This text by Bart Lootsma was originally published in the accompanying catalog of the exhibition. You can find the full catalog here.
Actionism is the unique Austrian brand of performance art, with Hermann Nitsch, Günther Brus, Rudolf Schwarzkogler and Otto Mühl as its main agents. By means of choreographies with naked bodies, paint and blood, combined with loud music, they intoxicate the participants and the audience.
Günter Brus, Ana, 1964. Photo: Siegfried Klein. Courtesy Atelier Otto Mühl.
Inspired by the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, the Actionists wanted to free the people from the bourgeois oppression that leads to fascism and war. The liberation of the body is central to this. Hermann Nitsch refers to his Orgien Mysterien Theater as plays in which the participants can release their pent-up aggression.
The Actionists move in the same circles as the progressive architects, exhibiting their work in the same galleries. In Otto Mühl’s video Wehrertüchtigung, a group of young students, who would later establish the architecture collective Zünd-Up, are submitted to a shared humiliation inspired by military drills.
Like Hollein and Pichler emphasize the cultic and ritualistic origins of architecture, the Actionists often refer to rituals and attributes of the Roman Catholic Church, turning everyday phenomena such as sexuality and the slaughter of animals into spiritual theater.
Otto Mühl, Wehrertüchtigung, Aktion 40, 1967 (still). Collection mumok – museum der moderner kunst stiftung ludwig, Vienna, acquired with the support of the Gesellschaft der Freunde der bildenden Künste, Vienna, 2009.
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Lecture series on the Austrian avant-garde tradition
“A little world in which the big one holds its tryouts”, is how guest curator and professor Bart Lootsma describes the development of Austrian avant-garde movements in the 20th century. In this lecture series, Lootsma places the so-called ‘Radical Austria’ of the 1960s in the context of the long Austrian tradition of art and design.
Digital catalog
Visiting the exhibition, you will receive the accompanying catalog. It documents both the technical information of all exhibited works, as well as substantive texts to contextualize important makers and themes. You can find the digital version here.
So Posthuman (1): Open your eyes
Posthuman; once your eyes are opened to it you see it everywhere. But what is it? In this recurring series, curator Fredric Baas explains. In the first column, Baas focuses on the changing human body, something Austrian designers were already investigating in the 1960s.
Cultic Cities
The need for radical change manifested itself in post-war Austria in a series of megalomanic urban designs. These projects share an obsession with technology and infrastructure and a drive to create completely new ways of living together.
Realized Manifestoes
The designers and artists in the Austrian avant-garde were obsessed with theories of social change. Despite their manifestos often being very radical, they realised an impressive number of their projects.
Everything is Architecture
With his manifesto Alles ist Architektur Hans Hollein does away with the traditional definition of architecture: “Our efforts are focused on the environment as a whole and on all media that determine it. Both television, the artificial climate, transport, clothing, the telephone and the home.”
Art and Revolution
The performances of the Actionists increasingly sparked scandals attracting attention of both police and media. This culminated in 1968 in the happening Kunst und Revolution, arranged by the artist Peter Weibel as part of student protests and taking place in a prominent lecture hall of Vienna University.
Schöner Wohnen
Schöner Wohnen, or ‘the destruction of the habitable coffin’ is a film made by the architecture collective Salz der Erde in 1971, in which the ideal of the tasteful-bourgeois housing magazine of the same name is mercilessly undermined.
Body and Sexuality
In the 1960s, the body became the starting point for a radical rethinking of architecture, design, fashion and art. The boundaries between those disciplines increasingly disappeared.
Perception
In the 1960s and 1970s, new media such as radio, telephone and TV changed the relationship between people and the environment. The impact on the human experience of the environment makes perception an important theme for many artists and designers during this period.
Cybernetic Cities
That cybernetics would radically influence the functioning of design, architecture and urban planning was understood in Austria at an early stage. Its consequences are speculated on in numerous projects.
Prototypes
Walter Pichler’s prototypes of furniture and appliances are perfectly executed and functional. By emphasizing certain effects of the use of everyday objects, these prototypes show their cold and disorientating impact.
Feedback Architecture
A series of experiments by Coop Himmelb(l)au investigates how human test subjects respond to intensive media experiences and how these reactions can be fed back to those media.
Mind Expanders
Haus-Rucker-Co works on the Mind Expanding Program from 1967 to 1971. The program aims to expand human consciousness and man-made environments on different levels.
Klima-Zones
The oil crisis and environmental issues have led to an international reconsideration of the technological fascinations of the avant-gardes of the 1960s. Haus-Rucker-Co, in particular, reflects in very large installations on the consequences of environmental pollution.
