Vienna Art Foundation presents Synaptic Driver

The artistic networks of the donaufestival will be expanded this year with a happening and performance project. In collaboration with Wiener Art Foundation, different forms of action and representation of performative practices will be presented under the title of “Synaptic Driver”. In line with the festival’s motto, “Nodes, Roots and Shoots”, 12 contributions will examine the possibilities of experiencing performative works not as individually completed events, but as open, network-building forms of artistic expression.

The venue is the vacant, former electrical shop Elektro Gantner. It is located – only a few minutes from the festival’s main halls – on the edge of the Stadtpark. Visitors passing the exhibition space on their way to the concert halls are invited to drop in.
 
With the presentation of the individual contributions as different approaches to the main question – the festival’s motto and the Bruce Nauman quite: “Art doesn’t liberate us from anything” – different forms of performance and installation works will be shown. The contributions were developed over a period of several weeks and not only seek interaction with the audience, but also a dialogue with each other. 

The event will be opened by Albert Mayr and Ludwig Kittinger / Fernando Mesquitas. Mayr will present a performance sculpture dealing with new media, technology and electronic music, thus also forging a connection with the festival’s music programme. Kittinger / Mesquitas will design a room setting which will continue to serve as a connecting element until it needs to be destroyed for a new contribution. The artists will design two interior walls in complementary colours red and green. In a subversive act of design and destruction, they will throw everyday materials, such as peppers or turf, against the walls with the help of special tools.

A period of intensive preparation precedes the contribution of Aldo Gianotti: During his travels through Italy, France, Spain and German, the artist collected thousands of event flyers. In Krems, he will transform the exhibition space into a storage space for them. Two people will be hired to hand out the flyers at the festival’s entrance. Questions will be raised concerning authorship and also the conditions determining the production and reception of performances.

One focus of BORIS KOPEINIG’s work is dealing with electronic (dance) music. The project, “underground dance loops”, explores the question of how sounds influence and change physicality and which bodies can be produced.

A joint performance of Marianne Vlasitsch and Michael Bäckström will start off the second weekend. As part of a happening lasting several hours, Vlasitsch/Bäckström will see installations, sculptures, rituals and dances emerging, which, as they say themselves, can best be described as “shamanistic”. Similar to the mating behaviour of male power birds, which build complex nests to attract females, Vlasitsch and Bäckström will adapt themselves and their “nests” to the audience they want to attract.

In their joint performances, Constanze Schweiger and Jasmin Trablicher repeatedly combine textile objects, which act as a kind of body, with music. It is only through being used by the body that these fabric objects unfold their actual volume, dealing with the correlation between the inside and the outside.

In the happening titled “Earth girls are easy (eight of ten aliens agree)”, Steffi Alte and Eva Seiler combine different media – film, poster, performance – into a strictly choreographed plot. It is based on Julian Temple’s film, “Earth girls are easy”. Every 20 minutes the artists will jump through posters depicting their own faces, thus staging a play with art and pop historical references.

The two artists, Konrad Kager and Baptiste Elbaz, also work with references. They use symbols, stories and cultural rites and combine these into irrational and surreal situations. During a procession, the sweets-filled mascot, “Venus vom Galgenberg” (a reference to the oldest statuette of a female figure found just outside Krems) will be carried through the Stadtpark like a holy statue. The reggae song, “Stalag”, which will be played by the band accompanying the procession, alludes to the NS concentration camp Stalag 17B, which was also located only a few miles outside Krems. Finally, the “Venus” will be smashed, similar to a Mexican piñata, and the sweets given out to the audience.   

The last day of the festival and performance series will be all about “gender”. In her work, “All sexes welcome”, CHRISTINA GOESTL, in a radical manner, takes apart the attributions of popular definitions of the sexes. As part of an audiovisual performance, audio snippets will be coupled with texts by scientists and researchers, such as Anne Fausto-Sterling, Suzanne Kessler or Sadie Plant, and projected via screens into the outside space.

In his works, Christian Falsnaes consistently deals with social expectations, especially as regards conceptions of masculinity. These are deconstructed by means of irony and exaggeration. Not least, Falsnaes in his performances aims to dissolve the boundaries between popular and high culture, between art, film and music.

Subcultural and queer practices form a crucial backdrop for the collaborative project, “Sugar Kisses Krems 2011”, of Toni Schmale, Laurette Rasch and Phini Gonzales. By means of the instruction, “Let’s play father, mother and child!”, heteronormative structures will be made visible and, by means of a discourse-driven handling of gender and trans-identities, newly illustrated. In oder to distinguish the different positions in the game, certain accessories will be used (e.g. mustache, apron, dummy) which are associated with coded gender and role expectations. The audience will be able to observe the self-contained fictitious world created by the artists in the electrical shop exclusively through the shop window.  

on Thu 6-10pm, Fri 2-10pm, Sat 12-10pm

Steffi Alte, Michael Bäckström, Baptiste Elbaz, Christian Falsnaes, Aldo Giannotti, Christina Goestl, Phini Gonzales, Konrad Kager, Ludwig Kittinger, Boris Kopeinig, Albert Mayr, Fernando Mesquita, Laurette Rasch, Constanze Schweiger, Toni Schmale, Eva Seiler, Jasmin Trabichler, Marianne Vlaschits

Curated by Amer Abbas and Barbara Pflanzner.

www.artfoundation.at