Archive: The wonderful feeling of shortening
This year the Kunstraum Niederoesterreich is continuing the performance series initiated in 2013 as an events and exhibition format. If last year the performance series concerned itself with the institutional opportunities and/or restrictions that the performance scene is confronted with, this time it concentrates its view on an aspect of the conceptual disposition of the performance itself.
Performance has an unstable relationship with its own visibility. The strength of the expressive power and the intensity that it can achieve in the moment and in which it becomes experienceable are inversely proportional to their perceptibility over time – a performance is simply non-visible over a longer period. This concerns not only the difficulty of keeping a solo work communicable and integrating it lastingly in the arts discourse, it simultaneously and more seriously concerns the performance tradition.
How can performers link up with the preceding performance artists? How can artistic stances and processes be kept accessible for later reception? An approach takes place through indirect routes. Alongside concepts, written descriptions, photo and video material there are spatial and material changes – and that is what this year’s performance series will be concentrating on.
Events do not just take place in an environment, they are formed by it and are in an intensive dialogue with it as they progress. Where, under what conditions a performance takes place is here just as decisive as the objects that performers use for their work or produce specifically for it. These sculptural manifestations are not seldom the necessary foils on which the transient action can formulate itself, and perhaps give a more intensive and more impressive image of the events than documentary material.
Three evenings in the Kunstraum Niederoesterreich are understood as complementary projects on this theme.
In the jury sessions and decisions on who the H13 performance prize should be awarded to, in view of the high quality of the submissions we have often regretted not being able to present more projects to the public. We are pleased that this year some artists from last year’s submissions are represented in our programme.
3 April 2014 from 16.00
THE SUPPER PARTY
And event for performance artists.
Discussions about unpalatable working conditions for performance artists often remain internal and thereby stick in the throat.
This is an invitation to artists to network with us and discuss and in the process also to initiate something lasting: an archive for performers.
The Kunstraum Niederoesterreich is making its premises and its infrastructure available for this first meeting.
A Hearty Invitation to all Performance Artists to Discuss, Enjoy and Subscribe to an Archive for Performance Artists: A Work in Progress!
Concept: Denise Kottlett
17 April 2014 19.00 SCULPTURE ME
Exhibition until 26 April 2014
The evening goes into questions that arise in connection with the spatial-sculptural setting of performances. How do artists react if they are supposed to realise works in the exhibition context? Often, exciting hybrids of sculpture, performance, visibility, definition and vanishing emerge out of this balancing act between one-time appearance and a static exhibition situation.
Jakob Lena Knebl, Evelyn Loschy, Johannes Mandorfer, Alexander Martinz, Driton Selmani, Gruppe Uno Wien, Annette Wehrmann, Eugen Wist, Anna Witt
Curated by Peter Kozek
The performance evening takes place as part of the cooperation project with Das Weisse Haus and the Kunsthalle Exnergasse.
8 May 2014 19.00 8∞
Exhibition until 24 May 2014
Eight loops – individual action fragments are spread around the room and form stationary, almost static moving images whose remaining dynamic points to a time without beginning or end. In this time bubble, the actions are no longer linear and targeted, but form sculptural forms of movement.
Milan Mladenovic
Curated by Sissi Makovec
