» locations as centers for interdisciplinary discourse, education and production. The curators use documentary texts and images - such as letters, manifestos, reviews, newspapers, books, video recordings, photographs and slides – to present institutions like the Feminist Art Program, founded in California in 1970, the Women’s Building in Los Angeles, the Franklin Furnace experimental theater space in New York, as well as Vienna's Dramatic Center and Rosa Lila Villa, as historic precursors of performative practices with explicitly political intentions. This updated stocktaking is impressive for it abundance of feminist »archivalia«, which has never before made available in such a «systematic» form. Carola Dertnig and Stefanie Seibold utilized a »snowball system of recommendations and tips« from participating artists, which necessarily led to a very subjective selection. The fact that documentary material does not per se ensure a differentiated view, since the conditions for maintaining and selecting it can only be reconstructed in a rudimentary fashion, is evident wherever gaps are discerned.

Whereas for the documentation of the activities of the Homosexual Initiative in Vienna, for example, it was possible to draw on an extremely comprehensive archive including films, posters and elaborately framed newspaper articles, a poster meant to represent the Salon Lady Chutney founded by Katrina Daschner, or a group photo of IntAkt (Internationale Aktionsgemeinschaft bildender Künstlerinnen) afford an insight into their programs that is adequate only for the initiated. Commentary provided by the curators is also lacking: for example, in the slide presentation of the Canon Club, which deals with the global situation of women without however delving deeper into their living conditions. While here it is difficult for the viewer to place the group in context, in the case of the feminist pioneers (such as Christa Biedermann, Mary Beth Edelson, Suzanne Lacy, and Martha Wilson) it is the very concept of the network that provides the context for their work. Valie Export is therefore not presented as an individual artist with her works, but rather as the initiator of the feminist exhibition »Magna« (1975), information on which is available in the form of an exhibition catalog.

The programmatic aspiration by means of which the curators endeavored to build a bridge to »La Lotta non é finita« was – as is hardly surprising – much more difficult to discern where visual materials such as film and video predominated (for example, Penelope Georgiou, Judith Hopf, the Clever Gretel Group, Deadly Doris, Minimal Club). In order to perceive »real« options for action, documentary instructions must apparently be backed by the strong visual presence of these performative practices.

»That bodies speak has been known for a long time… *«

The way in which the process of perpetual citation of norms can lead to a subversive difference from what has gone before, opening up new opportunities for action (Judith Butler), is a topic that is currently being explored experimentally by Hemma Schmutz and Tanja Widmann of the Generali Foundation. The fragmented body, or more accurately the gesture, seems for the two curators to open up a new realm of action, which to a large extent eludes controlling mechanisms since the ambivalence and open-endedness of the gesture makes it impossible to grasp as a whole. The exhibition, whose title is a quote from Gilles Deleuze, is arranged on four panels in a very open type of layout based on Aby Warburg’s »Mnemosyne Atlas«. Four thematic areas unfold, each taking as their point of departure an artistic work: »Masks« (Antje Majewski), »I am Making Art« (John Baldessari), »Maneuver« (Allan Kaprow) and »Men in the Cities« (Robert Longo). »What is a gesture? How does a gesture form a group? How does a group form a gesture? When is a crowd a group? What makes a mass of people into a mass? When is a group a collective?…« – These are the questions that open the first panel on the theme of »Masks«, which brings together paintings by Antje Majewski and Thomas Eggerer, videos by Aernout Mik and Daniel Herskowitz, and photographs by Catherine Opie. Audio stations enable viewers to listen to interpretive information revolving around the theme, based on the individual works. While the gestures are embedded here, similarly to the codes, in a communicative structure for which the corresponding society can be discerned more or less readily, in the second panel, »I am Making Art«, they become much more concretely palpable. They now describe a »gestural-artistic vocabulary« ranging from the conceptual-performative (John Baldessari, Maria Hahnenkamp), to the informal and virtual (Martha Jungwirth, Michaela Grill), to the expressive gesture (Jackson Pollock), or the gesture of hugging (Ilse Haider). What can be demonstrated at all, and when, is the subject of the third panel, »Maneuver«. This title indicates a very explicit analysis of changing gender relations and the theorizing that goes on about them. Mary Kelly is only now showing her work »Antepartum« (1972) to a wider public, because before now the conditions for an adequate, non-essentializing reception were simply not given. How static gender-specific behavioral and representational norms – polite etiquette (Allan Kaprow), sexual harassment (Fiona Rukschcio), role models (Francesca Woodman) – can be watered down, and the necessity of always bearing in mind the means that are required to do, is also demonstrated by the »Maneuvers« of Allan Kaprow. These take the form of instructions for action that satirize gender-specific constructions. Collisions are unavoidable whenever it’s a question of determining who should allow whom to go first, and for what reason. Gestures are always absurd – we are forced to conclude – when their formal nature is still recognizable but they have lost their »purposeful« content (catalogue text by Giorgio Agamben). Jacques Tati and David. W. Griffith, represented in the show with »Playtime« (1968) and »The Painted Lady« (1912) respectively, build these irritating moments into their films, while Josef Dabernig conversely robs gestures of their narrative basis in his film »Parking«. In this way he de-psychologizes the actors, while the familiar surroundings simultaneously take on a disconcerting and eerie charge. The fourth part of the exhibition is dominated by official or »rhetorical« gestures. It centers on a drawing by Robert Longo from the series »Men in the Cities« (1980). In the drawing he renders the »me-obsessed« proponents of the Yuppie generation anonymous, by subjugating their bodies to his stage directions and then decontextualizing them. Roman Ondák demystifies the statesmanlike impact of official symbolic gestures (handshakes, monument unveilings or conferences) by having school children perform these grandiloquent rituals in his photo series »Tomorrows« (»Erlauf erinnert sich« - »Erlauf remembers«).

All in all, the exhibition does not tell the «big» story of the gesture; it works instead on conceptually »dissolving the limits« of gestural meanings and effects. This approach enables and gives rise to open readings, although the arrangement of the panels sometimes feels too random.

Performative Installations #4 – Body Display

Taking the opposite tack, curators Angelika Nollert and Eva Maria Stadler pursue a synthetic, identity-establishing approach in their contribution «Performative Installation #4 – Body Display» in the Secession building. The body is interrogated here in its mediated constitution and as a projection surface «for public identities.» In her text for the exhibition Angelika Nollert makes an effort to distill the performative potential of the artistic works, which she discusses in their «eventfulness, in their relationship to the present time and their presence.» For her, «The ‹performative installation› addresses the viewer immediately and directly, he is challenged to take part.» In order to make this desired «interactive» moment tangible, the main gallery of the Secession building was transformed from White Cube to Black Box, endowing it with a stagelike character. But although visitors to the exhibition find themselves constantly on stage, they are here once again never really involved «interactively» in what is happening. John Miller, for example, shows in his brutal installation only the pitiful remains of a game show. Broken dildos on the pile of trash at the center of the setting don’t tell us anything new if they are meant to refer to the disastrous failure of sexual interactivity. «Generated identities» from the worlds of film and television step into the limelight in the works of Brice Dellsberger and René Pollesch. Here one gets the impression that political commitment is being exchanged for Radical Chic: identity changes just happen, homosexuality is casual and evidently doesn’t bother anyone anymore. Sure of the weight of good references, Dellsberger lets drop the name of director Andrej Zulawski, and Pollesch places himself in league with actors Volker Spengler and Irm Herrmann in the tradition of Fassbinder. The neutralization of identities as presented by Viktor Alimpiev and Marian Zhunin in their video work «Ode. Ode is not a song/Have you a feeling of a standard,» forms a system-critical departure from this sell-out of identities, while in John Bock’s video installation «weißschweißproduktion» («whitesweatproduction») late Capitalist criticism of the system becomes a fully meaningless foam fight. Feminist considerations and approaches can be found in the work of Andrea Fraser, Dorit Margreiter and Anette Baldauf. In her dual-wall video installation «Exhibition» Fraser looks at how her own body as an artist is bound within its context. Margreiter and Baldauf use photo material to discuss with proponents of the Viennese art scene their visit to the «She Zone,» an exclusive shopping center for women that was founded by an Arab businessman in Abu Dhabi.

This work has a «performative» effect because the mediated discussion of the documentary photo material allows visitors to gain insights that go beyond the analysis of the specific situation, opening up new perceptual possibilities, and perhaps also alternative opportunities for action.

«Mothers of Invention»: 6 December 2003 to 1 February 2004, MUMOK Factory, Vienna
«That bodies speak has been known for a long time*»: 22 January to 25 April 2004, Generali Foundation, Vienna
«Body Display»: 19 February to 18 April 2004, Secession Building, Vienna

 

Translated by Jennifer Taylor-Gaida

 

---