Aus der Mappe der Hundigkeit

JPG\90\export-weibel_GF0002194.00_0000013146.jpg
© Generali Foundation Collection—Permanent Loan to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg © Bildrecht, Photo: Josef Tandl

VALIE EXPORT/Peter Weibel

Aus der Mappe der Hundigkeit, 1968

Documentation of the action 5 black-and-white photographs, vintage prints, 40.3 x 50.3 cm / 50 x 40.3 cm each, framed between 2 glass plates, flush 40.3 x 50.3 cm / 50 x 40.3 cm each, fixed with black textile adhesive tape Photographer: Josef Tandl

GF0002194.00.0-1996

Artwork text

Five black and white photographs document the action From the Portfolio of Doggedness, which VALIE EXPORT and Peter Weibel carried out in Vienna in February 1968. EXPORT took her fellow artist for a walk—he crawled behind her on all fours on a leash—along the Kärntner Strasse in Vienna, one of the central streets and main shopping areas. This “sociological and behavioral case study” (EXPORT) belongs to the actionistic tradition. “Here the convention of humanizing animals in cartoons is turned around and transferred into reality: Man is animalized—the critique of society as a state of nature” (Weibel). Turning around a piece of normal social behavior makes transparent a particular symbolic order—that of gender specifics—and subjects it to criticism. Here, an active woman leads a passive man on a leash. Crawling, a form of animal behavior, is not, however, a reference to liberation from moral and political discipline or a “better” system. Rather, it points out the necessity of restructuring the social order that has been handed down to us. Photography has a documentary function here, it acts as an “ethno-graphical” study and shows particular communication processes in the observable reactions of the onlookers. The structures of the gazes disclose social behavior and contrast with the action. (Claudia Slanar)

Lending history
2013 Bern, CH, Kunstmuseum Bern 2009 Bielefeld, DE, Kunsthalle Bielefel 2008 Bolzano, IT, Museion 2008 Vienna, AT, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Luwig Wien (mumok) 2007 New York, NY, USA, Austrian Cultural Forum New York 2006 Turin, IT, Palazzo Cavour 2005 Munich, DE, Haus der Kunst 2005 Rotterdam, NL, Witte de With 3. OG 2005 Zagreb, CRO, Galerija Klovicevi Dvori 2004 Graz, AT, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum 2003 Graz, AT, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum 2002 Karlsruhe, DE, Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (ZKM) 2002 Berlin, DE, Freie Akademie der Künste 2002 Nîmes, F, Musée Carré d'art