Hyperbulie

VALIE EXPORT

Hyperbulie, 1973

"Körperaktion", "Körper-Material-Interaktion"

Artwork text

A corridor of wires through which electrical current flows (powered by a battery). A person enters the corridor and moves down it, whereby he constantly comes into painful contact with the electrical wires and thus slowly sinks to the floor. However, he accepts the challenge and, in a rather excessive intensification of willpower, presses his head against the wires again and again. In the closed, structured space of society, which parcels out and regulates all of mankind’s energies through painful barriers, man—whose body is covered with the stigmata of the social matrix—becomes a tamed animal obeying the requirements of a scheme under which he breaks down and which he doesn’t understand. Only an exertion of will which senselessly (because it must be a sense outside our society) overcomes the pain, which is the center of our society, is able to intend the condition of a free expression of life (free-flowing energies). (VALIE EXPORT)