Newsletter July 2010

Opening: Behind the Fourth Wall. Fictitious Lives—Lived Fictions

How do media images convey a sense of reality and truth to their beholders? How do media stage “reality,” and what significance do “generated” images have in our everyday lives? And what is the capacity of art today, what strategies and possibilities does it have at its disposal, to examine “reality” with a critical eye? The exhibition Behind the Fourth Wall. Fictitious Lives—Lived Fictions, curated by Ilse Lafer, pursues these and other questions. The show opened at the Generali Foundation on June 1, 2010. The artists represented in the exhibition apply themselves to the difficult question of how to establish a site of critical reflection in today’s media space. The show includes works by artists such as Omer Fast, Aernout Mik, Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, and Judy Radul, as well as several works from the Generali Foundation’s collection: Harun Farocki, Andrea Geyer, and Allan Sekula are among the artists featured in the exhibition, which will be on view until August 15.

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Performances by Michael Fliri and Marcello Maloberti

In the run-up to the exhibition and then for the opening, the Generali Foundation invited two artists to develop performances. On May 20, Marcello Maloberti joined us with his performative mise-en-scène “Die Schmetterlinge essen die Bananen”; on the day of the opening, Michael Fliri presented his performance “Give Doubt the Benefit of the Doubt,” in which the artist appeared as his own protagonist.

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EVENTS
Lecture and curators’ guided tour

On July 2 at 7 pm, the cultural scholar Christian Schulte will give a lecture entitled "Reaching Behind the Images—Essays on Reconstructing Distance," and on August 12 at 7 pm, curator Ilse Lafer and production assistant Katharina Menches will offer a guided curators’ tour of the exhibition.

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PUBLICATIONS

The catalogue Behind the Fourth Wall. Fictitious Lives—Lived Fictions was published in conjunction with the exhibition. It features essays by Roland Barthes, Susanne Knaller, Ilse Lafer, and Christian Schulte, as well as notes documenting the individual works included in the exhibition. Several color plates, including exhibition views and documentation of the two performances, as well as comprehensive biographical and bibliographic information about the artists round out the volume. The publication is available at our shop.

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Edition: Allan Sekula, Aerospace Folktales

In his seminal work Aerospace Folktales (1973), the artist and photography theorist Allan Sekula examines stories of the aerospace industry in southern California. Through black-and-white photographs, transcripts of interviews with the artist’s parents, and his own commentary, we learn how the loss of the father’s job affected the entire family.

Ed. by Sabine Breitwieser for the Generali Foundation, 2005, writings by the artist in English and German translation, includes audio CD.

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ART EDUCATION

Generali guided tours
General guided tours of the exhibition are held every Thursday at 6 pm; admission is reduced (€ 3.00). On the occasion of the international AIDS conference, a special guided tour in English will be held on July 22 at 7 pm; please notify us if you would like to attend at barbara.mahlknecht@generali.at.

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NEWS FROM THE COLLECTION’S ARTISTS
VALIE EXPORT at seventy, awarded the Grand Decoration in Gold

On May 17, the Austrian media and performance artist, filmmaker, and feminist theorist VALIE EXPORT celebrated her seventieth birthday. Born Waltraud Lehner in Linz in 1940, she chose the name VALIE EXPORT as an artistic concept and a logo. She was a cofounder of the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative in 1967, and participated in numerous international exhibitions, including documenta 6, 1997, and the Austrian pavilions at the 1978 and 1980 Venice Biennales. VALIE EXPORT has taught at several institutions, including the San Francisco Art Institute, the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and the Berlin University of the Arts. Between 1995 and 2005, she was a professor of multimedia performance in Cologne.
VALIE EXPORT received the EA Generali Sculpture Award in 1995; in 2000, she received the Oskar Kokoschka Award and the Alfred Kubin Award. In 2003, the artist was awarded the Golden Decoration of the City of Vienna; in 2005, the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art; in 2009, an honorary doctorate from the University for Art and Industrial Design Linz; and, on June 2, 2010, the Grand Decoration in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria.
In her "Expanded Cinema" works, EXPORT elaborated her own radically Actionist brand of performative art. Usually appearing as her own actress, she experimented with the boundaries of film and cinema. Her film actions disrupt the viewer’s passive attitude toward the medium. Her oeuvre is a focus of the Generali Foundation’s activities; our collection includes the "TAPP- und TASTKINO" ("TAP and TOUCH CINEMA") as well as her film and video works; in 1996, we organized the sorely needed restoration of her early film installations and held the first complete survey exhibition of her filmic oeuvre.

VALIE EXPORT in the Generali Foundation’s collection

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Harun Farocki receives the 2009 Wilhelm Loth Award

The filmmaker Harun Farocki receives the 2009 Wilhelm Loth Award, the art prize of the City of Darmstadt. The award includes a cash prize as well as an exhibition on Darmstadt’s Mathildenhöhe, which will be documented in a catalogue. Harun Farocki was born in Nový Jičín in 1944 and studied theater studies, sociology, and journalism at the German Film and Television Academy, Berlin (DFFB). Between 1974 and 1984, he was a staff writer and editor at the journal "Filmkritik." From 1993 to 1999, he taught as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1996, Farocki’s films and video installations have been shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions at museums and galleries. In 2007, his video installation "Deep Play" was on view at documenta 12. Since 2006, Farocki has been a full professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. He has received several honors and awards, including the German Documentary Film Award (1969, 1988, and 1990), the Adolf Grimme Award (1994), the Peter Weiss Award in honor of his oeuvre (2002), and the special award of the jury at the Locarno International Film Festival (2007).
Farocki’s early films are shaped by the idea of a cultural revolution as envisioned by the political left. His subsequent auteur films, filmic essays, and documentaries, by contrast, refrain from all interpretation, soliciting the viewer’s active engagement. In his filmic essays, Farocki examines film as a visual medium; in his installations, he addresses the way the camera is being put to use as an instrument of surveillance and control, among other issues.

Harun Farocki in the Generali Foundation’s collection

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Heimo Zobernig receives Friedrich Kiesler Award for Architecture and Art

On October 18, 2010, the artist Heimo Zobernig will receive the Friedrich Kiesler Award for Architecture and Art. In its statement, the international jury—Tony Fretton, Francesca von Habsburg, Moritz Küng, Frédéric Migayrou and Nasrine Seraji—praise Zobernig’s "unparalleled oeuvre and career" as well his "artistic agility, which allows him to subtly undermine established points of view and to uncover unprecedented vantages." The award includes a cash prize of € 55,000. In conjunction with the award ceremony, the Kiesler Foundation, Vienna, will present an exhibition of selected works by Heimo Zobernig.
Heimo Zobernig was born in 1958 in Mauthen, Carinthia, Austria. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, from 1977 to 1980, and then at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, from 1980 to 1983. Having taught at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main in 1999, he returned to Vienna, where he has taught at the Academy of Fine Arts since 2000. In 1993, he was awarded the Otto Maurer Prize; in 1997, the Fine Arts Award of the City of Vienna. In 2009, Vienna awarded him its Golden Decoration.
Heimo Zobernig works at the intersection between sculpture, film, Minimal and Conceptual art, design, and architecture. He has participated in numerous international exhibitions, among them documenta 9 and X in Kassel and, most recently, his "mid-career survey" at the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna, in 2002, which was also shown at Kunsthalle Basel and at K21, Düsseldorf.
Most recently, his installation "Black Cube, 2010" was on view in front of the entrance to the "Art 41" art fair in Basel. Heimo Zobernig has also created several projects for the Generali Foundation. In his 1991 exhibition our former office and showroom in 1991, he confronted visitors with several sculptures in the shape of stand-up bar tables, each tabletop painted in a different color. He painted the logo of the Generali Foundation, by hand, onto the green construction netting covering the façade of the new exhibition building, then under construction.

Heimo Zobernig at the Generali Foundation

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