Japanther Process Lecture
Dienstag, 11. Januar 2011 - 18:00 Uhr
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary - Augarten
Stop by Himmelpfortgasse 13 on January 11th to get a closer look.
Figura cuncta videntis (the all-seeing eye) / Homage to Christoph Schlingensief
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna
Figura cuncta videntis presents a selection of eleven performative installations, documentations of past projects, and video-based installations that are informed by the aesthetics of the performative, as well as some new commissions created or re-created for this show. The exhibition seeks to underline the processual, durational, ephemeral, and dynamic nature of aesthetic production as well as the transformative quality (in the process of rapid development from articulation to dearticulation) of the residual or aesthetic production that possesses a performative disposition.
As its centerpiece, the exhibition showcases Animatograph (Iceland Edition) by Christoph Schlingensief, the German filmmaker, artist, and theater director who passed away in August 2010. The Animatograph is a many-faceted installation that refigures the gaze as the all-seeing eye, providing both a metaphor for a universal ur-narration and an apparatus for its navigation. Realized at the KlinK og BanK exhibition space in Reykjavik, Iceland, it is the most prominent corpus of work by Schlingensief and will be reinstalled in Vienna for the fourth time as a homage to the artist. The show's title, Figura cuncta videntis, is a term borrowed from Schlingensief's extensive repertoire of appropriations and détournements. "So we look at each other and cannot shake off the gaze. But we are also being observed. So who is really looking at whom when we stand before this icon cuncta videntis. Simultaneously? The icon stares at both of us even though we thought it was only us that could not longer evade its gaze. The room scrutinizes us rather than we, the room." (CS)